> From: "Barry B. Bean" <bbbean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 20:35:08 -0700, Jan Steinman wrote:
>
>> Grain
>> harvests have been in steady decline for five years, at about a 2%
>> rate, with no indication of change on the horizon.
>
> I believe you've been sold a bill of goods!
My statement was sufficiently vague as to be defensible. But I should
have more precisely said that the rate of increase in world grain
output has been declining, and is no longer keeping up with the rate
of increase in demand. Ethanol in SUVs won't help this situation at
all. Let them eat cake.
References:
China's rice harvest has been falling since 1997: http://
www.eoearth.org/article/Aquifer_depletion
"Newly harvested wheat poured into U.S. grain elevators last week,
offsetting a decline in commercial inventories of nearly all other
types of cash grain" http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/
2006/06/27/1696973.htm
"This years harvest of 1,967 million tons is falling short of the
estimated consumption of 2,040 million tons by some 73 million tons.
This shortfall of nearly 4 percent is one of the largest on
record.... in six of the last seven years world grain production has
fallen short of use" http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/
2006/11/exploding_us_gr.html
"we [the US] need a rise of 73 million tons just to overcome the 2006
production shortfall. Beyond that we will need 24 million tons of
additional output to cover the estimated annual growth in food and
feed needs. If we then add 39 million additional tons to supply the
54 new distilleries..." http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/
Update60.htm
"World Grain Stocks in Decline" http://technocrat.net/d/2006/6/16/4549
"the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicates that a 1-degree-Celsius
rise in temperature (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the optimum during
the growing season leads to a 10 percent decline in yields of rice,
wheat and corn. With four of the past six years being the warmest on
record, grain harvests are suffering. High temperatures lowered
harvests last year in India and the United States and scorched crops
this year from France to Ukraine... falling water tables and rising
temperatures, along with trends such as soil erosion, has led to four
consecutive shortfalls in the world grain harvest." http://www.earth-
policy.org/Updates/Update31.htm
:::: Real peace in a petroleum-fueled world means rejecting petroleum
dependence in all possible ways. -- Jan Lundberg ::::
:::: Jan Steinman (a fossil-fuel-free zone) <http://
www.VeggieVanGogh.com> ::::
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