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| 00:00 | larger Farms mean larger more specialized equipment specialized equipment means specialized manufacturing Supply chains and specialized Supply chains are woefully vulnerable to disruption for Mass rrop producers the list of wbe equipment suppliers is exceedingly short in the late globalization period there are but four places that produced the relevant equipment for Mass row crop agriculture in both bulk and quality Europe's manufacturing Capac capacity is multinational and subject to the coherence or lack thereof of the |
| 00:34 | European Union the average size of a Chinese wheat or corn field is typically about 1 acre less than 1350th the size of its American equivalence North America's manufacturing capacity is intact but heavily relies on East Asia for computing components the Brazilians have some limited production capacity largely for their own Market but with a smattering of exports to South Asia and subsaharan Africa in a de globalized world European Supply chains face severe constraints german-made farm equipment requires the same supply chain linkages |
| 01:07 | throughout Central Europe as German automotive as well as Global markets for sales French equipment manufacturing capacity is likely to pass through the needle successfully due to both its total capture of its Home Market and less complicated access to North America Chinese farm equipment production and exports are simply a dead letter from both production and Export angles look to Brazil to pick up some of the slack for all agricultural producers the question will be whether they can tie themselves into one of the remaining |
| 01:38 | equipment suppliers it would be surprising if the regional geopolitic breaks against Algeria and Bulgaria and Poland and Romania and Spain and the United Kingdom but it would be more surprising if it breaks against none of them Australia New Zealand and South Africa are not at all approximate to their equipment sources but they also do not face supply routes nearly as B outside of the big Cadillac style Mega machines necessary for row cropping South and Southeast Asia use smaller equipment for their smaller Fields with |
| 02:09 | China out of the mix as a supplier there is no clean substitute India does make a lot of small work trucks and tractors but its supply chain sourcing spans the globe and includes China everyone who Sports largely internal supply chains and makes appropriately sized kit Brazil and India come to mind is a long way away probably better for Thailand and Malaysia to retool some of their Automotive sector to plug the looming gaps that will not that cannot occur overnight the worst of the impacts will be felt in the former Soviet states of |
| 02:45 | Russia Ukraine Kazakhstan and bellarus sure as with most heavy equipment manufacturer most is made close to home but every joke you've ever heard about Russian tractors is more fact Than Fiction Russia's Fall From Grace has been so hard that few Farmers have ever been able to purchase new equipment in the posts Soviet era what they operate is old and as much as the former Soviet space is known for manufacturing subpar equipment it is more known for shooring foreign Parts into local gear to keep it running the most successful and |
| 03:18 | productive farms in the FSU are the large ones that import their equipment from elsewhere whether it is because the old stuff finally breaks down or the new stuff is unavailable agriculture in this corner of the world is going to turn desperate indeed the pain will not stay bottled up in the late order period these countries are the origin of some 40% of the world's wheat exports the picture darkens considerably once one starts looking at the world of Transport the bulk nature of most agricultural outputs necessitates giant |
| 03:53 | bulk shipping vessels the specialized nature of large farm equipment necessitates specialized shipping systems there's no shoving a massive combine into an itty bitty shipping container the orders penchant for maximized production of specialized products combined with the input intensive nature of contemporary agricultural production requires endless Merchant fleets only 20 to 25% of grains and soy are transported internationally some 80% of the inputs are all these flows will be endangered to one degree |
| 04:23 | or another and any interruption in any of them will have devastating knock-on effects up and down the supply chains indeed all the way to the dinner table if pesticide or fertilizer or diesel fuel or raw soy or a refrigeration unit is delayed 3 months much of the food product itself will be lost somewhere along the chain of planting growth harvesting processing shipment there's the hardly minor issue of planetary geography roughly 2third of the human population lives in the temperate and near temperate zones of the northern |
| 04:52 | hemisphere this hemisphere is a net Food importer about the only good news is that the southern hemispheric tempered zones regions highly resistant to the coming geopolitical storm are very lightly populated compared to the Northern Hemisphere this makes the countries of the global South big food exporters but considering that the collective size of their agricultural regions is less than 1/5 that of the northern hemisphere the global South can only help so much any Northern hemispheric disruptions to either food |
| 05:24 | production directly or supporting Industries indirectly immediately turn to food shortages on on a scale Humanity has never before experienced under the globalized order most countries specialize in producing nonfood products of various sorts for example light manufacturing for Ireland cotton for usbekistan oil for Algeria electronics for Japan and then use export sales to purchase internationally traded food stuffs for most countries these sorts of swaps will no longer be nearly as available the greatest pains |
| 05:58 | will be felt in the same regions and and in the same sectors we keep returning to manufactured products out of East Asia and Northern Europe processed industrial Commodities out of the Persian Gulf East Asia and Northern Europe food products inbound to North Africa Northeast Asia the Persian Gulf and South Asia energy shipments on the Persian Gulf and the red Baltic black South China and East China Seas of these the most critical are those for the inputs that translate not simply into fuels but into the sorts of products that make |
| 06:32 | everything else in the industrial age possible oil and oil derived products are critical to All Things agricultural if they aren't present in sufficient volumes the tractors combines trucks trains Terminals and ships that are Central to producing and transporting food stuffs and their input streams simply do not function and forget the electric vehicle craze leaving aside the Minor Details that come Harvest Time farmers are out in the field Fields 18 hours a day or more and that there is no battery system in the world that can |
| 07:04 | handle that sort of outcharge with only six or fewer hours of in charge as well as the less than Minor Detail that an EV ship could not recharge in the middle of the freaking Ocean electrification Technology does not yet exist that can manage the high powerto sizee requirements for either heavy equipment or long-range Oceanic shipping there simply is neither an existing technology nor an imminent technological Revolution that can replace oil and natural gas in the agricultural sector one of the great technological advances that brought us |
| 07:35 | not simply the Modern Age but basic civilization itself was the ability to capture energy from moving water and air via watermills and windmills in order to grind grains into flour we now manage said grinding with electric Mills in a world suffering circumscribed access to the Basic Energy inputs that generate electricity good luck maintaining not simply an industrial lifestyle but a post waterer wheel lifestyle how many of the world's varied geographies have good geographies for water wheels you think there's enough of |
| 08:14 | them to grind flour for 8 billion people the energy question is about a lot more than merely fuel to explain that we need to jump into the next restriction on agriculture industrial Commodities remember how there is more to oil and natural gas than simply moving things around oil is typically the primary ingredient for pesticides herbicides and fungicides while most fertilizers base materials also include natural gas the collective adoption of such chemical inputs in the late 1800s in the advanced World increased grain |
| 08:47 | output by roughly a factor of four with the developing World participating in such bounty in the decades after World War II and especially after the Cold War without such inputs the reverse will be true every soil type every crop demands not only different amounts of fertilizer but different types as well each fertilizer has its own grab bag of geopolitical complications resulting in a dizzying mix of implications natural gas is Central to nearly all aspects of the fabrication of nitrogen type fertilizers nitrogen is |
| 09:20 | the go-to nutrient if the goal is leafy growth making nitrogen type fertilizers key for both grasses such as corn and wheat as well as fruits and vegetables flowers are specialized leaves anyone who cannot Source crude for domestic refining cannot produce nitrogen fertilizers this will be a problem nearly everywhere in the Eastern hemisphere but as with the broader energy question the complications will be particularly intense in Korea Central Europe and the bulk of subsaharan Africa the country that will certainly face the |
| 09:53 | biggest declines in agricultural output will be China not only do the Chinese grow pretty much everything at scale but Chinese soil and water quality is so low that Chinese Farmers generally use more fertilizer per calorie produced than any other country five times the global average in the case of nitrogen fertilizers consider that at least two of the top five producers of this entire list of products will face chronic nitrogen fertilizer shortages almonds apples beans blueberries broccoli cabbage carrots cashews cassava cauliflower cherries Co |
| 10:29 | coconuts corn cucumbers currants eggplant figs funo grapes green beans kiwi fruit lettuce Millet oats okra olives onions peaches peas pineapples plums potatoes pulses Quints quinoa raspberries rice rice Sesame squashes strawberries sweet potatoes turnips wheat and yams this all this is unfortunately just the opener for this particular hellscape there's a lot more to fertilizer than simply oil or natural gas the there's a second classification of fertilizer based on a material called phosphate phosphate is in essence |
| 11:05 | fossilized bird poop which serves as a suitable substitute to human poop I'm slightly oversimplifying here but mind bird poop is treated with acid ground to a powder and tossed on Plants its commodification and production in industrial volumes has proven absolutely critical to the rise of industrialized agriculture especially because a there are a lot more people who need food now than there were in 1945 and B most of humanity agrees that storing and spreading our own poop is something we would really rather not do |
| 11:38 | Testament to these facts phosphate-based fertilizers experienced an eight-fold increase in production and application since 1960 regardless of your feelings on the topics of population or poop the world's biggest phosphate suppliers are the United States Russia China and Morocco hopefully by now now you know what I think is going to happen to supplies out of America orted for regional use and Russia say goodbye to anything that once emerged from the Empire of Broken Dreams China's production comes from its deep |
| 12:13 | Inland Western provinces which are in most cases secessionists so keeping Chinese production internationalized requires China threading not one needle but instead three that leaves Morocco as the world's great hope and for once there is actual hope in addition to its already productive phosphate assets Morocco occupies a territory called the Western Sahara which has the world's largest undeveloped phosphate supplies most of which are located within a few miles of the coast there's a tedious drawn out |
| 12:47 | Saga within Africa on whether a western Sahara is a Moroccan Province a disputed territory or an independent nation considering that Morocco has controlled the Ws as long as I've been alive and that this is a chapter of about how much of the world is soon going to be starving in the dark you can imagine how much I care about such minutia even should Russian and Chinese supplies fall off the market completely the United States plus an enlarged Morocco should be able to supply sufficient volumes for all of North |
| 13:18 | America South America Europe and Africa that's great for them and wretched for everyone else this is actually worse than it sound one of the many complications the world of hypers specialized globalized agriculture has created for itself is that we now grow or raise each plant or animal where it makes the most economic sense within a holistic system for example cattle have shifted into the Great Plains while corn and soy dominate the Midwest in the pre-order days the two would have been more or less collocated in that pre-order system the |
| 13:56 | farmers would use cattle manure to provide phosphorus for their fields without immediate proximate supplies of animal poop Farmers now have no choice but to use artificial phosphate type fertilizers that has required both International Supply chains to source and process the phosphates and gasoline and Diesel to get the fertilizer to the field this entire model collapses in a post globalized system but as critical as nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers are they cannot hold a candle to potassium fertilizers on the outcome side most plants at |
| 14:32 | Harvest are between 5% and 2.0% potassium by weight with the most potassium heavy bits being the parts that feed into the human supply chain every crop needs a lot of potassium every year on the sourcing side nearly all the world's potassium comes from a mineral known as potach and internationally traded potach comes from just six places Jordan Israel Germany Russia Belarus and Canada Jordan is a borderline failed State even with unlimited American Security and economic support and de facto Israeli Management |
| 15:09 | in a post American Middle East Israel will be many things but a trade Hub will not be one of them German supplies are insufficient to help out any country Beyond those which Germany borders Russian bellarus are already on the other side of a new Iron Curtain that just leaves Canada thank God for Canada South America and Australia the continents that produce and Export the greatest volumes of food stuffs relative to their populations have almost no potash China Imports half its needs South Asia Europe and subsaharan Africa |
| 15:44 | are painfully shy of both Poes and phosphates there is one itty bitty Ray of Hope in the coming Global fertilizer and from that food shortage most Studies by most agricultural scientists suggest suggest that most Farmers have been over fertilizing for decades especially when it comes to potassium fertilizers this would suggest that at present most farms in most places have a potassium Surplus baked into the soil this would further suggest that most farmers can reduce their inputs of fertilizer without sacrificing yields by all that much the |
| 16:22 | question is for how long most data suggest up to a decade that might seem insufficient it is not it is wildly insufficient but it does suggest that perhaps we will have a bit of time to scramble for Solutions rather than jumping directly into Continental sized famines the first time someone hijacks a cargo ship let's end this cheery discussion with a look at the interaction between Agriculture and finance this might sound obvious but agriculturalists tend to not get paid for their product until they deliver it this might sound even more |
| 16:58 | more obvious but agriculturalists cannot work double shifts or odd hours or opposite Seasons to generate more product stuff is planted or born when seasonal weather allows it stuff is grown or raised while the weather of a different season enables it stuff is harvested or slaughtered once it reaches maturity almost certainly in yet another season and only then are agriculturalists paid but we've come a long way from pre-industrial days when the only inputs we farming were a few bags of unmilled wheat that had been held back from the |
| 17:31 | last Harvest or when the only cost for raising animals was an easily distracted stargazing Shepherd boy contemporary industrial agriculture has a dizzying array of inputs they fall into three General categories raw stock seeds for planting sound simple but in many cases hybridized genetically modified or otherwise specialized seeds are far more expensive than simply holding back some of the previous year's Harvest such specialized seeds easily lead to harvest is triple of what could be grown the oldfashioned way in 2021 seeds for a |
| 18:04 | single acre of corn plantings ran about $111 tree stock for Orchards needs to be purchased the never-ending process of selective breeding to generate bigger and more productive in taste your meat products requires a never-ending effort to secure the perfect stud in the pre-co lwi inflation days of 2019 a basic stud sheep easily set back a ranger $600 while a run-of-the-mill horny bull went for $1,500 in the everything shortage economy at the time of this writing those numbers have doubled should you want something special top-notch Black |
| 18:38 | Angus breeding stock can easily set you back 7 Grand at auction growth inputs these include fertilizers herbicides pesticides fungicides and possibly irrigation for plant crops and silage grazing rights and medical inputs for animal husbandry such expenses are not once inone whether you are engaged in plant or animal husbandry pretty much everything but wheat requires a degree of attention and inputs all season long equipment a modern combine will set a farmer back a cool half million dairy cows not only must be shielded from the |
| 19:16 | weather but they require facilities capable of milking them multiple times a day most of the newer low labor mostly automated facilities have installation costs in excess of $10 million AS Global demographics age and labor costs rise Orchards have even invested in labor saving machines that spray trees automate irrigation tasks and pick separate clean and even pack fruits all of this is in addition to more Baseline costs such as fuel and labor a typical 200 acre corn farm in Minnesota can expect input outlays of about |
| 19:52 | $85,000 every year a typical 5500 acre family Corporation wheat farm in Montana can expect that annual figure to top $1 million none of that would be possible unless everything was financed disrupt that finance and the entire system collapses among the advanced economies the financialization of the agricultural system is often integrated directly into governing systems in order to smooth out the process and protect farmers and ranchers from the vulgarities of Cycles Financial economic and climatic for example the Farm Credit system which |
| 20:29 | supports American Agricultural producers enjoys a direct Congressional Charter and is one of the United States's largest financial institutions most countries lack that sort of organizational and financial heft and are far more subject to the wins and trends of Global Financial availability from 1990 through 2020 that wasn't much of a problem Capital flight from the former Soviet world hyperf financialization out of China and heavy agricultural subsidies out of Europe and Japan combined with the ridiculous LLY |
| 20:59 | available and cheap credit made possible by the Boomer bulge has deluged agriculturalists the world over with all the financing they could stomach but between de globalization and the global demographic inversion that environment is turning inside out borrowing costs will rise even as borrowing terms tighten and liquidity vanishes agricultural producers will suffer right along with everyone else but when agricultural producers cannot Source financing there are food shortages love organic products and think they can |
| 21:31 | help solve these issues you must suck at math their inputs are much higher specialized seeds higher volumes of water non-chemical pesticides and herbicides and such are more expensive as well as bulkier to transport and store and apply the far lower effectiveness of organic inputs necessitates at least quadruple the passes over fields that synthetics require necessitating yet more labor and fuel all that extra activity on a f field encourages higher soil erosion and water contamination than traditional farming which in turn demand more inputs |
| 22:04 | the leading organic fertilizer for orcharding is chicken parts not suitable for human consumption it doesn't take much imagination to visualize the gooey pungent Logistics chain for shredded chicken guts which of course require a refrigeration chain to prevent utterly decadent levels of nastiness drastically increasing organic's carbon footprint and at the back end the result is far lower yields per acre meaning even more land with even more low Effectiveness inputs required to generate the same volume of food as more conventional |
| 22:39 | practices you can have organic foods or environmentally friendly Foods you cannot have both simply put disruption in nearly any sector immediately translates into a disruption of agricultural production with catastrophic outcomes |