WHEN THE END IS THE BEGINNING
While farmers are focused on the possibility the Earth will run out of phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers, agriculture could be hit almost as hard because reserves of other lesser-known chemicals are also being used up.
In an article called Peak Everything, Ronald Bailey writes in REASON magazine that some scientists are predicting we’ll run out of lithium, the building block of the batteries in tomorrow’s electric cars. We’re also running out of neodymium, a rare-earth metal used to make the magnets at the heart of everything from computers and cell phone to wind turbines.
Read Also
Riding the tariff rollercoaster
Farmers are accustomed to roller-coaster years. But the current geopolitical windstorm is something else entirely. On his cattle operation near…
The problem with the-sky-is-falling predictions, says an economist at Stanford University, is that they don’t allow for human ingenuity. Says Paul Romer: “We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered.”
Every generation faces finite resources, Romer says, and every generation figures out a workaround. Already, science-based companies are working on zinc-air batteries that may prove much more efficient that lithium designs, as well as replacements for neodymium. After all, neodymium wasn’t used in magnets until the world started running out of cheap cobalt.
There may even be fixes for the exhaustion of the globe’s phosphorus mines. Urine is a rich source of phosphorus, the NEW YORK TIMES reports. There’s enough phosphorus in the average adult’s urine to fertilize essentially all the food that that person eats. As an added bonus, there’s apparently little concern that the supply will run out.
CORRECTION
The name of BASF’s new kixor herbicide for corn in Canada is Intrepid, not Integrity as reported last month. COUNTRY GUIDE apologizes for the error. Intrepid was approved and officially launched after we went to print. It offers early season grass and broadleaf control with a choice of pre-plant incorporated or pre-emergent applications. Integrity by contrast is a Scotts herbicide for use in turf.
BOOK REVIEW
The economics of food
How feeding and fueling the planet affects food prices
Patrick Westhoff
FT Press $30.99
Reviewed by Tom Button, CG Editor
You’re in good company when you read Patrick Westhoff, the co-director of the influential Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri whose pronouncements on world ag trade and policy are among the most closely watched on the planet.
If anybody is going to answer the biggest question in agriculture today, Westhoff might be the odds-on favourite.
What is the new trendline for commodity prices? Will a bushel of wheat be worth more in 10 years than it is today? And how about a pound of beef, or a bushel of soybeans?
In other words, is this the right time to be investing in agriculture? Is it the right time to be encouraging your children to look at farming as a career, or the right time to be buying land?
Westhoff’s answer to all of those questions is, “Maybe.”
It must rank as one of the most dramatic maybe’s in the history of ag publishing. After all, we endlessly hear predictions that the world’s population is soaring past our ability to sustain it. We hear that China’s booming economy is creating so much new demand for pork and poultry, farmers may never be able to meet it, and that the end of cheap oil means that every acre of cropland will be simultaneously needed for fuel as well as food.
Westhoff agrees that we’re entering a new age. But then he points out that agriculture has a long history of entering new ages.
The world’s population has more than doubled from the three billion it reached in 1960, but so have grain yields, he points out. Along the way, there have been catastrophes, there have been droughts and there have been recessions. There have also been huge strides in farm productivity, with the result that, while the number of malnourished people in the world is more or less the same, most of us heap our plates as high as we ever did and never think twice about the cost.
Betting against the productive capability of farmers has never worked out, at least in modern, free-enterprise environments.
While we may be entering a new fuel-based future, Westhoff points out that this also means agriculture is getting sucked into the feedback loops that restrain energy prices. Yes, if oil climbs to $200 a barrel, grain prices would go through the roof too, at least in theory. But energy prices are self-correcting. Factories don’t hum on unaffordable oil.
Westhoff’s team computes a “stochastic baseline” every year that looks at weather, trade, ecnomic predictions and other factors to produce an incredible 500 different ways that food markets could evolve over the next decade. In practice, though, he sees just three main possibilities. Either (1) ag output and demand will rise at more or less the same rate, as they have for the past 60 years, (2) demand will outpace supply, driving prices up, or (3) supply will out outpace demand because of new technology.
What does Westhoff believe will happen? “The most likely outcome is that some forces will push up future food prices while other forces will push them down,” he writes.
While that sounds unhelpful, it may actually be the most realistic advice you can get. Certainly, thanks to Westhoff’s credentials, it’s the most authoritative.
If you’re going to thrive on the farm, it’s because you’re a more efficient producer than anyone else. It may not be the answer any of us want, but at least it’s a future we can make decisions about.
