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Largest US food distributor declares force majeure on fresh fruit and vegetables due to "devastating" freeze of "unprecedented magnitude"

Sysco, the largest wholesale food distributor in the US and primary supplier to most supermarket chains, has declared force majeure (the "act of G_d" clause) that allows suspension of contracted prices and supply of fresh fruit and vegetables due to the "unprecedented magnitude" of "devastating" and "extreme freezing temperatures" in a "very broad section of major growing regions in Mexico."

Food

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Norman Borlaug

We read with sadness that Norman Borlaug, leader of the Green Revolution, passed away yesterday. Borlaug, called “the man who fed the world,” helped develop genetically modified organisms and spread the technology in impoverished Third World countries. Borlaug was credited with saving more than 1 billion people from starvation and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, not to mention more than 35 honorary degrees and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


It’s fitting to end with Borlaug’s own words from earlier this summer, about how to succeed in feeding the future world:

Even here at home, some elements of popular culture romanticize older, inefficient production methods and shun fertilizers and pesticides, arguing that the U.S. should revert to producing only local organic food. People should be able to purchase organic food if they have the will and financial means to do so, but not at the expense of the world’s hungry—25,000 of whom die each day from malnutrition.

Unfortunately, these distractions keep us from the main goal. … Factor in growing prosperity and nearly three billion new mouths by 2050, and you quickly see how the crudest calculations suggest that within the next four decades the world’s farmers will have to double production.

…[G]overnments must make their decisions about access to new technologies, such as the development of genetically modified organisms—on the basis of science, and not to further political agendas.


http://www.consumerf...m/headline/3988

A Dakota Farmer Speaks:

I bring a unique perspective to the biotech/nuclear fission alignment. I began a short career in farming 60 years ago. My brief farming career was followed by a career in academia, where I regularly taught immunology which has confirmed radiation hormesis. My graduate school degrees are in microbiology and plant physiology.

When I actively farmed, nearly all farms operated without commercial fertilizer and chemicals for control weeds and pests. My corn crop yield was in the 35 bushels/acre range. Today the corn yield on my farm averages 160 bushels/acre. In the 60s we barely produced enough food for our world population of 3 billion. We used cultivation to control weeds and the plow to turn under the cornstocks in order to limit next year’s corn borer infestation. These tillage practices promoted soil erosion and contributed to excessive fuel consumption. Today thanks to Monsanto, no till and minimum till agriculture often replaces soil loss with in soil building and excessive fuel consumption with fuel conservation. Farms in 2005 used 64% less fuel per bushel than the farms of 1970.

The green revolution is another part of the story. Norman Borlaug made 8156 crosses to produce a short straw, rust resistant, very high yield wheat that thrives over a wide range of climate conditions. India and Pakistan at the brink of massive starvation went from food importers to food exporters at the end to the 1960s. Borlaug’s techniques were applied to rice which produced needed nutrition for many millions in other Asian countries. Borlaug is credited with preventing more than a billion deaths from starvation. In his later years Norman Borlaug fought the anti- biotech lobby: “If the naysayers do manage to stop agricultural biotechnology, they might actually precipitate the famines and the crisis of global biodiversity they have been predicting for nearly 40 years.”

Biotechnology and commercial fertilizer are key elements in feeding the world population. Coupled with cheap emission free nuclear fission we have the recipe for a sustainable future. I have written an essay that ties biotechnology and nuclear fission to a future of abundance. http://scienceandthing.blogspot.com/


http://atomicinsight...uclear-fission/

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Peak Food

World population was 2 billion in 1930. Now it is 7 billion, up 250 percent.
World grain production was 481 million metric tons in 1930. Now it is 2.4 billion metric tons, up 392 percent thanks to the green revolution pioneered by Norman Borlaug and others.

Grain prices fell all through that period— up until the last few years.

Developing-country wheat yields peaked at 2.7 metric tons per hectare in 1996 and have plateaued thereafter. Developed-country grain yields have plateaued from 2000.

In the last decade, the supply overhang has been absorbed, and now grain prices are running up. Meanwhile, each day sees another 200,000 people added to the world’s population.

As adults, each day’s cohort will need 66,000 metric tons of wheat per annum to keep body and soul together. That means that an additional 25 million metric tons of wheat production will be required to feed the world’s population each and every year.

Most of the world’s population already spends a quarter to a half of their income on food. Thus rising food prices will have a severe impact on their discretionary spending, shrinking the market for goods and services.



Archibald, David (2014-03-24). Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Kindle Locations 120-127). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[Rogerdodger]

I remember predictions a few years ago that Canadian agriculture may suffer from a coming cooling phase (cycle).
It has suffered early this year:

Agrium profit hit by frigid winter, lower fertilizer prices
May 6 (Reuters) - Canada's Agrium Inc reported on Tuesday a steep drop in first-quarter profit, hurt by a colder than usual winter across North America and a drop in fertilizer prices.
As the cold weather caused transportation problems and delayed spring planting in some areas, net earnings from continuing operations for the first quarter fell.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 09 May 2014 - 08:29 AM.

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Peak Food

World population was 2 billion in 1930. Now it is 7 billion, up 250 percent.
World grain production was 481 million metric tons in 1930. Now it is 2.4 billion metric tons, up 392 percent thanks to the green revolution pioneered by Norman Borlaug and others.

Grain prices fell all through that period— up until the last few years.

Developing-country wheat yields peaked at 2.7 metric tons per hectare in 1996 and have plateaued thereafter. Developed-country grain yields have plateaued from 2000.

In the last decade, the supply overhang has been absorbed, and now grain prices are running up. Meanwhile, each day sees another 200,000 people added to the world’s population.

If the climate were actually warming, vast areas of Canada and Russia could be put under the plough and could contribute to the world’s grain supply. But we know that the temperature of the planet has not risen for the last seventeen years.

We can be almost as certain that a severe solar-driven cooling event is in train.

Instead of the Northern Hemisphere grain belts moving north, they will be moving south. The U.S. Corn Belt will move toward the Sun Belt, just as the northern limit of American Indian corn growing moved three hundred kilometers south between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

Grain production in Canada will become difficult. Norway’s wheat production is already down 48 percent from its peak in 2007 because of cold, wet summers. Total world grain stocks were about 330 million metric tons at year-end 2013, only 14 percent of annual demand.


Archibald, David (2014-03-24). Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Kindle Locations 129-134). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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If the climate were actually warming, vast areas of Canada and Russia could be put under the plough and could contribute to the world’s grain supply. But we know that the temperature of the planet has not risen for the last seventeen years.

Danish researchers Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen discovered that the strongest correlation is between solar cycle length and temperature over the following solar cycle.

A long solar cycle is followed by a cold climate during the subsequent cycle; a short one, by a warm climate . A long solar cycle, number 23, finished in 2008, and thus the climate over the present solar cycle, 24, will be colder

In 2011, Professor Jan-Erik Solheim of the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo, published a paper predicting a decline of 0.9 ° C for the Northern Hemisphere. (over the next 10 years.)

This cooling will erase all of the warming of the twentieth century and take the planet back to the temperatures of the mid-nineteenth century.



Archibald, David (2014-03-24). Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Kindle Locations 416-419). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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What if David Archibald’s book turns out to be right? It is interesting to contemplate how the West would handle the geopolitical and humanitarian challenges brought on by a colder climate’s shorter growing seasons and likely food shortages.

Russian scientists at the Pulkovo Observatory are convinced the world is in for a cooling period that will last for 200-250 years. Respected Norwegian solar physicist Pal Brekke warns "temperatures may actually fall for the next 50 years.”

Leading British climate scientist Mike Lockwood, of Reading University, found 24 occasions in the past 10,000 years when the sun was declining as it is now, but could find none where the decline was as fast. He says a return of the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830), which included “the year without summer”, is “more likely than not”.

If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared.


http://iceagenow.inf...-brutish-short/

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Kansas – Earliest frost on record – Growing season now third shortest on record

The Daily News reported that an all-time (114-year) record was broken on September 13, 2014, when the thermometer dipped to 31 degrees F.

The low of 31 degrees not only was a new record for the day, but a new record for the first frost of the fall.

It also means this year’s growing season — at 134 days — is the third shortest on record in this bread basket of the U.S.. The shortest was 114 days in 1901, followed by 133 days in 1912.


http://iceagenow.inf...hortest-record/