$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', 'I') think I will be Oilfinder2's nemesis for a while. Grains are way up today. Wheat is up over 6 percent today!!! Must be a shortage coming on.CBOT

[copious.abundance]

More improvement in the Australian wheat crop.

--> Bloomberg <--
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Australian Wheat Output May Exceed Government Forecast on Rain
By Madelene Pearson

Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Wheat production in Australia, forecast to be the world's third-largest exporter, may exceed a government prediction after rainfall in July and farmers sowed a record crop, ProFarmer Australia said.

``In our July forecast, we were at 23.2 million tons, based on what we've seen in July we'd have to lift the peg on that,'' Richard Koch, managing director of the Perth-based forecaster said today in an interview in Sydney. ``I'd be thinking something north of 25 million tons.''

Australia's wheat crop may rebound 82 percent this harvest to 23.7 million tons, after drought slashed output last year, the nation's government forecaster said in June. Concern dry weather in May and June would hurt output has eased after rain last month.

``With average rainfall from now until the end of the season, we should have a good chance of having above-average national yields,'' Koch said. ``Combine record plantings with a good chance of above average yields and we have got a big crop on our hands.''

[...]

[copious.abundance]

Looks like the already-record Brazilian soybean crop is going to be even bigger. More corn coming outta Brazil, too.

--> Bloomberg <--
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Brazil's Soybean Crop May Rise More Than Previously Forecast
By Jessica Brice

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Soybean output in Brazil, the world's second-biggest producer, will rise more than previously forecast, the government said.

Brazilian farmers will harvest 60.1 million metric tons of the oilseed, compared with a July forecast of 59.8 million tons, the Agriculture Ministry's crop forecasting agency, known as Conab, said today in an e-mailed statement. Output will rise from 58.4 million tons in the previous crop.

Corn output will also be better than expected, Conab said. Farmers will produce 58.5 million tons from the current crop, up from a July estimate of 57.5 million tons and 51.4 million tons harvested last year, Conab said.

[wisconsin_cur]

BBC Radio launches this information hub to cover the "World Food Crisis."

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', 'I') think I will be Oilfinder2's nemesis for a while. Grains are way up today. Wheat is up over 6 percent today!!! Must be a shortage coming on.

CBOT

Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)

[careinke]

In your own words, One day does not a trend make. What is the price of bread today compared with last year this time?

Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', 'I')n your own words, One day does not a trend make.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '[')
OK I will.
A good, I mean really good,cow makes 100lbs of milk each day of her lactation. She dose not eat anywhere near 69 lbs of grain in a day. She gets a combination of grass or hay and corn silage which is field corn plants chopped up stalk cob husks and all then packed in a bunker or silo where it ferments which improves its digestability ,and she gets a good charge of grain, but 20 lbs would be a lot closer than 69. Now a human could eat the grain to his advantage but he would not do so well on the grass or the silage. Similarly beef cattle spend most of their lives eating grass and hay and are only finished(Fattened) on grain. The only thing that eats straight grain all its life as a rule are commercialy raised chickens.
So your numbers may be just a little bit off. But of course they were compiled by bureaucrats that havent been on a farm in a while.
Cattle are not a waste of the worlds grain supply. They are instead a way to convert undigestable (to us) grasses and corn stalks into meat and milk, grasses that often grow on land to steep or dry to grow grain on.

[wisconsin_cur]

The link I had before is broken (cached here but I can not get through to the PDF) so I guess I do not care what you think of the stats. I was using the USDA official statistics so if you have a problem with them you have a problem with the USDA and not with me.

If we cannot use USDA stats, then there is no reason to have a conversation. Because who else could we agree upon to be an unbiased (for this purpose at least) purveyor of data. A discussion without data can only be idealogical (at best) or acromial (at worst).

If you want to come up with some data from another source, I will be more than happy to consider it. But lets talk data shall we?
----------------
edit: I am more than willing to admit when I am wrong or change my view when I have a good reason, (I have done it way too often recently) but you need to give me some data.

[vtsnowedin]

I was hoping to use the brains we came with and not resort to competeing Google searches. USDA is fine and good but remember they are just government bureaucrats not rocket scientists. I'm betting they just took the calorie requirements of a cow and divided by the calorie content of grain to get their number. If the actual feed mix is considered it would vary too much from one region to another and farming style to style to be anything more than a rough average. The numbers I gave were from my own experiance of actually raising cattle so thought they were valid enough to post. Lets let it drop and move on to something more pressing.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'I') was hoping to use the brains we came with and not resort to competeing Google searches. USDA is fine and good but remember they are just government bureaucrats not rocket scientists. I'm betting they just took the calorie requirements of a cow and divided by the calorie content of grain to get their number. If the actual feed mix is considered it would vary too much from one region to another and farming style to style to be anything more than a rough average. The numbers I gave were from my own experiance of actually raising cattle so thought they were valid enough to post. Lets let it drop and move on to something more pressing.

[vtsnowedin]

OK . Google "Feeding the dairy herd" first hit should be a study from U of M. Lots of info there. There appendix A-1 gives a budget for cows at three different levels of production. The highest calls for 130 bushels of corn "Equivalants" per year which when divided into 325 lactating days and 56 lbs/bushel =22.4 lbs per day.
California cows milked three times a day having all their forage raised on irrigated land are indeed an extreme case and much different than the 100 head herds I grew up around. The remaining herds here are rapidly switching over to being certified organic to tap into this market with its higher prices.

[copious.abundance]

Well, well, well.

Remember those Midwest floods back in the spring, and everyone was saying this year's corn crop would be a disaster, and the price of corn went through the roof, and the doomers here got all excited?

Well, the USDA August report came out today, and it looks like it won't be a diaster after all. In fact, we're looking at the 2nd-largest-ever corn crop - which is exactly what they were projecting at the beginning of the planting season.

In other news, soybeans were revised down slightly, but wheat was revised upwards slightly.
CNN <--
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Midwest corn crop recovers from flood
Agriculture Department says corn crop on track for second-largest harvest ever. August 12, 2008: 10:16 AM EDT:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Farmers are on pace to produce the second largest corn crop and fourth largest soybean crop in history, which may lead to lower prices for the key grains, the government said Tuesday.

In its first estimates this year based on actual field visits and farmer surveys, the U.S. Department of Agriculture raised its estimate of corn production and said "nearly ideal" weather has helped Midwestern farmers recover from June's devastating floods.

[...] The department forecast that farmers will harvest 12.3 billion bushels of corn, up more than 570 million bushels from last month's estimate of 11.7 billion. That's down 6% from last year's record crop of 13.1 billion bushels, but 17% above the 2006 harvest.

Average corn prices this year are expected to drop to $4.90 to $5.90 per bushel, down 60 cents from last month's forecast of $5.50 to $6.50.

[...] The department has lowered its estimate for soybeans a bit, to 2.97 billion bushels from 3 billion last month.

Still, soybean prices are also expected to fall to $11.50 to $13 per bushel, down 50 cents from $12.00 to $13.50 last month, the department said.

[...] The department also slightly boosted its forecast of wheat production by 2 million bushels, to 2.462 billion, and projected that wheat prices will average $6.50 to $8, down 25 cents from last month.

[wisconsin_cur]

14m on the brink of starvation

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')apidly rising global food costs have contributed to the worst hunger crisis in East Africa for eight years, with at least 14 million people at risk of malnutrition, aid agencies said yesterday.

In Ethiopia, the worst-affected country in the region, the Government said that 4.6 million people faced starvation, but aid agencies claimed that the true figure was closer to 10 million.

Drought has worsened food shortages, and Oxfam said that the number of acute malnutrition cases had reached its highest level since the droughts of 2000, when mortality rates peaked at more than six people per 10,000 per day. The official definition of a famine is more than four deaths per 10,000 per day.

Ethiopian farmers said that the crisis was caused by the absence of the Belg rains, which were due in February and March. “It’s really hard. People are eating whatever they can find,” said Gemeda Worena, 38, the tribal head of Fendi Ajersai, a village in southern Ethiopia where six children died in one week this month. “We hadn’t had rain for the last eight months. We had to buy water to save our lives, but now we have nothing.”

[copious.abundance]

You're right WC, there has never been starving people in the world until recently. Famine is an utterly new concept to Ethiopia. The fact that there is currently a famine in East Africa - which has never ever happened before - indicates that there is a "spreading" world food crisis.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '[')url=http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic38714-0.html]Previous Thread Found Here[/url]
Part One:
World Protein Consumption and the use of grain feeds Ok, that was not the original name of the FAO report but I like my title better.

Why the increased prices of grains over the last few years when, as has been demonstrated on earlier pages, the actual calorie per capita has gone up? We are using that increase to make meat, eggs and milk.

Pork has around a 6:1 conversion ratio (I will assume that the developing nations producing most of this meat are getting the same results as their American counterparts):



Chicken, when producing broilers, has ~2:1 ration



Eggs and milk are a little harder to figure. In 2003 the USDA reported (on average) that 51 pounds of grain were used to produce every 100 eggs and 69 pounds were required to produce 100 pounds (~11.5 gallons) of milk.




So what does all of this mean for grain usage for animal feed?



So while grain production has gone up 1,500 tonnes over the last few decades,

only about 1/2 of this increase is available for human consumption (~600 million tonnes) all of this during a time when population has doubled.



So doing the math quickly and in my head this translates into treading water since the 1960's, no improvement, no loss in respect to grain available per person.

If we are to in anyway "blame" corn based ethanol it really seems to be a secondary problem since so little is used compared to how much the world puts into the production of meat as to make it a small portion of overall usage.



Part Two:
So the question remains, while there were famines in the past, is there anything different about today, in respect to that ability of people to purchase from the pie of food that is available?



The purchasing power of the top 2 Billion has gone up compared to the middle and lower 2 Billion. That increased purchasing power has a number of effects. Among them,

Obesity rate in China growing

Conclusion:
I have already been too brief and cursury. I expect and hope for some useful additions and corrections in response, but let me add just a few more thoughts.

1. Most of the concepts that we use for Oil production and consumption apply to food and grain production and consumption. Jeavon's Paradox, for example, goes a long way to explain why the excess grain production has been eaten up by increased meat production and human population expansion. Export Land Model is helpful in thinking about how things will unfold as time goes on.


Field Depletion rates even find a rough correlary in the way that the green revolution has resulted in increased but unsustainable yields as
the impacts of the Green Revolution undermine the soil and water upon which it depends..

How long will the plateau last?
So I'm sure I have over simplified or forgotten something. Have at it!

[vtsnowedin]

The dieoff of the human population has to start somewhere. Ethiopia and Darfor are just as good as any. You didn't think it would be KSA did you. What we do with the grain supply dosn't really matter until fertilizer becomes scarce in a post peak world. Then people won't feed any to the pigs until the rice and flour bins are full for the winter.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', ':')evil: The dieoff of the human population has to start somewhere. Ethiopia and Darfor are just as good as any. You didn't think it would be KSA did you. What we do with the grain supply dosn't really matter until fertilizer becomes scarce in a post peak world. Then people won't feed any to the pigs until the rice and flour bins are full for the winter.

[yesplease]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', ':')evil: The dieoff of the human population has to start somewhere. Ethiopia and Darfor are just as good as any.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('yesplease', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', ':')evil: The dieoff of the human population has to start somewhere. Ethiopia and Darfor are just as good as any.