The reason for the agricultural shortages has nothing whatever to do with anticompetitive behavior. Such claims are laughable and ignorant. If they were true, they would be longstanding problems from well before the pandemic.
In fact, these problems started appearing in late 2020 with the pandemic shutdowns causing labor and supply shortages that became more acute in 2021. The aftereffect of the shutdowns are still with us, although that situation is gradually normalizing. Still, they left in their wake not just loss of operations, but deferred maintenance as well. Hence, all the fires in agricultural and food factories.
The other, more recent factor is the Biden administration's "war on supply," a new and very dangerous development that is starting to spread to other countries. Since spring a year ago (2021), the administration has pressured every point along the supply chain that depends on fossil fuels, targeting companies that produce and transport such inputs. Federal agencies like the SEC and the Fed have had their mandate quietly and arbitrarily expanded to include restricting or stopping the flow of capital to such firms. I talked with a friend who works in this area last week about just this development. It's pretty frightening, given that we're already seeing shortages in this sector on par with the 2010-14 period, and the impact is far from being fully felt. There was no "war on supply" in the Obama or Trump years, in spite of Obama's opposition to coal. The 2010-14 surge in prices was caused by the world's central banks flooding the world with cheap dollar credit, setting off a speculative mania in commodities.
Few realize how much agriculture globally depends on synthetic fertilizers and other other inputs derived from oil and natural gas. We've all been learning the hard way in real time. Then Russia invaded Ukraine. The war and associated sanctions have choked off more supply, plus wheat, barley, and oats.
If you want to learn the facts about this situation, not fanciful notions put forth by ideologues in Washington, I strongly suggest that one person at The Scroll take a look at your fellow Substacker called Doomberg. This is an anonymous collective of people writing about natural resource inputs in our economy, known to industry insiders and contributors for years to industry newsletters and other publications. They're anonymous for now out of fear of reprisals for speaking out with the facts and the laws of chemistry and physics. They take on the "war on supply," especially the critical role of fossil fuels in producing food, and the fantastic hallucinations people have about electrifying everything, not knowing that batteries require yet more natural resources far beyond known supplies and that electricity that has to be generated somehow (and not by solar and other renewables, another fantasy easy to refute if facts count for anything).
The reason for the agricultural shortages has nothing whatever to do with anticompetitive behavior. Such claims are laughable and ignorant. If they were true, they would be longstanding problems from well before the pandemic.
In fact, these problems started appearing in late 2020 with the pandemic shutdowns causing labor and supply shortages that became more acute in 2021. The aftereffect of the shutdowns are still with us, although that situation is gradually normalizing. Still, they left in their wake not just loss of operations, but deferred maintenance as well. Hence, all the fires in agricultural and food factories.
The other, more recent factor is the Biden administration's "war on supply," a new and very dangerous development that is starting to spread to other countries. Since spring a year ago (2021), the administration has pressured every point along the supply chain that depends on fossil fuels, targeting companies that produce and transport such inputs. Federal agencies like the SEC and the Fed have had their mandate quietly and arbitrarily expanded to include restricting or stopping the flow of capital to such firms. I talked with a friend who works in this area last week about just this development. It's pretty frightening, given that we're already seeing shortages in this sector on par with the 2010-14 period, and the impact is far from being fully felt. There was no "war on supply" in the Obama or Trump years, in spite of Obama's opposition to coal. The 2010-14 surge in prices was caused by the world's central banks flooding the world with cheap dollar credit, setting off a speculative mania in commodities.
Few realize how much agriculture globally depends on synthetic fertilizers and other other inputs derived from oil and natural gas. We've all been learning the hard way in real time. Then Russia invaded Ukraine. The war and associated sanctions have choked off more supply, plus wheat, barley, and oats.
If you want to learn the facts about this situation, not fanciful notions put forth by ideologues in Washington, I strongly suggest that one person at The Scroll take a look at your fellow Substacker called Doomberg. This is an anonymous collective of people writing about natural resource inputs in our economy, known to industry insiders and contributors for years to industry newsletters and other publications. They're anonymous for now out of fear of reprisals for speaking out with the facts and the laws of chemistry and physics. They take on the "war on supply," especially the critical role of fossil fuels in producing food, and the fantastic hallucinations people have about electrifying everything, not knowing that batteries require yet more natural resources far beyond known supplies and that electricity that has to be generated somehow (and not by solar and other renewables, another fantasy easy to refute if facts count for anything).
https://doomberg.substack.com/