Comment: I didn't know there was a fertilizer crisis anywhere...could be a bunch of sh__...well, you know.... =)

LINK

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Chemicals Companies Join Forces to End Fertilizer Crisis

Story Filed: Thursday, February 10, 2000 8:43 PM EST

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 10 (El Financiero/Infolatina)-- The three most important manufacturers of fertilizers in the country - Agromex, Fertimina and Ferquimex - could establish a strategic alliance in order to put an end to the crisis which has hit the sector, reported El Financiero columnist, Dario Celis. The high cost of raw materials and falling prices of end products resulted in a crisis which has closed some plants and reduced production by 700 thousand tons. The crisis, say sector leaders, was the application of high prices by Pemex and opening of borders to imports by the Trade Department.

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-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 11, 2000

Answers

There may not be (a crisis) right now, and I haven't read anything about any fertilizer crisis in the U.S. farm trade publications very recently.

I could say that there are basically two categories of crops grown, worldwide. One is crops directly used as human food, such as truck crops (e.g., lettuce, carrots, potatoes, brochilli). The second is crops which are either fed to animals or made into something we use (e.g., field corn, soybeans, cotton). Both types of crops make heavy use of fertilizer products. Both require those fertilizers in very timesly fashion, or yields can drop spectacularly.

In today's ag., a major decrease in crop growth (caused, for example, by much too little fertilizer applied) can enable much more vigorous weed growth, which in turn will require additional herbicide applications, if much of any crop is to be harvested. Combines, for example, do not digest huge amounts of weeds very well at all.

When I see natural gas shortages reported, part of me (involved in ag.) starts thinking about what nitrogen will cost this Spring. From reports I have been seeing in this forum, and if these trends continue, I can potentially see whole regions of countries with serious fertilizer shortages.

For example, I can forsee governments decreeing that motor fuel and heating oil must take refining precedence ahead of, e.g., fertilizer.

Crisis? Perhaps not right now, but something to be monitored across the Northern Hemisphere.

-- Redeye in Ohio (cannot@work.com), February 11, 2000.

OR, alternatively, the nitrates are being rerouted into amunition.

Joss

-- Joss Metadi (warhammer@Pride.of.Mandeyne), February 11, 2000.

---redeye, thanks for pointing out the long lead time involved in agriculture for the non farmers here. Petroleum ripples lap the shore of food on the table eventually, just most people don't realize the time frame for this, they think somehow it'll happen automagically in a week or so, something like that. I think vast majority of people have absolutely no idea at all about commercial farming, food is those packages in the store, and it's grown on delivery trucks. The actual results of the oil problems now won't manifest themselves in your wallet until, at the earliest, late summer. some time sensitive foods like chicken and milk will be much earlier, but those prices will be steadily rising too.

The fact is right now, this nation would suffer serious famine without oil, that's it,bottom line. Oil is running out, peak production has been reached at the major fields. Politically, oil prices can be manipulated, but eventually there will be no way to maintain "modrn agriculture" as we know it now, and as it's practiced. This "feed the world" theory is ONLY possible with cheap oil.

Hope a lot of farmers during the next year or two read the writing on the wall, get hip, diversify, get alternative energy up and running, and prepare to be a lot more involved in marketing and distribution than they are now, else the majority are going under, or get bought up and be factory workers for ADM and a few more. That's it, that's a prediction, I may be quoteth at anyone's leisure. I'm more sure of this than any other topic of discussion here. Every single last possible indicator doth truly indicate this.

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), February 11, 2000.

Farmers *have* seen the writing on the wall for a couple of generations now and they're selling out before it's taken from them. We have corporate Amerika to thank for that. Consumers are ignorant to the importance of a strong country having the ability to feed itself. They are more than willing to trade the strength and freedom of self-sufficiency for a cheaply grown, unregulated, foreign vegetable, or a deseased corporate carcass (nicely packaged of course).

Those who would promote the NWO must first create an environment of dependancy. So far their plan is working beautifully as the voters are about to head to the voting boothes, single file, like sheep holding cans of Vaseline.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), February 11, 2000.

Create an environment of dependancy. That just about says it all. In slavery you get faith. From faith you get courage. From curage you get liberty. From liberty you get abundance. From abundance you lazyness. From lazyness you get apathy. From apathy you salvery. And we start all over again. Justthinkin.

-- justthinkin com (justthinkin@liberty.com), February 11, 2000.

Zog,

For those who simply take the supermarts having food available, for granted, (annually) for the lowest percentage of takehome income in the world, your comments are not to be contested.

Ag, in all developed countries, is about as dependent upon oil and natural gas as are other sectors of the economy. That is an unescapable conclusion.

I read your last paragraph, "Hope a lot of farmers...", and then found myself thinking about it sadly. Sadly because I know, from my own experience that, for non-truck-crop farmers, the whole seed, fertilizer, marketing, chemicals, and certainly U.S.D.A. and state ag. bureaucracies are all very heavily tilted towards today's intensive ag. Heck, our balance of payments would be a whale of a lot worse that it already is without ag. exports!

In two years, perhaps? Twenty to forty seems even problematical to me. Barring something like a 10% - 20% drop in oil available to this country, with price effects thereof, I can forsee susainable ag. taking root very slowly. Much more progress will go towards farmers moving more into specialty crops (e.g., high-oil corn, specialty soybeans, etc.) -- those crops they can grow, harvest, and handle largely with their existing hugely-expensive equipment and facilities base. That will be many farmers' way of side steppingbeing totally swallowed up by the ADMs (Archer-Daniels Midland) of the world. The writing is simply not on the wall, not in anything that I see mainstream farmers in the U.S. reading or seeing.

Were I to go back into old-time, proven sustainable-ag. techniques, without going totally organic (which is hellishly harder to do successfully than it might seem), I would have do more tillage (e.g., mouldboard plowing) than I do now. That is pertinent because both U.S.D.A. and U.S. EPA reg.s are essentially forcing farmers into minimum tillage, if not to no-till. (No-till, folks, is where you do not disturb the land except to plant and harvest, you leave old-crop residue on top as cover to prevent soil erosion and evetually to build organic matter in he soil.) You all want cleaner water, folks, vis-a-is soil particles washed off, well your good old EPA is forcing us to use even ** more ** chemicals. Because in no-till, you usually must use herbicides to burn down weeds before planting, and then you usually must use at least one additional herbicide application post-planting for weed control.

Folks, for full-time people in ag., as well as for part-timers like yours truly, it promises to be an interesting ride to come!

-- Redeye in Ohio (cannot@work.com), February 11, 2000.

Redeye,

Perhaps your answer lies at TeamLaw.Org. They have information about how to obtain allodial title to the land you "own". Once you have allodial title, the EPA can no longer tell you how to farm it.

George

-- George Valentine (georgevalentine@usa.net), February 11, 2000.