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Yeah, IIRC, Ukraine has one of the highest percentages of arable land in the world, up there with Bangladesh.
Since I like tangents... I believe that fertile land is worth less now that at any time in since the neolithic revolution. The amount of food produced per capita has never been higher, and it just goes up and up every year.
In the US alone, maize yields are up 40% since the year 2000. Milk production per cow is up 60%. Yields in other countries have increased even faster as they catch up to US standards. We still haven't fully unlocked the amazing gains that the Haber Process made possible over 100 years ago.
Empires used to be built on fertile land. Egypt was once the most valuable piece of real estate in the world since the flooding of the Nile river guaranteed food production every year. It produced enough surplus to feed the urban poor in Rome, and later, Constantinople. When Egypt was lost in the 7th century, Constantinople emptied out.
The most densely populated places in the world today are still often river valleys: The Ganges, the Nile, the Niger, etc...
But we've cracked the code. We can make our own fertilizer. We can irrigate the desert. Indio, California is the driest city in the US. And it is an agricultural powerhouse. Population may grow geometrically, as Malthus stated, but food production has grown geometrically at a faster rate.
The wheat and rapeseed fields of Ukraine matter less than ever.
On top of everything else, 40% of American corn gets turned into ethanol and added to gasoline despite this plausibly being worse for the environment than just burning gasoline and corn ethanol having an EROI much worse than gasoline.
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A great tangent!
Yes, I think you're right. (It's also potentially interesting given the speculation that global warming will make northern climes much more arable, IIRC Russia in particular could benefit). And the more right you are, unfortunately, the more likely it is that Ukraine will suffer a worse outcome.
Ukraine also has, or had, a lot of Soviet-era technical and industrial capacity. I'm not optimistic much of this will survive the war intact and in Ukrainian hands, however.
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IIRC US bulk crop production has expanded even though the amount of farmed acreage has declined substantially in the last few decades. It's a huge change and not one that gets talked about often.
What surprised me is how big the increase has been just since 2000.
I would have assumed that progress had leveled off, but no, it just keeps getting better.
Unfortunately it’s extremely dependent on the Haber-Bosch process. Modern crops aren’t grown in soil as much as they are grown in a six foot deep layer of fertilizer. Much of the phosphates for that fertilizer comes from Russia which is part of why food prices have been going up so much over the last few years.
No, they don't. Russia produces 5.6% of global phosphate output which is about 60% of US production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate
Could be wrong but I doubt it. Phosphate prices started going up in Feb 2020 and were quite high, but have now reduced to the merely elevated levels of 2012 since the end of 2024.
https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=rock-phosphate&months=240
That said, this graph is a little weird looking, so maybe it's not totally trustworthy.
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No one told my $NTR stock about higher prices. Potash shortages are always 30 years away.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NTR/
Russia has been very good about defeating the oil sanctions (with some huge percentage of the world oil fleet turning off their transponders). It's likely they are shipping nearly as many phosphates as they were before too.
Nutrien is losing value because they are having to spend more and more money on potash since the war started, which is cutting into their bottom line.
Top-line revenue doesn't seem to bear that out: https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/NTR/income-statement
Commodities investors got really excited in 2022, but the sector remains a wasteland, as it has been ever since 2014 or even longer.
Hell, since peaking in 2008, oil prices are down about 70% in real terms.
Iron ore, bulk shipping, oil, fertilizer prices, it's all in the toilet.
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