Too much rain for US corn but not enough for Aussie wheat
Straits Times 11 Jun 08;
GRIFFIN (INDIANA) - IN A year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best, while some farmers fear disaster.
With America typically supplying 60 per cent of the corn that crosses international borders in a year, a third of the soyabeans, a quarter of the wheat and a tenth of the rice, and Australia traditionally the world's second-largest wheat exporter, what happens in the two countries has a significant effect on world food supplies.
And what is happening is that American corn and soyabean farmers are suffering too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought.
Mr Randy Kron, whose family has farmed in the southwestern corner of Indiana for 135 years, should have corn more than 30cm tall by now.
But the rain has been remorseless all spring, and some of his fields are too soggy to plant; some of the corn he managed to get in has drowned, forcing him to replant; and the seeds that survived have produced plants that are barely 5cm high.
At a moment when America's corn should be flourishing, one plant in 10 has not even emerged from the ground, the Agriculture Department said on Monday.
Last winter, as the full scope of the global food crisis became clear, commodity prices doubled or tripled, provoking riots in two dozen countries and the spectre of greatly increased malnutrition.
While a universal saying among farmers is that high prices never last, as they encourage production that fills the demand and drives down prices, the current crisis is testing that theory.
With costs soaring for fertiliser and diesel, the expenses of farming are so high that the urge to plant more battles the temptation to plant nothing.
In America, even if farmers wanted to plant more, too much of the best land is waterlogged to do so. Indiana and Illinois have been the worst hit, although Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota were inundated last weekend.
Mr Bob Biehl, whose farm is near St Louis, Missouri, has managed to plant only 57 of the 263 ha he wanted to devote to corn, and says some farmers in his area 'haven't even been able to take the tractor out of the shed'.
Harvests ebb and flow, of course, but with supplies of most key commodities at their lowest levels in decades, there is little room for error now.
One bright spot on the horizon is a forecast that the world wheat harvest will rise more than 8 per cent this year, thanks to better weather and more cultivation.
But even that is uncertain as the prediction that Australia would emerge from a two-year drought is looking doubtful. With the exception of south-western Australia and a small corner of south-eastern Australia, little rain has fallen in recent months.
As a result, the harvest is likely to be below average: 5 to 15 million tonnes of wheat available for export, compared with 17 or 18 million tonnes in an average year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
