Sunday Digest #6
Apocalyptic Midwest Wheat Harvest
The price of bread plays a large but unseen role in the march of history. Increasing food costs contributed to the social unrest that fomented the French Revolution in the 18th century and more recently, the Arab Spring of the early-2010s.
Russia is often a top global wheat exporter and Ukraine is known as “the breadbasket of Europe” for its major production of wheat. For those reasons, many were concerned that the war in Ukraine would cause widespread social unrest in places like Africa and the Middle East. But in the first year of the war, a strong crop elsewhere made up for any losses in Ukraine.
That may be changing. Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s agricultural export infrastructure and imposed a de facto blockade on any seaborne exports. At the same time, the wheat harvest in the American Midwest was horrible this year.
The New York Times reports:
This single field, just 160 acres of Kansas dirt, tells the story of a torturous wheat season.
One side is a drought-scorched graveyard for grain that never made it to harvest.
Near the center, combines plod through chest-high weeds and underwhelming patches of beige wheat, just enough of it to make a harvest worthwhile.
And over by the tree line, the most tantalizing wheat beckons like a desert mirage. The grain there is flourishing, the beneficiary of a late-season shift from dry to drenching. But it will never be collected: The ground is too waterlogged to support the weight of harvesting equipment.
“It really doesn’t get any crazier than right here, right now,” the farmer of that land, Jason Ochs, said last week as he salvaged what he could from the field.
At a time when the global grain market has been scrambled by a war between two major wheat producers, Ukraine and Russia, farmers in Kansas are bringing in the state’s smallest wheat crop in more than half a century.
The main culprit is the extreme drought that, as recently as late April, had ensnared almost the entire western half of the state, and forced many farmers to abandon their crops. More recently, intense rain has eased the drought, but it came too late for much of Kansas’ winter wheat, which was planted in the fall for harvest in late spring and early summer.
the early part of the 2022-23 wheat-growing season was the driest on the Plains in 128 years — even drier than during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s
Wheat is more than just a crop in Kansas, where “The Wheat State” was once stamped on license plates and where University of Kansas sports fans “wave the wheat” to celebrate a score. Though Kansas farmers plant far fewer acres of wheat now than they did a generation ago — they can often make more money growing corn or soybeans — the state remains one of the country’s leading producers of wheat. The crop is sold for flour on the domestic market and exported in large quantities to Latin America, among other places.
The importance of the Plains wheat crop has only become clearer over the last year, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine created uncertainty around the global supply of the staple crop, a major source of nutrition in developing countries. Large harvests in other parts of the world have helped limit the instability, but fresh fears of shortages have arisen after Russia stepped up its attacks on key grain-shipping ports and suspended an agreement that had allowed Ukrainian wheat to be transported across the Black Sea.
On the Plains, the war has made for volatile commodity prices, fast-changing market conditions and, among some farmers, a sense that their work matters more than before. Wheat prices have shot up, in part because of the turmoil in Europe, but many American farmers have still struggled because the yields are so small.
Some farmers’ wheat is so scraggly that it is not worth harvesting, leaving them to rely on crop insurance.
About halfway between Kansas City and Denver in west-central Kansas, where Mike McClellan farms, the drought has persisted. And for the first time in the decades he has been farming, Mr. McClellan did not harvest any of his winter wheat.
“We had to get the crop adjusters out there to look at it and get it destroyed,” Mr. McClellan said.
In other parts of Kansas…a wheat crop that once seemed doomed by a lack of rain ended up being challenged by too much moisture.
Syracuse had 12 days in June with one-tenth of an inch or more of rain, the most in a single month since 1951, according to federal data. By the end of July, Hamilton County, which includes Syracuse, was completely out of the drought.
The rain was a boon for crops that were planted in the spring, like corn and grain sorghum, and in some places it gave a last-minute boost to the wheat. But the showers forced weeks of delays in the wheat harvest, and left some soil so soggy that no crop could be collected on it.
One interesting tweet
Media recommendation
Taylor Sheridan, the writer responsible for the hits Yellowstone and Tulsa King, is at it again with an action thriller featuring strong female leads. Though not as original as Yellowstone or Tulsa King, it certainly keeps you watching.
There you have it, the sixth edition of Sunday Digest with the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, failing US artillery shell production, and terrifying lady CIA agents. The portrait of a world spinning faster and faster. The good news is you have Netflix, Uber Eats, and running water. Until next time, be a good citizen, quit doomscrolling, and go outside.
Ad Astra Per Aspera!
