Ukraine

I was recently standing on the edge of a river outside Minneapolis. The water flowing past would travel another 1,854 miles to the Gulf of Mexico.

Bill Gates says the global hunger crisis is so immense that food aid cannot fully address the problem. What’s also needed, Gates argues, are the kinds of innovations in farming technology that he has long funded to try to reverse the crisis documented in a new report.

It was exactly two years ago this month that I turned wildly bullish the commodity markets, and with the benefit of hindsight, it was a well-timed forecast.

There were three news stories this week that dominated the headlines and caught the attention of investors, traders and ag producers. One was the Federal Reserve meeting held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where everyone was hoping to get a clue about further interest rate hikes.

One of the last working dairy farms on Ukrainian-controlled territory in the eastern Donbas region is doing everything it can to stay afloat in a place where neither workers nor animals are safe from Russia’s devastating war.

American farmers continue to see slimmer margins after three years of pandemic-induced shipping delays and supply chain disruptions. And high fuel prices caused in part by the war in Ukraine have only squeezed margins tighter.

Rising energy and food costs are impacting consumers who are living in an interdependent world.

A Russian cargo ship that Ukraine alleges holds stolen wheat from territory seized by Moscow appears to have reached the Syrian port of Tartus, according to satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press.

When long-haul trucker Deb LaBree sets out on the road to deliver pharmaceuticals, she has strategies to hold down costs. She avoids the West Coast and the Northeast, where diesel prices are highest.

Global hunger numbers rose to around 828 million people in 2021, according to the latest edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World from the United Nations. That’s 46 million more people from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019.

The past year has been a time of economic volatility and turmoil unlike any period I have seen in my more than six decades of farming. I know many of my customers are also feeling this turmoil in the form of higher gas prices and larger grocery bills.

U.S. consumers typically purchase fewer dairy products during periods of inflation. “We’re likely looking at a slowdown in dairy demand driven by a slower economy,” said Nate Donnay, StoneX Group director of dairy market insight.

Smart growth and investment in America’s downtowns and main streets must occur now to secure the land that grows our food, according to American Farmland Trust’s new report “Farms Under Threat 2040: Choosing an Abundant Future” and the accompanying web mapping tool.

Soybean planted acres reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on June 30 of 88.3 million was 2.7 million less than March planting intensions, but a record soybean crop is projected, weather permitting, to meet record demand.

As Congress and now the Supreme Court stymie the Biden administration’s efforts to curb climate change, one thing the president doesn’t want — sky high gas prices — actually is nibbling away at emissions of heat-trapping gas.