Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

The Famine Of 2009
Stranded Wind
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:47:15 -0900
From: Henri Ayre <henrithecelt@gci.net
see http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/28/12514/062/886/667285

Last week I received a very concerned call from South Dakota farmer and
agronomist Bryan Lutter.  "Neal, we're out of propane!"  I figured this
was personal distress – he and his family farm over three square miles of
land and I know this has been a tough year for many people. He promptly
corrected my misconception when I tried to console him. "No, everybody is
out, all three grain elevators, we can't get fuel for the bins, and we're
coming in real wet this year."

There are equally dramatic issues due to the bankruptcy of Verasun and the
apparent insolvency of the nation's largest private crop insurance
program. Payments that would have come in June or July of a normal year
are still not dispersed at the end of November and this has grim
implications for next year's crop.

I started digging into the details and unless I'm badly mistaken people
are going to be starving in 2009 over causes and conditions being set down
right now. It's a complex, interlocking issue, and I hope I've done a good
job explaining it below the fold ...

(I just submitted my personal story and a vision for the nation at
change.gov - you can see my vision for this problem
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/28/12514/062/886/667285here.)

<http://Stranded-Wind.dailykos.com/Stranded Wind's diary

The Dakotas have faced fuel restrictions for at least the last two years.
They're at the far end of the pipeline network and after complete outages
in 2007 everyone orders their diesel well in advance. Vehicle tanks are
kept fuller and the on farm tanks are not allowed to run low. Gasoline
supply dynamics have changed as well; British Petroleum shuttered three
hundred stations in the area, citing the high cost of trucking fuel to the
locations from the pipeline terminals.

This year propane is in short supply. Rural homes in that part of the
world are heated with propane and the grain elevator and on farm drying
require it to bring corn moisture down for storage. There is no sense that
homes will go cold this year, at least not due to supply issues; the grain
drying season is a short period of intense usage that will draw to an end
within the next week. Pray to whatever higher power you recognize that the
unheard of figure of 18% of the crop still in the field is brought in
before the snow flies.

The Dakotas were very wet this year and the corn is coming in at 22%
moisture. A more usual number would be 18% and for long term storage it
must be dried to 14% to avoid spoilage. That doubling in the moisture
reduction needed, an 8% drop instead of 4%, pretty much doubles the amount
of propane used. Right now the harvest is at a dead stop. What can be
dried has been and what is left can't even be combined without the fuel to
make it ready for storage; it would all just spoil in the bin if put up wet.

I wondered if this was a spot problem in that particular part of South
Dakota, but Bryan said it was widespread – he'd talked to farmers as far
away as St. Louis and they were reporting similar issues.  I made a few
calls to try to figure out how broad the problem was. I ended up talking
to Rollin Tiefenthaler at fuel dealer Al's Corner in Carroll, Iowa about
the issue.

The Iowa crop comes matures earlier and is brought in earlier, so that is
done, but he confirms that propane is being trucked long distances because
local terminals have outages. They did have one farmer's cooperative run
out of propane and they scrambled to get them enough, but in general it
wasn't a problem. These are plains cooperatives, operations with thirty
employees, dozens of vehicles, and tens of millions of dollars in
inventory and commodities under management, so one running out of fuel is
a problem that would affect a whole county.

Diesel has been a bigger concern for them – instead of the thirty mile
drive to the Magellan pipeline terminal in Milford they're running as far
as Des Moines or Omaha, each about two hours away, and the added time and
cost for running more trucks is eating them alive.

The die has already been cast in the Dakotas, they'll either get the crop
in or they won't. If they don't and it winters in the field they not only
lose 40% of the yield on that ground they lose 20% of next year's yield in
soy beans. The corn makes an excellent snow fence, trapping drifts six
feet high, and they're slow to clear in the spring. The farmers have to
wait until it's dry enough to plant before they can finish bringing in the
corn crop, then they plant their soy, and that delay cuts into the growing
degree days available for the soy beans and thusly we see the yield drop.

A few of you might not be from farm state and thusly won't know the normal
work flow. The corn crop is still partially in the field, but the soy
beans are already done. Soy matures and dries earlier, so it gets tended
first. There would never been an instance of soy being left to overwinter
just based on crop timing and I don't think the small, thin stocks with
relatively fragile pods would prove to be terribly durable under snow banks.

I wrote earlier about the
<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/3/0633/47471/444/650454famine
potential we face due to the underfertilization of the wheat crop. Wheat
that gets enough ammonia is 14% protein, if it is unfertilized closer to
8%, and that 43% reduction in total plant protein is going to cause
unimaginable suffering in places like Egypt, where half of the population
gets subsidized bread. Global end of season per capita wheat stocks have
been about seventy pounds my entire life, except the last three years
where they've dropped to only forty pounds. One mistake in this area and
one of the four horsemen gets loose, certainly dragging his brothers along
behind. That mistake may already have been made in the lack of wheat
fertilization this fall.

The fall nitrogen fertilizer application has been 10% of the norm. A
typical year would see 50% put on in the fall and 50% in the spring.
During fertilizer application season the 3,100 mile national ammonia
pipeline network runs flat out and the far points on the network
experience low flow both fall and spring. If they try to jam 90% of the
fertilization into a period of time when the system can only flow a little
more than half of the need much of our cropland will go without in the
spring of 2009.

Finances as much as weather are the issue with regards to fertilization
this fall. Crop prices have fallen to half of what they were, ammonia
prices have dropped but ammonia suppliers here, receiving 75% of their
supply from overseas, still have product in their storage tanks purchase
at the historical highs last spring and summer.

When farmers plant they record the acreage and they purchase crop
insurance - $20 to $40 an acre depending on the crop. If they have a
failure they file a claim, an adjustor contacts them, and they get a check
to cover the deficit. Some of this runs through the U.S. Department of
Agriculture and some of it is through private insurers.

My conversations with farmers earlier this week lead me to believe that
the largest private insurer, Des Moines Iowa's
<http://www.rainhail.com/Rain and Hail Agricultural Insurance may be
insolvent. Flooding claims from this spring were filed and payments would
have typically been received by the end of June or beginning of July. It's
now the end of November and payments are not being dispersed. Individual
farmers are told there was something wrong with their paperwork, but this
is nonsense – some of these guys have been farming thirty years and they
all didn't forget how to fill out a simple form all at the same time. Iowa
did have its second five hundred year flood in a decade and a half this
spring which certainly has something to do with the situation, but I
suspect Wall Street's sticky fingers got hold of Rain & Hail's assets,
just as they've done to every pension fund and state run municipal
investment pool.

  So, we're already facing what Bryan Lutter calls "the mother of all
 fertilizer shortages" next spring and on top of that local banks won't
 lend to farmers.

The local bank was quite willing to lend to a farmer on a crop despite the
weather related risks just like they'd lend on a car despite the driving
risks. So long as the asset was insured the risk was deemed manageable.
There were sure to be losses here and there, but they'd be administrative
hassles associated with well known risks. If the auto insurance companies
were viewed as untrustworthy no one would be getting a car without 100%
down at the dealership and the same rule is now in effect for farmers.

Farmers without financing can't afford nitrogen fertilizer at $1,000 a
ton, which translates to $100 an acre at current application rates. They
won't be paying $300 for a bag of 80,000 hybrid corn kernels, again a $100
per acre expense. The average farm size in Iowa is four hundred acres and
planting to harvesting would run about $120,000.

This looks incredibly bad. Bryan and I are both puzzled as to why the
mainstream media isn't covering this. Perhaps the need to sell Christmas
season advertising trumps the need for the public to know about the
troubles that are brewing.

This is already 1,600 words and I haven't even touched Verasun. Executive
summary? The nation's second largest ethanol maker took corn from farmers,
went bankrupt without paying many of them, and a whole lot of family farms
are going to be foreclosed upon in short order if something isn't done.

Take Action

The instant the Obama administration and the 111th Congress take their
seats, before anything is done about Detroit, before anything is done
about pension funds caught up in Wall Street's massive fraud, yes, even
before they touch universal health care SOMETHING has to be done to
protect our agriculture system from the volatility flowing from Wall
Street's death contortions. This won't be a giveaway – it'll be a genuine
investment with known risks and known returns for products that will
experience ongoing demand. We, as a nation must provide our farmers with a
fair, stable financing and insurance system or we're all going to pay a
terrible price.

If you're not in an agricultural state and you see something come up about
a plan to address these issues please take the time to call or write your
delegation members and let them know that you realize how important this
is, even though it doesn't directly affect your state.

My Personal Action

Perhaps this is the first time you've ever noticed my work. I'm the
executive director for the <http://strandedwind.orgStranded Wind
Initiative, an organization founded to develop local uses for renewable
energy in places that don't have transmission lines available. A few
months back a small group of the volunteers from SWI formed
<http://thirdmodeenergy.comThird Mode Energy, a commercial venture aimed
at building renewable ammonia fertilizer plants. We're working on projects
in New York, Iowa, South Dakota, Indiana, and I think one is going to
start in Ohio. We're looking for about fifteen more sites nationally and
we need local leaders to take these projects in hand. We're going to be
producing a package of information on this for legislators and media
figures active in environmental and economic issues which will be ready in
the first few days of January, with the intent of getting some of that
stimulus money directed at local, renewable ammonia production.

   If your town is down and hurting we might just have a partial solution
 to the need for jobs and energy. We've got a group for more detailed
 discussion on
 <http://kossacksnetworking.ning.com/group/strandedwindKossacks Networking.

   If you look <http://strandedwind.org/node/129here you will see an
 article from last spring - our first attempt at plant development for
 renewable ammonia. That one didn't go but we learned a lot and the story
 should give you a sense of the renewable fertilizer, greenhouse produce,
 and other good things that come from such development.

  If you look
 
<http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=838&pageid=28&pagename=Sci-Techhere
 you will see an article I did on wheat fertilization on
 <http://www.thecuttingedgenews.comThe Cutting Edge News.

UPDATE:

    I've received the usual class of complaints about my dairy: You're
 trying to start a panic! You're totally not right about the facts! Etc,
 etc, etc. My only answer to this would be to point out the diary I did
 regarding
 <http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/14/213818/306/523/495783Iceland's
 crash ... which called that one five months ahead of the real thing. Or
 all of the other stuff I've picked up from <http://theoildrum.comThe Oil
 Drum or <http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.comThe Automatic Earth and
 written about well in advance of the Meat Stick Media(tm) picking up the
 story. I have a nice quick reference
 <http://198.68.3.198/index2.htmlpage with my first 192 diaries on it so
 you can flip through the titles on one screen if you'd care to go looking ...

    I've received the usual suggestions about how our large scale grain
 production should be done organically. I have no ideological opposition
 to this and in fact I'm generally vegetarian and eat organic as much as I
 can lay my hands on it. The problem is that none of the proponents can
 describe to me what it would look like to cultivate an entire square mile
 in that fashion, let alone defining a plan that would allow a neat
 conversion of all of the forty to fifty thousand square miles of the
 state of Iowa to such methods. It's an admirable concept, but it doesn't
 seem executable. I do not at all accept that it's "big agriculture"
 keeping the farmers down. If there was a way to get similar yields
 without paying $100/acre for fertilizer and another $100/acre for seed
 the typical Iowa farmer with his 400 acres would be busy stuff an extra
 $80,000 a year into the bank. This is not the case today.

   Kossack
 <http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/11/27/11143/168/198#c198cordgrass
 is going to be disappeared to Guantanamo or worse for speaking the truth.
 Let's wish he or she a fond farewell:

Real news, useful news that could predict the future is no longer in the
MSM, precisely because hedge fund managers and people like that make money
on the future.  Knowing what is going to happen in the future is money in
the bank. The more people who know the future, the less money the investor
will make.

  Here is an article from
 <http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=93910The Grand
 Forks Herald about the propane shortage.

  And here is a direct quote regarding the wheat fertilization. The set of
 numbers indicate a fertilizer with 18% nitrogen, 46% phosphorus, and in
 this case no potassium. The source was Bryan Lutter, my agronomist friend
 in South Dakota. I redacted the farmer's name because I don't have
 permission to publish it.

Neal,

It's very frustrating there is not enough news on the lack of news
surrounding the under-fertilization of USA wheat. Example, NAME REDACTED
is a large farmer in New Underwood, SD. He normally uses 5 semi loads of
MAP (18-46-0) in the fall for his wheat. He used just 1 this year. The
wheat is in the ground, and the die cast.

He explained his reasoning for reduced use very well. The extra yield
boost costs too much. It's actually cheaper to simply buy the extra
bushels which the fertilizer would provide.

Bryan

UPDATED UPDATE:

Giving credit where credit is due, none of the work we've done this year
to set our fertilizer industry on a renewable footing would have happened
without the assistance of
<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/12/123650/358/901/475057Jerome
a Paris, who provided advice on the path we're taking.

The guy behind our plant designs, Kossack <http://nb41.dailykos.com/nb41
is a member of <http://ea2020.orgEnergize America 2020 and Kossack
<http://a-siegel.dailykos.com/A. Siegel introduced us.

I'd have died last spring without the timely assistance of
<http://www.theoildrum.com/user/AlanfromBigEasyAlan from Big Easy over at
<http://theoildrum.comThe Oil Drum. Seriously, dead and buried.

Dr. John Holbrook and Dr. Norm Olson invited us to appear at the
<http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4696fifth annual ammonia fuel network
conference and they've otherwise been a tremendous resource for us as
we've tried to set our nitrogen fertilizer business on a renewable
footing. I should also point at that <http://nh3car.com/ammonia powered
truck that was driven from Detroit to San Francisco last year - the first
bank deposit I ever made for work in this area came from NH3car.com.

Thu Nov 27, 2008 at 08:18:15 AM PST

Stranded Wind is a multi level enterprise that facilitates the development
of stranded renewable energy resources to address the issues of fossil
fuels, energy independence and global warming. Stranded Wind is committed
to the sustainable production of ammonia as an alternative fuel and
agricultural commodity, rail electrification, the development of biofuels
without impacting food production and local renewable power generation.
Stranded Wind provides organizational development resources to encourage
new, renewable energy projects using emerging technologies to enhance
local energy independence. <http://strandedwind.org/strandedwind.org

www.dailykos.com



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