FERTILIZER CRISIS MAY SLASH WORLD FOOD OUTPUT BY 40 PERCENT, SAYS UN FOOD OFFICIAL

Well before the Russia-Ukraine War outbreak, and before it was on the national radar, The Trends Journal picked up on a story from Wisconsin farmers noting fertilizer supply problems (see “THE PRICE OF UREA IN CHINA” 12 Oct 2021).

We suggested some enterprising American companies might want to get back into the fertilizer business, instead of depending on foreign sources like China and Russia.

The fertilizer crisis has since become a hugely recognized problem.  Now a senior United Nations (UN) food official says shortages might cause a 40 percent reduction in world grain production.

Impacts of that magnitude would be catastrophic on the world’s grain supply, according to Maximo Torero, chief economist of the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), as reported by slaynews.com.

Fertilizer prices have become prohibitively expensive to many farmers all over the world, Torero pointed out. He fingered the war in Europe, but though the conflict has worsened the problems, they existed before that.

David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, previously signaled in August that estimates of a 20 percent drop-off in food production could be low, according to Politico. 

“980 million people inside Africa…depend on the smallholder farms and the fertilizer to reach them, and we’re working on these issues as we speak,” Beasley said to the U.S. Congress.