A food insecurity expert predicts that there's only 10 weeks of wheat supplies left in the world as

[NickB79]

28. As the son of a farmer, this post really doesn't understand farming at all

Last edited Sun May 22, 2022, 09:59 AM - Edit history (1)

For example, most farms are so specialized in the US that they do not even have wheat-planting equipment, or enough extra seed if they wanted to grow more of it. You can't plant wheat with a corn planter, and you can't build out the equipment supply overnight. You also don't buy $100,000 of new equipment on a hunch. AND, wheat requires a different combine head than corn or soy at harvest. That alone is another $100,000. There's already a hot market for used farm equipment, because manufacturers like John Deere are encountering the same parts disruption issues auto makers are. Modern tractors and combines use a crap load of computer chips.

And most farmers lock in their prices a year before, signing contracts for product, ordering seed, ordering fertilizer. You contract X bushels of corn last fall? You plant corn this spring, or take a serious hit economically.

Crop production isn't something you flip a switch on. It takes years to move the needle outside the typical soy/corn rotation in the Midwest, where we still have land that's not drought-ridden. And by then, Ukraine may be free again, and flooding the market with wheat. US farmers would lose their farms in the commodity crash