According to the USDA, India is the world's 8th largest exporter of wheat at just under 10 million tonnes per year. India is not Russia, but India does have a significant role to play in the global wheat market. Bangladesh accounts for over half of India's wheat exports with Sri Lanka, UAE, Indonesia, Yemen and Philippines making up the bulk of the rest. India is also #2 in global wheat production. It's not surprising they keep most of it.
Over the weekend India banned wheat exports. They are hoarding the TP. Fuck you Bangladesh, you can starve to death - it sucks to suck. Condolences to the people in Bangladesh, they have some pretty crappy luck between the floods, earthquakes and cyclones. From an Indian perspective, they are primarily responsible (if not wholly responsible) for the welfare and safety of their citizens so banning any types of food exports makes sense for them. No sense in letting your own citizens starve while you send your food to other countries. MIGA, India First.
On the global wheat market, wheat futures opened Sunday night considerably higher than their Friday close.
The global food supply is clearly at risk. Not for everyone (yet) but for the countries already struggling. Between decreasing exports and rising costs of farming inputs like fuel and fertilizer, those countries we sometimes hear about but struggle to find on a map face a potentially dangerous and unsolvable problem. As things stand today it's probably more people dying of starvation in 2022 but not enough to create a total breakdown of society (with the possible exception of a couple of the unluckiest of places). But these things are not stagnant. India, to my knowledge, is the second country to ban a major food export following Indonesia's April 27th ban on all palm oil exports. Indonesia is (was) the world's largest exporter of palm oil accounting for 53% of all palm oil exports in 2020.
Are these a couple of outliers or is this the beginning of a trend? Are the dominoes beginning to fall? When your neighbors start hoarding the toilet paper, how long before you do the same? Would anyone be surprised if Argentina stops exporting wheat? Brazil imports close to $1B of Argentinian wheat annually, what then? Who would be next? If more countries start banning food exports to secure their national food supply it seems logical that more would then follow.
Localized food shortages have always existed and may always exist (a topic worthy of a lengthy discussion). The things that are happening now are increasing the probability that something really bad will happen in the next 8 to 12 months on a global scale. If more dominoes fall in the form of countries banning food exports, we increase the probability that more countries face massive food shortages, starvation, civil unrest and even societal collapse. Looking at things from today forward, it seems likely that extreme starvation and civil unrest is now written in the stars for the poorest countries; Somalia, Yemen, Chad, Congo, etc.
Joe Biden's teleprompter recently warned of food shortages (one would assume in the US), for whatever that is worth. Robert Kiyosaki has switched from touting silver to touting tuna and has said 50% of Americans will die because of inflation (and I assume food shortages). Surveying the landscape today, that claim seems borderline absurd. But understand that the US is a net importer of food, about 15% of our food supply is imported. If enough dominoes fall, Robert Kiyosaki finally gets to be correct. And if 50% of Americans face death by starvation, we cease to function as a society. We have, at minimum, aided in the creation of a situation that has increased the probability of food shortages in our own country. We are increasing the wrong set of probabilities at the potential cost of the complete collapse of our society. Yet here we are.
Perhaps have a look at the Bonner Private Research Substack essay from May 4, "Reaping the Whirlwind."
When I read an article such as yours, I am always interested in the underlying causes. The question now, on an individual basis, with enough toilet paper in reserve, how much food should we hoard? We increased our vegetable garden threefold this spring, but don't have access to animals, except the deer in the neighbourhood.