There are a number of baby steps in the right direction, towards what is required worldwide to avert famine, but a mobilization is needed, both for production, and to defeat the deadly anti-production, pro-war axis of green finance and moral idiocy. A recent U.S. incident makes the point.
On March 23, a group of six U.S. farm and commodity organizations called for planting more crops in 2022, by taking out some of the farmland in the Conservation Reserve Program.
They wrote to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, saying, “The United States needs to produce more grain and oilseeds to offset the loss of Ukraine’s grain and sunflowers. Time is of the essence. The planting window in the United States has already opened….”
Vilsack turned them down flat on March 31.
What the producers proposed is to grow crops on at least 4.5 million acres out of the 22 million acres in the CRP. “We urge USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] to provide flexibility to producers to plant crops on prime farmland as well as the least environmentally sensitive acres currently in the program without penalty, whether on an emergency basis or through an early-out of their current CRP contracts.”
Their letter details the world crisis. “World stocks-to-use ratios, which are a measure of supply to demand adequacy, for wheat, corn, barley, and sunflower oil already are running low….” They reported that “45 African and least-developed countries import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia.”
Although the acreage they ask to use is not large, given the U.S. total crop land base of over 365 million acres, it would provide food for multi-thousands.
