Another cut in crop forecasts

U.S. crop production forecasts were slashed again this week:

The agriculture department on Tuesday cut estimates of US corn yields for a third successive month, forecast record soyabean exports to China and warned of the slimmest cotton stocks since 1925.

“The combined production shortfalls and dramatic potential stock drawdowns mean a much tighter supply picture than just a few months ago,” the agency said in a separate grains report.

Benchmark Chicago corn futures soared above $6 a bushel for the first time since August 2008, before ending lower.

I'm looking breathlessly to Michael Roberts for the more granular data analysis he promised; this year could well be a preview of agriculture in a warmer world of the future.

In other unfortunate news, most of the $20 billion of food aid that was pledged last year has failed to materialize, and the probability of inspiring U.S. leadership on the issue has fallen substantially after the recent mid-term elections.

Food aid by text message

Speaking of food aid, here’s a great story:

We've reached a very strange point in human history when it is assumed that people who don't have access to food will have working cell phones:

In a test project targeting 1,000 Iraqi refugee families, the United Nations agency will send a 22-dollar (15-euro) voucher every two months by SMS to each family, who will be provided with a special SIM card.

The beneficiary can then exchange the electronic voucher for rice, wheat flour, lentils, chickpeas, oil, canned fish, cheese and eggs at selected shops.

Addressing concerns about mobile phone ownership among the refugee population, WFP spokeswoman Emilia Casella said all the 130,000 Iraqi refugees currently receiving food aid from the agency in Syria have mobile phones.

Update: The Roving Bandit approves.

Enough (hunger)

I’m currently reading Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, based on a trusted recommendation, and am finding it surprisingly substantive for a book written by two WSJ journalists. I’m about halfway through and will post more when I’m done, but two quick thoughts for now.

First, I had not appreciated at all the bizarre distortions created by the U.S. food aid system (aid is required to come from U.S. farms) and the “Iron Triangle” of farmers, shippers and charities which upholds is. The resistance to spending just 25% of food aid budget on locally produced food (which would be much more cost-effective) is astounding (it was quashed in Congress four years running from 2005-2008).

Second, everyone (Bono, Tony Blair, the authors, etc.) fixates on hunger in Africa specifically, but there are more undernourished people in South Asia than in Africa, and Africa has less than 30% of the billion undernourished people in the world. The lion’s share are in Asia (despite the Green Revolution!). So it’s good to keep that in perspective.

Update: Right, so apparently I posted on the latter less than two weeks ago, in response to an NYT article on the same topic.