90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #161

Food Costs Likely To Rise as Farmers' Expenses Shoot Up

Bad policy and unpredictable nature are sending food prices through the roof.

Famine is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse for good reason; hunger was an unwelcome companion for most of human history. The threat it poses declined in recent decades because of innovations in agriculture and increasing prosperity. But the largely policy-inflicted economic disruptions of the past two years partially reversed progress made towards feeding the world and alleviating poverty. Now, with food prices on the rise, there's a danger that hunger will follow.

"I want to say this loud and clear right now, that we risk a very low crop in the next harvest," Svein Tore Holsether, the CEO and president of fertilizer giant Yara International, warned in November. "I'm afraid we're going to have a food crisis."

Holsether worried about the rising cost of energy and especially of natural gas, which is needed to make ammonia from which urea, a key fertilizer component, is synthesized.

"Prices for the humble chemical — yes, the stuff in urine — are soaring to levels not seen in over a decade," The New York Times agreed a month later. "People and industries of all kinds are feeling the shocks."

A combination of always-unpredictable nature, bad policy, and busted supply chains (also largely from policy decisions) dramatically hiked prices for natural gas and its products. Prices for alternatives to urea are also rising because of demand and parallel political decisions. The U.S. Treasury agreed in December to suspend sanctions on potash from Belarus from which about 20 percent of the world's supply of the stuff is sourced, but other high trade barriers remain in place for fertilizer and its components. The result is that major inputs for producing the food that we eat are becoming increasingly dear when they can be found at all.

"Among farmers and ranchers, very few topics are being discussed as much as the skyrocketing cost of fertilizer and increasing...

House Republican leaders are targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over the January 6 riot, saying she refuses to respond to their questions about security at the U.S. Capitol and that her select committee is in fact a “cover-up” for the speaker’s missteps surrounding the riot.

Four Republicans, led by GOP Conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), held a press call Monday to deliver the party’s messaging on the riot, which Pelosi is currently probing through her Democrat-led select committee.

“This partisan sham committee is not focused on answering the most important questions of why the Capitol was left unprepared that day and how we can ensure this never happens again,” Stefanik began.

“Most importantly, the American people deserve to know what the mainstream media refuses to cover: The fact that the only office that is off-limits to this partisan sham investigation is Speaker Pelosi’s office,” Stefanik continued. “This is a political weapon, and it’s used to cover up for Nancy Pelosi’s failures.”

House Administration Committee ranking member Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), who was also on the call, detailed a letter he wrote to Pelosi on Monday demanding the security officials who ultimately report to her — the House Sergeant-at-Arms and the House Chief Administrative Officer — comply with Republican requests for information about how the Capitol was protected on January 6.

In his letter, Davis accused Pelosi of continuing to “obstruct Republican access to House records relating to the security preparedness of the Capitol complex on January 6th, 2021.”

He also cited letters he sent early last year to both security officials and Pelosi that he said went unaddressed, but he added that a third security entity, the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP), was immediately responsive to his initial letter.

In his new letter, the Illinois Republican highlighted that former USCP Chief Steven Sund and former Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving had “conflicting” accounts about what occurred leading up to and during the January 6 riot, namely whether Irving rejected Sund’s request for National Guard presence on January 6 because he was worried about the “optics” of it and who in the “chain of command” was directing Irving as the Capitol...