Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,
U.S. agriculture has been facing a poor harvest this year, aggravating the global food supply crisis, industry executives have said.
The supply of food worldwide has been tight, since Russia’s war in Ukraine cut off vital shipments of resources needed to make fertilizer and grain products from the region.
Several high-level executives from big agricultural firms such as Bayer, Corteva, Archer Daniels Midland, and Bunge, told The Wall Street Journal that it will take at least two more years of good harvests in North and South America to ease the supply pressures.
“The current market expectation is that global grain and oilseeds markets need two consecutive normal crop years to stabilize global supplies,” said Chuck Magro, chief executive of Corteva, at an investor presentation this week.
This year’s grain harvest has fallen below normal yields in the West, hindering efforts to restock global crop supplies he explained.
The United States and South America, two of the world’s major crop exporters, faced persistent drought conditions this summer.
The hot summer worsened drought conditions in states throughout the U.S. Grain Belt, which saw a major reduction in the harvest due to lack of water and a wet spring planting season earlier in the year.
The Agriculture Department announced on Sept. 12, that it had lowered its nationwide corn production estimates to 13.9 billion bushels.
This is 3 percent lower than its projections in August, about 8 percent lower than the total amount harvested last year.
Projections for soybean production estimates in September were down 3 percent from August, down slightly from 2021.
Maintaining a Food Truce
Global recession fears have also weighed on food commodity markets and the prolonged conflict in Ukraine has not helped matters.
Wheat price futures at the Chicago Board of Trade have risen 17 percent over the past 12 months, according to the WSJ.
Corn is up by about 28 percent, while soybeans jumped 14 percent.
Food prices skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February.
