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  • Fertiliser prices knock ethanol production

    Read related story from The Land
    For the past year the price of fertiliser has been skyrocketing in the United States, which lead to slow sales and increased stockpiles of fertiliser.

    The increase prompted many companies to decrease production.

    Last northern autumn prices began to come down, but farmers continued to wait to make fertiliser purchases in the hopes that prices would continue to go down.

    Now as planting time draws nearer, fertiliser manufacturers are claiming that delivery channels for fertiliser are unable to move product due to a full supply chain.

    According to Mosaic Company chief executive officer James Prokopanko warehouses at all levels – from distribution to retailer – are full.

    “I’m not going to forecast a shortage, but capacity is going to be ever more constricted,” Mr Prokopanko said.

    One of the big challenges to overcome, according to Mr Prokopanko, is the idling of railways that has occurred in response to the slowdown in commodity shipments.

    He says the railroad will need time to get equipment back in operation.

    Compounding the problem is the fact that many dealers are reluctant to mark down the price of fertiliser that they purchased last summer when prices were high.

    “It’s one thing to have high inventory,” said Mark Gulley, an analyst at Soleil Securities Corp in New York.

    “It’s another thing to have high-priced inventory.”

    The result in parts of the US are a wide variety when it comes to fertiliser prices.

    Due to the clogged supply chain Mmr Prokopanko says there could be a shortage that could limit farmers ability to get the fertiliser they need.

    It was estimated on January 6 that US farmers would plant 85 million acres of corn this season, but now with the fertiliser situation as it is, Mr Prokopanko says he expects farmers may plant only 82.5 million acres.

  • Agribusiness giant cleans up on water sales

    Related story from The Land

    Tandou Limited has received a $4.8 million revenue injection following the sale of some of this year’s water allocations.

    The company has sold a total 12,500 megalitres of temporary water allocations at an average price of $385/ML.

    Tandou says the $4.8m, net of expenses, comes in addition to the net $4.3m of temporary water sales recorded in the 2008 year end accounts.

    “The sale of these water allocations puts Tandou in a very strong cash position,” Tandou chief executive Guy Kingwill said.

    “We will carefully consider new ventures this year if we identify compelling value and good fit with our business.”

    The agribusiness giant has a mix of cropping, orchard and grazing properties.

    Late last year it hit the news by selling 250,000ML of supplementary water entitlements for $34m to the Federal Government.

    Tandou says that sale eliminated all bank debt, while allowing it to still retain 31,617ML of regulated water entitlements, recently valued at over $30m.

    The company also has significant temporary water allocations remaining and it is anticipated that these, along with any further increase in allocations by the NSW Department of Water and Energy, will continue to be traded pending the continuing strength of the temporary water marke

  • Food prices to soar after fire and floods

    Story from The Land

    The impact of the North Queensland floods and the Victorian bushfires will be felt by consumers, according to Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke.

    While there are estimates of up to 150,000 cattle killed by the floods, it will be some time before an accurate figure is known.

    However, Mr Burke said estimates already showed that up to 20pc of the cane crop had been lost in some areas.

    And with the Victorian bushfires devastating fruit crops, consumers are in for a shock at the supermarket shelves.

    “Sugar cane’s taken a 20pc hit in parts [as have] a number of our fruits, our stone fruits,” Mr Burke said.

    “Similar with apples down south, there’ll be a number of fresh produce items where if people are willing to put up with more blemished fruit the next couple of months, that will certainly help the farmers to do the best with the produce that has survived.

    “If there was ever a time to be picky, it’s not the next few months.”

    Mr Burke said there would not be an immediate shift in meat prices in the supermarket, as it would take until “the first muster in May or June before we know exactly what the cattle numbers are”.

    “Some cattle, the stronger ones, can swim for a couple of weeks, but certainly most of the calves of the last season will have been taken out,” Mr Burke said.

    “And you’ve got to remember, Queensland is the calf factory for the Australian beef industry so there will be some very significant challenges in total beef numbers.”

  • Diamond compares G20 to Easter Island

    Related article from Mike Adams in Natural News

    Jared Diamond is no doom-and-gloomer; he’s a Pulitzer Prize winning author of thoughtful, carefully researched books about the rise and fall of societies. Diamond is best known for Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, both of which are among my top-recommended books of all time.

    When you read these books, you’ll quickly realize that Diamond is perhaps the world’s top expert on what might be called the “holistic, interdependent nature of complex societies.” Rather than limiting his perspective to immediate, short-term actions and consequences (as most national leaders and corporations do), Diamond intelligently examines the long-term, interdependent factors that lead to any society’s success or failure.

    I’ve personally read both of Diamond’s books mentioned above, and they have strongly influenced my own views about the future (or lack thereof) of western civilization. What Diamond and I both agree on is that complex civilizations are quite fragile, and short-terming thinking can easily doom a society or civilization to irreversible collapse. (Another interesting book to read on this subject, although it’s quite technical and a bit older, is The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter.)

    Collapse can come from many vectors. Many collapses are environmental, such as the collapse of the Anasazi Indians in North America or the collapse of the Tiwanaku in South America.

    Other causes of collapse include man-made accelerations of environmental change; the classic example being the rampant deforestation of Easter Island by its inhabitants.

    It is the Easter Island example that perhaps most closely resembles the short-sightedness of modern western civilization. At the expense of future generations, today’s CEOs, bankers and politicians are destroying our future in so many ways (financial, chemical, environmental, plundering of fossil fuels, etc.) that it is a challenge to imagine a scenario where western civilization even survives in its current form.

    Jared Diamond, in fact, has publicly declared he sees only a 51 percent chance of western civilization surviving. You can hear this from his own mouth in this video interview.

    About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health. Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org

  • Squashed koalas gross and unnecessary

    I also wish to clarify something. I did not say that rally drivers, or rally organisers are murderous in their intent. What I did say is that the sport is a relic of a bygone era and has very few positives and a large number of negatives.

    It might have been more appropriate to compare the Repco Rally to the Viking summer solstice festivals where thousands of suburban louts guzzle vodka and throw rocks at each other. The combination of danger, excitement, tradition and attraction to tourists have a certain similarity. Not too many people die, most people have a good time, and the local economy benefits from the sales of vodka and beds for those civilised enough to sleep during the three or four longest days of the far northern year. In those festivals, though, it is mainly the louts who hurt one another.

    Those concerned about the impact of the Repco Rally are worried about the impact on local koala and other furry bush mammals, rather than the drivers themselves.

    Most importantly, the Repco Rally comes to our doorstep after seventeen years in Western Australia because the government calculated that it was only returning $1.60 to the economy for every dollar invested. By comparison, the Cottesloe Surf Carnival returns around $14 for every dollar invested. Of course, it does not involve the adrenalin rush of danger that driving at 200kph through the bush does, or that rolling rocks into crowded valleys of drunken revellers does, either.

    So, I accept the charge of hyperbole. I withdraw the comparisons to bullfighting, dwarf throwing and whale slaughtering. The Repco Rally is inappropriate simply because it is expensive to mount, damaging to the natural landscape on which we wish to base our tourist economy, a relic of the fifty years of excessive consumption of cheap oil, and will return very little to the local economy.

    The global collapse of the financing for Formula One racing is proof that these are not isolated rumblings of a tree-hugging, anti-car nut. The sports sponsors’ love affair with speed is over. Corporates wanting to build profile for the post-carbon world that we have to build to survive this recession and the challenges of the twenty first century do not want to be associated with an orgy of oil-burning hot rods, they want to support sustainable, green events that establish their credentials as corporate citizens.

    To those of you that love the smell of high-octane fuel in the morning, I’m sorry. You have had your fifty years in the sun, but evolution has moved on. Like the remaining custodians of traditional cultures wiped out by three centuries of European colonialism, you are the living relics of an era that is disappearing. At least you have the resources to document the culture of the internal combustion engine and the media connections to ensure that those documents are publicly aired. You have living ancestors who can describe a life without the thrill of the throbbing engine. You have a way back. If only the Inuit, Ainu and Arrente were so lucky.

    Giovanni Ebono will be on Bay FM 99.9 between 9:00 and 11:00 this morning.

  • Rudd in the cold on warming

    Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt said indecision and internal division were behind Thursday’s decision to dump a House of Representatives inquiry into the ETS.

    The BCA, which gave guarded approval to Labor’s plans last year, now says the Government has to find a way to minimise the initial cost of the scheme if it comes into effect in July next year. Policy director Maria Tarrant said the economic crisis meant “the Government has to think of a way to minimise the scheme’s impact in the early years after its introduction on July 1 2010”.

    “There are likely to be big questions as to whether companies will have the cash flow to buy the permits they need, or invest in the emission-reducing technologies they need at that time and still remain viable,” Ms Tarrant said. “It could put many companies’ ongoing operations at extreme risk.”

    With green criticism intensifying, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong yesterday warned environmentalists the ETS was their best chance to see an early reduction in Australian greenhouse gas emissions. Green groups have argued the scheme’s lack of ambition and already generous industry compensation means it is fatally flawed.

    Senator Wong said: “We have a chance now to reduce Australia’s emissions next year or, if we fail, to simply allow our emissions to grow. The most responsible thing to do, even in this economic environment, is to start the hard task of reducing our emissions right now.”

    Australia Institute executive director Richard Denniss and others have advanced the argument that an ETS means an individual’s or state’s efforts to voluntarily reduce emissions have no impact on the country’s total level of greenhouse gas, and that a carbon tax would be a better answer.

    But Senator Wong rejected those arguments as well.

    “If you are serious about climate change a carbon tax is not the answer,” Senator Wong told The Weekend Australian.

    But the federal Coalition appears to be hardening in its opposition to the scheme.

    And the Australian Industry Group agrees the Government needs to “look at every option” to ameliorate the early costs, warning the effects of the economic crisis risk “fracturing any consensus around this issue”.

    Among options being canvassed by industry groups are a plan advocated by Professor Ross Garnaut for a low fixed price on carbon in the first two years of the scheme, offering trade-exposed industries all their permits for free in first few years, starting the scheme as a “dry run” without actually charging for permits and offering industries exemptions or holidays from the cost of the renewable energy target.

    Coalition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb told Sky news yesterday the scheme was a “total failure”.

    And Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said the global financial crisis had “amplified the negative effects of the emissions trading scheme many times over”.

    Executives from Virgin Blue also told the Senate fuel and energy committee yesterday they were “deeply concerned about the planned timing of the introduction” of the emissions trading scheme.

    “Even in the most benign circumstances, the (emissions trading scheme) is effectively a tax on investment and growth,” said Virgin Blue general manager Simon Thorpe.

    The Government is drafting its legislation. It says it intends to try to pass it through both houses of parliament by June, but most observers believe debate will continue later in the year.

    The Greens have said they are willing to negotiate with the Government over the legislation, but also believe the scheme as it stands is deeply flawed.