More wheat stats.
My personal favorite Misleading Wheat Stat is "Ukraine/Russia grow 25% of world wheat exports."
Why's it misleading? It's technically true, but doesn't mean what people think!
Missing wheat from the war is actually less than 1% of global wheat crop!
When the headline is "25% of world wheat exports missing," that naturally leads people to think "oh my god we have to suddenly come up with 25% more wheat in the world out of > nowhere."
Nope! Only 0.9% Let's talk about where that 25% figure comes from & why it misleads.
Black Sea wheat was 25% of EXPORTS: wheat shipped internationally.Most of the world's wheat is eaten in the country that grew it! For ex, India & China alone grow massive domestic domestic crops & eat most of them.
So exports are a SMALL fraction of the global wheat crop.
Estimated wheat export shortfall from Russian invasion: 7 million tons.Sounds like a lot! Unless you look at total global production, which last year was 778 MILLION TONS.
The war shortfall is 0.9% of the global wheat crop! Not 25%!
We don't have to suddenly increase world wheat production by 25%.We have to increase it by… 0.9%. And the world's farmers already started planting more wheat 4 months ago, when wheat futures rose due to possibility of Black Sea conflict.
Most of the world plants wheat in the FALL and harvests in SPRING/SUMMER. So planting to make up for missing Black Sea wheat already happened. 4 months ago.India went all-out planting more wheat, looks set to continue a 3yr streak of rapidly increasing wheat exports. The US planted four MILLION more tons more wheat seed last fall > than usual. Aus, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, even Brazil getting in on it.
Dr Sarah Taber − Mar 16Wheat trade updates: India coming in clutch
-India's annual wheat harvest is now coming in.
-They've been preparing to grow wheat exports since futures start rising last fall: building up port facilities, QA check stations, rail capacity.
-Bumper wheat crop expected this year.
Again, the "25% of exports" framing makes it sound like we have to replace 1/4 of the world's wheat.
Reality is we have at least a dozen countries and thousands of square miles zooming in to replace a whopping 0.9% of global crop shortfall.
I think they're gonna make it guys
Again, specific places are facing EXTREMELY REAL wheat supply problems. MENA usually sources from Ukraine. Switching supply chains to India & other sources takes extra time, & > if they're further away from India and Ukraine, it takes longer for supplies to get there.
What these places are facing is a SHIPPING shortage.Not a lack of enough wheat in the world.
Their food supply chain problems are still dangerous. A local, shipping-induced shortage that lasts a week can still kill you.
To solve that problem, we gotta start with being clear on what the problem IS!We haven't! We decided it's a wheat shortage, not a shipping shortage.
So investors panicked, drove up the price of wheat, & made it even harder for these places to get new import shipments launched.
FWIW: Anytime you see a shocking datapoint bouncing around in the news, it got there because one person actually looked at the data ONE TIME.But there's no guarantee OP actually knew what it means! And the folks repeating it definitely don't know. : /
And that's how a 0.9% shortfall in global wheat production, that farmers already fixed 4 months ago, turned into a global commodity panic that solved nothingwhile a very real shipping problem continues to threaten people's lives.
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