Brazil threatens to nationalize fertilizer mines Reuters Brazil may nationalize privately held mineral deposits used to make fertilizer to bring down farm production costs, Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes said.
The threat from Latin America's farming powerhouse, which is heavily dependent on fertilizer imports, is the latest in a regional trend to bring natural resources under greater state control as world oil and food prices push new highs.
Fertilizer prices have doubled over the past year. (20 May 2008) Below item is a comment on this story from Gristmill.
Fertile for problems South America's industrial-ag powerhouse eyes rainforest potash deposits Tom Philpott, Gristmill ... Industrial ag looks increasingly set to become a flashpoint of what's known in polite company as "geopolitical tension," i.e., the naked competition among nations for control over key resources. But here's the bit that really caught my eye [in a Reuters story]:
Part of the supply problem in Brazil's fertilizer sector stems from the risks investors face. Increased output of potassium, for example, depends on the exploration of deep underground deposits in the Amazon, where environmental red tape deters development.
Wow ... "environmental red tape." You know, that whole impulse to protect the Amazon rainforest, the globe's greatest natural carbon sink -- at a time of rapid, human-created climate change. Some of that red tape also involves defending the rights of indigenous people who have lived sustainably in the rainforest for centuries.
Brings to mind the recent pronouncements of Blairo Maggi, the powerful Brazilian politician who's also its biggest soy grower and business partner of Cargill, Bunge, etc. I found it a bit chilling when he declared:
With the worsening of the global food crisis, the time is coming when it will be inevitable to discuss whether we preserve the environment or produce more food. There is no way to produce more food without occupying more land and taking down more trees.
(21 May 2008)
Forget Saudi Peak Oil-Worry About Peak Grain Marianne Lavelle, Beyond the Barrel (journalist blog at US News & World Report) To oil world watchers and worriers, the words Twilight in the Desert are instantly recognizable. That's the name of the book by energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, who used hundreds of internal documents to bolster his case that oil production has peaked or soon will be peaking in Saudi Arabia-home to what the world trusts as the largest source of petroleum reserves. But it turns out that long before we learn whether Simmons's prediction pans out, the sun is setting on another resource in the kingdom.
Grain production in Saudi Arabia is now down 42 percent from the peak of 4.9 million tons reached in 1994 and is now on track to decline rapidly in the coming years. Thanks to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute for compiling these figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
