2013-08-14

Fertilizer and Agricultural Prices Set to Soar?

This could be something. I don't know enough about it, but if it is directly comparable to the example from the 1990s, then agricultural prices may be headed higher next year and forever.

Executive Order -- Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security

Here's one site's take on the Executive Order: From Over The Transom
Obama issued an Executive order on August 1, 2013 that will effectively ban Ammonium Nitrate in the USA. It will become too expensive and create too much possible civil and criminal liability to manufacture, store, or transport it. Clinton did the same thing to Anhydrous Ammonia dealers in 1999. It put most Anhydrous dealers out of business. Obama is imposing the same regs and adding explosives regulations on top of OSHA and EPA regulations. It’s all there if you know how to read bureacratese.

Tannerite will probably be banned outright as soon as DHS & BATFE finish making policy based on this E.O. Whether or not they can criminalize it I don’t know. You can count on it being taken off the market though. The government has had it’s sights on Tannerite for a long time now.

Food and Fuel prices will skyrocket because Ammonium Nitrate forms the basis for almost all nitrogen in granular fertilizers used in American farming. There are no cost and ease of manufacture/use equivalents for ammonium nitrate. Supply and demand economics are going to be the harsh lesson of the day. Crop yields will go down. Corn is the basis for the American food supply and the fuel additive ethanol. A.N. is critical in corn production.

Hope everyone is ready for $12/gallon gasoline and $20 a box corn flakes.
Rhetoric aside, even a modest rise in food prices will bring starvation to nations such as Egypt. Inflation will pick up sharply all across the emerging world. China's CPI is 31.4% food and they are relatively developed in the emerging world. Poorer nations will all see inflation shoot higher if food prices take off again.

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