LIMA’S COLDEST NIGHT SINCE 1996
Anomalous cold is continuing to ravage South America this week.
On Wednesday, the Peruvian capital of Lima suffered its coldest nights in decades when a low of 13.1C (55.6F) was logged at the Callao Airport–the city’s official weather station.
Other sites across Lima registered even colder lows: the park of Campo de Marte saw 11.9C (53.4F), while the neighborhood of Von Humboldt experienced 8.4C (47.1F) — the lowest readings for both downtown stations since 1996 (solar minimum of cycle 22).
Swathes of the South American continent have has been suffering historic chills in recent weeks and months.
In fact, Argentina just experienced its coldest autumn (March-April-May) since 1976 (solar minimum of cycle 20), with the freeze expected to have dire consequences across many of the country’s key growing regions:
And looking ahead, more of the same is forecast as the the month of June rolls on:
GFS 2m Temperature Anomalies (C) June 26 – June 30 [tropicaltidbits.com].
SOUTH AFRICA SHIVERS
After a brief burst of warmth, South Africa is now shivering through another cold spell with frosts noted in the Highlands.
Some notable lows: Bloemfontein Airport recently sank to -7.3C (18.9F); Johannesburg to -2.3C (27.9F); Graaff-Reinet plunged to -4.2C (24.4F); while neighboring Botswana registered an anomalously-low -1.3C (29.7F) at its capital Gaborone.
And as is the case with South America, Southern Africa’s pockets of polar cold are forecast to persist.
BLACKOUTS IN PAKISTAN AS CHINA POWER PLANTS GO UNPAID
Blackouts have been sweeping Pakistan this month as the country’s cash-strapped government struggles to pay Chinese power suppliers, complicating efforts to rescue its failing economy.
As reported by asia.nikkei.com, the power is going out in cities like Rawalpindi for 8 hours a day, which is having dire consequences on economic activity and, in turn, on household budgets already squeezed by 13%-plus inflation levels.
The outages are worse still in rural areas, such as in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which is receiving just six hours of electricity per day.
“We are used to living without government-supplied electricity as our forefathers did in ancient times,” said Mumtaz Baloch, a government employee living in Balochistan — an apposite statement, in my opinion.
A key cause for the blackouts is Chinese power producers shutting down multiple plants because the Pakistani government has failed to pay dues amounting to 300 billion rupees ($1.5 billion).
Ahmed Naeem Salik, a research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, said that current power generation capacity in Pakistan is 41,000 MW, while consumption is around 28,000 MW: “We have 13,000 MW of extra electricity capacity, but still there is a lot of load shedding,” he said. “[This] is mainly because we have to pay the loans [to Chinese companies] that we are unable to pay, and hence [the Chinese] have stopped power production.”
Blackouts are prevailing ACROSS Pakistan, including in the coastal town of Gwadar. Aslam Bhootani, a member of the National Assembly in Gwadar, told asia.nikkei.com that a 300 MW plant was supposed to power the town, “[but] the Chinese stopped construction of this power plant after [the government] failed to pay the dues to existing Chinese power producers.”
Pakistan’s power woes echo the ongoing crisis in another South Asian country, Sri Lanka — social unrest there is mounting and, as I reported on yesterday, public sector workers are being given Friday’s off to grow food in their back yards amid a looming famine:
And similarly to Sri Lanka, the Pakistani government has reverted back to a five-day workweek, reversing a change to a six-day week that was intended to increase productivity. In another measure, the country is planning to shut down commercial markets early to conserve energy. And thirdly, it is also seeking an International Monetary Fund bailout but first has to jump through IMF hoops, which include renegotiating a cheaper energy deal with the Chinese.
NORTH AMERICAN OAT SHORTAGE
Soaring global demand combined with fierce chills and a persistent drought has led to record low ending stocks for oats in Canada and the United States: “an exceptional situation for oats and oat products markets,” reports world-grain.com.
Demand for oats outpaced production last year after major North American oat growing regions suffered from severe drought and destructive outbreaks of Arctic cold — a recipe that led to depleted supplies that failed to keep up with usage.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my 40 years of working in the oat industry,” Randy Strychar, president of Oatinformation, recently said. “The bottoms are in, and prices are only going up from here,” he continued.
Besides oats’ tight supplies and growing demand, soaring costs of wheat and other grains are supporting its price strength.
However, despite the strong headwinds, Strychar said he is somewhat optimistic.
North American soil moisture in the oat-growing regions has been improved by record-setting snowpacks from last winter. And while the snow-saturated soil made the ground too wet for planting in both the U.S. and Canada –with late planting resulting in lower crop yields– Strychar is hopeful that the higher moisture content may counter some of those late planting yield loses.
Concerns remain, however, that oat supplies will still fail to keep up with domestic demand: “I suggest you get the coverage you need now, and don’t expect farms to sell large loads,” Strychar warned North America’s oat processing plants.
U.S. CORN BELT ALREADY SUFFERING FROM LATE PLANTING
“I recently asked my neighbor when was the last time he remembers a “normal” planting season,” said Paul Hodgen, a corn, soybean, and wheat farmer in Roachdale, Indiana, “He told me those days are long gone.”
Hodgen said he has only just finished planting, adding that it went much slower this year. Typically, he is finished several weeks earlier.
“We got zero farming done in March. [And] because we didn’t get hardly any planting done in April, that month was pretty much a washout. Then it all hit at once,” Hodgen said. “Basically, the recap for 2022 is we’re waiting for 2023.”
Indiana’s cold winter turned into a cold spring, and the soil took a long time to warm up to a temperature acceptable for planting, reports agriculture.com. Then, and in another swing between extremes, Indiana was hit by brief burst of heat which Hodgen says will prove “a shock to the corn”. The warmth is required to speed along growth; however, Hodgen adds that “it is also condensing our spraying window, which means less time to get all our in-crop applications done.”
According to the latest USDA planting figures, corn has played a miraculous catch-up in recent weeks to now stand at the 5-year average of 97% planted. Soybean, wheat and oat plantings have also recovered and stand at or close to their averages.
But this “official” reporting flies in the face of what farmers on the ground are telling us. However, and as every market analyst and grower has come to accept, the USDA is a government agency tasked with stabilizing the markets as opposed to always portraying the true picture.
With this in mind, I am betting that the finalized figures will reveal that acreage is indeed down.
Moreover though, given the late planting (a large percentage of which took place outside of the ideal window), along with a global shortage of key agricultural inputs, yields are set to be drastically reduced this year, meaning even tighter global stocks and additional pain come harvest time in Sept/Oct, particularly for the planet’s import nations.
Recommend this post and follow
The Life of Earth
No comments:
Post a Comment