Food

How expensive is fertilzer?

The world ban blog looks at fertilizer prices in the post Fertilizer prices ease but affordability and availability issues linger by John Baffes and Wee Chian Koh (1/5/2023).  In Europe The sharp increase in natural gas prices in Europe has led to widespread production cutbacks in ammonia—an important input for …

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How much have food prices increased?

The World Bank Data Blog provides information on food prices in the article Food prices eased but risks remain elevated by John Baffes & Kaltrina Temaj (11/21/2022) The World Bank’s Food Price Index declined 12% in the third quarter of 2022 (q/q) after reaching an all-time high in April. The …

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How much corn?

The image (2020), which I find fascinating, is from the NASA earth observatory article Falling for Corn: The natural-color image above was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Terra. The map below shows lands that were planted with corn in 2020 (marked in yellow). The map was built from …

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Have we passed peak agricultural land?

The chart here is from the Our World in Data article After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’ by Hannah Ritchie (5/30/2022).  Interestingly Despite this reduction in agricultural land, the world has continued to produce more food. This is true of both crops and livestock.5 …

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Where do we find data on crop yields?

Our World in Data has, well, the data in their Crop Yields Data Explorer. For example, here is a chart of cereal yield for a few countries. With the crop yields data explorer you can select from most countries, different crops, and different measurements. In each case the data can …

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How does food move around the U.S.?

An article by Fast Company, The first map of America’s food supply chain is mind-boggling by Megan Konar (10/28/19), reports on the paper Food flows between counties in the United States by Xiaowen Lin, et. el. The author of the paper created the network graph of food flow copied here.  …

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