(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The United States can export excess US Wheat to countries in Africa.This can solve crises of famine. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-05 I have been reading the excellent diaries written by RO37 about Ukraines's successes in the Black Sea and Ukraine's ability to begin limited shipping of wheat to countries in the Horn of Africa (Somalia and Ethiopia). And I want to say that I deeply respect RO37 and other diarists writing about Ukraine and Russia. Those countries are not my area of expertise. However, I have been very confused by assertions that either Ukrainian or Russian wheat is essential for countries that need immediate food assistance, in this case in the form of wheat. Those of us who study global agricultural trade, and the impact of "dumping" of foreign grains on African countries aren't thrilled to see more dumping of wheat being pushed as a foreign policy litmus test for loyalty to Ukraine. I wonder how this particular framing came about. The United States currently has a surplus of wheat, and has been a net exporter of wheat for decades. The only wheat it is currently importing is Hard Winter Wheat from the EU, due to poor production of HRW in the US in the last few years.(Hard Red Winter wheat is used mostly for bread flour). You can check the excellent resources at the USDA and their Economic Research Service, which gives updated reports of production of agricultural commodities in the United States, as well as US exports and imports. www.ers.usda.gov/… Another source is the trade journal, The Milling and Baking News, which is now online, so you don't have to spend days in an archive reading through back issues and flagging pages to photocopy for later analysis for your dissertation. I checked the most recent wheat production estimates by the USDA ERS, and the US is projected to have a surplus of wheat, as it often does. If there is a shortage of wheat in Africa, the United States can buy some of the surplus wheat in the United States and ship it to Africa. The US has been doing this for decades. One advantage of buying surplus wheat to dump, er, give, to African countries is that then the price of wheat in the US goes up, and the USDA doesn't have to spend money on "crop reinsurance" to buy wheat from farmers that they otherwise would have sold on the open market. I think it is great that Ukraine can send wheat to Africa, but most leftist researchers of African agriculture would say that global institutions should be supporting the development of African internal agricultural markets and not destroying them by flooding them with low cost grain. Also, dumping crops like wheat in African agricultural markets suppresses the diversity of cultivation of local grains and tubers. Again, I recognize that there are geopolitical reasons for the way the story of Ukranian and Russian wheat is being told. It just doesn't match the reality of more than fifty years of research on US hegemonic control of agricultural trade. I have also been astonished to read that so-called "leftists" are apparently arguing that the US should stop helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression because the world needs more Russian and Ukranian wheat. Or something like that. I read a lot of comments by so-called leftists on various platforms, and am constantly astonished by these obvious trolls. I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for eighteen years, worked with leftists here on various political causes, and my dissertation was supervised by leftists in the Department of Sociology and Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin. I have met and interacted with many varieties of leftists, and leftists can be an odd and eccentric group of people who often disagree among themselves. But the trolls I encounter on social media are not "leftists". They are propaganda agents working against the interests of the United States. I should also say quite clearly that while I think of myself as a left progressive, I am loyal to the United States of America and its Constitution. I dislike encountering media bots pretending to be leftists while working to divide the United States. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/5/2197284/-The-United-States-can-export-excess-US-Wheat-to-countries-in-Africa-This-can-solve-crises-of-famine?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/