Crops & meat prices jumping

You would think that farmers would be excited about grain shortages: if Russia blocks Ukraine's exports, that raises the price for other exporters. Unfortunately shortages are all over input costs: fertilizer and gas are more costly than ever, and other factors are pushing the price of pork up, as shown in this BBC news article from today (June 29, 2022).

As the above chart shows, the trend is just gathering steam: in September 2021 Bloomberg reported on low inventories of beef, pork, and chicken. I don't have an update on inventories, but it seems the pressures are still strong.

Maryland crabs

Uh oh! Today's Baltimore Sun reports that the crab population is under threat, and that harvesters will be limited in how much they can harvest and sell. This apparently is linked to the winter dredge survey, which reported in mid-May that the crab population is at its lowest level in the past 30 years.

The DNR is at pains to avoid pointing fingers, but the obvious causes include nearby agriculture, including fertilizer runoff from horticulture (mostly corn & soy) and fertilizer runoff from chicken farming. Importantly, much of the runoff is from upstream states- Maryland deals with waste from the other five states in the watershed....

Lab-grown meat

Just saw this article, posted September 2021, on many reasons why we shouldn't expect to see lab-grown meat any time soon. Although venture capitalists continue to fund it, most likely it will take many years before anything is available at scale. 

This is a good example of why I discourage people in my Resources class from writing about new technologies. If the engineers are still trying to get the technology to work, or if it's not financially sustainable on its own yet, economists generally don't want to go there. We just can't analyze the economics of a technology that's not "economic" yet. Maybe the advances in technology will come fast and furious and it will be economic soon, which would be fantastic! Then again, that might never happen. Just save the economic analysis for technologies that are at least close to being economic. 

Gas taxes

Can you... Pigou?

The RFF's Daniel Raimi encourages states to take the windfall tax revenues and put them to good use. In Alaska and New Mexico, oil was taxed and the proceeds put into a rainy day fund. On the other hand, his counter-example is Appalachian states like West Virginia, where coal mining was never taxed, and where the economy continues to suffer. Maybe now, with the current high prices, Texas will finally be able to see its way clear to go ahead with the Medicaid expansion....

Yields of organic agriculture

Consumers are buying more and more organic produce. That's probably good for the environment, at least as far as improving biodiversity in the fields (as shown in a 2021 study in Switzerland and this 2022 meta-analysis) but that comes with losses in terms of yields. A 2021 study of growing grain in Sweden found that organic agriculture was 43%-72% as productive as conventional agriculture, and a 2021 meta-analysis concluded that on average, organic yields were about 75-80% of conventional plots. So maybe there are more bugs (good and bad both) in the fields, but it means that more fields will be required to produce the same amount of food. That also means higher prices for consumers, which will matter more for some consumers than others. Seems like the jury's still out.