Paraquat, Ploughs, and Perils: The Future of Global Grain

This year, global grain production will be somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0 billion tonnes, of that around 500 million tonnes will be available for export. It’s an impressive figure considering where we’ve come from over the last 70 years, having increased global production from 631 million tonnes back in 1950.

Today, across all grains, the global average yield is somewhere between 3.0 and 4.0 tonnes per hectare, up from 1- 2 tonnes back in the good old days. To produce the yields we have today, my calculator tells me results in anywhere between 625 million and 1 billion hectares of farmland being sown each year.

For the sake of this yarn, ?let’s split the difference and call it 769 million hectares being planted in an average year across the globe—an area that just happens to be exactly the same size as Australia.

So, imagine running an A-B line from Perth to Sydney, then pointing the New Holland tractor east to begin seeding on the big main paddock called, somewhat unimaginatively, ‘New Holland’, while leaving the kids to run around Tasmania in the old Chamberlain as a holiday job.

Fun fact: if today’s big seeding rigs can cover 7690 ha each year, the world only needs 100,000 farmers with big NH T9 682 hp rigs, enough to sow the 769 million ha needed to produce the Weet-Bix, Corn Flakes, and Rice Bubbles we like to eat.? These big rigs would free up around 300 million farmers who today make up the global grain farming community.? ?

Let’s allow the imagination to continue to run riot and say we’ve squeezed most of the world’s 8 billion-plus people into Sydney and Melbourne, which seems to be where the government’s immigration program is heading. Let’s also assume most of the 2.5–3.0 million tonnes of harvest that will come off every hectare of Australia will be consumed locally, leaving just 500 million tonnes for the export market—an amount that just happens to equate to what the Northern Territory can produce.

Fortunately, many of the local population in our one exporting state can trace their lineage back 60,000 years or so, so they should revel in their newfound status as the grain basket of the world.

Each year, the Chinese-owned Port of Darwin would see the equivalent of 10,000 x 50,000 tonne bulk carriers steaming in and out with the bounty of grain needed to keep the rest of the world (those that haven’t migrated to Australia) from descending into Malthusian anarchy. By anyone’s measure, that’s a lot of grain—enough to feed 2.5 billion people if they each consume 200kg a year.

For those who skipped geography, Malthus was an 18th-century English scholar convinced humanity was doomed to outgrow its food supply, predicting population growth would inevitably lead to famine, disease, and societal collapse—what we now call "Malthusian anarchy."

He famously theorised that while populations grow geometrically, food production only grows arithmetically, meaning the day would come when there simply wouldn’t be enough to go around. When Malthus published his thinking, it had people in a panic, but luckily, history had a few surprises up its sleeve.

First came the plough, then additional new farmland in new colonies, then phosphate fertilisers, the combustion engine, and finally, post-war, synthetic fertilisers and crop breeding leading to ?what became known as the Green Revolution.

Being referred to as a Green ?Revolution has nothing to do with organics but was the end result of clever chemical and biological engineering, which together has been instrumental in helping humanity sidestep Malthus’ grim prophecy.

If we take the 1950s as the starting point, the Green Revolution began to make a real difference in global food security, about the time that TV arrived in Australia (1956 for those not around back then).

The end result, was that instead of spending our evenings marvelling at the new box in the corner, which could bring moving images of starving Africans and Indians on the nightly TV news, we got to see images of peasant farmers marvelling at the wonders of DDT to keep their crops from being eaten.

The only problem was that this also attracted the attention of newly formed green activist organisations such as the Environmental Defence Fund and the Sierra Club, both of which cranked up their global anti-agricultural chemical campaigns in the 196Os around the time the global population hit 3 billion and we were starting to see the first signs of an end to the massive famines that had plagued the world since time immemorial.

Today, we are easily able to feed the current global population of 8.135 billion—a population that is still increasing by 198,916 a day (I kid you not). This is despite the world getting richer, fatter, and wasting its way through ever-increasing amounts of food.

And it’s not because farmers are paid vast amounts to overproduce produce—in fact, quite the opposite. In 1956, a bushel of wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade was selling for US$2.20 a tonne; today it sells for US$6.60. Adjusted for inflation, that $2.20 should have increased elevenfold to $22.00, yet it’s only increased threefold, so in real terms, our farmers should be getting around A$1200 a tonne if commodity prices had kept up with inflation.

This highlights not only the incredible efficiency gains farmers have achieved but also the impact of agricultural chemicals in keeping food affordable for global consumers.

Unsurprisingly, the huge gains in productivity linked to the Green Revolution coincided with the rollout of two wonder chemicals: Gramoxone (paraquat), released in 1962, and Roundup (glyphosate), in 1974. To that, you can add triple superphosphate, zinc sulphate, UAN, and NPK fertilisers, all of which came on the scene in the 1950s and 60s.

In short, chemists and chemical engineers have turbocharged agriculture to stay in front of a booming global population. So, while Malthus worried about an empty pantry, it turns out we’ve been stocking the shelves and then some. But all this is now under threat from regulators, who seem increasingly influenced by modern activists.

But back to my cropping data. As the world’s 300 million farmers don’t crop every paddock every year that they or their forefathers cleared, it begs the question: just how much land goes under the plough each year, and how much more would be required if we lose our two key ag chemicals?

Roughly 11-12% of the Earth’s surface has been cleared for crops, which equates to an area roughly the size of double Australia or a single Russia, so, should the global Green movement manage to convince all the governments of the world to end farming except for say Russia we could send our farmers—and those with 60,000 years of farming experience—up to Russia to crop half their country every year on a year in year out rotation.

This might be a bit of a challenge, as 65% of the soil is permanently frozen, and parts of the country seem to be covered in landmines and controlled by the neighbours, but Putin has a reputation of having a crack no matter what the odds.

Should Russia prove unviable, Brazil and Argentina is another region which combined is about the right size as the sole area to be cropped to feed the world.

Now not all of Brazil is cleared but that should not be a problem. ?In fact, while Australia may have stopped clearing back in 1983, the world is still knocking over around 5 million hectares a year—roughly the size of the Great Southern region of WA with Brazil being responsible for 1 million hectares of this a year.

Brazil cops a lot of blame by the green movement but all they’re doing is catching up to Europe, the United States, and Australia, who all went through their own land-clearing phases. In fact, Brazil seems to be following the 1950s Brand Government policy of chaining a million acres a year, except they have no intention of listening to the bleating of the UN or any other activist organisation as they ramp up to be one of the biggest grain producers in the world.

At some stage, I’ll write an article on where land is left for clearing for those wanting to send the No. 2 son or daughter off to experience the thrill of being a new land farmer, as there is still plenty of uncleared land left in South America, Africa, and Russia.

Now, let’s get back to what will be needed if the Green Left gets their way and bans the globe's two most valuable agricultural molecules: 60,000 tonnes of C?H?NO?P and over one million tonnes of C??H??N?Cl?.

I couldn’t find a good study on the impact of this on global grain production, which isn’t surprising as the results are not likely to please the activist class that inhabit our universities.

However, a number of papers on going totally chemical-free suggest a significant impact. For instance, a meta-analysis from Nature concluded that organic farming systems typically have 20-25% lower yields compared to conventional farming. But for cereal grains, this reduction would be somewhat higher.

Similarly, a study by the Rockefeller Foundation estimated that going fully organic could reduce global food output by around 30-40%, depending on the crops and regions being considered. And a report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) surprisingly found that if the world shifted entirely to organic farming, global grain production could decline by 40-50% without significant improvements in organic farming techniques.

Take your pick as to the impact of going organic, but on average, between a third and half the world starves. But what about just taking out paraquat and glyphosate—the foundation chemicals for no-till farming?

The best estimates suggest global grain production would be reduced by 15%, which doesn’t sound like much until you consider that this equates to the 500 million tonnes of traded grain produced by the big exporters that keep half the world from revolting against their governments when the markets run out of bread. The other way of looking at it is the world needs to find another 100 million hectares of farm land, which might upset those activists hell bent on returning farm land to tree coverage.

You can almost imagine what it would be like, with the sounds of activists groups fighting each over climate change vs ban paraquat, the gunshots from the government quelling the food riots, the dust storms from the ploughs along with the smell of burning forests as the bulldozers are put to work to make up for the loss of production.

This is not a matter of unexpected consequences but highly predictable outcomes; ?no, C?H?NO?P and C??H??N?Cl? means massive impacts on C and CO? and food production.

Multiply that across millions of hectares of farmland globally, and we go back to watching images of starving children with potbellies on TV—only this time, we get to see it in full colour on our big high-definition screens, with the wailing mothers in full surround sound. Not that the activists will be watching—they are very selective about the social media they consume, preferring Taylor Swift clips and cat dancing videos to starving kids.

In the meantime, the organic activists will be out in force, offering snake oil solutions to gullible governments based on old recipes like pelargonic or acetic acid as future herbicides, just as they’ll claim copper Bordeaux mixtures, nicotine, and arsenic are all viable natural alternatives to our Green Revolution fungicides and pesticides—simply because they were invented before the big evil multinationals like Dow and Monsanto came along.

If we follow their loony logic down their zero-risk rabbit hole, as our government seems hell-bent on doing, one day we will end up with no ag chemicals, no livestock, no felling of trees, no burning of coal, oil, or wood—it’s caveman stuff, minus the fire.

Sure, this might seem too extreme, but we are no longer facing just the Sierra Club and the RSPCA who are pushing for an end to DDT, there are now thousands of organisations out there pressuring the likes of the APVMA to take a zero-risk approach to not just glyphosate and paraquat but every agricultural chemical we currently need to feed what will soon be 9 billion people.

If government regulators reject science-based risk assessments and adopt a zero-risk approach, then the one thing is certain we will need to clear up to 100 million hectares of additional land roughly the remaining uncleared area of the amazorn to keep the world fed.