cereal grains, petrochemical inputs, and speculation

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=wheat

looking at the numbers can be confusing, misleading, or both so i am just going to report what i found without much interpretation beyond saying that speculators will always be happy to see commodity prices rise, no matter who is harmed...it is the nature of speculation to "buy cheap and sell dear"...there is litte room for altruism in that philosophy...not an editorial per se ( wrong blog for that) just saying...the good news first...the price of natural gas is down to $4.04 per 1000 cu./ft. ...aside from doing most of the cooking and heating hot water and homes, it is the feedstock for anhydrous ammonia which is what gets put on the corn fields around here by way of artificial nitrogen fertilizer ( comes in the big white tanks on wheels to tow behind the tractors in the fields...look around in late april[if it's a warm spring] or may and you'll see them )...if the natural gas price is down anhydrous ammonia will be cheper too...its cost has been down the last couple of years...so less cost to farmer brown...what else? well, the price of wheat dropped form $348.69 a tonne to $326.09 a tonne so that may be a bit of help in food costs around the globe...but i wouldn't count on it continuing to drop just yet...that exhausts my good news...on the other side...maize is up to $303.94 from $284.06 a tonne and sorgham ( the staple of the poor of africa ) is up to $296.32 from $221.58...and all this in just a few weeks ( i think my last blog on this subject was twenty days ago)...$25 just put 7.001 gallons of 89 octane gasoline in my truck because the price of a barrel of oil was $98.23 just a few minutes ago...that isn't going to help in the cost of running farm machinery moving the feedstock to the processing plants( hardly anyone grows food anymore...at least on farms), emulsifying, extruding, blending, and packaging the product, and then moving it to the distribution centers, all before it makes the trip home in the back of your station wagon, mini-van, suv, motorcycle, compact car, etc....specualtors are having a field day with oil right now...which relates back to all the disturbances that are afoot in the arab world...which are, at least in part, coupled to food prices...we are all bound together in this...parts of an integrated whole where one thing leads to another and it is all too complex for simple analyses like this or those you'd find in the media...i am certainly no expert...just trying to have a reasoned look at what's up and understand what i can...i know that agriculture almost anywhere is deeply dependent on petrochemical inputs ( and the garden is no exception...it's organic...all compost and manure in there with the plants...but that has to get to campus somehow[as well as the gardener] and the somehow is a chevy pick-up...when the university so kindly puts a spigot by the garden so i don't have to haul water form inside hawthorn hall the garden is using energy beyond sunlight again...the water has to be pumped somehow...bet electricity is involved.) and when the cost of a barrel of oil goes up so does the cost of food wherever you are and however much you have to spend for it may not go as far...wish it were different...hope some of the things we are trying to do in the garden shed some light on how that might come about...stay tuned...spring is nearly hear and we will be out and actually doing somethig rather than just speculating.