Food: A problem of plenty?

fertilizer and food price chart

fertilizer, cereal, rice and wheat indices

Legend
PFERT: Primary Commodity Prices, Fertilizer
PCERE: Primary Commodity Prices, Cereal index
PRICENPQ: Primary Commodity Prices, Rice, Thailand
PWHEAMT: Primary Commodity Prices, Wheat
PFOOD: Primary Commodity Prices, Food index

If I am reading this chart right, when prices of food commodities (cereals, rice, wheat) go up, fertilizer prices go up. But when food prices come down, fertilizer’s stay up? Wheat prices are more-or-less where they were back in the 90’s. The rest have barely budged. No wonder I’ve spent most of my adult life hearing about farm distress.

Code and charts are on github.

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