Another comment By Jeremy in Barrons March 15 2014
What else is on your mind these days? I worry about food, and I worry about Africa. The global economy has really two civilizations, or two systems. One is everything outside of Africa, where Taiwan, Thailand, Canada, Mexico, and other countries are all one big system moving together—trading oil and everything else. And then there is Africa, which, with the possible exception of South Africa, is its own little world. But it's the only part of the world where the population, on a broad basis, still is growing rapidly. It probably will decline, but these countries can't produce enough food, unless they get good advice and capital and fertilizer—or they become really clever farmers, and get a lot of help and sensible governments. The countries I worry about most immediately are in North Africa, curling all the way into Syria, because they eat wheat. The price of wheat is two, three times what it used to be, and the price of energy is four times what it used to be. These are not rich people, so they have been desperately squeezed, and the weather is bearing down on agricultural production. The most dependable aspect of climate change is more droughts and more floods. All of this has many implications, from countries like Egypt being able to feed its population to immigration policy in Europe to the impact on high-grade, low-cost phosphate, a big chunk of which comes from Morocco. Phosphorus is crucial for farming. The much higher prices of wheat, oil and, to some extent, fertilizers have helped destabilize various societies in this region. I worry about what happens if the deterioration spreads to Morocco. Thanks, Jeremy.