North Dakota Soybeans -- Again -- December 22, 2021

This was the first day in weeks that I've watched CNBC. I heard that Jim Cramer tested positive for Covid-19 earlier this week. Today, he's live on "Mad Money" and he looks perfectly normal, healthy, and hale. This is why we're shutting down the economy -- for folks testing positive for Covid-19 and looking as normal, healthy, and hale as Jim Cramer. Oh, give me a break. 

He has a full studio of camera people, a producer, housekeeping staff, hanger on, tour groups, and there he is, known to have tested positive and no mask! Say what? Tested positive, inside, and not wearing a mask?

But I digress. Back to the soybean story.

From The Bismarck Tribune: "groups combine to build new soybean plants in North Dakota" -- link here:

• byline: Casselton:
• deal finalized; has been in the works for two years;
• Louisiana-based CGB Enterprises Inc. and Minnesota Soybean Processors: joint venture
• to be called, North Dakota Soybean Processor LLC -- will own and operate the plant;
• to be located in Casselton, 25 miles west of Fargo, ND (in other words, not the high-tax state of Minnesota)
• to be fully operational by 2024; will create up to 60 new jobs:
• expected to crush 42.5 million bushels of soybeans in the first year
• big consumer? livestock

Soybean Oil Manufacturing Plant -- Spiritwood, ND -- MPC, ADM -- Close On Deal -- December 17, 2021

 Link here.

• JV: Archer-Daniels-Midland, Marathon Petroleum Corporation (the refiner)
• product: soybean oil --> renewable diesel fuel
• ADM: 75%
• MPC: 25%
• to be completed in 2023
• product to be supplied to MPC
• 600 million lbs of refined soybean oil per year--> 75 million gallons of diesel per year
• diesel: one gallon = 137,381 Btu
• North Dakota consumption: 100 trillion Btu distillate fuel oil
• 100,000,000,000,000 / 137,381 = 730 million gallons per year
• Spiritwood: about 10% of ND's annual distillate fuel consumption (?)
• disclaimer: I often make simple arithmetic errors.

Mosaic Company Moving -- In The Stock Market And To Florida -- January 10, 2021

Over at the sidebar at the right, I have something called "Themes -- 2021."

The overriding theme for 2021 is a "risk-off" trade for investors and a booming global economy as we move to a "new normal." 

"New normal." LOL.

I'm mentioning that because it will help explain some of the stories I post and/or link on the blog.

Example: I see that Mosaic Company is among the "leaders" in those companies moving tomorrow's market in futures. Linked here but the link is dynamic and will probably be different six hours from now.

From wiki:

The Mosaic Company is a Fortune 500 company based in Tampa, Florida which mines phosphate and potash, and operates through segments such as international distribution and mosaic fertilizantes. 

It is the largest U.S. producer of potash and phosphate fertilizer. 

The Mosaic Company was formed in October 2004 by a merger between IMC Global, a fertilizer company formed in 1909, and Cargill's crop nutrition division. 

It is a combined producer and marketer of concentrated phosphate and potash with a customer base which includes wholesalers, retail dealers and individual growers worldwide. 

Its headquarters are in Plymouth, Minnesota and it employs approximately 12,000 people in eight countries. 

On October 26, 2018, Mosaic announced that it would be relocating its headquarters from Plymouth, Minnesota to Tampa, Florida.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

I don't invest in Mosaic (at least not directly) and never will .... wait, let me check its dividend ... nope, not enticing ... but Mosaic Company will be something to follow in line with my "Themes -- 2021."

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The Movie Page

Wow, wow, wow -- 84 Charing Cross Road, 1987. TCM, Sunday night, what a treat!

I had never seen the movie and I certainly didn't think I would ever like it but after last week this movie appears to be a breath of fresh air. 

On one side of the Atlantic, London. On the other side, New York City. 

Wow, what a treat. Judi Dench pops up everywhere. 

84 Charing Cross Road: one of my top ten movies. I didn't know that until tonight, having seen it for the first time. I just don't know how actors do it. 

"Breaking through the fourth wall": I learned that phrase from our oldest granddaughter of all things. It would be interesting to know if Anthony Hopkins considered this his favorite film.

We lived three years not far from London when "we" were in the USAF. In addition to those three years I was back over to England many, many times over a four-year period. I immediately got the map out and re-lived old memories. 

It's funny how things work out. I was assigned to a seven-physician flight medicine clinic at RAF Lakenheath, a prime and much-sought-after assignment. The clinic had a satellite clinic a few miles away over at RAF Mildenhall which was considered an outpost which no one wanted; the poor step-child as it were. I always went with the flow, never argued or fought for the spoils which I thought I deserved, but just did what the boss said. The boss told me I would be assigned to that satellite clinic along with another junior physician. 

It turned out to be the best non-decision decision I ever made. I had a blast over at that two-physician clinic. Operationally it was an incredible experience, but just as important: geographically separated from the main hospital and the seven-physician flight medicine clinic I was free of all office politics and had (almost) no administrative responsibilities. All I did was practice clinical medicine; fly all over England; and spend several wonderful weeks in Spain, northern and west-central Africa, during those three years. 

Life in the military is funny. Some years -- actually many years -- a lifetime later, in fact, -- after that RAF Mildenhall assignment, I was sent back to northern England for short periods, multiple times. I like to think I spent a full year in northern England over the course of four years but it's possibly I exaggerate the amount of time actually spent in Yorkshire. During that time I cultivated numerous friendships, closer than (m)any I had previously experienced. 

One colleague was a US civilian, working for an organization which did not exist on paper. She was as good as any in her field, and after 20+ years in the organization, she deserved the best of assignments. Near the end of my own career, I learned that she had been given an assignment no one wanted: remote and literally at the end of the world. We talked about the (un)fairness of life; she accepted the assignment after my support. She could have retired but she took the assignment. I lost track of her after she departed but I can only imagine she ended up having the best of times in .... Australia.

Yes, truly funny how things work out in life. 

Now, to look at that map and bring back a lot of memories.

Why I Love To Blog, Reason #7 -- I Blogged About This Years Ago -- The NY TImes Picks It Up Now -- January 10, 2021

Another story that will compete for biggest story of the decade.

Wow, I'm in a good mood. I talked about this years ago. If I can find it on the blog, I will post the link.

I said early on that global warming would expand agriculture worldwide. I first saw it in North Dakota and Montana as corn production increased in North Dakota and wheat production increased in Montana. 

Now this from The New York Times: how Russia wins the climate crisis. Whoo-hoo!

Climate change and its enormous human migrations will transform agriculture and remake the world order — and no country stands to gain more than Russia.

A great transformation is underway in the eastern half of Russia.

For centuries the vast majority of the land has been impossible to farm; only the southernmost stretches along the Chinese and Mongolian borders have been temperate enough to offer workable soil.

But as the climate has begun to warm, the land — and the prospect for cultivating it — has begun to improve. Across Eastern Russia, wild forests, swamps, and grasslands are slowly being transformed into orderly grids of soybeans, corn and wheat. It’s a process that is likely to accelerate: Russia hopes to seize on the warming temperatures and longer growing seasons brought by climate change to refashion itself as one of the planet’s largest producers of food. 

Around the world, climate change is becoming an epochal crisis, a nightmare of drought, desertification, flooding and unbearable heat, threatening to make vast regions less habitable and drive the greatest migration of refugees in history.

But for a few nations, climate change will present an unparalleled opportunity, as the planet’s coldest regions become more temperate. There is plenty of reason to think that those places will also receive an extraordinary influx of people displaced from the hottest parts of the world as the climate warms. Human migration, historically, has been driven by the pursuit of prosperity even more so than it has by environmental strife.

With climate change, prosperity and habitability — haven and economic opportunity — will soon become one and the same. And no country may be better positioned to capitalize on climate change than Russia.

The full story over at The NY Times is behind a paywall, but that much of it, from climatekc.org tells me all I need to know.

Wow. 

Is the narrative beginning to change? No, not at all, but this is another great example of Dr Strangelove. 

I'm lovin' it.

Wow, wow, wow -- if one looks long enough, one can find the NYTimes article (actually a New York Magazine article, apparently) in its entirety, not going through a paywall. LOL.

Link here. 

And archived here.