Teucrium Trading, LLC, a sponsor of a suite of six single commodity ETPs that include energy and agriculture and one core agriculture commodity ETP, announced the launch of the Teucrium Corn Clock, a real-time dynamic flip clock, that displays each second how many bushels of corn will be required for that year just to supply the needs of the additional population up to that point in time.
In commenting on the Corn Clock which is displayed on the Teucrium website, Brandon Riker, director – strategic marketing and analysis, said, “Teucrium’s goal in establishing the Corn Clockis to visually illustrate and create awareness about how population growth can drive demand and thus impact the supply necessary to meet this demand.”
Riker said that according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 2.44 people are added to the planet each second and each person uses, on average, about 4.85 bushels of corn per year¹. As an example, since the beginning of the year through 11:59:59 pm on February 28, 2013, the planet had added over 12.4 million people. To support the demand for corn from just these 12.4 million people, the world will need to produce about 60.3 million bushels of corn this year.
With the global population increasing by around 75 million people each year, about twice the population of California, and each person using about 4.85 bushels of corn¹, that means just to provide for that demand, the planet must produce approximately 363.8 million additional bushels of corn.
Riker additionally noted, “Based on current world-wide yield from the USDA, this would mean about 4.87 million additional acres (an area about the size of the state of New Jersey) would need to be planted to meet the growing demand. However, all land is not created equal and there are often issues, for example, with access to water and infrastructure.”²
Supply is a function of yield per acre and arable land under cultivation and although historical yield per acre for many crops including corn has increased, the yield change is not consistent year over year or ever increasing, and does decline from time to time³.
Additionally, according to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, “Much of the suitable land not yet in use is concentrated in a few countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, but many countries with growing rural populations in these areas are extremely land-scarce, and much of the potential land is suitable for growing only a few crops that are not necessarily those for which there is the highest demand. Also, much of the land not yet in use suffers from constraints (chemical, physical, endemic diseases, lack of infrastructure, etc.) that cannot be easily overcome or that it is not economically viable to do so.”²