The great and good of the global metals industry gather for London Metal Exchange week — the flagship event for the industry.

With most base metal prices running way ahead of fundamentals, real and apparent demand unclear and leading economies at different stages of recovery or not, its a key time to take the temperature of banks, producers, consumers and funds involved in metals.

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Reuters energy correspondents covering the Vienna OPEC meeting will be sharing their insights and taking you behind the scenes of the Reuters operation with this live blog.

By Christopher Doering 
    
The surge in sugar prices and potential risk of a shortage has provided some sweet fodder for one late-night comedian who can’t help but poke fun at the attention the tasty ingredient is receiving.
 
Stephen Colbert, who hosts the Colbert Report on Comedy Central, spent part of his show this week lamenting the sugar crisis. 
 
After showing a montage of television clips about the sugar situation, Colbert proceeded to break a glass cover — similar to one containing a fire extinguisher — and pulled out a bag of sugar, which he dosed all over himself.
 
“Oh my God, there’s a sugar shortage,” said Colbert. “How could this happen. Well, like interstate highways and potable water it’s the government’s fault.”
 
Large U.S. food companies, including Kraft Foods, General Mills Inc and Hershey Co, have been pushing the Obama administration to ease sugar import curbs, citing forecasts for unprecedented sugar shortages that could result in higher retail prices and possible job losses.
 
In a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack dated Aug. 5, the companies and other groups warned that “our nation will virtually run out of sugar,” if a USDA forecast is accurate.
 
“Can you imagine an America with no sugar?” said Colbert. “Juice would contain nothing but 10 percent juice and we’d all be eating uncaramelized apples. What are we going to do?” 

For more information on the sugar shortage, click here.

Alaska is known as a big oil producing state, but don’t forget about it when it comes to renewable energy. That was the message of the state’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. 
    
At a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing this week, Salazar showed several large U.S. maps of potential wind, solar and geothermal energy resources. One problem, the country’s biggest state, Alaska, was nowhere to be found.
    
“There are few things that irritate me more than maps of the United States of America that do not include that great northern state,” Murkowski told Salazar, as the standing-room-only hearing room burst into laughter.
    
“Our renewable energy resources are wonderful and vast and we look forward to the time that you will come up to visit them,” she said. 
    
Murkowski even defended Hawaii, which was also left off Salazar’s maps.
    
“We do encourage the Department of the Interior to make sure that all 50 states are represented on your maps,” she said, raising more giggles from committee members and those sitting in audience, including the press table.
    
Salazar was just as amused.
    
“That’s a point well taken,” he said. “Alaska is so important that it merits a map all to itself.”
    
“You’re right,” Murkowski responded.
    
If Salazar follows through on his promise, the solar energy map for Alaska would be rather dark — at least during the winter, when the sun doesn’t shine in some parts of the state for several months and is out for only a few hours a day elsewhere.

–Tom Doggett

For more news on renewable energy, click here.

Photo credit: DOI (Interior Secretary Salazar testifies before Senate committee)

U.S. farmers could set a record for soybean plantings this year, topping 2008’s 75.7 million acres. The Agriculture Department will release its initial projection of seedings later this week. Some economists see plantings of 79 million acres (32.9 million ha) given that market prices and production costs currently favor soybeans.

Most expect corn plantings to lose ground as global recession takes the shine off demand from livestock and ethanol. But it would be daunting to break the U.S. corn plantings record even if the biofuels boom were re-ignited.

Corn seedings hit 93.5 million acres (37.8 million ha) in 2007 in a land rush to profit on ethanol. Although it was the largest total since 1943, it ranks 16th at USDA. The largest corn planting on record is a giant 113 million acres in 1932 — 21 percent larger than 2007. It may not give a full picture of corn-growing in America.

USDA began recording corn plantings in 1926. It has records of corn harvest area from 1866. From 1909-18, harvest area usually exceeded 100 million acres, so plantings had to be much larger, to allow for abandonment and other uses. In 1926, for instance, plantings were 99.7 million acres and harvest area was 83.3 million acres, a decline of 16 million acres. In recent years, the shrinkage from plantings to harvest area has been around 7.5 million acres, mostly for silage.

There are plenty of reasons for large corn plantings in the early 20th century. Corn was needed to feed the vast herds of horses and mules used as draft animals on the farm and in the city before gasoline power was adopted. Corn is easy to store. Livestock could glean cornfields after harvest. And, yields were a lot lower — 25.7 bushels an acre in 1926 for a crop of 2.14 billion bushels. In 2008, the corn crop was 12.1 billion bushels with a yield of 153.9 bushels an acre from 86 million acres.

–Charles Abbott

    Five largest soybean plantings
    (Records begin in 1924) 
    75.718 million acres, 2008 
    75.522 million acres, 2006 
    75.208 million acres, 2004 
    74.226 million acres, 2000 
    74.075 million acres, 2001 
    

   Five largest corn plantings 
    (Records begin in 1926) 
    113.025 million acres, 1932 
    109.830 million acres, 1933 
    109.364 million acres, 1931 
    103.915 million acres, 1930 
    101.959 million acres, 1936

Photo:

During his first week on the job, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said no one knows for sure how many people work at the Agriculture Department. Speaking to USDA employees and later to reporters, he used that startling anomaly as an argument to update USDA’s computer equipment.

Like the admonition against saying “never” or “always” during an argument, there could be a corollary: Never say “no one knows” in a bureaucracy.

A USDA employee quickly provided an answer for Reuters: 99,439 fulltime, part-time and temporary federal employees as of Monday based on figures from the payroll agency.

There were some qualifiers in Vilsack’s statement. He said he asked the Obama transition team and “I was told no one knows for sure how many people work at (USDA). They could tell me how many checks are issued, but not how many people actually work here.”

A former USDA official snorted at the idea of an uncountable workforce. ”That may be almost an urban myth,” he said. “It’s not a simple answer” but is within reach.

There are some complexities. For example, USDA employment rises to include Forest Service “smoke jumpers” and wildfire crews during the summer and shrinks during the winter.

Then there’s the roughly 9,400 people in the county offices who are part of the Farm Service Agency. They perform federal tasks but are hired by locally elected committees. 

A few years ago, USDA budget workers on a lark composed a multiple-choice question on USDA employment. All four answers correct although differing on points like counting fulltime workers only or including county office workers.

– Charles Abbott

Photo credit: Reuters/Jeff Haynes

Many U.S. farmers don’t have confidence in President-elect Barack Obama, with many fearing the new administration will not be receptive to the needs of American farmers and ranchers.

A Reuters straw poll of more than 800 farmers at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual meeting in San Antonio found 72 percent of the respondents did not believe Obama would have the best interest of the farmer in mind.

Instead of helping U.S. sectors that produce goods for the country, such as farmers, several mentioned Obama would focus on programs that work to even out income and help those that are seeking something from the government.

U.S. farmers, who tend to be social and fiscal conservatives, have traditionally supported Republicans. One Illinois farmer said he was “not necessarily a Republican beating a drum here but… I just don’t have the confidence in him that I probably should have.”

The Farm Bureau, the nation’s largest farm group, representing growers and ranchers, has adopted a more optimistic tone. Bob Stallman, president of the group, said Obama made several positive comments toward agriculture during the campaign and has expressed a need to have a healthy farm economy.

– Christopher Doering

Photo: President-elect Barack Obama  tastes some peaches during a campaign stop at a farmers market in Greensboro, North Carolina, on August 20, 2008.  REUTERS/Jim Young

What do Bigfoot, a mermaid, an alien from outer space, and clean coal all have in common?
    None of them exist, according to several environmental groups.
    Organizations such as the League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation have launched a multi-million dollar media onslaught aimed at knocking down claims that power can be generated from coal now in an environmentally safe manner.                                                                                                                                                      The so called “reality” campaign features a television commercial with a man touting “clean coal technology” in a barren field and print ads with fictional creatures holding lumps of coal. The message of the ads is “In reality, there’s no such thing as clean coal.”
    How to handle America’s abundant coal supply is likely to remain a contentious issue as U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration tackles climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
    Coal-fired power plants generate about half of U.S. electricity supplies, and account for about 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — the biggest single industrial source.
    Obama has expressed support for the development of technology that would allow coal-burning power plants to trap and store carbon dioxide rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. Such technology is commercially untested and currently economically nonviable.
    Coal industry trade groups, such as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, say that they are committed to carbon reduction strategies and coal power is necessary to provide Americans with affordable electricity.
    Until the carbon capture and storage technology is developed, however, environmentalists behind the Reality Coalition say on their website “coal will remain a major contributor to the climate crisis.”

–Ayesha Rascoe