Energy / Fertilizer / Food Crisis Tracker
Posted by lynk1@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 50 comments
After reading an article posted here yesterday about this convergence, I decided that I needed a dashboard to help me, visualize it all, and thought some of you might like it too.
As you may be aware today, the Russian gasoline export band goes into effect.
It’s a totally free resource, no need to buy or sign up, and we will be working hard to keep it up-to-date over the coming months.
Nebraskastar@reddit
Thank you!
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Glad to help!
ShrodingersArmadillo@reddit
Good idea, incorrect data points but there's an issue you're looking at the events but what you need to do is look at the shipping traffic because that's what shows shows the picture.
Why? that is the bottleneck where things get out of control. Remember 2020?
The biggest crisis is right now in the oceans and will start to hit big time April 15th no ones talking about it so the point will not be in your data.
Why? oil tankers move at about the speed of a bicycle.
Why April 15th? that's the day that China and Europe have no more shipment of oil and oil prices will spike dramatically. Always pay attention to shipping. Trump thought he could take total control before this deadline now you see why he's panicking.
lynk1@reddit (OP)
this is such a good point that events don't explain the delay, shipping does.
I actually built a new section today based on this comment. it's called the Supply Clock and it sits right between the timeline and the crisis explainer. it has countdown cards showing days until the US and Europe pre-war oil buffers exhaust (using your April 10 and April 15 dates, plus EIA tanker transit data to back it up), and a horizontal timeline with the war start, Hormuz closing, and today as a pulsing marker working its way through the transit zone.
also added refinery utilization tracking below it, since that's the downstream indicator for when supply actually gets scarce vs just expensive. when that number drops, shortages follow. you can see it here if you want to check it out.
seriously thank you for this.
ShrodingersArmadillo@reddit
excellent work this gives everyone a more complete picture well done :)
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Appreciate that. That realization has really stuck with me and changed my prep pace this LAST week before that utilization drops.
lynk1@reddit (OP)
April 5 Update
Big week of building since April 2nd.
Supply Clock New section inspired by a comment that events don't explain delays, shipping does. Countdown cards show days until the US and Europe pre-war oil buffers exhaust (April 15 and April 10), with a timeline showing where we are in the transit window. Answers "why hasn't this hit yet and when will it" at a glance.
U.S. Drought Monitor Live USDA data. Currently 90% of the US is in some level of drought, 23% severe or worse. Huge deterioration right at planting time.
Cascade flow A compact transmission chain at the top of the explainer showing Conflict → Energy → Fertilizer → Planting → Food Prices with live metrics. Makes the whole chain visible at a glance.
Refinery utilization Leading indicator for when supply actually gets scarce vs. just expensive. When that number drops, shortages follow price increases.
Timeline FAO March index confirmed (+2.4%), anhydrous ammonia topped $1,000/ton, F-15E shot down over Iran, Iran hit Gulf refineries, UN Hormuz vote watered down, Iran expanded passage to Iraqi ships, India resumed Iranian oil imports.
lynk1@reddit (OP)
April 2 Update
Wow, really big, genuine thanks for the response on this everyone. A few of you had great suggestions so I spent the day building on it. Here's what's new.
Consumer price tracking Someone asked about grocery prices specifically, and that was a great call. Added a new section called "At the Register" that pulls CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for groceries, consumer gas, and home energy. These update monthly with about a two week lag so they're not real-time like the commodity charts, but they show what people are actually paying. That felt important to include alongside the futures data.
Market map Built a treemap view inspired by those stock heatmap layouts. All 20 instruments at a glance, sized by supply chain impact and colored by daily change. Click any tile to open the full chart. Added shipping, gold, defense, and livestock tracking alongside the original energy, fertilizer, and food tickers.
Source grouping Took the suggestion about how Ground News handles multiple sources. Timeline events and map markers now show linked source pills so you can cross-reference instead of relying on a single link.
Timeline updates from today Things are moving fast so I added several new events. China quietly restricted fertilizer exports on March 20 which removes up to 40 million metric tons from global supply through August. Russia's export ban expanded to producers today and Ukraine has hit 10 Russian refineries in the past week. Trump addressed the nation and said the war will end "shortly" but had no plan for Hormuz. Iran and Oman started drafting a monitored transit protocol today which is the first real diplomatic signal we've seen. Oil hit $112 WTI.
Share button and nav Added a share button and a proper nav bar with section links. If this is useful to someone you know, the link is easy to pass along now.
Still building. If you have more ideas let me know.
LeadingTheme4931@reddit
Thank you!!
Accomplished-Bad-711@reddit
wonderful, thank you. but I feel the most serious concern for multiple reasons as of right now, is jet fuel availability and diesel oand gasoline for cars etc. anyone know how much longer I have to stock up on life saving supplements without the risk of an emergency lock down locking them away for good?
lynk1@reddit (OP)
On jet fuel and diesel, those are things we're actively tracking. Diesel retail is on the dashboard at $5.40/gallon and climbing. We track WTI, Brent, and gasoline ETFs in real time. Jet fuel (kerosene-type) is closely tied to the same disruptions and I'm looking at adding it as a separate indicator.
On supplements specifically, I don't have a data source for that kind of retail inventory, but the underlying risk is the same thing driving everything else on the dashboard. If Hormuz stays restricted and diesel keeps climbing, anything that moves by truck or cargo ship gets harder to get and more expensive. The Iran-Oman transit protocol from yesterday is the first real sign of potential partial reopening, but Trump said the military campaign will continue "extremely hard" for another 2-3 weeks so it's unclear when shipping normalizes.
Practically speaking, if there are things you rely on that come from overseas or require refrigerated transport, the window to stock up is now while logistics are still functioning. The action checklist on the site has some of this broken down by urgency.
Accomplished-Bad-711@reddit
thank you so much for the answer, but seeing as money is not nearly enough, do you think w all the infrastructure destruction on top of all else, the economy can last a few months longer before crashing even as recession is rampant and decimating poor households? ( talking about Europe, china and north america, seems like w some exceptions just about everyone else is cooked to a nice crisp because they will outbidded ) as for your last sentence ,is there somewhere on the site that says "based on the latest, jet fuel will run out by this date?" as opposed to merely increasing massively in price ?
lynk1@reddit (OP)
on the economy lasting, honestly it depends on what you mean by crashing. what we're watching is more of a slow squeeze than a sudden collapse. energy costs flow through to everything over weeks and months, not overnight. europe is more exposed than north america because they import a higher share of their energy, and their fertilizer production was already running at 75% from the russia-ukraine gas situation. china is actually in a better spot short term because iran is letting their ships through hormuz, so they're getting energy at a discount while everyone else pays more.
for poorer nations you're absolutely right and it's the part of this that keeps me up at night. when urea goes from $400 to $800 a ton, countries like bangladesh or pakistan just can't compete with american or european buyers. that's where the real food security risk lives and it shows up months later when their harvests come in short.
on jet fuel, the dashboard doesn't project a "run out by" date because in developed countries it doesn't really go to zero, it just gets so expensive that airlines cut routes and trucking companies pass costs along. So what we track is the upstream pressure that drives those costs. jet fuel is basically refined crude, so when you see WTI at $111 and refineries getting hit by both iranian strikes on gulf facilities and ukrainian strikes on russian terminals, that's your leading indicator.
what i could add is refinery utilization rates, which the EIA publishes weekly. when utilization drops, that's when actual supply shortages start showing up, not just price increases but real availability problems at regional airports and truck stops. going to look into that. super appreciate the ideas!!
Kazaryn@reddit
This one will be a success. I hope the other programmers in the chat take note of the account-less experience and sources attached features. There's been a plethora of new experimental programs here lately and this one is very well done. My recommendation to you as developer is look at the way ground news does a sort of 'grouped source' and lists all the websites reporting that thing since it could be a cool feature, but this thing is ready to ship imo
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Super kind words thank you for that. I’ll check that out. Have not heard of that before.
RicardoHonesto@reddit
Awesome! Really valuable. Bookmarked.
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Thanks so much! Would love to answer any questions or add more content if you had ideas.
RicardoHonesto@reddit
Any way of adding data from other countries? So we can see how it's spreading around the globe in some way?
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Brilliant idea. Will look into this tonight!
RicardoHonesto@reddit
The fertiliser is interesting to me as it's going to take longer to show up, but could have a massive impact globally.
Monitoring global food stocks, isolated shortages and how they all link up would be very useful.
Water too would be interesting not just related to the war.
Going further, migration trends would be cool, to show how these things interlink.
Sorry if this isn't possible just throwing ideas out.
lynk1@reddit (OP)
No need to apologize at all! These are great ideas and exactly the kind of thinking I'm hoping for.
Fertilizer is the one I'm most focused on because you're right, it's a slow burn. The price spike already happened (urea +129%) but the downstream impact on crop yields won't be visible until harvest (Aug-Sep). We just added a cascade flow visualization that shows exactly this chain and when each stage hits.
Global food stocks is on the roadmap. The USDA publishes WASDE reports monthly with stock-to-use ratios by commodity and country. Apparently, that's the real danger signal, when reserves drop below the 14% threshold things get serious fast, so i'm working on getting that data in.
Water/drought we actually just shipped today. There's now a U.S. Drought Monitor section pulling live USDA data showing what percentage of the country is in each drought category. Right now about 73% of the U.S. is in some level of drought which compounds the fertilizer problem since stressed crops need more inputs not less.
Migration data however, is harder to get in real time. UNHCR publishes displacement numbers but they lag by months. It's an important downstream indicator though and something I want to figure out. If anyone knows of a good near-real-time source for that I'm all ears.
RicardoHonesto@reddit
Awesome. This is going to be a really great resource. Looking at your website too, you are doing good. Thank you.
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Very much appreciated! Your pfp is so funny to me too haha. Would totally be opento more feedback if you ever have anything else.
RicardoHonesto@reddit
Sure. I've been browsing it on and off today and I'll get in touch with anything else for sure.
gun_is_neat@reddit
Agreed, extremely well done page. Just spent like 15 minutes going through it
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Wow thanks so much! So glad you found it interesting. I initially started to put it together just to understand what the heck we could do and what timelines of things might realistically look like.
gun_is_neat@reddit
Only thing that confused me for a moment was down on the US strategic reserve percentage.
-52% was colored in green, whereas it would make more sense to be labeled in red as it is a depletion of a stockpile. At least that makes more sense in my head.
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Great catch, you're totally right. A drop in crude reserves is def bad news and should be red, not green. The card was treating all negative numbers the same way regardless of context. Just pushed a fix for that, it should show correctly now.
The color logic now understands that for prices (diesel, gasoline, urea) up = bad and down = good, but for reserves and inventory it's the opposite. A 52% decline in crude stockpiles is definitely not a green situation lol
Thanks for flagging it.
Art3misGr1mm@reddit
That is so cool! Thank you so much! I'm Adhd and this Broke it down amazingly for me! I appreciate you!
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Thank you for the kind words, I'm genuinely just delighted that you got something out of it! I love building things like this and this particular page has been quite interesting. I'll keep it updated over the coming weeks/months as these events come to bear their fruit so consider giving it a bookmark if you like. you can also check out the blog at hrdcopy.com for more resources or content breakdowns you might enjoy.
Art3misGr1mm@reddit
I downloaded it and have shown multiple people in my life and they all found it amazing too! I wish I had the brain power to understand how to do these types of things. Lol
lynk1@reddit (OP)
That's so great! I would love to keep helping all of you if you have other ideas or questions. How to build these things or what you might like to see on here. We are a little ways outside of a small-ish city in the PNW and our perspective can seem pretty limited to ranchers and farmers, so would love to hear how this feels relevant for others and how we can improve it.
Art3misGr1mm@reddit
I live in a very small rural town in western NY, it's a very red area. I think some people are in denial of what's going on over there and I don't talk to many people in my area for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure of how to be helpful. Also I've had Reddit for years but don't really comment or engage hardly, I'm more of a lurker but I'm trying to connect with people more given the current state of the world. Lol
shananigans1978@reddit
Super cool - great job and bookmarked for frequent use!
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Thanks so much! We're working to make things more digestible right now and adding some more charts/tickers that are relevant like meat prices (which tracks feed cost), and global shipping. Stay tuned!
Gallowizard@reddit
This is a great resource, thanks for taking the time to put it together
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Awesome I’m so glad you found it useful. We will keep trying to make it relevant and better as we watch these things unfold and try to provide more value as ideas come.
FlapDoodle-Badger@reddit
Very good layout on mobile. Def worth a bookmark.
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Woohoo, thank you! Appreciate the feedback, genuinely.
jezuscringe@reddit
Amazing work! No fuss, super useful, no account needed
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Wow, I love that so much. I never considered how much people would love that no account needed part. It really came out of the fact that I built it for my ranch family and our farm/rancher friends. Stay tuned and throw a bookmark on it if you want to stay updated on these things. We will be keeping it account free and awesome as we move through these next 8 months toward what we expect to be peak food prices.
WadeBronson@reddit
How can we support you?
lynk1@reddit (OP)
What a cool thing to ask and thank you. I added a share button under the top two buttons. You can also check out hrdcopy.com if you wanted to check out some other helpful free resources. There's more than a half a dozen free guides of printables, and there is a free version of the resilience dossier you can download too. Thanks for the consideration!
8takotaco@reddit
Whoa, this is cool! Thank you! I'd love to see how grocery prices are impacted... due to fuel, trucking, and supply challenges, any thoughts on how that info would be reliably captured? A bit more micro than the futures markets you track now, not sure how feasible it is?
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Ok this is a really cool idea. I looked into it and there really isn't a good way to get that data in REAL TIME as far as I can tell, because the real-time grocery data layer sits between the futures markets andconsumers, and nobody really publishes that in a clean feed the way commodity exchanges do. The closest reliable sources are the USDA ERS food price outlook which forecasts grocery category inflation monthly and the BLS CPI for food at home which tracks actual price changes but lags by about a month. There's also the FAO Food Price Index.
I just went through and added a Consumer Impact section (called "At the Register") right after the Food Commodities component. It shows 3 BLS CPI stat cards: Groceries, Consumer Gas, and Home Energy. There's a little note about the lag in what the numbers represent vs the real-time futures data above it (seems to be about a month unfortunately).
I'm very interested in this feature and will keep trying to find ways to improve this.
throwawaybsme@reddit
How'd you make it?
lynk1@reddit (OP)
I've been developing things with AI for a few years (not a developer by trade) and broke way more things than i've shipped, but i'm finally starting to build flywheels from project to project and have had the best success when building things that I actually needed and would actually use. This page is a great example of that, and the main domain hrdcopy.com is by far the most successful project of the last few years. We're just a family on a small ranch in the PNW trying to see what we can do to survive these next few years, as leaving is not really in the cards for us. I'd be glad to share anything else about the process you might be interested in.
typeomanic@reddit
The UI has claude code smell haha
lynk1@reddit (OP)
Ya Claude code for sure 👍🏽
throwawaybsme@reddit
Let's just exacerbate the energy crisis by using a power hungry AI, unnecessarily.