A2Z Challenge 2024 - How would you know...

Pepper and Quatorzain Poem

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024humanist55

The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…

By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

I could find no Commodity beginning with “Q” so I am looking at another important “P” – Pepper as a commodity however the poetry form is a “Q” – the Quatorzain Poem…

Woldwide Trade in Pepper in 2022 $5.13B –
548th most traded product – 0.022% of total world trade

It is axiomatic that the Spice Trade from the Far East to Europe was important because without refrigeration, foodstuffs, especially meat, sometimes needed a little disguising and spices not only hid any dubious smells but in some cases, had antimicrobial properties that made meals safer. Of course, if curry spices were all that effective then there would be no such thing as Delhi Belly, but there is sufficient antimicrobial action that scientists are now looking seriously at spices from a medical standpoint. Of all the spices, Black Pepper is the oldest and most widely used – what restaurant table does not have a pepper pot? Turmeric, clove, nutmeg, cumin, and cinnamon are also contenders for medical research but Black Pepper has been such an important spice, traded for so long that it was used as currency in its own right – sometimes referred to as “black gold”. The legacy of this trade remains in some Western legal systems that recognize the term “peppercorn rent” as a token payment for something that is, essentially, a gift.

Black, White and Green Pepper are all true peppers from the plant Piper Nigrum (part of the Piperaceae family). This vine is native to India but grows in most tropical areas. Pink Peppercorns are from the Peruvian Pepper Tree, members of the cashew family Sichuan Peppercorns: also not peppercorns but rather “Chinese coriander”.

Black pepper is produced from the still-green, unripe drupe of the pepper plant. The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying.^[9] The heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying.^[9] The drupes dry in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper skin around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer. Once dry, the spice is called black peppercorn.

White pepper consists solely of the seed of the ripe fruit of the pepper plant, with the thin darker-coloured skin (flesh) of the fruit removed. This is usually accomplished by a process known as retting, where fully ripe red pepper berries are soaked in water for about a week so the flesh of the peppercorn softens and decomposes; rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried.

Green pepper, like black pepper, is made from unripe drupes. Dried green peppercorns are treated in a way that retains the green colour, such as with sulfur dioxide, canning, or freeze-drying. Pickled peppercorns, also green, are unripe drupes preserved in brine or vinegar.

All these treatments of the pepper drupes result in slightly different flavours as well as colours so for example, you might use white pepper in mashed potato in order that it doesn’t show as black pieces. For many years, I had by my bedside as nighttime reading, a book which I would still recommend as the definitive encyclopedia “Herbs, spices and Flavourings” by Tom Stobart and from the large section on pepper I learnt this – the single most important thing to know about pepper in relation to cooking – piperine is the flavour element of pepper and is easily evaporated during cooking whereas the resin that gives the heat remains – and so rather than adding pepper to say, a casserole before cooking, pepper should always be freshly ground at the table – even ground pepper loses its piperine by evaporation over time.

Perhaps because of its historical role as the source of pepper, and although the majority of pepper today comes from Vietnam, India is a hub for both importing pepper from around the world and then processing and re-exporting it. India imports large quantities of pepper from Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. Usually, the majority of the pepper is just sent once again as whole black pepper to different areas. A lesser amount of the imported pepper is utilised in the production of different goods. Pepper trade makes up one-third of the net volume of spices traded globally.

World Pepper Production and Trade

Source Wikipedia

Country	Production (tonnes)
Vietnam	270,192
Brazil	114,749
Indonesia	89,041
India	66,000
Sri Lanka	43,557
China	33,348
Malaysia	30,804
World	747,644
Source: FAOSTAT of the United Nations^[1

The quote below shows how Pepper futures typify the role of all futures in the trading world…

Farmers use commodity exchanges as a buffer against price volatility, but a pepper trading platform and speculators complicate pepper trading even more. Commodity markets’ speculative character draws people and organisations looking to make money off of price changes.
To place well-informed wagers on the future course of pepper prices, speculators examine economic statistics, market patterns, and other variables. Their involvement gives the market more liquidity but also creates a degree of uncertainty.
On the other hand, traders and investors use pepper trading for a variety of purposes, including risk control and portfolio diversification. They may engage in the spice market without physically handling the product, thanks to the Indian stock market.
Pepper Trading

Whilst on the subject of a food-related future – Pork Bellies were once almost the icon of futures trading even being mentioned in the film “Trading Places” which we encountered under Orange Juice – but icons come and they can go too. Pork bellies have yielded in popularity at the table to bacon year by year until they have fallen below the threshold at which Futures Traders find it worth investing in and Pork Bellies have been dropped from Futures Trading…

And so to today’s poetry form which is a quatorzain (from French quatorze, fourteen) is a form of sonnet. It consists of 14 lines and is, like a sonnet, divided into two tercets and two quatrains. According to my favourite source for poetry forms, Language is a Virus:-

The term is used in English literature, as opposed to sonnet, for a poem in fourteen rhymed iambic lines closing (as a sonnet strictly never does) with a couplet. The distinction was long neglected because the English poets of the 16th century had failed to apprehend the true form of the sonnet, and called Petrarch’s and other Italian poets’ sonnets quatorzains, and their own incorrect quatorzains sonnets. Almost all the so-called sonnets of the Elizabethan cycles, including those of William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel, are really quatorzains. They consist of three quatrains of alternate rhyme, not repeated in the successive quatlains, and the whole closes with a couplet.

Was Shakespeare wrong – this sounds like an academic storm in a tea pot, but whatever, this will be a quatorzain or as Shakespeare thought of it, a sonnet…

Pepper

Pepper you were known as “black gold”
precious drupes of Piper Nigrum
grown and processed in far India
sought for heat and taste, your role
was to fuel world exploration
you drove many a man’s career
searching for the better shortcut
they found instead America
then sought to go North-West but
cruel ice and snow crushed dreams there
dreams of spice isles and quick richness
so gaps filled in the atlas
bought only fame and stories told
of their futile quests for “black gold”…

Palladium and a Pylon Poem

April 18, 2024May 3, 2024humanist55

By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide Trade in Palladium in 2022 – $29.4 Billion

To be a Commodity, a substance has to be both important and tradeable on a sufficiently large scale and so most of the commodities are easily recognisable items such as iron, cocoa and orange juice – but in Palladium, we come to an element, for such it is, that most people will, if they even know the name, have no idea as to what it is or why it is sufficiently important as to be a tradeable commodity. Yet if you drive a car with a catalytic converter, are fond of white gold or are diabetic and use testing strips, you are (like rats) closer than you know to a small amount of Palladium.

You may not have heard of Palladium, but its sibling is Platinum and grouped together in the Periodic Table, the members of the Platinum Family (platinoids, platinides, platidises, platinum group, platinum metals, platinum family or platinum-group elements) consist of ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum. As is often the case with elements found close together in the Periodic Table, they have similar properties – their main characteristic has determined their greatest utility – they have many catalytic properties and so the major driver of Palladium as a commodity is the demand for Catalytic Converters in car exhaust systems. Incidentally, palladium recycles well and so there is a trade in used catalytic converters which sadly also drives the theft of them too…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum_group

As early as 1700, miners in Brazil were aware of a metal they called ouro podre, ‘worthless gold,’ this demonstrates that alloys can occur in nature – and ouro podre is a native alloy of palladium and gold and today, Palladium is one of the metals alloyed with gold to make “white” gold for those who don’t want the gold colour but want jewellery that is stronger and less tarnishing than silver. However, these native metal sources are not where Palladium is commercially extracted from – the ores are limited to four main sites in the world and 37% of the Palladium sold comes from Russia. So once again, Putin’s unwarranted war on Ukraine and the sanctions that followed it, have been a major lever in the trading prices of Palladium just as we have noted they were in oil and gas prices. Incidentally, every commodity has a Trading Identity Number and for Palladium it is HS Code 71102900.

A comparison of “gold” colours including Palladium/Gold alloy

Lastly, Palladium was named by its discoverer (as an element) William Hyde Wollaston in 1802 after the asteroid 2 Pallas, which had been discovered two months earlier. The nymph Pallas was killed by her childhood friend – Athena – daughter of Zeus who – seeing Athena and Pallas sparring, wanted Athena to win and distracted Pallas who was then accidentally impaled by Athena’s spear and Athena was thenceforth known as Athena Pallas. As recompense for killing her friend, she created a STATUE that looked like Pallas and she named it the Palladium which was later housed in the city of Troy. Pallas Athena had many responsibilities as Goddess of War, Wisdom and Health which is a rather mixed job description…

Athena and Pallas sparring whilst Zeus watches from the sidelines – in the style of Titian generated by Midjourney

And so to the “P” poem for today. I had a choice of a Pantoum – a form with a lot of repeating lines giving an incantatory feel which didn’t feel right and so I am going to go with another poetry movement, this one before the Second World War. The Pylon Poets made reference to, if not celebrating, modern technology – taking their name from a poem by Stephen Spender called The Pylons. Other Pylon Poets included W. H. Auden, Cecil Day-Lewis and Louis MacNeice. Most famously was perhaps W.H. Auden’s Night Mail which was also made into the soundtrack to a short film. I have chosen the Duplex form which is one of my favourites for the way each couplet passes a theme on to the next one creating a great sense of progress.

Palladium

Palladium which celebrates poor Pallas
Was first a statue made by her killer

The wooden statue was protector of Troy
A job not done so well so history tells

Her story languished for many decades
Later her name graced a minor planet

When telescopes revealed the heavens
Then science paid yet another tribute

When Wollaston found another element
With minor use named for a minor body

But now we crave the miner’s hard-won produce
for catalysis, jewellery and more

At last we found purposes for “useless gold”
Palladium which celebrates poor Pallas

Orange Juice and an Ottava Rima

April 17, 2024April 16, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

For those of you who read my a-z Challenge Theme Reveal, you will know that the choice of Commodities as this year’s theme (plus poems), began with a wondering about whether there could really be enough oranges in the world to supply our desire to have orange juice on hand wherever we go – in case you missed it I reproduce the wondering below.

The Wondering…

Consider this – you go to your local supermarket to buy, among other things, some orange juice. You find the right section where there are several brands to choose from, fresh in the chiller and long-life too – perhaps a hundred-litre packets all told. That’s just your local shop, imagine how many shops there are in your town or city each with a hundred litres of orange juice on sale at any particular time – and remember, this stock is turning over all the time – being bought and then replaced with stock from the store room. Multiply by the number of cities in your country and then by the number of orange juice-drinking countries in the world and you have imagined an ocean of orange juice! Where does it all come from – especially considering it takes eight oranges to make a litre of juice? Are there enough orange trees in the world to account for all this juice?

Of course, if you believe in Solipsism – then you will think that the world only exists because you imagine it into being and of course, you want to have plenty of orange juice wherever you go, so you imagine it into being present in all those thousands of shops worldwide. I am more of a realist and so I know that there must be enough orange trees to provide the juice – I just have no idea where!

Most people have no idea where all that orange juice comes from either and what about dried mint in all those expensive little jars – you may have holidayed in some sunny spot and seen oranges growing, but when did you ever see a mint farm?

The Answers!

Before giving those answers, you will know by now that I like to tease out some unusual facts about each Commodity and for today it is legislation nicknamed the “Eddie Murphy rule”. At the end of the 1983 movie Trading Places, Eddie Murphy jumps into Dan Aykroyd’s arms, the pair shouting in delight because they have just gamed the orange juice futures market bandstand to make a fortune. In the film, Murphy and Aykroyd created a fake crop report to scam the market as a result of which Wall Street eventually made it illegal to trade on inside information obtained from the government and immortalised Eddie Murphy (as if he needed it) in the hallowed halls of financial investment.

For years, the trade in Orange Juice Futures was something of a backwater in the Commodity Trading world, but in 2023, all that changed – the price of OJ futures surged by 92% and it is what that tells us about both the perils and profits to be made from soft commodity futures which is interesting.

The great orange juice trading rally – and why a big squeeze could lie ahead

Although the US is only number 3 among the world’s orange producers behind Brazil and China by a country mile, a disastrous crop of oranges in Florida, which grows 90% of US orange crops annually, led to the dramatic rise in prices. Once the prices started to spiral in the US, then investors started buying futures from outside the US and so the spiral, like a tropical storm passing over warm seas, was fuelled. In fact actual tropical storms were part of the problem – hurricanes Ian and Nicole, in the Autumn of 2022 autumn, which destroyed 10% of the orange trees, followed by freezing conditions were compounded by the third factor in a triple whammy – an incurable citrus greening disease that has been ravaging trees for years. The disease, also known as Huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, typically kills off crops within five years. So the harvest in Florida was the lowest in 2023 for a century. But all this turmoil is what thrust OJ futures into the trading limelight – as long as a commodity “future” remains stable, there is nothing to gamble on – and that is what all trading in stocks, shares and commodities is – gambling. As soon as the prices of OJ futures started to climb, then the possibility of making a killing by getting in whilst the prices were lower and cashing in when they were highest became irresistible to traders.

So now for the answers to where the oranges come from to gratify our needs worldwide…

And here are the countries that consume the orange juice…

**Source:** United States Department of Agriculture

Why orange juice? Well because the demand is for juice more than for whole fruit and its cheaper to transport the frozen, concentrated juice without all that skin and pith. Hence Orange juice futures. And what about those little jars of dried mint – are they a commodity? They are not – the sector is too small and diversified around the world – to be a commodity, you have to be big – in the case of orange juice – $6 Billion big!

And so to the poem whose “O” form today is Ottavo Rima (I imagine meaning eight/rhymes) and consists of eight iambic lines, usually iambic pentameters. Each stanza consists of three rhymes following the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c.

Orange Juice – an Ottavo Rima

When I grew up, the orange was a treat
Compared to the apple, fruit of England
The orange came from far away to meet
Our post-war need for vitamin C and
Exotic fruit from far-off lands of heat
In a world our parents had fought for, and
Too, beside the fresh and juicy fruit we
Also had a glass of orange juice for tea.

Orange drink made from concentrated juice
Which tasted all the better when we were
Allowed to make it stronger, rules loose
Or a blind eye turned by him or her
For indeed they loved it just like us
Post rationing is it any wonder
That orange juice was the prize of their life
For family and for husband and wife.

Nickel and a Nonet Poem

April 15, 2024April 15, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

World Trade in Nickel (2022) $4.7 Billion

Nickel is a silvery metal which is the fifth most abundant element on Earth. It can occur as a native metal but this is quite rare and often is from the interior of meteorites. More commonly it is found in combination with sulfur and iron in pentlandite, with sulphur in millerite, with arsenic in the mineral nickeline, and with arsenic and sulphur in nickel galena and of course, in many meteorites. The core of the Earth is a Nickel-Iron mix. The chemical and physical properties of Nickel make it extremely useful for many purposes both on its own and in combination with other metals.

“Because nickel ores are easily mistaken for ores of silver and copper, understanding of this metal and of its use is relatively recent. But unintentional use of nickel is ancient, and can be traced back as far as 3500 BCE. Because nickel ores are easily mistaken for ores of silver and copper, understanding of this metal and of its use is relatively recent. But unintentional use of nickel is ancient, and can be traced back as far as 3500 BCE. In medieval Germany, a metallic yellow mineral was found in the Ore Mountains that resembled copper ore. But when miners were unable to get any copper from it, they blamed a mischievous sprite of German mythology, Nickel (similar to Old Nick), for besetting the copper.” (Source Wikipedia)

There are some uses for pure Nickel, but the majority of Nickel is used as alloys (Nickel readily alloys with other metals) because it lends some of its great properties to these metallic combinations. Principal amongst these alloys must be Stainless Steel where Iron, Nickel and Chromium are combined – the nickel adds strength and the chrome gives the self-healing property of stainless steel (Stainless steel can rust but the chromium heals the rust!). Below is an illustration of the many uses of Nickel.

In America, the Nickel is an iconic small denomination coin but even that is nowadays made largely of copper and electro-plated with nickel – another thing that Nickel does very well. So although we do not hear as much about nickel as say, Iron and Steel or Copper, nevertheless Nickel is all around us in many forms and combinations with other metals.

This is a good place to consider the difference between investing in Hard commodities like Nickel, and investing directly in the mines that extract the commodity. This is a complicated question so I decided to ask ChatGPT for advice – you will see from the tabs at the top of this web-page that I have done quite a lot of research into AI this last year and particularly on the word generating side, I have sometimes found it a good starting point for ideas although you need to fact-check its offerings carefully to make sure there are no “hallucinations” present. The answer to this query seems to be very clear and comprehensive and this is what it said:

Direct Exposure vs. Indirect Exposure: Investing in hard commodities like metals involves directly purchasing physical assets such as gold, silver, copper, etc. When you buy shares in a mining company, you’re investing in the company’s business operations, not directly in the underlying commodity. The value of your investment in the mining company is influenced by various factors beyond just the price of the commodity, such as company management, operational efficiency, exploration success, geopolitical risks, etc.
Risk Profile: Investing in commodities themselves tends to be more straightforward in terms of risk. The value of commodities is primarily driven by supply and demand dynamics, inflation expectations, and currency fluctuations. On the other hand, investing in mining companies introduces additional risks associated with the specific company, such as operational risks, regulatory risks, environmental risks, labor disputes, etc. The performance of a mining company’s stock may not always perfectly mirror the price movements of the underlying commodity.
Leverage and Volatility: Mining stocks can exhibit higher volatility compared to the underlying commodity due to the operating leverage inherent in the business model. In times of rising commodity prices, mining companies can benefit disproportionately as their profit margins increase. Conversely, during downturns, mining stocks can experience amplified losses. Directly holding commodities typically involves less volatility, although it depends on the specific commodity and market conditions.
Dividends and Growth Potential: Mining companies may pay dividends to shareholders, providing income potential in addition to capital appreciation. Furthermore, investing in mining companies offers exposure to potential exploration successes and resource discoveries, which can lead to significant growth opportunities not available when investing directly in commodities.
Diversification: Investing in mining companies provides exposure not only to the price of the underlying commodity but also to the broader equity market. This can offer diversification benefits within a portfolio compared to a concentrated exposure solely to commodities.
ChatGPT

And so to today’s poem and the poem form I have chosen for N is the Nonet. In poetry, a nonet is a nine-line poem, with the first line containing nine syllables, the next eight, so on until the last line has one syllable. Nonets can be written about any subject, and rhyming is optional.
So much “modern” poetry is written in free verse and the strictures of form are much relaxed, but in order to write free verse with a poetic voice, it is necessary to exercise the mind with tight forms – just like playing scales on a musical instrument and writing a Nonet is just that kind of exercise…

Nickel – A Nonet

Shiny metal Nickel whose ore was
often confused with Copper
you make Stainless Steel all the
stronger, our world safer
cleaner and brighter
in so many
places we
must give
thanks…

Milk and a Martian Poem

April 15, 2024April 15, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide Trade – 893 billion U.S. dollars in 2021

Life begins with ‘mother’s milk’ – if you are lucky – if you lost your mother in childbirth or your mother is unable breast feed or is driven by outdated mores not to breastfeed – then you will likely depend on ‘formula’ milk which has been sourced from other animals – most frequently cows. If your country does not produce sufficient milk for the production of dried milk, then your formula will contain milk-powder that has been imported from some other part of the world. Powdered because it is easier and cheaper to transport than the fresh liquid. Some parts of the world are unfamiliar with fresh milk and all their milk has been processed into UHT (Utra High Temperature treatment), or else they re-constitute milk from dried powder but both this and UHT milk are not the same in terms of quality – powdered milk often lacking the fat element of fresh and UHT having an aftertaste…

https://www.babymilkaction.org/archives/32584

If you think of milk only of a dewy glass of fresh milk straight from the fridge (and already you have made a choice between Full-fat, Semi-skimmed and Skimmed), then you are forgetting all the ‘Preserved Milk’ products – for that is what all the various yoghurts, butters and cheeses in the world are – forms of preserved milk. Preservation means treating something so that it will last longer without spoiling. For example, in rural Ireland in the 18^th-19^th centuries, a reasonably prosperous family might keep a milk-cow as well as grow potatoes, and in the Summer, they would churn the higher yield of milk into butter. The byproduct – buttermilk, was dunk fresh or allowed to ferment slightly and consumed with last seasons potatoes. The butter was wrapped in the leaves of the Butterbur plant which are suitably large, and then buried in the peat bog where the anaerobic and acid conditions perfectly preserved the butter. Come Winter and the family consumed new season potatoes with butter dug up from the bog. This was a surprisingly heathy diet since potatoes are very rich in vitamin C whilst milk products have a good balance of protein , fat and carbohydrate and are a very important source of essential nutrients, including calcium, riboflavin, phosphorous, vitamins A and B12, potassium, magnesium, zinc, and iodine. So the preservation of milk, by freeze drying it to a powder or turning it into a secondary product like yoghurt or cheese is a huge part of the journey of milk on the international market.

I work in a Gelato (Ice Cream) factory and as we soon upscale to much bigger capacity equipment – we face the choice of whether to stick with fresh whole-milk (meaning a tanker sized refrigerated tank on the outside of the factory) or go with powdered milk (a vast reserve of palleted powder, reconstituted with water and probably coconut oil added). Our Italian gelato consultant tells us that in taste tests, most no-one can tell the difference but that people (the ones who read the ingredients) like to see Whole Milk (in bold because it is a notifiable allergen!) Previously I had a small frozen yoghurt shop and I made my own mix of plain yoghurt, milk and sugar and I also sold Boba Tea. Boba Tea was not big in Britain back then and so it survived the 2008 Chinese dried milk scandal and is now slowly gaining traction. The real scandal was that some 54,000 babies got sick and four died due to formula made with Chinese dried milk powder contaminated with Melamine (read the full story here) but the damage to the reputation of Chinese agricultural products was enormous and the Boba Tea mixes which were largely powdered milk in particular, causing the collapse of Boba Tea shops across much of Europe though not in the UK where Boba Tea was in its infancy. This is not the sort of thing tat is supposed to happen in the world of soft commodities – as I write, it has just been announced that following the latest safety scandal regarding Boeing aircraft, in which a door plug came off one whilst in flight, the senior management have been axed because they suppressed any whistleblowing over safety concerns by workers and middle management. When the episode occurred, Boeing shares took a nosedive and the change of management will not immediately restore the value of those shares. These things happen in the world of stocks and shares and the nearest equivalent in soft commodities is a bad harvest which as we saw with Frost Futures, can even be hedged against – but a crisis of confidence due to criminality at worst, negligence at best as happened with Chinese milk – is not supposed to happen – commodities are supposed to be what those in the heady world of high finance buy to ameliorate the vicissitudes of their portfolios…

Who are the exporters of Milk and who are the great importers?

And here are the places that produce milk…

And lastly – here are the top milk processing companies in the world – see if you can spot one you know…

And so to today’s poetry form and the poetry form I have chosen is Martian Poetry. The Martian Poets were a small group of poets who were reacting against the somewhat dour and sometimes pessimistic poetry of the post-war group known as The Movement which included Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, D. J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn and Robert Conquest. The Martian Poets were named for a poem by Craig Raine (whom I met once) called A Martian Writes a Postcard Home. Other Martian Poets included Christopher Reid, Oliver Reynolds and John Hall Wheelock and the nature of the poetry “drew inspiration from surrealism, metaphysical poetry of John Donne, Andrew Marvell, etc., nonsense poetry of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, and Anglo-Saxon riddles.” My poem below is a homage to Craig Raine’s original Martian poem…

Martian Report 11011/101 Milk

Where does milk come from?
I asked my host’s sprout No.2
Zoe identifying as she/her
100¹ solar rotations
Tesco! She replied
No silly! Cows!
Mark – sprout No.1
identifying as he/him
110² solar rotations
supplementary identity brother
Dad! What’s a cow?
Asked Zoe
We will take our Martian friend
to a farm this weekend
and you shall see cows!
Host and pod senior
11100³ solar rotations
identifying as he/him
supplemental identity – Father

Cows – it turns out
are breast-feeders
on four legs
unlike the host identifying
as she/her
supplementary identity – Mother
who walks on two legs
– cows are enslaved
and farms are prisons
enclosures of grass
which is a brush
for brushing up sunlight
and converting the energy
so cows can make milk
and – as it turns out – meat

Zoe imbibes a lot of milk
she made that weird expression
I cannot fathom the meaning of
when the cow breast
was pointed out
It’s dirty! She said
she ran off to look at
some cow progeny
that were being loaded
into a transporter
– diesel class/lorry
Why haven’t they got breasts
Zoe asked the prison superintendent
They identify as he/him
she was told
and we don’t need them
so we are selling them…
Why make the cows
have them then?
asked Mark
If the cows don’t have babies
they won’t make milk
for you to drink!
What happens to
those boys? Asked Mark
They will be fattened up
and go to market
said the superintendent
Go to market for what?
asked Mark
Why to be eaten!
Zoe made a high-pitched noise
and ran away shouting
I’m never going to drink milk again
or eat meat!
Now look what you’ve done!
Said Mother…

¹ 4 Years old
² 6 Years old
³ 28 Years old

Lacquer (Shellac) and a Limerick Poem

April 12, 2024April 12, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide trade in Shellac – 2022 – $167.84 million

Of all the commodities that I have or will be dealing with this month, Lacquer or Shellac, is the one that I expect most people to know little about despite it being a material of great ubiquity and one that most people will have come into contact with in one of its uses or other…

Imagine you are the guest in a posh house and that the lady of the house has just handed you a glass of whisky and you turn to place it on a magnificent antique dining table standing next to you – before you can say “knock me sideways with a feather” – the good lady darts forward and pausing your placement of the glass with a tight grip on your arm, she deftly slides a coaster beneath your glass before allowing its descent to complete. “It’s the French Polish, you know!” she says to you. She was afraid that an odd dribble of alcohol might run down the glass and cause a ring to be “melted” into the French Polish necessitating an expensive visit from the French Polisher to repair the damage. On a personal note, I have attempted a little French Polishing in the course of my chequered career and it is hard work (and no, I am not talking about the kind of French Polishing advertised in London phone boxes – that is another story altogether!)

You see French Polish, or Shellac, is a wondrous material – one of whose both benefits and deficits, is that it can only be dissolved in alcohol, ethanol or methanol will do it and alcohol is pretty rare in nature, especially distilled to the concentration required to dissolve shellac! This wondrous material may certainly be associated with furniture, both as a polish but also as a stain, yet that is only one of the many jobs we have found for it! “It is currently used in a wide range of applications, such as coating pharmaceutical pills, food, musical instruments, material conservation, painting, and electronics insulation, as well as in the military industry. Lac has insulation properties, adhesiveness, tastelessness, moisture resistance, and a smooth film texture and is non-toxic. Due to these properties, lac is anticipated to be widely used in the future for finishing many industrial products.” You can read more here. So you may have encountered shellac as the shine on an M&M, the coating of a pill, it may be inside a transformer you possess or a motor winding in your hair dryer, you may have drawn with it as the binder in Indian Ink. In the past, it was used to seal letters and more recently, was a vital part in a stage of making phonographic records – a stage known as “the shellac”. And so I say again – this may be one of the greatest products you have not been aware of… This is not merely an ancient substance from which we get the word Lacquer itself, but a substance for which we are constantly finding new uses as shown in the graph of patent applications being filed (below).

Applications of natural lac products: (A) uses in industries, and (B) patents on the use of shellac in the last few years.

Where does this miraculous material come from you may well ask although given its many uses, you may understand why it is important enough to be traded as a commodity and on the futures market. Shellac is the boiled up bodies, eggs, droppings and secretions of the Lac Fly – a group of insects “of the family Kerriidae (Hemiptera), also known as scale insects, which produce a resinous material that forms a hard scale test over their bodies.” The females of the species cling to twigs of very particular trees and suck the sap at one end, whilst at their rear end they extrude a tunnel of chitinous resin that contains and protects their eggs. Whole twigs become entirely covered (stick shellac) and are harvested, scraped, heated and filtered to extract the pure resin which is Shellac. There are several grades and colours of shellac depending on an interaction between the particular species of Lac Fly and the particular tree they were on since there are a number of species of both insects and suitable trees – at least 400 trees species have been identified. Only the least coloured shellac can be further processed and more colour removed to make the food grade and pharmaceutical grades of shellac – nevertheless, if you are of a squeamish disposition, you may want to think about what you are consuming next time you pop certain shiny glazed sweets in your mouth…

Drawing of the insect *Kerria lacca* and its shellac tubes, by Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, 1909

Stick Shellac from an article on Insect Farming

“Lac production is limited to south, east, and southeast Asian countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar” With all the uses being found for shellac in the First World, you can see how important a crop the Lac Fly represents to these Developing countries. And indeed, it is the fact that shellac production depends on a natural, growing insect, that makes it a “Soft” Commodity which is very amenable to those who wish to gamble on Shellac Futures – there are food years and bad years and a shortage of product in one country may be offset by a glut in another…

And so to today’s poem which as L has to be a Limerick. And as much as I looked forward to and enjoyed writing about Lac Flies and their wondrous product, I found the Limerick the most difficult to get right and it took endless tinkering to get the rhythm, the humour, the rhymes and just the right hint of bawdiness – I hope you like it…

Shellac – a Limerick

Sue who thought French Polish “encroyable!”
Knew nothing of the substance fabled
Poo, eggs and secretions of Lac Flies
Speechless, poor Sue nearly died
When told of the shit on her table!

Kerosene and a Kyrielle Poem

April 12, 2024April 12, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day

Worldwide trade in Kerosene 1998 $9 Billion – rank 151 / 771

It’s some times hard to find the exact date figures for each commodity and for Kerosene I commend this site for its excellent infographic on producers and importers of kerosene (even if it is 1998 and not 2022 as I have tried to stick to…)

The Lady with the Lamp…

One of the iconic images of the early Nineteenth Century, is that of Florence Nightingale depicted as “The Lady with the Lamp” and I imagined that she might have used some sort of oil lamp and that might be a good place to start with talking about kerosene, but the truth of this image is rather more complicated.

I already mentioned Kerosene under the letter H for Heating Oil as a commodity and Kerosene is a specific form of Paraffin derived from Crude Oil distillation. Kerosene can be used contemporarily as heating oil but also as aviation fuel, rocket fuel and it was one used as a replacement for whale oil in lamps, much to the relief of whales who were being hunted to the brink of extinction by the 1860’s. The growing scarcity of whales raised the price of whale oil as a commodity and drove the search for alternatives such as petroleum-derived Kerosene. So today I want to examine the historical importance of Kerosene as a major commodity for lighting.

A “fanoos” lamp from the Florence Nightingale Museum

Going back to “The Lady with the Lamp” for a moment – The Florence Nightingale Museum exhibits a Turkish Fanoos lantern which it claims is the correct type of lamp that the eponymous inventor of The Nightingale Ward would have used. This is a concertina-style paper lantern – a collapsible travelling lantern which would have had a candle inside. Candles, incidentally, can be made from Paraffin Wax – another product closely related to Kerosene. But the more romantic image of Florence Nightingale carrying a Greek or “genie” lamp burning some form of oil, caught the public imagination more after several depictions of such – so much so, that “A further layer of meaning was added to the lamp with the foundation of the Nightingale Training School in 1860. The oil lamp was already a symbol of learning because it had enabled reading in the hours of darkness since classical times. Now the lamp came to represent nurse education.”

A so-called toy lamp (because of its small size) which burnt Whale Oil.

Oil lamps had been used for thousands of years often vegetable oils so in the Mediterranean countries this would have been Olive Oil. There were many seeps of crude oil around the world and one of the oldest attempts to extract oil for lighting oil, is the Persian scholar Rāzi, who created a form of kerosene by filtering petroleum through an alembic with materials like clay. It was not until 1854 that “a Polish pharmacist, Ignacy Łukasiewicz, invented the kerosene lamp – a device that quickly went on to light up Europe. He also went on to open the first oil mine and kerosene refinery in the world, becoming a pioneer of the oil business.” In America, “Until the late 19th century, an oil find often was met with disinterest or dismay. Pioneers who settled the American West dug wells to find water or brine, a source of salt; they were disappointed when they struck oil”. But with the perfection of the method of extracting kerosene from crude oil, the new commodity was set to take over from Whale oil and literally save their blubber.

A Sperm whale being hunted for the spermacetti oil in its head which made the best quality lamp oil…

Later, the major commodity to be extracted from Crude Oil, would become Gasoline which we encountered under “G” – which just goes to show how commodities can change over time. Whole industries such as whaling (1780-1860) can rise and fall in less than a hundred years. Likewise, the shift from crude oil’s importance as a source of kerosene lamp oil was eclipsed by the advent of electric light although it gained a new lease of with the advent of jet engines and as a heating oil and the gasoline fuelled the growth of the motor car and the asphalt created the roads for cars to run on until every fraction of crude oil was utilised for something – spanning many separate commodity markets.

Con trails – the water vapour resulting from burning Kerosene in aircraft jet engines also releasing CO2

The other narrative running through this evolution of commodities, is the way that we humans have exploited the natural world for whatever riches our burgeoning “civilisation” has required. Vegetable oil lamps were sustainable, whale oil lamps nearly extinguished whales and fossil fuels are largely responsible for the unfolding disaster of climate change! Hmmm…

And so to today’s poem which at “K”, brings us to a French poetry form called the Kyrielle. “written in quatrains (a stanza consisting of 4 lines), and each quatrain contains a repeating line or phrase as a refrain (usually appearing as the last line of each stanza). Each line within the poem consists of only eight syllables. There is no limit to the amount of stanzas a Kyrielle may have, but three is considered the accepted minimum.
Some popular rhyming schemes for a Kyrielle are: aabB, ccbB, ddbB, with B being the repeated line, or abaB, cbcB, dbdB. Mixing up the rhyme scheme it’s possible for an unusual pattern of: axaZ, bxbZ, cxcZ, dxdZ, etc. with Z being the repeated line.”

Kerosene – A Kyrielle

Homes once lit by Whale Oil lamps
were the reason why whales were hunted
– long before the “Save the Whales” camp
‘twas Kerosene saved the whales.

Kerosene a component of crude oil
scars our skies with jet vapour trails
but when whalers ceased their toil
then Kerosene saved the whales!

Electric lamps made safer homes
then aviation took up the slack
made tourists of us – ones who roam
but kerosene saved the whales!

Whale watching is the latest fad
no matter how much Kerosene burnt
do you not realise it’s mad
when Kerosene saved the whales

only to have them share our fate
and all die from global warming
we denying it till it’s too late
– did kerosene save the whales…?

Jute and a Jazz Poem

April 11, 2024April 10, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day

Worldwide Trade in Jute and other Textile Fibres, 2022 – $285M – the world’s 1115th most traded product representing 0.0012% of total world trade.

A Jute field, Jute stems, Jute fibres and rope made from Jute.

“Jute is a long, rough, shiny bast fibre that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from flowering plants in the genus Corchorus, of the mallow family Malvaceae. The primary source of the fibre is Corchorus olitorius, but such fibre is considered inferior to that derived from Corchorus capsularis.” quoth Wikipedia and it has a long history of use in making string, rope and traditional packaging such as hessian (burlap) sacks. You might think that this is old hat but the quest for sustainable, biodegradable materials to replace plastics in everything from rope to packaging, is leading to a renewed interest in Jute. Furthermore, the story of Jute illustrates some earlier geo-political shifts and has – in the UK been responsible for some serendipitous sweet things.

Jute fibres come from the “skin” or bast of the jute plant just as linen comes from the bast of the flax plant. The only plant fibre grown more than Jute is Cotton and other natural fibres include hemp and more recently, bamboo. Due to the nature of the Jute plant, a single fibre from the bast can be up to 4 metres long and also very strong, making them extremely effective in applications such as string and rope. Jute is sometimes called the Golden Fibre on account of its strength and cheapness. To read a briefing on Jute as a Commodity for investment – look here.

Jute is mostly grown in South Asia – especially India and Pakistan and in the mid-19th Century, it made the fortunes of industrialists halfway around the world in Dundee, Scotland. The first bales of jute fibre arrived by ship from Bengal in 1820, and by the 1890s, more than 120 jute mills were in operation, employing around 50,000 people. The industrial revolution was producing machinery that could operate in mills together with a population of cheap labour – mostly women and children – to process the fibres into products. However, those same industrialists were among the first to recognize the benefits of outsourcing because they abandoned their Scottish workers between the two World Wars and set up factories in Calcutta (Kolkata) where the labour was even cheaper and the raw material was on hand. Thus the finished product could be shipped around the world rather than the raw material and then shipping out the finished goods – in this respect Jute was an early adopter of a practice that has decimated many “First World” countries. During the Second World War, there was a great need for sandbags in particular and government subsidies protected the Dundee mills from competition from India, this kept some of the Jute mills open a little longer, but the industry really died progressively until the last shipment of jute arrived in 1998 and the last mill closed in 1999. You can see the Dundee Tapestry which commemorates the industry here.

There was an unexpected side product of shipping Jute to Dundee. There is a story of a storm-beset Spanish ship forced to shelter in Dundee and selling its cargo of oranges to an enterprising local greengrocer who, on discovering that they were bitter “marmalade” oranges – made just that! Dundee is adjacent to the Scottish Lowlands which are renowned for their soft-fruit growing and since jam was a way of preserving fruit in the pre-refrigeration era, to make marmalade was an obvious thing to do. Whether this is the real origin of Dundee Marmalade – what is certainly true, is that ships bringing Jute from India, having made a long sea passage from the Cape of Good Hope, northwards, or more likely zig-zagging back and forth across the Atlantic with the winds, would be very short of water, fresh fruit and food generally by the time they passed Spain and Portugal and so they would often call into port there before the final leg of the voyage to Dundee. The time of the Jute harvest in India meant the ships would be passing Spain/Portugal at just the right time for the orange harvest and without the need to fully stock their larders, there was room to take marmalade oranges to Dundee and keep the nascent marmalade industry going.

Victorian Marmalade jars from the famous James Keiller and Sons

And so to the poem, J turns out to represent a paucity of poetic forms – the only one being Jazz Poetry “poetry that “demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation,”. Originally this was merely poetry that referenced jazz music and jazz musicians, but as Jazz has evolved, so has Jazz Poetry and the latest iteration of it in modern times is hip-hop music and the live poetry events known as poetry slams where Rap is the poetry form…So that is where I am heading today SHMG (So Help Me God).

Jute Rap

Ajay’s a worker on a jute plantation
bringing in rupees for the Indian nation
and when the harvest’s in – like done
and dusted – he moves to the mill f’yet more fun
handling jute is rough on the hands innit
and breathing in dust might be his finish

Dem original factory owners came from Scotland
its now in the portfolio of an Indian non-dom
hiding her taxes between the nations
while poor peeps like Ajay expect no vacations
either planting the jute or bloomin’ growin’ it
or working in the factory sepa-rating and spinning it

They say jute’s good – gonna be good for the planet
do away with the plastic and rubbish innit
So Ajay na worry ‘bout lack of work
Ain’t never get the chance for him to shirk…

Investment – hedging against Inflation and an Ideogramme Poem

April 10, 2024April 10, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

I could not find any Commodities beginning with I and so I decided to focus on the idea of Investment and how Commodities are used as a hedge against Inflation in a portfolio of Stocks and Shares.

Commodities are the only major asset class to provide a hedge against inflation, new research by London Business School (LBS) experts Professor Paul Marsh and Dr Mike Staunton and LBS alum Professor Elroy Dimson confirms.

But these same inflation-hedging properties also mean commodities tend to underperform in extended periods of disinflation.
London school of economics

Dear Readers… I know that among the readers and writers of the A-Z Challenge, will be found Poets, Novelists Genealogists and other exotic bloggers and each of you will have your own particular jargon – Iambic Pentameters, Inciting Events, Ahnentafel number and as for the writers of Erotic Fiction – let’s not even go there… So I ask you to admire for its sheer jargon and general opacity – the following statement from a London Business School article:- “Based on historical returns, it seems reasonable to assume that a balanced portfolio of collateralised commodity futures is likely to provide an annualised long-run future risk premium of around 3%.” Anybody know what that means?

What I do understand, is that there are “Soft” Commodities, often referred to or bought as “Futures” – things like crops which are bought ahead of time, before they have grown, and if there is a bad harvest, then the person who bought the futures, is going to do well and if there is a good crop then he may have paid over the odds because the market price will be low. But in a period of rising inflation, commodities – especially soft commodities like foodstuffs, also rise because the price to the end consumer also rise as a response to inflation – hence commodities are among the few things which protect an investor – and I guess that’s what that jargon-laden sentence means! “Hard” Commodities are things like metals but although they are not subject to the vagaries of weather, they have their own “levers” that cause fluctuations in the market – you only have to look at the sanctions which have been applied to trade with Russia as a result of her unwarranted war on Ukraine to see how certain hard commodities from Russia, not least of all oil and gas, have had profound effects on the market prices. Germany, for example, has had to scrabble around to try to replace its unwise over-reliance on Russian gas and that has affected the price from and for, other countries.

So moving swiftly on to today’s poem which is an Ideogramme which is a form of poetry that relies heavily on typographical elements, design, and layout. It is a form of Concrete Poetry where the shape of the typeset poem depicts the subject.

Investment (Moneybags)

Heating Oil and a Haiku

April 9, 2024April 8, 2024humanist55

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

25% of the yield of a barrel of Crude Oil is Heating Oil and the Crude Oil Market reached a value of US $ 1424.38 Bn. in 2022 so $356.09

I mentioned Bitumen amongst nearly-rans for “B” commodities and we just covered Gasoline and we now come to another derivative of Crude Oil – Heating Oil – all four of these substances can be traded as commodities and they all have their niche roles in trading portfolios – Heating Oil, for example, is a product subject to seasonal demand – alternating depending on which hemisphere you are in. Heating oil is actually kerosene or paraffin and these terms are often used interchangeably but I will be returning to Kerosene under K and in any case, Heating Oil is traded as a distinct “futures” product. But what I want to talk about today, is the process by which the three derivatives are extracted, simultaneously, from crude oil – Fractional Distillation.

Some of you may remember this from school days though I am not sure whether it would have been taught in Geography or Chemistry classes – but the diagram below is one of those “once learned never forgotten” things – a piece of magic at the heart of the 20^th Century industrial age. Elegantly simple in principle, probably a fiendishly tricky piece of engineering in practice, a Fractional Distillation Tower is what you see in oil refineries and crude oil, once heated to the point of becoming a vapour, enters the tower at the bottom and as the various components rise and cool at different points in the tower, they condense and are drawn off separately. The most volatile reach the top of the tower – Butane and Propane whilst the heaviest and thickest remain at the bottom of the tower – such as Bitumen or Asphalt.

Although this particular diagram doesn’t show it and most of the items appear to be fuels, there are also substances like Naptha which go on to be used in other industrial processes – Naptha is a very volatile solvent. Other industries also use hydro-carbons to make plastics with the addition of certain other chemicals and all of these things, fuels, solvents and plastics can be seen to be releasing stored “fossil” carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere causing global warming or in the case of plastics contributing a material which will not breakdown easily in the environment and which is slowly poisoning the food chain…

There is no choice about what components come out of a fractional distillation tower except in as much as different sources of crude oil do contain slightly different proportions of hydrocarbon fractions. It makes one think what might happen if we ever do get near the “bottom of the oil barrel” – we might have weaned ourselves off petrol and diesel vehicles but we might still need some plastics or we might still need bitumen for building roads for electric cars and yet whenever you distil crude oil – you get a whole selection of products, whether you want or need them all, or not…

A Haiku

And so to the poem which today is a Haiku. And yes, in my Theme Reveal, I promised a Heroic Ode and that would be a difficult one to write about Heating Oil although some might consider a Haiku about Heating Oil equally challenging – however the Haiku is an extremely popular poetry form these days having spread far beyond its native Japan and Heroic Odes are decidedly out of fashion, so I decided to meet the challenge of writing about Heating Oil with a Haiku…
Infamously, the Punk poet John Cooper Clarke wrote:-

To write a poem
in seventeen syllables
is very diffic…

But the haiku demands more than seventeen syllables, the syllables need to be distributed 5-7-5 and the theme of a Haiku should be related to nature and also “focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colourful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment.” You may say, with some justification that Heating Oil is not a very promising subject for such a philosophical, traditional, and compact form – but I have done my best…

Heating Oil – A Haiku

Autumn advances
We dip the heating oil tank
Dark smell of Winter

Woldwide Trade in Pepper in 2022 $5.13B – 548th most traded product – 0.022% of total world trade

World Pepper Production and Trade

Pepper

Worldwide Trade in Palladium in 2022 – $29.4 Billion

Palladium

The Wondering…

The Answers!

Orange Juice – an Ottavo Rima

Worldwide trade in Shellac – 2022 – $167.84 million

Worldwide trade in Kerosene 1998 $9 Billion – rank 151 / 771

The Lady with the Lamp…

Worldwide Trade in Jute and other Textile Fibres, 2022 – $285M – the world’s 1115th most traded product representing 0.0012% of total world trade.

Jute Rap

Investment (Moneybags)

25% of the yield of a barrel of Crude Oil is Heating Oil and the Crude Oil Market reached a value of US $ 1424.38 Bn. in 2022 so $356.09

A Haiku

Woldwide Trade in Pepper in 2022 $5.13B –
548th most traded product – 0.022% of total world trade