Incoming Food Crisis

[Luke]

Ok, this is mixup of many sources, but we have definitely something brewing on that front
Feel free to post other references

Mind: general rule is: when some food related commodity raises in price, those at the end of foodchain (you, me, average shopper) will feel it 6-9 months after the price spike ,as old stockpiles diminish, and people are forced to buy at higher prices. IF they can still afford it.

Rice: raise in price 50% since June : http://www.zerohedge.com/article/watch-rice-clues-corn Note that might indicate similar spike in corn ..

http://dailyreckoning.com/the-food-shock-of-2011/

Prices for basic foodstuffs like corn and wheat remain below their 2008 highs. But they’re a lot higher than they were before “the food crisis of 2008” took hold. Here’s what’s happened to some key farm commodities so far in 2010…

* Corn: Up 63%
* Wheat: Up 84%
* Soybeans: Up 24%
* Sugar: Up 55%

What was a slow and steady increase much of the year has gone into overdrive since late summer. Blame it on two factors…

* Aug. 5: A failed wheat harvest prompted Russia to ban grain exports through the end of the year. Later in August, the ban was extended through the end of 2011. Drought has wrecked the harvest in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan – home to a quarter of world production

* Oct. 8: For a second month running, the Agriculture Department cut its forecast for US corn production. The USDA predicts a 3.4% decline from last year. Damage done by Midwestern floods in June was made worse by hot, dry weather in August.
There might be other factors than that.

Detailed overview:
http://dailyreckoning.com/the-end-of-cheap-food

General: http://dailyreckoning.com/rising-food-and-energy-costs-to-add-to-retirees-problems

Overall: stockpiling on essentials started to look important even from investment standpoint. Do the math, please!

[bluestflame]

it would be easier to implement some form of "microchipping" which though on a full belly would meet with massive opposition , with a populace facing an empty belly and a lack of alternative foodsources , (well it's a good idea to have your own home grown food as a failsafe , even if grown indoors, a "known quantity")

[Anchor]

Ok, this is mixup of many sources, but we have definitely something brewing on that front
Feel free to post other references

Mind: general rule is: when some food related commodity raises in price, those at the end of foodchain (you, me, average shopper) will feel it 6-9 months after the price spike ,as old stockpiles diminish, and people are forced to buy at higher prices. IF they can still afford it.

Rice: raise in price 50% since June : http://www.zerohedge.com/article/watch-rice-clues-corn Note that might indicate similar spike in corn ..

http://dailyreckoning.com/the-food-shock-of-2011/

There might be other factors than that.

Detailed overview:
http://dailyreckoning.com/the-end-of-cheap-food

General: http://dailyreckoning.com/rising-food-and-energy-costs-to-add-to-retirees-problems

Overall: stockpiling on essentials started to look important even from investment standpoint. Do the math, please!

Are these US$ prices? If so, of course the price has gone up the US$ is so weak as the problems with it become clearer and mount up.

I wonder what the stats would look like if measured against say a precious metal?

[Ethereal Blue Being]

I have noticed prices going up especially corn and blue cornchips, organic brown rice, oranges, I'v noticed how organic produce has gone down over the last year in comparison, I guess people figure when they look at rising prices for conventionally raised produce in comparison to organic --they might as well pick organic as often as possible. MSNBC says alot of cotton crops have been flooded out as well. Peaches and pecans which come out of souteastern US are very cheap. I've been wondering if there is a Corexit/petroleum contamination issue Im not buying 60 cent to 80 cent per pound peaches and $5.00 a lb pecans. It is just too coincidental this is happening in an oil leak year.

[A New Hope Reborn]

Has any one noticed that a lot of food products have been down sized, like they have made the pieces smaller and pumped in more air and/or increased the size of the packaging to keep the overall weight of the products the same. it could just be greed or maybe they are trying to hide something (my god i am becoming paranoid i blame you avalon).


quote "just because i'm paranoid doesn't mean some one's not watching me"

[Steven]

The prices are already risen here in Canada. It started with cereals and rice approximativly 18 mounths ago. A little after the first financial issue in automn 2008.

Today, everything is more expensive related to average commodities, while the salary aren't following up the rise of prices and the employment is decreasing.

Here in Quebec, we haven't been touch so hard. The economy is still quite good, while the financial opportunities are at its best for consumer. The interest rate is extremly low.

Personally, I don't think this financial crisis will stop the basic economy. There is no lack of supply, no lack of working forces and no lack of the demands.

One of the reason why the cereals began to rise its prices is because of a sudden decision to exclusivly put a side a larger quantity of cereals to produce methanol. It began in 2007.

Namaste, Steven

[Luke]

Relatively, dollar is down to my currency (PLN) -3.35 percent in last 6 months, EUR/USD +4.53%, largest change is to Yen, -14.14% .. Gold was $1230 in june, ~$1350now, +9.75 % nowhere near the changes in base grain prices.

[Anchor]

Gold is pretty much still a rigged market - but even so there are some indicators here.

[jiix]

Here in Quebec, we haven't been touch so hard. The economy is still quite good, while the financial opportunities are at its best for consumer. The interest rate is extremly low.

Lucky. Its getting pretty bad in Vancouver!

[noxon medem]

- a Question of self-scrutiny on the agenda of contemporary food-politics:
I have been stacking up some moderate, basic reserves, anyway that is wise.
But lately, following the logic of this thread, I have been thinking, maybe
this hamstering, storaging my reserves, is only to a certain point a humane
thing to do. Enough to support my self and my closest for a periode,yes.
But, If lots of people like me, relatively rich and informed in a well-supplied society,
in times of general food shortage, if we buy up a lot for personal reserves, will that
not drive up prices even more ? And leave less for others, to serve for dinner ?
In other words, if there is a depopulationagenda through foodshortage, will I not
then contribute to it by storing so much resources ?

- so ...
who is this :

:hungry:

Two things have become clearer in confronting this issue.
- I must try to get a higher part of my food directly from nature.
- I realize how lucky and thankful I am for being born into this
relatively safe and abundant physical frame.

[Luke]

Ok , way I see it:
First rule of survival is : never do anything that will damage your well-being IF NOTHING HAPPENS!
Starting from that: few factors to consider
1. Building a "food buffer" - every time you shop get some more stuff you use, put it on the shelf and rotate. (use older ones, add new ones). This way you wont' be caught flat-footed.
2. Look for easy ways to process most basic foodstufs. Un-processed materials are always cheaper than processed ones. Trick is to get that processing going without much additional work. There are kitchen addys available that make, say preparing your own bread easy (from full grains).
3. Get to know folks that are farming. Nothing beats personal contact. Limit amount of middlemen between you and your food.

[worldruler]

cost co has good range of freeze dried foods good price to . but alas only the american can purchase

[worldruler]

there is nothing wrong being organized and prepared ,think of it as preparing for a long winter . dont forget the gas
ps hopefully winter want be too long

[sojorner]

I've found youtube very helpful...I actually learned to dehydrate eggs there...it was very easy, did it in my oven.

Youtube is full of informative everyday people willing to share their knowledge on food storage, dehydration, emergency prep. etc...

Soj

[Lost Soul]

Gold is pretty much still a rigged market - but even so there are some indicators here.


Sure. Rigged to go up as the Federal Reserves goes into for another round of quantitative easing. This time it's 600 million dollars. Other currencies are racing to the bottom and it appears only the Chinese are increasing interest rates. Our dollar lost 40% of its value during 2009. It looks like it's losing another 30% this year.

That means that savings goes down since folks will be able to buy less with what they have in their savings or what they earn on their paychecks.

So, if food prices rise, it really means two things. First, there is a shortage (thanks to the fire in Russia and other things that compromised the crops) and second, the money is worth less as the central banks issue more of that paper stuff.

[Fredkc]

Sure. Rigged to go up as the Federal Reserves goes into for another round of quantitative easing.
So, if food prices rise, it really means two things. First, there is a shortage

Actually Lost Soul, one makes the other a certainty.
"quantitative easing", whatever it is really called is simply printing debt-as-money like a mad dog, and giving it to someone.

Doesn't matter who you give it to, it will result in higher prices, sooner or later.
Give it to people and you wind up with "free" money chasing "not-free" goods. means the price of goods will, nay has to go up.

Give it to banks, and (since they are bankrupt) they will sit on it. But it then remains "money on paper". It only becomes "wealth" when invested in commerce. They trouble is right now, the economy is so over-run with "money on paper", releasing it would more than double the price of goods, overnight. Even bankers aren't that dumb.

Economics aside, I still think the real on-going threat to our food situation is corporatism, and monopolization through genetic manipulation. Here you will find STUPID at work, like nowhere else.
Fred

[Ahkenaten]

Since Tuesday's election that some commentators feel put the Fed squarely in control of the US economy as Congress and Obama cannot infuse money into the system any more..................and yesterdays "easing" action, in reality printing up billions more in paper currency................prices have escalated alarmingly not only in precious metals but virtually all commodities including foodstuffs. Not only is this deliberate devaluation of the dollar (Bernanke is on record stating that the Fed is concerned because inflation has not been high enough and one of their goals is to increase inflation) but frankly I worry if we cannot avoid the spectre of hyperinflation anymore. The people again will be made to bear the costs of efforts to adjust currency values against international markets, to protect the interests and power of the very rich.

check this article out.

http://www.uncommonwisdomdaily.com/gold-up-41-commodities-currencies-exploding-higher-10561?FIELD9=1

[Luke]

How Ben Bernanke Sentenced The Poorest 20% Of The Population To A Cold, Hungry Winter
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-ben-bernanke-sentenced-poorest-20-population-cold-hungry-winter

he following chart prepared recently by JPMorgan demonstrates something rather scary, and makes it all too clear how the Chairman's plan to "assist" the US population via some imaginary "wealth effect" due to QE2, is about to backfire. As is now becoming very evident, the prices of energy and food products are about to surge, and in many cases have already done so, but courtesy of some clever gimmicks (Wal Mart selling what was formerly 39 oz of coffee as a 33.9 oz product for example) (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/here-how-wal-mart-squeezing-every-last-ounce-decaffeinated-inflation) the end consumers haven't quite felt it yet. They will soon. There is a limit to how much every commodity can open limit up before it appears on the SKU price at one's local grocer. And while a marginally declining "core CPI" is irrelevant for this exercise as it measures only items that are completely outside of the scope of everyday life, what will be far more important to end consumers will be the push higher in food and energy costs. The problem, however, is that for the lowest 20% of Americans, as per the BLS, food and energy purchases represent over 50% of their after-tax income (a number which drops to 10% for the wealthiest twenty percentile). In other words should rampant liquidity end up pushing food and energy prices to double (something that is a distinct possibility currently), Ben Bernanke may have very well sentenced about 60 million Americans to a hungry and very cold winter, let alone having any resources to buy trinkets with the imaginary wealth effect which for over 80% of the US population will never come.

[witchy1]

Was just reading this - think it falls into this thread:

One Piece Of Moderately Good Economic News And 14 Pieces Of Bad Economic News That Are So Horrifying You Might Not Want To Read Them Standing Up

Today the financial world was buzzing with excitement because there was one moderately good piece of news for the U.S. economy. U.S. employers added 151,000 jobs during the month of October and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.6%. This is certainly welcome news, but these days it seems as though there are at least ten pieces of bad economic news for every hopeful economic signal. So don't get fooled when the U.S. economy takes one step forward, because it is about to take another dozen or so steps backwards. We are living in the middle of a nightmarish long-term economic decline that has been building for generations. The deindustrialization of the United States, the horrific trade deficit caused by globalization and the skyrocketing national debt are problems that have taken decades to develop. The Federal Reserve has been ripping the guts out of our financial system since 1913. These are not things that are going to be fixed overnight. In fact, there are some statistics that just keep getting worse and worse and worse as time goes by. We are heading straight for a devastating economic collapse and hopefully we can all warn as many people as possible while there is still time.

The more research that you do into our economic situation the more depressing it becomes. We are in big, big, big trouble. The following are 14 pieces of bad economic news that are so horrifying you might not want to read them standing up....

#1 More than 42 million Americans were on food stamps during the month of August. That is a new all-time record, and that number is 17 percent higher than it was one year earlier. In fact, the number of Americans on food stamps is up more than 58 percent since August 2007.

#2 The number of "persons not in the labor force" in the United States has set another new all-time record. The United States has not had such an extended bout of mass unemployment since the Great Depression. The "official" unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months.

#3 More than 1000 people now live in the 200 miles of flood tunnels that exist under the city of Las Vegas. Once one of the most prosperous cities in the United States, Las Vegas is now little more than a shiny, glittering corpse that it rapidly decaying.

#4 Poverty is absolutely exploding and it is hitting those who are the most vulnerable the hardest. According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.

#5 In the past 60 days alone, the price of cotton is up 54%, the price of corn is up 29%, the price of soybeans is up 22%, the price of orange juice is up 17%, and the price of sugar is up 51%.

#6 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.

#7 The American Bankruptcy Institute says that there will be about 1.6 million consumer bankruptcies in 2010. That would represent a huge increase over 2009.

#8 According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.

#9 The individual U.S. states are mostly flat broke. For example, it is being reported that the 15 largest U.S. states spent on average over 220% of their tax receipts over the past decade. Clearly this is not even close to sustainable.

#10 The U.S. government is completely and totally broke. After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government is facing a "fiscal gap" of $202 trillion dollars.

#11 In an attempt to keep our financial system solvent, the U.S. Federal Reserve has announced plans to create $600 billion out of thin air and pump it into the U.S. economy. The Fed is calling this "quantitative easing", but what they should really be calling it is "cheating, debasing and inflating".

#12 Many of the major trading partners of the United States are expressing deep resentment regarding the new quantitative easing policy announced by the Fed. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard recently described the growing animosity this way....

Li Deshui from Beijing's Economic Commission said a string of Asian states share China's "deep bitterness" over dollar debasement, and are examining ways of teaming up to insulate themselves from the tsunami of US liquidity.
#13 For many analysts, the economic collapse of the United States comes down to cold, hard math. For example, the former CEO of the tenth largest bank in the United States says that it is a "mathematical certainty" that the U.S. government will eventually go bankrupt.

#14 According to a recent article on CNBC, the financial world is already buzzing about QE3....

"They're already talking about QE3," said Dave Rovelli, managing director of US equity trading for Canaccord Adams. "Eventually we're going to be printing so much money the dollar is going to really go down and everybody's going to try to deflate their currency against us. I just don't know how this could end well."
So is that all the Federal Reserve has left?

Are they just going to keep pouring bags of money into the economy until things get back to "normal"?

Are we going to have "Quantitative Easing 3", "Quantitative Easing 4", and "Quantitative Easing 5"?

It has been a long-running joke, but perhaps by the end of this thing Ben Bernanke will literally go up in a helicopter and start shoveling out huge piles of cash over the countryside.

The era of great prosperity that we have all enjoyed for so long is coming to an end. It would be advisable to use the remaining period of economic stability that we still have to prepare for what is ahead.

These economic problems could have been fixed decades ago if people would have actually listened and would have followed sound economic principles on an individual and on a corporate level, but that did not happen.

Now we are up to our eyeballs in debt and the greatest economic machine in history is rotting all around us.

We are in deep, deep, deep trouble and denying it is not going to make it go away.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/one-piece-of-moderately-good-economic-news-and-14-pieces-of-bad-economic-news-that-are-so-horrifying-you-might-not-want-to-read-them-standing-up

[onawah]

All the more reason for more people to become activists pressuring for positive change! See the thread at :
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?4613-S510-Illegal-To-Grow-Share-Trade-Sell-Homegrown-Food&p=66699#post66699
and take action! There are many links there that make it easy to do.
Also, see:
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/leaked-trade-agreements-and-hidden-things-inside-s-510-corporations-plan-to-end-normal-farming/
Many more actions to take and information of great worth there including many links to videos, legislation concerning food and the economy, articles by whistleblowers, and much, much more..

[xbusymom]

cost co has good range of freeze dried foods good price to . but alas only the american can purchase

anyone thought of exchanging "gift packages" to someone outside of the US? you gift me with $ and I gift you with... - not selling!)

[TigaHawk]

wouldent the prices of freight make things expensive?

Was walking down the road to the video game store at 12am, stopped in at the 7-11 to buy some water. its now gone up by 10c - trying to remember the date i remember it being $2 last, as its now $3.10 for 600ml

[Arpheus]

Orange juice just went up from 3.34 a gallon to 3.94 a gallon i wasn't too happy when i saw that.

[Fredkc]

wouldent the prices of freight make things expensive?

Was walking down the road to the video game store at 12am, stopped in at the 7-11 to buy some water. its now gone up by 10c - trying to remember the date i remember it being $2 last, as its now $3.10 for 600ml
Bingo!

And it always affects the heaviest things first:
Water,
Milk,
Meat, and such.

[Banshee]

Be especially wary ( at least in the US ) of any meat or animal by products containing rbgh. Choose organics ( verifiable) whenever possible, but more importantly is the label Non rbgh/rbst.

[Rocky_Shorz]

and the best part is...

They didn't have to print one bill, just the announcement was enough to trigger the sharp increase in inflation...

another market driven panic...

[Luke]

and the best part is...

They didn't have to print one bill, just the announcement was enough to trigger the sharp increase in inflation...

another market driven panic...
Actually dollar printing just add to "natural" factors driving up the prices, like droughts, floods and tariff wars.
Of course we can speculate how natural those "natural causes" are :)

[Rocky_Shorz]

2 Nuke plant shut downs today? Vermont and New York?

I guess without food, people don't need energy to cook it...


NEW YORK -- A transformer exploded at the Indian Point nuclear power plant Sunday night, leading to an automatic emergency shutdown of one of its reactors, authorities said. No one was injured and no radioactive materials leaked.

Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/11/07/2150816/transformer-explodes-at-ny-nuclear.html#ixzz14j4ZG7UA


Leak Shuts Down Entergy Nuclear Plant in Vermont

Plant spokesman Larry Smith said the plant was shut down at about 7 p.m. Sunday for what he described as a "very minimal" leak, estimating its rate at 60 drops a minute. The leak came from a crack in a pipe that is part of a system feeding water into the reactor, which is then turned into steam to drive an electric generator.

Mr. Smith said the leak was contained, had no contact with the outside environment and posed no threat to the public. However, the reactor had to be shut because it can't be operated while the pipe is repaired. He provided no time estimate on when the plant would be back up and running.

The leak is the latest at the Vermont plant, which supplies about a third of the state's power. In the past year, increased levels of tritium—a radioactive material—have been found in the groundwater there. Leaks were eventually found in the reactor's underground piping system and were repaired.