Posted on 02/19/2011 6:13:52 AM PST by HangnJudge
Forget stocks, the real crisis is coming… and it’s coming fast.
Indeed, it first hit in 2008 though it was almost entirely off the radar of the American public. While all eyes were glued to the carnage in the stock market and brokerage account balances, a far more serious crisis began to unfold rocking 30 countries around the globe.
I’m talking about food shortages.
Aside from a few rice shortages that were induced by export restrictions in Asia, food received little or no coverage from the financial media in 2008. Yet, food shortages started riots in over 30 countries worldwide. In Egypt people were actually stabbing each other while standing in line for bread. We’re now seeing the second round of this disaster occurring in Egypt and other Arab countries today. Thanks to the Fed’s funny money policies, food prices have hit records. And even the Fed’s phony measures show that vegetable prices are up 13%! The developed world, most notably the US, has been relatively immune to these developments… so far. But for much of the developing world, in which food and basic expenses consumer 50% of incomes, any rise in food prices can have catastrophic consequences. And that’s not to say that food shortages can’t hit the developed world either. According to Mark McLoran of Agro-Terra, the Earth’s population is currently growing by 70-80 million people per year. Between 2000 and 2012, the earth’s population will jump from six billion to seven billion. We’re expected to add another billion people by 2024. So demanding for food is growing… and it’s growing fast.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
But if the production of cloth fails....
When was the last time you saw a spinning wheel?
much less, knew how to use one
Rawhide?”
I suppose, if civilization falls for longer than a decade. Most people have enough clothes in their closets to last for at least a decade.
The only disasters that I see lasting longer than a decade is an asteroid strike... or a socialist Amerika.
$4.00 a pound tomatoes is why I bought the tiller. I also noticed yesterday that bell peppers are 90 cents each. Assparagus was $4.00 a pound and the stems were about the size of a pencil. There were 6 pieces of squash that looked like it had leprosy. And this was at an HEB store here in Houston.
I think it may actually be cheaper to grow a garden this year.
Beef jerky, good protein source, salt
Vacuum sealed, will last forever
LOL fashionable, huh?
We can’t afford gold, we are hoarding silver along with the beans and bullets.
Thank the ruin-you-engine ethanol BS for this.
:D I still wouldn’t want to eat it in that state. And then there’s biodiesel. Poorly chosen metaphor... (I’ll be taking my foot out of my mouth now)
In free market economic theory, there is no absolute measyure, but supply and demand are always compare one to the other to set a market price level. Crashes occur when supply signficantly exceeds demand (including the supply that suppliers intentionally hold back from the market to manipulate prices higher). Crises occur when real demand of a vital product or commodity exceeds real supply by a signficant factor that those who suffer from the shortfall constitute a politically significant force.
When it comes to food production....no move was dumber than shipping a large part of world ag production to Communist China
Communist China is leading Ag producer in the world now....and surpasses the US by a large margin. The Commie Chinese do it on a small amount of arable land (only 6% of Communist China is arable...land useful to grow crops)...much smaller amount than the US
Now, the US is an Ag importer...we get so much of our food from Communist China now...even though we produce enough to feed all Americans
Of course, the Free Trader Communists would whine “isolationism, protectionism” if we kept our American ag production for a wholly domestic market....even though the US would be hit hard by a production loss in Communist China. Keeping our Ag domestic would alleviate food shortages domestically, and, keep costs low when the food shortages come.
This is the brillance (/sarc) of Free Trade Communism: Take a self-sustaining nation and make it dependent on another. This is pretty much what the Free Trade Communists have done with much of the Third World Ag production....dumped non-market based cheap crops on poor countries....killing their domestic production.
Sad thing is that a lot of this food shortage could have been prevented.
I saw that.
“Assparagus was $4.00 a pound...”
“Assparagus” is how I feel about it too. And you’re right, because of the weather we’ve had, if we have any further problems, it may very well be cheaper to grow our own food this year.
Our green bell peppers are normally $1.40 here, tomatoes only about $1.50 a pound. Living in an agricultural area, it’s hit and miss (Milk here, for example is only about $1.80-$2.20 depending on where you buy it, per gallon).
Potatoes are a good crop as most veggies don’t have enough calories in them to sustain life. That’s why we need beans, grains and starchy potatoes, mm mm mm!
You are a hedge fund trader and the Federal Reserve just gave you acces to a heap of money at really cheap prices in what appears to be a highly inflationary envorinment. Your choice is:
a. Safe bet. Buy treasury notes at a .0015%/year discount to return (including your borrowing costs).
b. Buy a broad basket of commodities leveraged at current margin rates on futures with a 95% guaranteed portfolio correlation on a broad basket to expected inflation rates based upon quantitative easing projections.
I.e. are you going to gamble for no significant gain or an almost certain payoff of a large gain, with no moral hazard since if you lose, the Fed will have to bail you and all of wall street out yet again again again to avoid "system risk."
The problem is, you get the weapons in order to acquire the food (i.e., land, water). Hunger—>war just as much as war—>hunger. I daresay that most countries on earth can’t feed themselves. We could, but we’d have to skip the kiwi fruit.
There's just me here, one person. I went ahead and made tacos without fresh tomatoes, they weren't bad.
BTW, I retired from TI there on SW Freeway in Stafford.
I bought silver dollar (slicks) at $11.50 each. I think they've doubled in price.
Lots of nickels too:
Should trends continue, 2012 may well feature a War against American kulaks, who are obviously hoarding their corn against the needs of the People!
If the President’s New Economic Policy doesn’t work, it must be because of greedy farmers and capitalist wreckers!
/progressive party line
Much of the world’s Ag production is now in Communist China, so we are closer to the Collectivized farms than most people believe.
We kind of already have that in the USA....as we have kicked off the family farms and replaced them with Multi-National corporation corporate farms. In reality, Globalism is just Communism for rich people.
I have one, know how to use it, also know how to weave, knit, sew, and quilt.
Shoes are beyond my housewifery skills, but I figure I could barter for those.
“There will ALWAYS be food, the problem is at what cost?”
That is basically what I tell people. You will just need to be more prudent to meet the needs of your family within your budget.
My MIL grew up on a ranch/farm, I asked her if she ever went hungry, she said no but they ate a lot of beans. They had to sell almost everything they raised to keep the ranch so they often had to survive on squash, beans and rabbit.
In the ‘50s we ate canned fruits and vegetables because fresh wasn’t always available. Bananas were there all the time but all the other fruit came in season.
The point was made in the symbloism of the remark, pertaining to a VERY fictional, yet allegorical series. Regarding as to whether it happened or not, historians differ in opinion, though until your statement, I have never heard it was even in debate. Which is true, I dunno, but I did find this (Which subsequent references):
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html
“Smallpox blankets
Despite his fame, Jeffrey Amherst’s name became tarnished by stories of smallpox-infected blankets used as germ warfare against American Indians. These stories are reported, for example, in Carl Waldman’s “Atlas of the North American Indian” [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac’s forces during the summer of 1763:
... Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort — an early example of biological warfare — which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer. [p. 108]
Some people have doubted these stories; other people, believing the stories, nevertheless assert that the infected blankets were not intentionally distributed to the Indians, or that Lord Jeff himself is not to blame for the germ warfare tactic.”
____________________________________________________________
Historian Francis Parkman, in his book The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada [Boston: Little, Brown, 1886] refers to a postscript in an earlier letter from Amherst to Bouquet wondering whether smallpox could not be spread among the Indians:
Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them. [Vol. II, p. 39 (6th edition)]
When the Willamette Valley in Oregon is actually growing 100% food crops instead of grass seed, flowers, and ornamental trees and shrubs, AND there’s still a food shortage; I’ll start worrying.
Till then, it’s just inflation caused by the fires in Russia and increased fuel prices.
And the reduction of the US agriculture output was accomplished by...the Rockefeller wing of the republican party in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Not all socialists are in the democrat party.
Exactly. Our biggest farm subsidy bills have passed either with GOP controlling Congress or the White House. A few years ago Bush signed the $75 BILLION farm bill....the largest in history. Most of that went to Multi-Nat Globalist corporations...did not go to true American farmers.
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