No, but they're not hesitating in reducing the size of the product, etc.
Posted on 11/05/2010 2:25:23 PM PDT by blam
NIA Projects Future U.S. Food Price Increases
Gerard Adams
November 05, 2010
The National Inflation Association today announced the release of its report about NIA's projections of future U.S. food price increases due to the massive monetary inflation being created by the Federal Reserve's $600 billion quantitative easing. This report was written by NIA's President Gerard Adams, who believes food inflation will take over in 2011 as America's greatest crisis. According to Mr. Adams, making mortgage payments will soon be the last thing on the minds of all Americans. We currently have a currency crisis that could soon turn into hyperinflation and a complete societal collapse.
"For every economic problem the U.S. government tries to solve, it always creates two or three much larger catastrophes in the process," said Adams. "Just like we predicted this past December, the U.S. dollar index bounced in early 2010 and has been in free-fall ever since. Bernanke's QE2 will likely accelerate this free-fall into a complete U.S. dollar rout," warned Adams.
NIA projects that at the average U.S. grocery store it will soon cost $11.43 for one ear of corn, $23.05 for a 24 oz loaf of wheat bread, $62.21 for a 32 oz package of Domino Granulated Sugar, $24.31 for a 32 fl oz container of soy milk, $77.71 for a 11.30 oz container of Folgers Classic Roast Coffee, $45.71 for a 64 fl oz container of Minute Maid Orange Juice, and $15.50 for a Hershey's Milk Chocolate 1.55 oz candy bar. NIA also projects that by the end of this decade, a plain white men's cotton t-shirt at Wal-Mart will cost $55.57.
NIA's special U.S. food price projection report is now available to download for free by clicking here.
The report highlights how despite cotton rising by 54%, corn rising by 29%, soybeans rising by 22%, orange juice rising by 17%, and sugar rising by 51% during the months of September and October alone, these huge commodity price increases have yet to make their way into America's grocery stores because corporations have been reluctant to pass these price increases along to the consumer. In today's dismal economy, no retailer wants to be the first to dramatically raise food prices. However, NIA expects all retailers to soon substantially raise food prices at the same time, which will ensure that this Holiday shopping season will be the worst in recorded American history.
If you are an NIA member and have a question about the U.S. economy or inflation, please browse through our ‘NIAnswers’ database and if your question hasn’t already been answered there, you can either submit it on ‘NIAnswers’ or email it to us at: editor@inflation.us
If you are a member of the media and would like to schedule an interview with NIA’s President Gerard Adams about inflation, please send an email to media@inflation.us or if it is urgent you can call us directly at 1-888-99-NIA US (1-888-996-4287).
Blistering Holiday Hiring Shreds The "All The Growth Is From Inventory" Scaremongers
So I should keep prepping?
Looking at agribusiness realistically, inflation and hyperinflation are solely based on currency, not production or consumption.
To start with, American agricultural production is kept artificially low by the government. Even during the Dust Bowl, the remaining farmers produced far too much, which caused prices to crash. To make matters worse, there was a strong deflation, because there was too little currency. The end result was farmers burning corn for fuel, while people starved because they had no money.
The solution at the time: destroy vast amounts of food and limit production, and distribute some of the excess to the people who were starving.
Today, most production in the US is “push” based, making only enough to meet demand. This means that a driving force for inflation in food is, oddly enough, the price of petroleum, both for farm equipment and for fertilizer.
However, hyperinflation would come about not because of general inflation running wild, but because speculators had shifted into commodities, stripping much of the supply from the push system, leaving shortages at the retail level, while also demanding higher prices for the commodities they owned.
The simple solution to this is to limit speculation in the commodities market. Not even particularly difficult, since this is not paper speculation, that can happen overseas, but speculation with physical stocks of commodities, that can only happen in the US, with the exception of oil and minor products like cocoa that are not produced here.
Otherwise, American agribusiness has to a great extent been semi-nationalized since FDR, so prices are set by the government.
If there is a bad harvest, the government just opens more land up for legal farming. In many cases, there are three growing seasons in a year, so it levels out quickly.
The slowest responding agricultural production are beef and pork, which may experience some bad times in the near future, since it takes a long time to grow an animal.
Thank you for your analysis.
US No 2 Yellow Corn: 5.11-5.62 Mostly 2 lower.
A year ago it was 3.91 per bushel.
In 2006 a bushel of corn was about 2.25
These prices will soon be reflected in Corn Flakes and the price of Beef, and lots of other products.
We are “burning up” our food supply in cars using Ethanol.
There would be blood in the streets long before prices got that high.
Somewhat worse, as far as meat goes. Because grain is so high, farmers have seriously reduced their herds. The US cattle herd is at 1973 levels, caused back then by a corn disease, and swine are at the lowest national level ever measured.
But high grain prices have been going on so long, that many farmers are using their winter stores of fodder, hoping that the price will drop. That being unlikely, when their winter stores are depleted, they will have no choice but to thin their herds even further. Some are trying alternative fodders, but that has rarely been a successful strategy, and means they cannot sell those animals for meat, as it tastes different.
This reminds me of a skit from the old Sonny and Cher show, probably in the early 70s, which went something like this:
Cher was at the register while a clerk rang up the purchases. “Lettuce, $10. Cheese, $30. Bread, $26”
Cher then asks, “How long are these prices going to keep up?”
“What?” says the clerk.
She asks again, and the clerk still doesn’t hear her, so she takes a loaf of bread and hits him over the head with it while she yells the question at him.
The clerk grabs the bread from her and hits her over the head with it, yelling, “Only until tonight! The sale ends tomorrow!”
Seriously, though, I’m rather concerned about inflation right now. With another round of manufactured money being thrown into the economy, I don’t see how it can be avoided. I guess it takes a bit of a logical leap to realize that money can’t just be printed; it has to represent something of value. And the liberals pushing this avoid using logic as much as possible.
Feeder cattle just went pretty high.
No, we aren’t.
The problem is that farmers, instead of planting corn people eat, are planting corn people don’t eat (feed corn) that is used for ethanol.
The effect is the same, a decrease in suply of corn people eat. And that increases the price of corn consumers have to pay for.
Actually this scenario, what is really going on, is worse than it could be.
Because the corn they are planting for ethanol is not corn we use in human food products, it isn’t exactly going to solve our own hunger issues.
Anyone know how credible these guys are? Because those prices seem pretty incredible for “soon”.
I think they are a new group but, I saw Glenn Beck use some of their stats on his program Thursday.
I've been trying to figure out what 'soon' is too. To me soon would be 2011-2012 but they use a 'decade' for the t-shirt price...it's not clear and probably deliberately so.
Now, some of the other articles about inflation are showing healthy price increases in the first half of 2011, some of them substancial.
Bm
So the NIA is projecting inflation in 2011 on top of inflated numbers from 1970's
A little disingenuous.
That being said, food prices are going up substantially in 2011, but before we get to their unreal numbers the US economy will have crashed and burned already
The article is a little late. The 64 ounce Tropicana OJ is now 59 ounces. The 16 ounce Carolina Pride smoked sausage is now 14 ounces. TP rolls are getting narrower. The inflation is already here, cleverly disguised with smaller packages.
There’s been $2 corn in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and as recently as a couple few years ago. As far as corn flakes, the box costs more than the corn inside. Marketing and transportation costs - gasoline/diesel - impact those prices more than the corn futures price.
Very Correct Statement.
No, but they're not hesitating in reducing the size of the product, etc.
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