All you pollyannas can just move along, nothing to see here. Everthing
will be taken care of. Just a tem****ary glitch in the matrix.
Here is today's small sampling of "food insufficiency" stories.
Billy may be right, this appears to be a possible "Perfect Storm", or
the fulfillment of Dr. Kissinger's proposal.
Any of you Right or Left Coasters have anything re****table on the first
article? We can no longer get Lundberg Farms rice here in our town.
This has happened in the last week. Food prices are going thru the
roof in a big hurry, produce from the fresh sections is outta sight.
Cauliflower is 3.00 +, brocolli same, Iceberg Lettuce 1.68, and these
are the common items. I picked up a bag of organic gala apples at
1.98#... twelve bucks for the small bag. Unorganic apples are 1.78#.
Meat and eggs are going up weekly. Gas is at 3.35 and diesel is 4.12.
Oil passed 117.50 today.
It's fast becoming a matter of backing up and remembering and doing as
our parents and grands did, to a degree. We have some cush, just gotta
give up some of the extraneous horsecrap, eh?
And enlarge our own growing capacity. Both my sons, *and* DILs are
finally onboard and borrowing all the garden info and bookmarks I have.
Those hunnert and fitty issues of TMEN sittin' on the shelf are gonna
be the new bibles in the future. ;-)
--
Soins et bonne chance
Charlie
--------------------------------------
Monday, 21 April 2008
By Josh Gerstein, New York Sun
ORIGINAL ARTICLE <http://www2.nysun.com/article/74994>
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Many parts of America, long considered the
breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable
phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of
New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour,
rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also
anecdotal re****ts that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.
At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers
grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched
in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.
"Where's the rice?" an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu,
said. "You should be able to buy something like rice. This is
ridiculous."
The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four
or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants,
but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in
stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.
"You can't eat this every day. It's too heavy," a health care
executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded
two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. "We only need one bag
but I'm getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it," the
elder man said.
The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members
were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk
dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another
customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap.
"Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice
purchases based on your prior purchasing history," a sign above the
dwindling supply said.
Shoppers said the limits had been in place for a few days, and that
rice supplies had been spotty for a few weeks. A store manager
referred questions to officials at Costco headquarters near Seattle,
who did not return calls or e-mail messages yesterday.
An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no
restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on
purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the
shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to
warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers
doubled.
-----------------------------------------------
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=arSRWU0yDL7M&refer=home
Only the Beginning
If food prices fail to go down in the coming weeks and months, the
experience in Haiti might only be the beginning.
Food riots have, by my count, now occurred in nine countries around the
world. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said in a recent re****t
that Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania,
Mozambique and Senegal have also seen food-related violence in recent
weeks.
To what extent is ethanol to blame for the high prices? A new study by
economist Thomas E. Elam of the consulting firm FarmEcon LLC explored
the question.
The study, to be sure, was commissioned by livestock farming interest
groups, yet it appears to rely on widely accepted economic models. Elam
used his model to simulate what the price of corn today would be if the
U.S. hadn't been subsidizing biofuels. He found that prices are about
50 percent higher than they would have been in a world without
subsidies.
---------------------------------------
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JD22Dj01.html
Rice, death and the dollar
By Spengler
The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended
consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market
failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the
unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the
weakness of the American dollar. Wa****ngton's economic misery now
threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.creative-i.info/?p=237
Food - the ultimate weapon of the ruling elite
By William Bowles
Using food as a weapon is as old as the siege but todays barbarians
have upped the anti by several orders of magnitude.
There are only two possible ways in which a world of 10 billion
people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down
more quickly. Or the current death rates must go up. There is no
other way. There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates
can go up. In a thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very quickly
and decisively. Famine and disease are natures ancient checks on
population growth, and neither one has disappeared from the scene
To put it simply: Excessive population growth is the greatest single
obstacle to the economic and social advancement of most of the
societies in the developing world. Speech to the Club of Rome by
Robert McNamara, Oct. 2, 1979
----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5158
On April 11, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) released a re****t
that found that of the national efforts to improve U.S. food safety,
none of the targets were reached in 2007. According to the CDC, 76
million Americans one in four come down with food poisoning every
year. Among the most common is E. coli, a byproduct of the system of
industrialized animal agribusiness. Americans have a common perception
that the problem stems from food coming from outside the country from
China, say, or Mexico. Instead, it's our food that's the problem.
Instead of cleaning up its own act, the American meat industry has
****fted responsibility to the consumer not just in the United States,
but also in countries where U.S. meat is ex****ted. The United States is
using bilateral trade agreements to arm-twist weaker countries into
accepting its food safety standards as a tool to expand the market
control of U.S. cor****ations. South Korea is the latest victim.
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