Food Shortages

Sera_J

I heard on the news last night that it is just media hype. ... they are having shortages due to people buying it up in bulk and hoarding, but mostly in other countries.

 I wouldn't stress. It's like the TP shortage! lol 

 http://moneynews.com/money/archives/st/2008/4/24/100454.cfm?s=st

Wheat Crop Failures Could be Total, Experts Warn

Thursday, April 24, 2008 10:03 a.m. EDT

On top of record-breaking rice prices and corn through the roof on ethanol demand, wheat is now rusting in the fields across Africa.

Officials fear near total crop losses, and the fungus, known as Ug99, is spreading.

Wheat prices have been soaring this week on top of already high prices, and futures contracts spiked, too, on panic buying.

Experts fear the cost of bread could soon follow the path of rice, the price of which has triggered riots in some countries and prompted countries to cut off exports.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/198730,200000-tons-of-government-rice-go-missing-in-thailand.html

Asia World News | Home

Bangkok - An estimated 200,000 tons of rice, worth 100 million dollars, has gone missing from national warehouses in Thailand this year as world prices of the commodity soared, state media reported Monday. The grain has disappeared from the government's rice stockpile of 2.1 million tons, kept in national warehouses as a means of curbing high prices on the local market and assuring a food supply for the poor, said Bank of Thailand (BoT) senior economist Benjamas Kotenongbua. Benjamas told the Thai New Agency (TNA) that the "missing" rice was worth an estimated 3.2 billion baht (101.5 million dollars), and rising. Rice prices have almost doubled this year, as artificial shortages have been created in the world market by bans on rice exports in India and Vietnam, usually two of the world's largest rice traders. In Thailand, which is expecting a bumper rice crop this year, exporters are having trouble meeting orders recently because of domestic shortages of the grain caused by hoarding. The government is also having trouble buying new supplies of rice for its stockpile, and holding on the stocks that are supposed to be in the warehouses, said the TNA. The government-sponsored "mortgage programme," by which the state purchased rice at a favourable price to fill its warehouses, saw commitments of only 240,000 tons of rice in the 2007-2008 rice-growing season, compared to earlier estimates of 8 million tons, said Benjamas, who works at the central bank's Khon Kaen office. "The major reason for the sharp drop of rice participation in the programme was the result of soaring of rice prices which persuaded farmers and middlemen not to sell rice to millers," she said. In the first three months of this year, Thailand exported a total of 3.26 million tons of rice, almost double of exports during the same period in 2007. But there are doubts that Thai exporters will be able to meet orders in the future as the domestic supply dries up.

I'm not so sure that this is media hype, though the media will be hyping it up.  

And those of you that think that what happens in the rest of the world doesn't affect what happens in the US, read international news for one week.  You'll start to see that we're one world. 

Excellent post, Xerxes.  

Xerxes

And those of you that think that what happens in the rest of the world doesn't affect what happens in the US, read international news for one week. 

Exactly! Watch LINK TV instead of Fox News. It's AMAZING the difference in what the world is hearing and what we're hearing.  

FourIsCompany

Exactly! Watch LINK TV instead of Fox News. It's AMAZING the difference in what the world is hearing and what we're hearing.  

That's certainly a better alternative than Fox, CNN, ABC, MSN or any of the others.  I don't like to disrespect American culture, but we have been insulated for so long about what goes on outside of our borders-and that's cultural.  Events in this world, whether in Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Columbia, New Zealand, Africa or Thailand do have great and long lasting effects.  We live in a world economy whether we like it or not.

It doesn't matter what the specific item is. If it's part of our economy, something most of us use, or something which is hard to substitute...we've been grabbed by our shorthairs.

I remember the sugar shortage, the coffee shortage, and more recently, the butter shortage. The prices went up, we kept on buying, and the prices never went back to where they were before the "shortage".

Electricity went up a few years back because there was a draught, which ended and the prices stayed up (at least in my neck of the woods).

Don't even get me started on the gas prices...quickly heading for $4.00 per gallon where I live.

Sometimes I wonder if some of these "shortages" are real, or just a tactic to jack up the prices and then leave them there...one item at a time.

I'm afraid for a lot of people it's going to come down to either putting gas in the tank or food on the table, which will be a real Catch 22.  Without the gas, how do they get to the food?

Joyce

fuzzy_dogs_mom

I'm afraid for a lot of people it's going to come down to either putting gas in the tank or food on the table, which will be a real Catch 22.  Without the gas, how do they get to the food?Joyce

PS There can be fun perks for CSA members---I am going to be teaching Gizmo to track at our local farm and my kids like going to visit the animals :)

Anybody wonder why as gas prices go up, the oil companies are reaping record profits?  (Somewhere in the $120B+ area last year.)  

 If you want to protest, buy gas from alternate sources (avoid exxon-mobil or british petroleum stores) and buy in increments of $20, rather than a fill up each time. 

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/34432.html

Gas consumption is going down.  If we continue to lower our consumption of petroleum, the prices might drop.  The biggest factor is the "war" which will never end. 
 

Sometimes I wonder if some of these "shortages" are real, or just a tactic to jack up the prices and then leave them there...one item at a time.

That's just supply and demand at work. It's no mysterious secret. Demand is high, lower the supply, raise the price.

I don't buy this food shortage hype though. Americans are in no danger of starving, that's for sure. 

ron2

The reason the cost of food is going up is two-fold. The cost of gas to transport the goods to market.

And ethanol. Ethanol is a poor substitute for gas. It burns at a higher temperature which means cars will have to run hotter. Which means cars can't use the standard gaskets and seal, as they get eaten up by the alcohol. And ethanol is still a carbon-based fuel. We will still release co2 into the air. The good news, if you care to listen to scientists instead of Al Gore is that co2 is not a greenhouse gas. Water vapor is. Anyway, with more and more of the corn production going towards fuel use, it has raised the price of corn. Supply and demand and free market. This also raises the price of foods, especially prepared foods because nearly every prepared food uses corn syrup as a sweetener, binding agent, or preservative. As a fuel, it is more costly to produce than regular gas and you still have to drive a diesel truck to deliver it. The sheer amount of poundage required to produce one gallon is going to make it expensive. About as much as one might pay for a gallon of moonshine, which is what it is. And the government is subsidizing farmers. And the $ .51 excise tax recently levied on our gasoline is to pay for ethanol subsidies.

I have a solution but it is politically incorrect and will hurt feelings.

Treat people that won't let us drill and process our own fuel as traitors. Quit buying from OPEC. Everytime we by from them, we are supporting terrorism. What, you say? Osama bin Laden is from Saudia Arabia, the anchor country of OPEC. Leave corn as a food item. What about global warming? Well, it's not happening the way it is predicted by politicians and others who don't actually study climatology and the various factors in the Earth's environment. And here's a news flash, any fuel you burn creates heat and co2. Your own body does that. We can still develop alternate fuels, better batteries for electric cars, etc. But let's be energy independent and put our economy back on the upswing.

I told you it was politically incorrect.

Rock on, Ron!!  Right on the money.

Xerxes...When crude oil is almost $120/barrel, who pays that?  The oil companies.  Who gets the profits from the crude oil?  OPEC.  Why is OPEC raising prices and not increasing supply (when they can)?  Because they don't have to!  India and China are vastly increasing the global oil demand and every country who buys from OPEC suffers.  Including the US.  The oil companies' profits are NOT the same as their profit margins (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/profitmargin.asp).  Just for those who are curious, the federal government makes more money off a gallon of gas than does ExxonMobil.

Good points, polarexpress.  For myself, I know I take a lot of trips to the grocery store, but I don't have the storage space or freezer space to stock up for a month at a time. If I go to Safeway or SaveMart, I drive a mile.  If I go to Wal-Mart I drive 8 miles, but the prices are significantly lower. I do reuse the plastic bags.  I use them for poop pick up in the yard (and I  take them in bunches to the dog park). If people come over to swim in the summer, I use them to send wet clothes home. I keep some in the kitchen to hold the recycling (cans, glass, plastic) so I don't have to make 50 trips a day out to the recycling can. It would be nice if the manufacturers would make plastic grocery bags that are recyclable themselves.

Joyce

Thanks.

I bought a new car in February that gets near 33 miles to the gallon. So, it takes about a gallon of gas to get to work. Maybe a little more as I have traffic lights to deal with on part of the journey. Anyway, I usually fill up when I reach half a tank. When I bought the car, the gas had just bumped up to $2.95 a gallon. Now, it's averaging $3.45. So, when I bought it, half tank to the automatic pump-stop was about $15 and now it's about $20. 5 dollars in a little over two months. But certainly that increase is due in good measure to OPEC. Pres. Bush had asked OPEC to increase production to lower gas prices and give the working man a break. OPEC's reply was "No."

And now even those countries such as Saudi Arabia are griping about the increased cost of food. Well, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. You raise the price of gas, you raise the price of everything. There is nothing that we do as a civilization that does not require the use of fuel.

What I do is try and make each trip work. On the way home, I have a choice of two Wal-marts, a Kroger, an Albertson's, an affiliated store in Van Alstyne called Diamond's. So, I get home later but I don't have to go back out.

There are times I think that there's a good chance that even if everyone drove a car like mine, the companies and PTB would still raise the price of gas so that they can still get $50 or $60 out of you for a tank of gas. That would be a bad idea.

I don't think the oil companies or OPEC realize that you can price yourself right out of a market. When the average person in Texas is making between 6 and 14 dollars an hour and you raise the cost of fuel enough without the cost-of-living raises, people will have to make a choice between driving and eating. It has happened to the widow of my friend, Lee. At one point, she had enough for groceries or enough to buy gas to go to work. She had to stay home a day until her boss squeaked out a small raise. If that happens enough, people won't make it to work. production grinds to a halt, company goes out of business, and then the oil companies have lost several sources of revenue. The workers, the company, the other companies that supply and make money off of this company.

There is no oil shortage. The reserves and wells we have actually go far deeper than previously known. There are working wells in south Texas that are dormant and capped. Storage facilities down there are full. Some have said the we are buying from OPEC so that we can run out their supplies. That's crap. We should drill and process our own oil and develop our own alternate energy. That, even more than the Gulf War and the Iraq War, would put us in control of our own economy and the oil market. Why? Because we are the biggest consumer. If we produce our own and sell to ourselves and other nations at a lower price, we will no longer be held economic hostage.

fuzzy_dogs_mom

 I do reuse the plastic bags.  I use them for poop pick up in the yard (and I  take them in bunches to the dog park). If people come over to swim in the summer, I use them to send wet clothes home. I keep some in the kitchen to hold the recycling (cans, glass, plastic) so I don't have to make 50 trips a day out to the recycling can. It would be nice if the manufacturers would make plastic grocery bags that are recyclable themselves. Joyce

A kindred spirit! That's how I use some of my grocery bags too!

You live in California so by STATE LAW your bags should be recyclable. The grocery store should have bins for this---unless the grocery chain is a very small one. Details are here : http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/lgcentral/basics/plasticbag.htm 

polarexpress

You live in California so by STATE LAW your bags should be recyclable. The grocery store should have bins for this

All the larger chains, including Safeway do have the bins to recycle the plastic bags. I never have any left to recycle because I also use them for a multitude of purposes.

I love the idea of beloning to a fruit/veggie co-op and when I clicked on the link, there is one large one not far from me. The smallest share they have is $18.50 a week though and I think that would mean a lot of waste for just the two of us, but I'm going to check into it further. I'd love to have locally grown fresh fruits and veggies all the time

Article in the Chicago Trib this evening.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-food-limits-apr25,0,1213201.story