I went food shopping today and I noticed empty shelf spaces throughout the store.

None of these empty spaces were large (by themselves) and they were of certain items of a certain flavor and brand.

This looked more like backorders that haven't come in as yet which may or may not be significant.

The amount of empty spaces is significant because it has not been that way before except as an aftermath of Katrina. After Katrina, The entire space allotted to staples such as flour and sugar were empty until the next truck would come in. This was not the case today, there would be other brands of the same product there.

Maybe there was a big sale and you missed it?

Or everyone knows something and you don't.

Sue

plus alot of really bad weather is slowing down the trucks..
closed roads--big mult car-truck crashes--with the cost of
fuel they may not be shipping as often--i noticed at the
high-end grocery store where i shop for things like fruit
and meat that the peanut butter was hit real hard--no sales
but it was not full like they normaly keep it..

Up near the border, on Fridays (payday), the Canadians come across the border to shop and they usually cleaned out the stores by closing time. Also, most stores up there get a vegetable/canned goods/dry goods and also a meat shipment once a week.

When I lived in St. Ignace, Mi, the vegetable/canned goods/dry goods came on Tuesdays and the Meat Delivery truck arrived on Thursdays. If you wanted a London Broil, you had to be at the store before Thursday night or else you were SOL for another week.

In typical Oklahoma fashion we were predicted to get somewhere between a trace and 12" of snow in one afternoon earlier this week. However, the temperature was forecast to be about 40F the following day and only go up on subsequent days.

Even with the weather expected to blow in & blow out in a day (or two at the most) the store shelves were looking pretty bare just in advance of the storm. Don't people keep ANY food at home anymore??? (I'm afraid I know the answer to my own question.)

It is Super Bowl Sunday.

Were these empty shelves near the Beer, Chips, and Brautwerst sections?

No.. all the good stuff was in plentiful supply!!!!

There's your answer: they swapped out a truck of real food for pretzels and cheesy poofs.

I've noticed several different grocery stores having less than full shelves lately.
However, yesterday, one of the major stores in my city did not have a single unused shopping cart available, with many buy 1, get 1 free sales..

I just ordered groceries for the boat (7 men x 14 days):

While placing the order, I was informed that canned Crowder Peas & Purple Hull Peas were "unavailable".

Later, the grocer called back to report that Quaker Oats Crunchy Bran cereal was not available.

This goes hand-in-hand with my observations of grocer shelves while I wass home.

large shops and small try to have as little stock as possable and use just in time delivery. this is because stock on shelves ties up money, less stock means more profit

after working in a supermarket warehouse asda/walmart for 9 years i can tell you we always had at least 800 lines of 33,000 out of stock at any given time. most this down to central distrobution warehouse out of stocks thanks to there just in time ordering from suppliers. the idea of just in time ordering is great but in practise it is a nightmare the computer controls set by central office fail to take into account that small increases in sales can cause people to think stock is short with half full shelf and they buy acouple extras to tide themselves over.

cookery shows and recipes in magazines and newspapers even the net can cause whole sections to be stripped in hours.

i use to do the stock and order manually so last years sales plus 5-7% was the standard depending on the line. now it is last years order plus 1% by the computers. lowers stock holding but does tend to leave alot of gaps.

I went shopping for seeds today at a small Feed & Seed store. The owner showed me where the garden seeds were at and commented that he didn't have much to offer and he's been waiting for the seed man to come and restock the display. The problem is that the seed man hasn't been around since his last visit, LAST SPRING!! He did let me have 40 packs of garden seeds for $1.50 per pack whereas they were marked at either $1.59 or $1.79 per pack.

I've come across an internet article about a week ago that stated garden seed suppliers of heirloom seeds are already running short and if someone wants to find/get the seeds of their desire, they had better order quickly.

I think people are waking up and looking at current events a little more realistically and they are getting scared! Just MHO.

+1 I agree 100 percent, not just with seeds but with food and other supplies as well. I think as time goes by more people will wake up and shortages will be more wide spread.

The price of wheat from my food co-op has gone up 33% from last year, all within the last 60 days. I fully expect it to NOT be available next month--when I went to pick up my order today, I noticed that just about everyone had ordered at least 25#, half about 50#. Previous to February, I was the only one ordering wheat in bulk.

Also, the price of pinto beans has gone up about 25% in the local "specialty" groceries.

The price of wheat has really gone up because of the big push towards corn based ethanol. The reality is that corn ethanol will seriously increase prices of food and do almost nothing to the prices of fuel. If for no other reason then that corn is a fertilizer greedy plant. And all those fertilizers come from fossil fuels. Mostly natural gas, but not exclusively. Add in the diesel fuel used in tractors, trucks and electricity used in refining the corn into ethanol and there's very little if any actual energy gain. But, the fields of wheat and soybeans are being planted with corn and the fields of corn are being turned into ethanol, not Doritos. All in all its pretty poor food and energy policy. My suggestion, boycott E85 fuel when and where you can and write your congressman to protest subsidies for ethanol fuel.

Just in case you've never thought about it, most of the raw seeds and beans that you buy in bulk for cooking are perfectly fine for GROWING. I scooped up a selection of grains and seeds, and sprouted them just to see.

Amaranth, quinoa, barley, red winter wheat, lentils, various beans... they all sprouted. The only ones that just sat there on the damp paper towel was the millet, which was hulled, and I didn't expect it to do anything. But if I wanted millet, I could pick up some of those heads of them that they sell for entertaining the parakeet (pet food section).

I think there are possibly more in the bulks seasonings section, and I'll check them out next time.

Also, I just bought ten pounds of my favorite bean, Anasazi, and I tried a few of them. Yep, they sprouted just fine. I think I'll be growing a patch of them this summer. (The shipping cost more than the beans.)

Also, feed stores tend to carry seeds for oats, buckwheat, sweet sorghum, etc (some may be treated).

Anyway, just a thought that seeds for sprouting (very nutritious) and growing don't only come on small packets for $2.69 for a few grams.

Sue

Good to know.

Amaranth is a good plant to try because you can use it as an ornamental, and most people would have no idea that the seed and leaves can be used as food.

I totally agree and NO, I didn't buy any seeds for those bulk peas and beans that I already have, for that reason.

I recently ordered 90lbs of bulk organic red winter wheat berries on line which cost about $1.00 per lb - plus shipping. While checking out our local organic coop market I found that they were selling organic red winter wheat berries at $0.69lb which you bag from their bins. I suppose the difference is not getting a 6 gallon hard pail to store it in. I will probably build up our stoage supply then refill from our local market as long as prices are favorable. We are also going to plant red winter wheat in one of our pastures and try to grow it ourselves.

In our neck of the woods diesel is up to $4.15 a gallon. I can't imagine the prices on shelves not going up as the cost of getting suppies to stores has been going up so fast.

Don't know if you like spelt, I prefer it, but its supposed to be easier to grow and more resistant to disease than wheat. It also has a higher protein/fiber content. The berries are priced about the same as red winter wheat. Slightly nutty taste (makes great bread).

diesel $8.88 a gallon here in the uk and Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's , are charging their shoppers 12 per cent more on average for a basket of 25 staple goods compared with last year. in house memo for the company i work for warns that it could get as high as 27% higher than last year and to ajust stock and order to reflect the expected switch to lower quality (own brand)goods from branded goods (heniz etc). from what i am seeing i think 27% is low ball. while crude oil prices may have dropped abit fuel duty has just been raised in the uk budget and is due for another duty increase in october.

Butter prices in Britain rose by 18% last month, while milk rose by 12%. A kilo of peas has gone up from £1.19 to £1.79 at Tesco, a dozen eggs at Sainsbury's has leapt from £1.62 to £2.35, while Asda has increased the price of its orange juice from 73p a litre to 88p.

We do use spelt. While none in our family have a wheat allergy problem, spelt is a great alternative to those who do have allergy problems with wheat. I've seen that spelt does have a higher protein content than wheat, but you can find some hard wheats that are close. The standard sack of bleached white flour from the store won't compare to spelt.

I do have some spelt seeds that I plan to plant soon. I've read though that their hulls need to be separated from the berry - and there are additional steps in processing that are not needed for wheat.

We tried out our grain mill over the weekend for the first time with some red wheat berries and the result were some of the best homemade pancakes we've ever eaten! What a difference!

I can't go to any stores right now because I'm underway on a boat.

Has anyone noticed any more empty shelf spaces since the strike/slowdown started Monday?

I was just at the store about an hour and a half ago, and didn't notice any shortages. However, I have to admit that I don't know where shortages would start to show first, and could have easily missed something. I can say that there didn't appear to be any empty shelves.

I'm thinking food type shortages would show up in dairy products first, then meats, vegetables, bread, and on down. The shorter the shelf life, the more dependent it is on a continuous supply chain. Of course in an immediate shipment stoppage or crisis situation all bets are off as everything would fly off the shelves.

Fresh food is the last thing I'd buy if I thought the store wouldn't be getting more. Get the stuff with a good shelf life.

Canned food
Powdered milk
preserves
etc

According to the NY Sun, food shortages are showing up in this country.

Perhaps we should do like other producers,,QUIT EXPORTING OUR PRODUCE!!!! Wow,,what a concept, save food products that are needed to feed ourselves??????

"...QUIT EXPORTING OUR PRODUCE..."

I'd vote for you for President!!!

Of course, all of our farmland that is owned by foreign governments might mess up your idea...

I dunno, if I was a farmer I think I'd want to sell my products any damn place I wanted to. The market should correct any situation where we would need to sell food domestically instead of exporting.

We have a recent addition to the many different chains of supermarkets up here near DC. The recent addition is a chain store called Wegman's. They do things a little differently than other stores and have food stocked by Regions or Ethnicities. The Asian, Indian, and Mexican/South American sections were running very low on rice. The American Food Section (for lack of what to call it with it's Rice -a- Roni and such LOL) was running low on regular bagged rice, but had a lot of boxed, quick rice selections still available.

After seeing what I saw at Wegmen's, I went to Costco to get a look at what they had. Costco was down to their last five 25lb bags of long grain enriched white, two of which were snapped up as I sat there watching. Also, they had about ten 10lb bags of basmati rice left on a palate in the middle of the isle. Other than that, they were completely out of bulk bagged rice. They had added a palate of Uncle Ben's flavored Microwave Rice variety packs, but it was about $7.99 for six two-serving packs. On a side note I overheard the person at check out mention that customers were only allowed 2 bags per check-out.

I didn't check any of the other local supermarkets, but may do so tomorrow just out of curiosity.

I have been shopping more of late and I am seeing more empty spots and more space behind the front row of products than before, all over the stores.

I went shopping at a Wally World Supercenter yesterday. I noticed large amounts of empty shelf space all over the store. Especially noticeable were those shelves that held sugar, flour, and rice.

It's still my understanding that the USA is likely to experience real shortages of flour and cooking oil.

I am not seeing any empty shelf space around the cooking oil section in any of the stores that I go to.

it is called panic. People are buying up everything in bulk supplies. I watched someone over the weekend try to put three bags of wheat into a little Toyota at the feed store- they didn't look like kind of people who have a grinder. Haven't seen them this nutty since y2k.

When the wall street journal puts out an article telling people to hoard, then what can we expect?

Yep. And they are hoarding the stuff now when it's 4 times the price. Historically, food shortages in this country are usually limited to certain niches, often d/t bad growing seasons. The time to stock up is NOT when the stuff gets sparse on the shelves. That only exacerbates the problem and makes a general panic spread.

Yep, just gives people an excuse to act afool. Better then even odds that guy has stock in ConAgra.

A year or two from now you will be seeing alot of this missing food, alas, spoiled and in the dump.

I copied this article from www.standeyo.com



Unprecedented Demand Cleans Out Major Storable Food Supplier

Learn How to Pack Your Own


May 29, 2008
By Holly Deyo

It came to our attention today, that the world's largest producer of storable foods, Mountain House, is currently out of stock of ALL #10 cans of their freeze dried foods, not just the Turkey Tetrazzini.

They are not alone. People are finally awakened that time is running out. This morning, Fox News aired a live preparedness seminar and they warned people NOT to expect emergency supplies to be provided by the government and that they need to be self-sufficient. Will you be prepared?

Below is Mountain House's customer notice.

Dear Valued Customers:

We regret to inform you Oregon Freeze Dry cannot satisfy all Mountain House #10 can orders and we have removed #10 cans from our website temporarily. The reason for this is sales of #10 cans have continued to increase. OFD is allocating as much production capacity as possible to this market segment, but we must maintain capacity for our other market segments as well.

Currently we are able to meet demand for Mountain House pouches and most of these products are still available for purchase on our website. Some of our dealers still have Mountain House #10 Cans available and you will need to locate them and contact them directly....Search Online Dealers.

We want to clarify inaccurate information we’ve seen on the Internet. This situation is not due to sales to the government domestically or in Iraq. We do sell products to this market, but we also sell other market segments, including Ingredients and Private Label markets. The reason for this decision is solely due to an unprecedented sales spike in #10 cans sales.


They don't expect to have stock available till Sept.-Oct. You might check with The Freeze Dry Guy at 866.404.3663 (FOOD) to see if he has supplies available.

http://www.mtnhse.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=M&Category_Code=MHCDL

That actually has the opposite result from what you expect: you wind up with even less food available locally and need higher imports.

When farmers aren't allowed to sell to the worldwide market their sales prices are lower since the pool of potential buyers to bid is smaller. Though this seems fine to buyers at the time, the result is less money for the farmer to invest in future production, and future production is lower than it otherwise would be.

It's similar to the problem with many old-style food-aid programs to poor countries: by just donating food the prices local farmers can get falls, removing their ability to invest in future production. And so the cycle repeats...

"Shortage" seems to be mostly hysteria. "Rising Prices" is real. Some rice breeds not grown in the US actually are getting scarce due to hoarding in Asia, but there is still plenty of rice. Just not cheap rice or the exotic Basmati varieties not grown here.

For many other commodity foods such as wheat and such rising fuel prices are causing farmers to reevaluate what they should grow, and consumer's supply levels and prices are going to fluctuate until prices find the right level to give farmers a reason to produce what consumers want in the desired quantity.

Maybe if they stop growing nothing but corn for that high- pollutin' bio-fuel and go back to growing grains again???

The First Law of Unintended Consequences - if you make it a lot more profitable to grow corn instead of wheat then that's what the farmers will do.

And it may be hard to reverse: foreign producers will be tempted to enter the wheat market to fill the void, making it harder for US farmers to re-enter the wheat market once the bio-fuel mania dies down...