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???