NY Sun on food shortages

Article here.

According to them a lot of stores are limiting the amounts a customer can purchase.

I might need a bigger garden...

-Blast

http://www2.nysun.com/article/74994

Yeah, I saw that too. Remember my "Forest to Farmland" post? Time to start cutting!

Something was niggling at me last night to go to Walmart and buy a dozen cans of Ravioli. Now I know what it was, and I'm glad I got mine before the rationing starts.

You know, they can grow an awful lot of rice down here in the south, if the price would just go up a little. I know a handful of dryland wheat farmers that could start sowing their fields tomorrow if the global price of wheat weren't being so heavily subsidized. Maybe with the dollar so weak we might be able to start producing something to market to the rest of the world, besides debt.

While perusing the Walmart last night here, I noticed more than the usual number of pallets of rice sitting around waiting to be put on the shelves. Maybe I found out where all the rice is going.

Any shortage in the market now is just a supply/demand adjustment. I would expect such commodities to fluctuate from time to time, but I cannot accept that there's a shortage. I don't see that anything has changed in the production cycle to warrant it. Market shifts occur all the time, especially when currencies fluctuate significantly. I would expect prices to start going up now.

Rice is a lot more water-intensive than wheat. We have a researcher at work who focuses on developing strains that use less water, but it may be a while. At present, according to him, rice production accounts for 30% of the fresh water use in the world.

I read the article real early this morning and I just saw reports from CNN and Fox news talking about it. Fox had the reporter on but he didn't add any thing new, but did add a little more detail about foreigners coming in and buying wheat and rice. According to him they are not sure how much is for immediate use and how much is speculative.
I lean towards the speculative because of the following reasons.
The following article details the closing of the largest rice mill in the southern hemisphere
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/17/business/17warm.php
I also read an article (I can’t find it now) but here is another that basically says the same thing. http://allafrica.com/stories/200803101649.html

You can grow a bushel (32 dry quarts) of wheat on a strip of reasonably fertile soil 10'x110'.

Sue

Uh, when was the last time you ate 500 pounds of rice? That's close to 2500 servings.

Some people eat rice at every meal. Hoarding 500 lbs. of rice isn't that unusual if you eat it all the time, especially if you're hoarding it not just for yourself, but to feed a family.

And yet another article on shortages. This one in Japan. The entire country ran out of butter. They import nearly all their food.

http://business.theage.com.au/japans-hun...80420-27ey.html

Headline: "JAPAN'S HUNGER BECOMES A DIRE WARNING FOR OTHER NATIONS"

April 21, 2008

"MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare.

"I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn't believe it — this is the first time in my life I've wanted to try baking cakes and I can't get any butter," said the frustrated cook."


With even a modest snowstorm forecast the stores in this area are stripped bare of butter, milk and eggs.

I wonder what reaction a forecast of shortages of these basic items would cause.

I was at Costco this weekend - at least at my store, they had the usual number of pallets at floor level - I did NOT look up to see what they had "up top". The had generic "white rice", "Uncle Ben's" and Basmatti. I picked up a bag of Uncle Ben's, and WAS thinking of a bag of Basmatti, but it was $13 for 20 lbs, more than 2x the price of Uncle Bens (even if it does taste good - on occasion)

500 lbs of rice sounds like someone gearing up for the Jambalaya Festival down here in LA.

Kinda wish I had paid more attention to watching my grandmother canning veggies rather than playing in the trees when I was a child.

She's 90 and forgotten more knowledge than I'll ever learn about gardening, etc. Now it's pretty much too late to learn from her.

Those of you that still have your old-ones that can teach, learn from them while you can.

Yes, with "intensive" agriculture- lots of irrigation and fertilizers.

Raise your hand if you are surprised.

*looks around* Didn't think so.

I think there is an echo in here.

What concerned me more was the "based upon your prior purchasing history". Good thing I use the "Boil in Bag" stuff out of the box. Perhaps I should try my hand at cooking rice without the bag...

Amen...

Man, I've still got twenty pounds of rice in my cupboard that's been sitting there since a year ago. I don't eat that much rice to worry. Now if they start cutting back on the pasta, I am in trouble.

Seriously, nothing's happened in the world to jeopardize our supply of food in this country yet. One rice mill in Australia closing up didn't happen overnight, their production rate has been dropping off for the past decade. They glutted the market with cheap rice in that part of the world, and put everyone else out of business over there, so now that they can't do it anymore, someone else will step up and start milling rice elsewhere, grown by someone else, and the market will normalize at a slightly higher price. In the meantime, people are going to try and buy up cheap rice, forcing the price up quickly as the subsidies go away.

We farm about 5-10% of the total arable land on the planet. I am not too worried about a food shortage anytime soon. I am worried about governments stepping in and screwing with the marketplace and destroying competition.

As soon as they get the delta irrigation control up and running in southern Iraq, I expect them to start being a global, or at least a major regional competitor on the ag market. Where else in the world can you get 5 cuttings/year of alfalfa?

Whether the shortages are because of crop failures or some jack@$$ screwing with the market it results in the same thing. However it isn't just one mill closing though, India a major exporter of rice has ceased exporting all but the highest quality rice (over 90%reduction), and 4 of the largest wheat exporters have ceased exportation.

The food shortages - and riots - we are seeing are the direct result of governments mandating and subsidizing biofuels. Farm land is being taken out of food and feed production and put in to fuel production. This is why food prices have been rising here. IMHO, it is immoral to take farm land out of food and feed production and put in to fuel production.

Ethanol is crap as a fuel. At best its energy quantity vs production energy requirements are a wash. It contains less energy per gallon than gasoline and vehicles equipped to operate on E85 will see a 15%-25% drop in fuel mileage. It attracts water and ethanol-gasoline blends disassociate in the presence of water, so it has to be shipped by rail or truck.

Biodiesel is a better fuel, containing nearly the same energy content per gallon as petroleum-based diesel. That said, my moral objection to growing crops for fuel and not food still stands.

Even using waste biomass to create it, ethanol is a loser as a wide-use fuel vehicle. Biodiesel produced from waste vegetable oil is a good thing (again, IMHO). If I had a diesel vehicle, I would be looking for a local restaurant or two to talk to about their waste oil.

I would add it is just as immoral to pay people not to grow a crop either, vis-a-vis the good ole CRP program. There are plenty of good alternatives to soils management that don't require leaving a field vacant for a decade or more.

Now come on your telling me that the idea of paying farmers not to grow crops judt so we can import the same thing at twice the price is bad, surely not. If any one is confused read with a heavy sarcastic tone.

Yes, CRP is a joke, just as ethanol is. The problem is politicians don't want to do anything to sound or look like they are Anti-Farmer...

The price gouging we are seeing at the pump is the same as we are beginning to see with other commodities... a lot of it can be attributed to the BS futures markets, wherein companies alter the prices to reflect the wealthy few who are manipulating the markets to line their pockets, and not because of basic supply and demand... this is why Exxon et al are making record profits.

I solidly suggest anyone who is interested or concerned about the current state of their food read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Micheal Pollan. Its a very well read book about how our food is grown and some of the political reasons for our current agricultural system. He does get a bit new agey toward the end when he talks about hunting for the first time, but overall the book is an excellent read.

Just rotate with the right sequence of crops. For example, if you grow something that takes nitrogen out of the soil for a few years, grow IIRC a legume like peanuts occasionally.

I've been stocking rice, dried beans, wheat and such ever since the end of a rough patch I went through in which my canned food stores were depleted. So now I've got a couple hundred pounds of each stored for an emergency.

What worries me is that all of this was purchased at either a big box store or supermarkets where I use discount customer cards. I don't think it would be hard for someone to do a search of the stores various databases and see that I've purchased a lot more than I could've consumed over the short period of time I've been buying these foods.

That reasoning is why I posted "I think it best not to try this website" when the thread came up about the website where you plug in what foods you have stored and the system tells you how many days you can survive within your home.

Those who through it, entered all kinds of figures into it and ended up with some very strange outputs. That increased my personal suspicions about the purpose of that website.

but, that's just me!!!

I can understand that, but a person can just go to the site and start plugging in numbers for fun that don't relate to what they actually have.

And while the people who may access a database showing what my food purchases are don't know that I still have the food for sure, they will know for sure that I made the purchases and they might come to my home and start asking questions for starters...

I'm paranoid too, I suppose. LOL

Just because we are paranoid don't mean they aint out to get us. Seriously though if you’re that paranoid about someone finding out what you are buying give a false address when you get a new card for a store. While it illegal to give a false name, it is not legal to give a false address unless it is for a fraudulent purpose, but just not wanting someone to know where you live or showing up at your door is not fraud.

[Wheat] "Yes, with "intensive" agriculture- lots of irrigation and fertilizers."

No, those figures were from Gene Logsdon's book Small-Scale Grain Raising which was written for small-property owners and home gardeners. The author advocates animal manures, green manures, etc. Wheat is a dryland crop, not requiring much irrigation. Winter wheat is sown in the fall (in milder areas), sprouts, makes a little show of green when the rains come, goes dormant, then sprouts multiple stems for each plant (called stooling) and starts growing again when the weather warms up a bit in spring, and is harvested in midsummer, often without ever being irrigated.

Spring wheats, planted in spring in colder areas, is planted in spring for a late summer harvest. This may take some irrigation, but not as much as many other edibles. And nowhere near as much as many ornamentals.

Sue

an article on the "Food shortage"

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/blather_spew/food_alarmism_u.php

kc2ixe,

Thanks for the link! That makes a lot of sense.

-Blast

Realistically, most dryland wheat farms produce about 25 bushels an acre on average. Irrigated wheat farms can produce upwards of 60 to 70 bushels of wheat per acre. I don't know anyone with yields higher than that. Southern Walla Walla County has some of the best soil conditions for wheat I've ever seen (a rich Loess soil and plenty of ground water for irrigation). When they grow wheat there, they get about 65 bushels and acre. I'd think that is the optimal yield for the amount of effort necessary. I am sure you could get more out of the ground, but the effort would be along the lines of diminishing returns for the effort expended.

The article only reinforces my earlier point.

It's not hard. Just remember to keep the lid on.

Jeanette Isabelle