I came across an article last June stating that food shortages would start appearing around Sep'06. The article further stated that some major chains were "remodeling", widening aisles/decreasing shelf space. I did observe that and bare shelves appearing that held sugar, flour, & some odds & ends of other products. I read another article in Dec'06 that stated the shortages would be more obvious by Feb'07. I am seeing this. I ordered groceries for my towboat last month, I can't get canned Crowder Peas. My grocer informed me that they disappeared towards the end of Nov'06.
I fully expect shortages in corn products (Tortillas have risen 400% in Mexico & South America), wheat, whey, barley, oats, sugar, & some other staples besides.
Has anybody else noticed empty shelf space in stores?

Interesting. One big reason may be a lot of cropland is being switched over to corn for ethanol. This is a Really Bad Idea.

-Blast

I'm skeptical of the usefulness of looking a little bit of empty shelf space as an indicator of food shortages. You're going to get a lot of false positives from lazy stockers.

The only thing I've noticed missing from the shelves has been six packs of eggs. But since they had plenty of 12, 18 and flats of eggs I'm not too willing to read a lot into it. Even when the pass to Cheyenne is hit or miss, the stores here seem to stay pretty well stocked.

Only times I've seen shortages here was late in the day on 9/11 and just last month during the ice storm here a bunch of items were cleaned out.

Other than that the local SuperCenter has more than enough supplies on hand... at least 24 hours worth of stuff.

If the terriorists hit us hard then you might need to worry about this a little more. But then again I don't know if they would ever be able to pull off a big enough attack to fully cripple our supply chains. When you factor in the fact that we live in a global community with food & stuff coming in from around the globe I don't know that we will ever be cutoff permanently.

There will always be local shortages for various reasons.

I've read about the increase in prices of corn (maize for our European brethren) and think it is due to the interest in ethanol production. The irony is that we can't produce enough corn in order to replace all of our foreign supplied oil (at least without depleting our food stocks).

On the overall question of food stocks, I think that you are refering to local shortages caused by specific factors. In Dallas the stores get cleaned out the moment a single snowflake hits the ground. If we keep several weeks of canned/dried foods in the pantry, we should be able to ride out any specific shortages.

I'm more concerned about the water supply. Even if I have filtration and purification equipment on hand, it won't be useful if water isn't around. The area lakes around Dallas were hit pretty hard by last summer's heat wave. All of the recent rain hasn't helped the lakes rise back to normal levels.

A news release Friday states that honey bees in several states have disappeared. I am not making this up. Coast to Coast AM carried the story last night. No dead bee bodies and this is not attributed to the mites that have been killing bees (I guess they leave some remains behind). 1 "bee" family on the east coast had 3000 hives, now they have 800 hives and no idea where their bees have gone to.
Bees pollinate 1/3rd of our food crops and wind does the rest.

The plague, or whatever it is, has happened since the last harvest. It can't be blaimed for anything right now.

A year from now, maybe.

I listened to an update on the "disappearing bees" story tonight, by Linda Moulton Howe. The bees are disappearing in 22 states and it is 60%+ of the hives affected, that are being wiped out (1 example given was 800 hives remained out of 1 company's 3000 hives). The same story is occurring in Spain and Italy (the 2 major apiary suppliers in Europe). Honey bees imported from Australia (because ours are disappearing) are also disappearing once they have been introduced into this country. The current hypothesis concerns new pesticides and insecticides that have been introduced into agriculture within the last few years. Because the bees leave the hive before they die, there are no bodies to autopsy and thus there isn't a possible "smoking gun" as yet, just the mystery.
Besides the fact that honey bees pollinate 1/3rd of our food producing crops, they also pollinate those plants that feed other animals and those non-food crops (cotton?) that we make use of.
I would like to know why the mainstream media spends so much air time on Anna Nicole and hasn't said a peep on this subject (no, I really am not that nieve).

New information reported by Linda Moulton Howe on C2C-AM last night, the northern bee keepers are now starting to open up their hives (they were last checked in Nov 2006) and they are finding 60% - 96% of their bees are gone. Other pollinating insects have also been determined to be MIA. She's reporting, based on interviews with Fed & Florida State Agriculture people stating that an emergency does exist and that food shortages may be apparent before the end of 2007.

She also reported that herbicides mixing with insecticides, rodenticides, and pesticides may be mixng together, after being applied, to form new chemicals that no one has a clue about or what their impact on the local ecology (includes humans) may be.

One insecticide in particular, based on Nicotine, has been identified by the French & Italian gov'ts to be, at least partly, responsible for the decimation of bee hives in their countries. They have banned the Nicotine based insecticide. She didn't state (or I missed it) whether their bee populations were rebounding after this insecticide was banned within their borders.

She also reported that the long term effects of Genetically Modified crops MAY have something to do with the insects disappearances. Again, the long term effects on humans have not been ascertained as yet either.

Information on last night's show can be seen at:
coasttocoastam.com