What does it matter?

[Lumi]

The petty arguments that go on in here now seem to me, just a waste of time.

The fractured factions in here will never come to an agreement.

We live in a divided society that our handlers want us to be more divided, while this is going on and we argue about Obama being a citizen, Michelle telling us to eat more veggies while she jams a a double double down her neck, are things we cannot affect.

There are things that are far more important, at least to myself that I am concerned with. I could even say worried about. And for these concerns, I will take the attacks from the usual suspects, those who cannot read and understand the facts.

Food Crisis 2011? 14 Disturbing Facts That Make You Wonder If The Coming Global Food Shortage Has Already Begun


Will 2011 be the year that we point to as the beginning of the great global food crisis? Food prices are soaring, supplies are very tight and already we have seen some very intense food protests flare up around the globe this year. When people don't have enough to eat, they tend to become very desperate, and unfortunately it looks like the global food situation is not going to improve much any time soon. Right now the world is really struggling to feed itself, and with each passing day there are even more mouths to feed. It is being projected that the population of the world will reach 9 billion people by the year 2050. There are already way too many people starving to death around the globe, and unfortunately starvation is only going to become more rampant as food supplies get even tighter. Some of the key food producing provinces in China are facing their worst drought in 200 years. Flooding has absolutely devastated agricultural production in Australia and Brazil this winter. Russia is still trying to recover from the horrific drought of last summer. Global weather patterns have gone haywire over the past 12 months, and this is putting immense pressure on a global food system that was already on the verge of a major breakdown.

Food stockpiles all over the world are disturbingly low at this point. If a major global famine broke out not even the United States would be able to last for long. The U.S. government is supposed to be keeping a lot of food stockpiled in the event of an emergency, but that is just not happening.

Right now a desperate scramble for food is beginning. Quite a few nations that used to be huge food exporters are now importing a lot of their food. Prices for staples such as wheat, corn and soybeans are absolutely soaring, and the UN is projecting that they will continue to rise rapidly throughout 2011.

Unless something dramatically changes, the global food situation is only going to get tighter and tighter and tighter as this decade rolls along.

So who is going to decide who gets fed and who doesn't?
As food prices continue to rise, will we start to see more food riots erupt all over the world as starving populations demand answers from their governments?

What is going to happen if weather patterns get even worse or if we have a string of really bad natural disasters?

What is going to happen if we experience a really bad global economic collapse?

Right now these are just the "birth pains", but if things get much worse we could be looking at a horrific food shortage that will rock the globe.
The following are 14 facts that make you wonder if the coming global food shortage has already begun....

#1 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. corn reserves will drop to a 15 year low by the end of 2011.

#2 The United Nations says that the global price of food hit another new all-time high in the month of January.

#3 The price of corn has doubled in the past six months.

#4 The price of wheat has roughly doubled since the middle of 2010.

#5 According to Forbes, the price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.
#6 The United Nations is projecting that the global price of food will increase by another 30 percent by the end of 2011.

#7 Due to all of the unprecedented flooding, the winter wheat crop in Australia has been absolutely devastated.

#8 This winter Brazil was hit by some of the worst flooding that nation has ever seen. This has substantially hampered food production in that country.

#9 Russia, one of the largest wheat producers on the entire globe, is still feeling the effects of last summer's scorching temperatures. In fact, Russia is actually importing wheat this winter to sustain its cattle herds.

#10 China is busy preparing for a "severe, long-lasting drought" that is projected to have a huge impact on several provinces. In fact, Chinese state media says that the eastern province of Shandong is dealing with the worst drought it has seen in 200 years. The provinces being affected by this severe drought grow approximately two-thirds of the wheat in China. The following is a very short video news report about the horrible drought that China is going through right now....


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bBGsxn_lvX4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


#11 It appears that Chinese imports of corn will be about 9 times larger than the U.S. Department of Agriculture originally projected them to be for 2011.

#12 Approximately 1 billion people around the world go to bed hungry each night.

#13 Somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds, and 75 percent of those are children under the age of five.

#14 As food has become increasingly scarce around the world, many companies have started using whatever kinds of "fillers" that they can think of in their "food" products. For example, Raw Story is reporting that some companies in China have actually been mass producing "fake rice" that is made partly of plastic.

According to one Chinese Restaurant Association official, eating three bowls of this fake rice is the equivalent of consuming an entire plastic bag.

Let us pray that this is not the beginning of a major global food crisis, because hunger and starvation are horrible things.

Starving to death is a fate that nobody should ever have to go through.

So, let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare as if we will be facing the worst.
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[Lumi]

Lengthy Distribution Process Worsens Food Outbreaks

Lengthy Distribution Process Worsens Food Outbreaks

Lengthy Distribution Process Worsens Food Outbreaks

Hopefully most of you can get over yourselves due to the fact this a Fox News Story

WASHINGTON ? The recent listeria outbreak from cantaloupe shows that large-scale occurrences of serious [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif]illnesses[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] linked to tainted food have grown more common over the years, partly because much of what we eat takes a long and winding road from farm to fork.

A cantaloupe grown on a Colorado field may make four or five stops before it reaches the dinner table. There's the packing house where it is cleaned and packaged, then the distributor who contracts with retailers to sell the melons in large quantities. A processor may cut or bag the fruit. The retail distribution center is where the melons are sent out to various stores. Finally it's stacked on display at the grocery store.


Imported fruits and vegetables, which make up almost two-thirds of the produce consumed in the United States, have an even longer journey.

"Increasingly with agribusiness you have limited producers of any given food, so a breakdown in a facility or plant or in a large field crop operation exposes thousands because of the way the food is distributed," says Dr. Brian Currie, an infectious disease specialist at Montefiore [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif]Medical [/FONT][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif]Center[/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] in New York.

The Colorado cantaloupe crop that's linked to 84 illnesses and as many as 17 deaths in 19 states has traveled so far and wide that producer Jensen Farms doesn't even know exactly where their fruit ended up.

The company said last week that it can't provide a list of retailers that sold the tainted fruit because the melons were sold and resold. It named the 28 states where the fruit was shipped, but people in other states have reported getting sick.

A Kansas-based processor that purchased cantaloupes from Jensen, Carol's Cuts, didn't provide a notice to its customers that it had sold the [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif]farm's[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] cantaloupes until nine days after the original recall.

"The food chain is very complex," says Sherri McGarry, a senior adviser in the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Foods. "There are many steps, and the more steps there are the harder it can be to link up each step to identify what the common source" of an outbreak is.

Fewer and larger farms and companies dominate food production in the country. That has driven some consumers to seek out farmers markets and locally grown produce.

Supermarkets now highlight food grown nearby, while farmers markets have soared in popularity.

But many in the produce industry have come together to try and improve the ability to quickly trace food from field to plate.
This is good business. Large recalls, such as spinach in 2006, peanuts in 2009 and eggs in 2010, tend to depress sales for an entire product industry, even if only one company or grower was responsible for the outbreak.

Recent outbreaks of salmonella in peanuts and eggs, which are ingredients in thousands of foods, have been more widespread and sickened more people than have the tainted cantaloupe.

"There has been a laser focus on improving traceability so any recall can identify the affected product immediately and not have an effect on the rest of the entire category," says Ray Gilmer of United Fresh Produce Association, which represents the country's largest growers.

Gilmer says that larger food companies have no choice but to take food safety very seriously.

"The stakes for a large company to have a food safety incident are huge," he said. "It could destroy their company."

Listeria, a bacteria found in soil and water, often turns up in processed meats because it can contaminate a processing facility and stay there for a long period of time. It's also common in unpasteurized cheeses and unpasteurized milk, though less so produce such as cantaloupe.

The disease can cause fever, muscle aches, gastrointestinal symptoms and even death.

One in five people who have listeria can die.
A food safety law passed by Congress last year gives the FDA new power to improve tracing food through the system. [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif]Food [/FONT][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif]safety[/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] advocates say the law will help make the food network safer by focusing on making every step in the chain safer and making it easier to find the source of outbreaks.

For the first time, larger farms are required to submit plans detailing how they are keeping their produce safe.

Erik Olson, director of food and consumer [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif]safety [/FONT][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=arial, sans-serif]programs[/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] for the Pew Health Group, says it is critical that those improvements are made to prevent more, larger outbreaks as the system grows more complex.

"Clearly the food industry has just changed enormously in the last several decades," Olson said. "It would be virtually impossible to sit down and eat a meal and eat food that hasn't come from all over the world."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/...process-worsens-food-outbreaks/#ixzz1Zvf0Qbh0

 

[Lumi]

Climatologist Says Texas Drought Could Last Until 2020

Climatologist Says Texas Drought Could Last Until 2020

Climatologist Says Texas Drought Could Last Until 2020

AUSTIN (AP) - The state climatologist for Texas says the record drought of 2011 could be only the beginning of a dry spell that could last until 2020.

State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon tells the Austin American-Statesman says water planning is often based on standards set by the previous record drought of the 1950s, which lasted nearly 10 years. Nielsen-Gammon, who also is a Texas A&M professor of atmospheric sciences, says the present drought could be significantly longer-lasting than what has been planned for.

He says that, ?sooner or later, there will be a drought that?s worse? than the previous standard-setter.

Forecasters predict dry weather to last long-term beyond the next decade from the La Nina phenomenon returning in 2012 to cool the surface waters of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

 

[ssd]

lumi-
thanks for posting. Good article. People need to start looking to source good local food and to grow some of their own.

Raised bed kits or growing in large pots or bags of soil are easy ways to garden even in limited space.

New store that has opened near me sells decorative rain barrels - so that you can collect the rain from your downspouts to water plants around your yard and a neighbor recently had a water 'bladder' installed under his deck.
http://www.basicconcepts.com/products/products_bladders.asp

 

[Lumi]

The Food Crisis Of 2011

The Food Crisis Of 2011

The Food Crisis Of 2011

Every month, JPMorgan Chase dispatches a researcher to several supermarkets in Virginia. The task is to comparison shop for 31 items.

In July, the firm?s personal shopper came back with a stunning report: Wal-Mart had raised its prices 5.8% during the previous month. More significantly, its prices were approaching the levels of competing stores run by Kroger and Safeway. The ?low-price leader? still holds its title, but by a noticeably slimmer margin.

Within this tale lie several lessons you can put to work to make money. And it?s best to get started soon, because if you think your grocery bill is already high, you ain?t seen nothing yet. In fact, we could be just one supply shock away from a full-blown food crisis that would make the price spikes of 2008 look like a happy memory.

Fact is, the food crisis of 2008 never really went away.

True, food riots didn?t break out in poor countries during 2009 and warehouse stores like Costco didn?t ration 20-pound bags of rice?but supply remained tight.

Prices for basic foodstuffs like corn and wheat remain below their 2008 highs. But they?re a lot higher than they were before ?the food crisis of 2008? took hold. Here?s what?s happened to some key farm commodities so far in 2010?

?Corn: Up 63%
?Wheat: Up 84%
?Soybeans: Up 24%
?Sugar: Up 55%
What was a slow and steady increase much of the year has gone into overdrive since late summer. Blame it on two factors?

?Aug. 5: A failed wheat harvest prompted Russia to ban grain exports through the end of the year. Later in August, the ban was extended through the end of 2011. Drought has wrecked the harvest in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan ? home to a quarter of world production
?Oct. 8: For a second month running, the Agriculture Department cut its forecast for US corn production. The USDA predicts a 3.4% decline from last year. Damage done by Midwestern floods in June was made worse by hot, dry weather in August.
America?s been blessed with year after year of ?record harvests,? depending on how you measure it. So when crisis hits elsewhere in the world, the burden of keeping the world fed falls on America?s shoulders.

According to Soren Schroder, CEO of the food conglomerate Bunge North America, US grain production has filled critical gaps in world supply three times in the last five years, including this summer?

?In 2010, when drought hit Russian wheat
?In 2009, when drought hit Argentine soybeans
?In 2007?08, when drought hit Australian wheat
So what happens when those ?record harvests? no longer materialize?

In September, the US Department of Agriculture estimated that global grain ?carryover stocks? ? the amount in the world?s silos and stockpiles when the next harvest begins ? totaled 432 million tons.

That translates to 70 days of consumption. A month earlier, it was 71 days. The month before that, 72. At this rate, come next spring, we?ll be down to just 64 days ? the figure reached in 2007 that touched off the food crisis of 2008.

But what happens if the U.S. scenario is worse than a ?nonrecord? harvest? What if there?s a Russia-scale crop failure here at home?

?When we have the first serious crop failure, which will happen,? says farm commodity expert Don Coxe, ?we will then have a full-blown food crisis? ? one far worse than 2008.

Coxe has studied the sector for more than 35 years as a strategist for BMO Financial Group. He says it didn?t have to come to this. ?We?ve got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output.?

?We?ve got complacency,? he sums up. ?So for those reasons, I believe the next food crisis ? when it comes ? will be a bigger shock than $150 oil.?

A recent report from HSBC isn?t quite so alarming?unless you read between the lines. ?World agricultural markets,? it says, ?have become so finely balanced between supply and demand that local disruptions can have a major impact on the global prices of the affected commodities and then reverberate throughout the entire food chain.?

That was the story in 2008. It?s becoming the story again now. It may go away in a few weeks or a few months. But it won?t go away for good. It?ll keep coming back?for decades.

There?s nothing you or I can do to change it. So we might as well ?hedge? our rising food costs by investing in the very commodities whose prices are rising now?and will keep rising for years to come.

?While investor eyes are focused on the gold price as it touches new highs,? reads a report from Japan?s Nomura Securities, ?the acceleration in global food price is unrestrained. We continue to believe that soft commodities will outperform base and precious metals in the future.?

So how do you do it? As recently as 2006, the only way Main Street investors could play the trend was to buy commodity futures. It was complicated. It involved swimming in the same pool with the trading desks of the big commercial banks. And it usually involved buying on margin ? that is, borrowing money from the brokerage. If the market went against you, you?d lose even more than your initial investment.

Nowadays, an exchange-traded fund can do the heavy lifting for you, no margin required. The name of the fund is the PowerShares DB Agriculture ETF (DBA).

There are at least a half-dozen ETFs that aim to profit when grain prices rise. We like DBA the best because it?s easy to understand. It?s based on the performance of the Deutsche Bank Agriculture Index, which is composed of the following:

?Corn 12.5%
?Soybeans 12.5%
?Wheat 12.5%
?Sugar 12.5%
?Cocoa 11.1%
?Coffee 11.1%
?Cotton 2.8%
?Live Cattle 12.5%
?Feeder Cattle 4.2%
?Lean Hogs 8.3%
So you have a mix here of 50% America?s staple crops of corn, beans, wheat and sugar?25% beef and pork?and 25% cocoa, coffee and cotton. It might not be a balanced diet (especially the cotton), but it makes for a good balance of assets within your first foray into ?ag? investing.

The meat weighting in here looks especially attractive compared to some of DBA?s competitors, which are more geared to the grains. It takes about six months for higher grain prices to translate to higher cattle and hog prices.

You can capture that potential upside right now?and you?ll be glad you did when you sit down to a good steak dinner a few months down the line. After all, it?s going to cost you more.

The Food Shock of 2011 by Addison Wiggin originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning.

 

[ssd]

MIT

Billion Price Project

http://bpp.mit.edu/