Start Stocking Up On Food Now, It’s About To Get Expensive
on August 4, 2012 at 6:50 pmDid you hear? Half the country is in drought conditions and the corn/soy bean crop is seriously suffering for it. What? You mean it’s NOT on every news network every night? I wonder why that would be? Because it lends support for climate change? Because it would hurt the stocks of the corporations that own the networks? Pick your reason, it doesn’t really matter ’cause they ain’t reporting on it in any meaningful way. My guess? When the corn crop is harvested and it’s terrible, there will be huge headlines about how we’re all doomed. There’s always money to be made in “emergencies” even if we’ve known it’s coming for months. Fox will doubtless blame Obama for rising food costs.
From Addictinginfo:
1,584 counties have been declared disaster areas by the federal government as of two days ago, and the number is going up all the time. For contrast, there are only 3,033 counties in the whole of the United States. Thirty-two states are being affected, and two-thirds of corn and soybean crops, as well as livestock, are in these areas.
Already the prediction is that twelve percent of the corn and eight of the soybean will be completely lost, and that number rises as long as the dry weather continues.
Unfortunately, droughts tend to perpetuate themselves and there is little cause to suspect conditions will change anytime soon. I’ve started to slowly stock up on nonperishables like dry cereal, rice, canned goods, etc. Won’t hurt to pack the freezer with beef, chicken and pork before the price starts to rise next year (there’s a lag between corn prices spiking and meat costing more) although that requires one of those industrial freezers to store it all.
Don’t take this as Glenn Beckish fear mongering, but there’s a reason the media is seriously under-reporting this insane drought and it’s not because they have our best interest in mind. It’s not like the supermarkets are going to go bare but prices are going to go up and little extra spent now will save you a fair amount later.
I have trouble with how much food prices have already gone up… they don’t count the price of food in the cost of living… isn’t that strange?
Justin, don’t be too hasty in saying the store shelves won’t go bare. Like the run on the banks at the start of the depression and what happens with flash lights, batteries and portable generators when there is a major black out or with bottled water and toilet paper in a hurricane or other major storm event — those shelves could very well be emptied.
Could this be history repeating itself almost. First a monetary depression with people losing their jobs and homes and then a tremendous drought like the “Dust Bowl” ??? Where is FDR when we need him? Oh we do have Bachmann to tke McCarthy’s place and could Iran be our Pearl Harbor?
Worse yet is the amount of corn that is used to produce ethanol…
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/12/514943/the-corn-identity-the-us-will-make-ethanol-out-of-enough-corn-to-feed-412-million-people/