Crops, Consumers, and Cash

It must have been a hard fall for everyone. Posting has fallen off sharply on the other blogs on CPN, and I'm starting to feel a bit like Cassandra these days. Signs seem to point toward a major economic hiccup occurring sooner than later, and time to prepare is getting a little tight. Yet the activity on many boards, not just these, is declining. My hope is that people are too busy preparing to read blogs....

But if you aren't, take a look at the chart at the head of this article. That shows you the price increase in some basic foodstuffs along with things like gas and heating oil over the past year, and it's a bit of an eye opener. Consumer prices haven't risen too sharply here in Manitoba to reflect these increases as yet, but I believe that they will. Even if you aren't fully committed to the idea of food storage, perhaps you might want to lay in a few extra nibbles, just in case.

Getting food in our society is a delicate and fragile dance of producer, processor, transporter retailer and consumer. It doesn't take much for this dance to be interrupted, especially at the supply end by Mother Nature.

Here is an article that details 5 threats to different crops:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/5-dangers-to-global-crops-that-could-dramatically-reduce-the-world-food-supply

The author of the article seems a bit paranoid and the tone of the article is faintly hysterical, but the problems are real, and worth knowing about. Another article, somewhat less end of the world-ish, but perhaps more sobering:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/25/impending-global-food-crisis

Talking more about price volatility than hyperinflation, it nonetheless makes a scary case for food storage. In Britain, the cost of food has risen 22% in just three years. That should make you stop and think!

I urge everyone to think about their food situation. Make sure you've stored as much as you can. Just a few dollars dedicated to this every week will build you a respectable reserve in no time.

The other thing I urge you to do is think about gardening. Yes, I know it is winter in Manitoba, but start planning and practicing the art of producing your own food NOW. Almost any yard or apartment balcony can produce a startling amount of food with the right techniques.

It might not be a matter of life or death. It might just be a matter of enjoying cheap food while everyone else devotes more and more income to purchasing food. Or it might be a matter of enjoying fresh nutritious veg when everyone else is armwrestling over wilted carrots at the grocery store. I don't pretend to know where things are headed, foodwise. I DO know that without the ability to produce at least some of your own food and stores of what you cannot produce, you are a hostage to whatever fate throws your way.

Do something about that now.

Originally posted November 01, 2010 @ MPN

Revelation 6: verses 5-6

I’m not religious, but the imagery is appropriate...

If you read a lot of news, you’ll likely know that Russia is banning the export of wheat for the remainder of 2010. The Russians have lost at least 20% of their crop, and are ensuring that there is no homegrown shortage. As Gwynne Dyer wrote in a recent column about this: “If anybody starves, it won't be Russians.” At least, not yet.

I believe that we are likely at the maximum population that our agricultural capacity can carry. It’s likely that without heavy inputs of fertilizers, water, and pesticides that we are far exceeding what the planet can actually feed. Global warming or not, we’ve seen how vulnerable our food supply is to the weather.
Here in Manitoba, a bumper crop around Portage La Prairie has seen upwards of four inches of rain on it in places. If you get just the wrong breaks, that crop might rot in the fields. Add that to the smallest acreage of wheat seeded on the Prairies this spring since 1971, and you have the potential of another major exporter limiting its exports.

The ‘reserve’ of wheat around the world is now about 50 days, down from three times that not that long ago. It would not take too much more bad weather or failed harvests to shrink that number further. Indeed, it may shrink anyway as the world population continues to increase. So what is the bottom line for you?

Right now, likely nothing at all. Oh, you might wind up paying a bit more (or a lot more) for flour and products made with them. There might be food riots in faraway places like Mexico or Pakistan, but nothing like that here. Life will likely trundle along without much notice of the increasingly thinner margins that are developing between the plenty we still enjoy, and the famine that much of the rest of the world endures periodically.

So as you butter your toast, bite on that bagel, or chow down on that bowl of Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs, give some thought to the future. Maybe an extra bag of flour in the larder isn’t such a bad thing. It might just keep one horseman from your door.

Link to the Dyer article I quoted. A worthwhile read:

http://vueweekly.com/front/story/grain_wars/

Originally posted august 20, 2010 @MPN