After reading an article on Time Magazine, discussed later in this article, it seemed that Time was sending a not so subtle message to the public, via innuendo, that required us to take a closer look at the situation in regards to the nation's food supply. On February 20, Bloomberg.com published an article that should have enjoyed wide media coverage, however was relegated to the alternative news as our MSM didn’t see fit to warn America of the possibility of a looming global famine - and have been negligent in informing us that the food on hand in the United States is at a historic low, without question an issue of national security and survival. We investigated this matter in-depth and an eventual probability of famine in the US is avoidable, at least in the short term, but without the public understanding the danger we face, nothing will be done to alleviate this danger to America:
Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year, Potash Says
By Christopher Donville
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) — Grain farmers will need to harvest record crops every year to meet increasing global food demand and avoid famine, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. Chief Executive Officer William Doyle said.
People and livestock are consuming more grain than ever, draining world inventories and increasing the likelihood of shortages, Doyle said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Global grain stockpiles fell to about 53 days of supply last year, the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1960, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“If you had any major upset where you didn’t have a crop in a major growing agricultural region this year, I believe you’d see famine,” Doyle, 57, said in New York. (Emphasis added)
Crop prices have soared as much as fourfold this decade because of increased demand for food in India and China, where hundreds of millions of people are moving up to the middle class and can afford to eat more meat from animals raised on grain- based feeds, Doyle said.
Soybean futures rose to a record $14.2875 a bushel yesterday on the Chicago Board of Trade, capping an 85 percent gain in the past 12 months. Wheat prices, which have more than doubled in the past year in Chicago, reached a record on Feb. 11, and corn climbed to a record on Feb. 6.
“There is a dietary shift occurring in China today, particularly amongst the young,” Hugh Grant, chief executive officer of Monsanto Co., the world’s biggest seed producer, said in a Feb. 6 interview. “As protein consumption increases, as they move from fish to chicken, chicken to pork, and pork to beef, the demand for commodities increases almost by an order of magnitude.”
'Enormous Pressure’“We keep going to the cupboard without replacing and so there is enormous pressure on agriculture to have a record crop every year,” Doyle said. “We need to have a record crop in 2008 just to stay even with this very low inventory situation.”
MUCH MORE, EXTREMELY INFORMATIVE ARTICLE
It is this author’s contention that this impending disaster, which I believe is essentially transparent once the facts are revealed, is being manufactured by political interests that place profit and power above the health and safety of the American public. Spring isn’t here yet, and this is an issue the public can change if enough people become aware of the facts that are widely available on the Internet, but our fascist MSM continues to ignore and/or downplay the issues that are of vital interest to the average American. It’s no secret to the informed public that a global famine is destined to occur due to the persistent drought conditions which are worsening as per the effects of global warming and climate change. Tough times lie ahead, but in today’s world, it’s unconscionable that the American public is being ripped-off so the wealthy can acquire more wealth while we suffer every time we visit the local store(s) when the US food crisis is currently avoidable.
The crisis we face is two-fold; the economic crisis, and the lopsided effect it will have on the lower middle-class, poor, and the countless millions of social security recipients and disabled is staggering! Some families have attempted to stretch their budgets by driving less, and for the first time in years, gas consumption actually decreased and strapped families are curbing their driving in an effort to compensate for the rise in costs of the essentials that feed and supply every American family. LINK On the other hand, the nation’s bulk of Social Security recipients, many who are already stretched to the max, face cutting “what” to make their budgets meet? For those who exist on less than a thousand dollars per month, who number in the millions, what essentials are they to cut out of their budgets to simply survive as we watch everything we buy rise in cost while wages remain stagnant and many are actually declining? This is a lower-class nightmare in the making, and for some, the reality of the nightmare has already come home to roost! 2007 was rough, but 2008 looks even worse and none of us know what nature has in store for us as it pertains to unusual weather patterns that have plagued the US for several years, affecting our agriculture, and are becoming even more unpredictable.
Food industry says prices headed up again in ‘08
By Rene Pastor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans who dug deeper into their pockets for groceries last year will face sticker shock again this year when shopping for food, experts said on Thursday.
“There’s going to be real food inflation in this country,” C. Larry Pope, president and chief executive of U.S. beef processor Smithfield Foods Inc., said at the U.S. Agriculture Department’s annual outlook conference.Prices of grain futures have surged lately. For example, wheat futures have more than doubled on the Chicago Board of Trade over the last 12 months. Pope said meat shoppers eventually will pay for the rally because farmers who raise livestock cannot absorb the sharp escalation in feed costs. MORE
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