Archive
Global Food Reserves Have Reached Their Lowest Level In Almost 40 Years
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For six of the last eleven years the world has consumed more food than it has produced. This year, drought in the United States and elsewhere has put even more pressure on global food supplies than usual.
As a result, global food reserves have reached their lowest level in almost 40 years.
Experts are warning that if next summer is similar to this summer that it could be enough to trigger a major global food crisis. At this point, the world is literally living from one year to the next. There is simply not much of a buffer left.
In the Western world, the first place where we are going to notice the impact of this crisis is in the price of food. It is being projected that overall food prices will rise between 5 and 20 percent by the end of this year. It is becoming increasingly clear that the world has reached a tipping point. We aren’t producing enough food for everyone anymore, and food reserves will continue to get lower and lower. Eventually they will be totally gone.”
Via Activist Post
Food Prices Rising: Reaching Near Emergency Levels, Riots Expected
“According to a group of researchers, their mathematical model using food prices can predict social unrest and riots. Given the drought and rampant speculation, this may bode ill for several regions in the world. Food prices have been rising for quite some time, and aren’t showing any sign of slowing.
People raise their voices and go to arms for reasons too complicated to address here altogether, but it would be folly to leave hunger out of the equation. The spark may be an anti-Islam film or an incident of police brutality, but Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts says that it’s high food prices that create “the range of conditions in which the tiniest spark can lead to riots.” “
Via Activist Post
Rising Food Prices Continue to Climb, with Prices Up 10% in July Alone
“Food prices are rising, and consumers are feeling it. Rising food prices aren’t only hitting America, they are happening around the world. Costs have gone up 10 percent between June and July alone, with corn, soybeans, and wheat reaching record prices. This outpaces the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s estimate of a 6 percent increase.’
Via Activist Post
Food Inflation, Food Shortages And Food Riots Are Coming
“A devastating global food crisis unlike anything we have ever seen in modern times is coming. Crippling drought and bizarre weather patterns have damaged food production all over the world this summer, and the UN and the World Bank have both issued ominous warnings about the food inflation that is coming.
To those of us in the Western world, a rise in the price of food can be a major inconvenience, but in the developing world it can mean the difference between life and death. Just remember what happened back in 2008. When food prices hit record highs it led to food riots in 28 different countries. Today, there are approximately 2 billion people that are malnourished around the globe. Even rumors of food shortages are enough to spark mass chaos in many areas of the planet. When people fear that they are not going to be able to feed their families they tend to get very desperate. That is why a recent CNN article declared that “2013 will be a year of serious global crisis”. “
Via Activist Post
Supermarkets Being Looted In Spain
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Just a few years ago many Spaniards would joke saying that thanks to the new immigration wave everyone in Spain could afford to have a “Sudaca” as a maid. Sudaca is a derogatory term similar to “wetbacks”, commonly used in Spain referring to South Americans. This is pretty sad given that these “sudacas” are children and grandchildren of those same Spaniards that left to SA because of the Spanish Civil war. Now, its obvious that they are suffering many of the miseries their “Sudaca“ brothers went through in the past. Spaniards eating out of garbage bins, many of them senior citizens, has become a common sight in Spain and in other European countries where they have emigrated to looking for work themselves.
The lesson for today my friends is, never to rejoice in the misery of others. You never know if one day you may suffer that same fate. Many of these images are carbon copies of what many Argentines had gone through and still suffer today.”
Via Alt Market
The Growing Threat Of Soybean-Inspired Social Unrest In China
“Two weeks ago we explained why the drought-inspired soaring price of Soybeans – specifically from the US – would notably influence global central-planners’ actions – and more specifically the Chinese (given its high impact on food price inflation). Food prices remain elevated and the PBoC is undertaking Reverse Repos – the exact opposite of an RRR-driven easing program so many expected. However, there is a further, deeper, and more troubling consequence than ‘simple’ inflationary arguments – that of social unrest. Confirming our insight, the LA Times points out,
Soybean oil is the most important edible oil in China with more than two-thirds of cooking oil consumed in China coming from soybeans – and most of those soybeans are supplied by the US (more than half of US exports are to China and the US is China’s number 1 supplier). According to one official this “makes [China] vulnerable to the drought” and bound to the fortunes of farmers in the American heartland. The Chinese devote more than 20% of their income to food (three times more than Americans – according to the USDA). “
Via Zero Hedge
Deja Food: Will Social Unrest Surge As Corn Prices Soar?
“With Corn hitting its highs again, we are reminded that global food production has been hitting constraints as rising populations and changing diets hit against flattening productivity, water and fertility constraints, and the likely early effects of climate change. As was described in the recent all-encompassing theory of global-collapse, there is general agreement that one of the contributing factors to the rolling revolutions beginning at the end of 2010 was increasing food prices eating into already strained incomes. It is unclear how much impact easing has had on food prices this time, weather has very much made its presence felt (as we noted here). From one omnipotent force (central bankers) to another (hand of god), the fear is that more broadly, food is likely to be a more persistent problem than oil supply. This is because we require almost continual replenishment of food to stay alive and avoid severe social and behavioral stress – food is the most inelastic part of consumption. This says nothing of the pernicious inflationary impact that will likely quell the kind of free-flowing printing so many hope to see from China et al.”
Via Zero Hedge
The Reality of Food Scarcity, Famine, and Massive Disruptions to Our Food Supply
“Since the end of the Great Depression the greater majority of the American people have given little thought to the idea that food is scarce. Unlike most other countries, even those who have no gainful employment are still able to acquire food in one way or another in America – be it through private or public assistance. We’ve been the richest country in the world for over a century, and with that comes the ability to acquire food before any other nations have a shot at the bidding process. The leftovers – like rotten meat and dairy products – are often then distributed to second and third world nations, essentially leaving them to fight over our scraps. Here in America, we toss out millions of pounds of uneaten food, often from ‘single portion’ plates capable of feeding entire families in poorer African and Asian countries.”
Via SHTF Plan
Why is George Soros selling gold and buying farmland?
“Food prices are skyrocketing all across the globe, and there’s no end in sight. The United Nations says food inflation is currently at 30% a year, and the fast-eroding value of the dollar is causing food prices to appear even higher (in contrast to a weakening currency). As the dollar drops in value due to runaway money printing at the Federal Reserve, the cost to import foods from other nations looks to double in just the next two years — and possibly every two years thereafter.
That’s probably why investors around the globe are flocking to farmland as the new growth industry. “Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar,” reports Bloomberg magazine (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…). “A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA.”"
Via Natural News
We can’t trust our own government
“While many individuals and groups have waged a constant and frustrating battle against the coming total seizure and control of food production as practiced by family farmers and ranchers historically, several questions have gone unanswered. The biggest of all of course is, why?
Common sense, combined with critical and analytical thinking, cannot produce a rational answer for the onslaught of legislation, expansion of government agencies known for their incompetence and waste, and the complicity of state governments. “
