It’s deja vu all over again. A chart of our stock market and 1929 are almost identical. We have Obama and liberal progressives in office, running the socialist, government control playbook just like FDR. Poverty is rampant, a 100 million on welfare, record numbers of people on food stamps, and 110 million people have quit looking for jobs and “left the workforce”. And like in the great depression, dust bowels are starting to form in areas used for agriculture.
Going to the grocery store is an exercise in shock control. The price of food is mind boggling. I don’t know how people can afford it. And Obamacare is doubling and tripling health insurance costs. Taxes keep going up, education expenses continue to rise exponentially, and people’s incomes have actually fallen, on average. The big squeeze continues. Good thing you can turn on the TV and find out everything is just fine, so “don’t worry, be happy”, as the talking heads across the nation say.
Article reprinted in it’s entirety with written permission of the author
Guest Post by Michael Snyder
Did you know that the U.S. state that produces the most vegetables is going through the worst drought it has ever experienced and that the size of the total U.S. cattle herd is now the smallest that it has been since 1951? Just the other day, a CBS News article boldly declared that “food prices soar as incomes stand still“, but the truth is that this is only just the beginning.
If the drought that has been devastating farmers and ranchers out west continues, we are going to see prices for meat, fruits and vegetables soar into the stratosphere. Already, the federal government has declared portions of 11 states to be “disaster areas”, and California farmers are going to leave half a million acres sitting idle this year because of the extremely dry conditions. Sadly, experts are telling us that things are probably going to get worse before they get better (if they ever do). As you will read about below, one expert recently told National Geographic that throughout history it has been quite common for that region of North America to experience severe droughts that last for decades. In fact, one drought actually lasted for about 200 years. So there is the possibility that the drought that has begun in the state of California may not end during your entire lifetime.
This drought has gotten so bad that it is starting to get national attention. Barack Obama visited the Fresno region on Friday, and he declared that “this is going to be a very challenging situation this year, and frankly, the trend lines are such where it’s going to be a challenging situation for some time to come.”
According to NBC News, businesses across the region are shutting down, large numbers of workers are leaving to search for other work, and things are already so bad that it “calls to mind the Dust Bowl of the 1930s”…
In the state’s Central Valley — where nearly 40 percent of all jobs are tied to agriculture production and related processing — the pain has already trickled down. Businesses across a wide swath of the region have shuttered, casting countless workers adrift in a downturn that calls to mind the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
If you will recall, there have been warnings that Dust Bowl conditions were going to return to the western half of the country for quite some time.
Now the mainstream media is finally starting to catch up.
And of course these extremely dry conditions are going to severely affect food prices. The following are 15 reasons why your food bill is going to start soaring…
#1 2013 was the driest year on record for the state of California, and 2014 has been exceptionally dry so far as well.
#2 According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 91.6 percent of the entire state of California is experiencing “severe to exceptional drought” even as you read this article.
#3 According to CNBC, it is being projected that California farmers are going to let half a million acres of farmland sit idle this year because of the crippling drought.
#4 Celeste Cantu, the general manager for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, says that this drought could have a “cataclysmic” impact on food prices…
Given that California is one of the largest agricultural regions in the world, the effects of any drought, never mind one that could last for centuries, are huge. About 80 percent of California’s freshwater supply is used for agriculture. The cost of fruits and vegetables could soar, says Cantu. “There will be cataclysmic impacts.”
#5 Mike Wade, the executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, recently explained which crops he believes will be hit the hardest…
Hardest hit would be such annual row crops as tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, cantaloupes, garlic, peppers and corn. Wade said consumers can also expect higher prices and reduced selection at grocery stores, particularly for products such as almonds, raisins, walnuts and olives.
#6 As I discussed in a previous article, the rest of the nation is extremely dependent on the fruits and vegetables grown in California. Just consider the following statistics regarding what percentage of our produce is grown in the state…
-99 percent of the artichokes
-44 percent of asparagus
-two-thirds of carrots
-half of bell peppers
-89 percent of cauliflower
-94 percent of broccoli
-95 percent of celery
-90 percent of the leaf lettuce
-83 percent of Romaine lettuce
-83 percent of fresh spinach
-a third of the fresh tomatoes
-86 percent of lemons
-90 percent of avocados
-84 percent of peaches
-88 percent of fresh strawberries
-97 percent of fresh plums
#7 Of course it isn’t just agriculture which will be affected by this drought. Just consider this chilling statement by Tim Quinn, the executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies…
“There are places in California that if we don’t do something about it, tens of thousands of people could turn on their water faucets and nothing would come out.”
#8 The Sierra Nevada snowpack is only about 15 percent of what it normally is. As the New York Times recently explained, this is going to be absolutely devastating for Californians when the warmer months arrive…
Experts offer dire warnings. The current drought has already eclipsed previous water crises, like the one in 1977, which a meteorologist friend, translating into language we understand as historians, likened to the “Great Depression” of droughts. Most Californians depend on the Sierra Nevada for their water supply, but the snowpack there was just 15 percent of normal in early February.
#9 The underground aquifers that so many California farmers depend upon are being drained at a staggering rate…
Pumping from aquifers is so intense that the ground in parts of the valley is sinking about a foot a year. Once aquifers compress, they can never fill with water again. It’s no surprise Tom Willey wakes every morning with a lump in his throat. When we ask which farmers will survive the summer, he responds quite simply: those who dig the deepest and pump the hardest.
#10 According to an expert interviewed by National Geographic, the current drought in the state of California could potentially last for 200 years or more as some mega-droughts in the region have done in the past…
California is experiencing its worst drought since record-keeping began in the mid 19th century, and scientists say this may be just the beginning. B. Lynn Ingram, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California at Berkeley, thinks that California needs to brace itself for a megadrought—one that could last for 200 years or more.
#11 Much of the western U.S. has been exceedingly dry for an extended period of time, and this is hurting huge numbers of farmers and ranchers all the way from Texas to the west coast…
The western United States has been in a drought that has been building for more than a decade, according to climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Ranchers in the West are selling off their livestock,” Patzert said. “Farmers all over the Southwest, from Texas to Oregon, are fallowing in their fields because of a lack of water. For farmers and ranchers, this is a painful drought.”
#12 The size of the U.S. cattle herd has been shrinking for seven years in a row, and it is now the smallest that it has been since 1951. But our population has more than doubled since then.
#13 Extremely unusual weather patterns are playing havoc with crops all over the planet right now. The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Lizzie Bennett…
Peru, Venezuela, and Bolivia have experienced rainfall heavy enough to flood fields and rot crops where they stand. Volcanic eruptions in Ecuador are also creating problems due to cattle ingesting ash with their feed leading to a slow and painful death.
Parts of Australia have been in drought for years affecting cattle and agricultural production.
Rice production in China has been affected by record low temperatures.
Large parts of the UK are underwater, and much of that water is sea water which is poisoning the soil. So wet is the UK that groundwater is so high it is actually coming out of the ground and adding to the water from rivers and the sea. With the official assessment being that groundwater flooding will continue until MAY, and that’s if it doesn’t rain again between now and then. The River Thames is 65 feet higher than normal in some areas, flooding town after town as it heads to the sea.
#14 As food prices rise, our incomes are staying about the same. The following is from a CBS News article entitled “Food prices soar as incomes stand still“…
While the government says prices are up 6.4 percent since 2011, chicken is up 18.4 percent, ground beef is up 16.8 percent and bacon has skyrocketed up 22.8 percent, making it a holiday when it’s on sale.
#15 As I have written about previously, median household income has fallen for five years in a row. So average Americans are going to have to make their food budgets stretch more than they ever have before as this drought drags on.
If the drought does continue to get worse, small agricultural towns all over California are going to die off.
For instance, consider what is already happening to the little town of Mendota…
The farms in and around Mendota are dying of thirst. The signs are everywhere. Orchards with trees lying on their sides, as if shot. Former farm fields given over to tumbleweeds. Land and cattle for sale, cheap.
Large numbers of agricultural workers continue to hang on, hoping that somehow there will be enough work for them. But as Evelyn Nieves recently observed, panic is starting to set in…
Off-season, by mid-February, idled workers are clearly anxious. Farmworkers and everyone else who waits out the winter for work (truckers, diesel providers, packing suppliers and the like) are nearing the end of the savings they squirrel away during the season. The season starts again in March, April at the latest, but no one knows who will get work when the season begins, or how much.
People are scared, panicked even.
I did not write this article so that you would panic.
Yes, incredibly hard times are coming. If you will recall, the 1930s were also a time when the United States experienced extraordinarily dry weather conditions and a tremendous amount of financial turmoil. We could very well be entering a similar time period.
Worrying about this drought is not going to change anything. Instead of worrying, we should all be doing what we can to store some things up while food is still relatively cheap. Our grandparents and our great-grandparents that lived during the days of the Great Depression knew the wisdom of having a well-stocked food pantry, and it would be wise to follow their examples.
Please share this article with as many people as you can. The United States has never faced anything like this during most of our lifetimes. We need to shake people out of their “normalcy bias” and get them to understand that big changes are coming.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/15-reasons-why-your-food-bill-is-going-to-start-soaring
Don’t have kids.
“#12 The size of the U.S. cattle herd has been shrinking for seven years in a row, and it is now the smallest that it has been since 1951. But our population has more than doubled since then.”
Yield per animal has skyrocketed since then, I don’t have the numbers with me right now, but you really can’t compare the animals of 1951 to what we have today. Not just genetically, but nutritionally.
Then why does a package of hamburger cost $8? Have you looked at meat and poultry prices lately?
I remember well the 1977 drought, which affected Oregon as well. Outside watering was banned and as far as the toilet was concerned, the instruction was :”if its yellow let it mellow, if its brown, flush it down.”
Jerry Brown was Governor Moonbeam back then. I guess dark clouds don’t follow him around…
I always go to SAM;s club .Still can get some good deals on food if you buy in bulk.I buy a lot of my preps there too.Give them a try
A lot of Snyder posts seem like a stopped clock or are just too early. But this one, if you lived in CA for decades, you can feel it. There is no rain coming off of the oceans… who knows maybe next year it could be el nino and not stop for 40 days and nights, but it feels like mr. rain packed it up and went south… permanently … or least for a lifetime or two.
Part of the pacific rainfall feeds the Colorado basin, so a major side effect could be the Hoover dam dipping below minimum head around 2015-2017.
Imagine no power, no water, endless fires, and 100 year overdue “big one” … I worry I may see that.
& people forget, these are “best case scenarios”!
Fukushima radiation’s coming in everyday also.
California should have built desalination plants years ago. Now even that solution may be too late due to the ongoing radiation from Fukushima.
Westcoaster – desalination plants chew up lots of energy. Unless California addresses its energy issues, it will have difficulty powering desalination plants, in my opinion. Desalination would probably be ok for household use, but to use it for agriculture – boy howdy will you need a lot of water.
“Around 75% of California’s water supply comes from north of Sacramento, while 80% of the water demand occurs in the southern two-thirds of the state.[7] The majority of California water is used by the agricultural industry. About 80-85% of all developed water in California is used for agricultural purposes. This water irrigates almost 29 million acres (120,000 km2), which grows 350 different crops.”
To irrigate by using desalination water over such a vast amont of land would be an enormous project. The start-up costs alone would be huge. And of course, no one will use that water when the drought breaks. If it does.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Desalination-plants-a-pricey-option-if-drought-5239096.php
Water from desalination plants cost double what it costs from other sources. And if California had built them years ago, as you suggest, the costs then were about triple for water – making the desal water hugely expensive.
Desalination is not a perfect answer.
Desalinization of just drinking water is way up there in cost.
Desalinization of sufficient water for agriculture is a pipe dream.
MA
The U.S. is turning to desert faster than any country in history, largely due to industrial agriculture. Why? The toxin-laded soil is no longer alive with uncountable volumes of bacteria and fungi and can no longer the carbon or water it once held. If the water simply washes away, there’s not enough to recharge ground supplies like the huge one under much of Midwest.
It can be turned around pretty rapidly, but not if people continue to choose toxic produce and CAFO animal items.
Allan Savory says it can be fixed by simply by changing the way we pasture cows (and other herbivores). He also says it is the fastest, cheapest way to reduce carbon levels. The video is worth your time:
We’ve been calving and lambing the past couple of weeks. There is something deeply comforting in watching you herds and flocks slowly expand, and as far as snowpack goes we’ve got one of the deepest we’ve had in years and more on the way today.
When we chose to farm we picked water as the number one requirement- in exchange for a steady supply of fresh water we understood that we would have to live in an area where harsh Winters were the norm. It took me years to understand the restorative powers of having 5 months of the year fallow. Everything needs a time of rest to regenerate. California has a climate where producers pump out agriculutural products 12 months a year, but the trade off is exhausted soils entirely dependent upon chemical fetilizers and a dearth of water in times of drought. No matter how much man tries to outsmart the Natural order, it always has its way.
The question for us is do we take advantage of the rising costs or do we continue to sell our pork, poultry, beef and lamb at the prices we have been selling? Of course since the majority of our customers are our neighbors and friends, community takes precedence over economy. I’d rather have a loyal customer base who trust and respect us and get by rather than a bloated bank account and a reputation as someone who profits from the bad fortune of others.
They’ll probably need to convert to drip irrigation like the Israelis do, but won’t convert until the aquifers are totally depleted. Thankfully we can get oranges from Brazil and South Africa. We already get organic produce from Mexico. My guess is that “organic” there means “extra DDT”.
If the aquifers are totally depleted where will we get the water for drip irrigation?
Muck: “Desalinization of sufficient water for agriculture is a pipe dream.”
It would make far more sense to identify the gene for salt tolerance that exists in certain plant species now (which I’m sure they’ve done) and then to breed that into agricultural crops, so that crops could be grown without needing to desalinate the water.
Of course, all the people who scream about “GMO” would go nuts and assume that such a modification would poison their food.
I appreciate the morals you expressed in your post Hardscrabble, too bad your ethics on doing the right thing aren’t shared by the masses. Unfortunately we seem to live a ‘hooray for me and the hell with the rest of you’ kind of world.
1. Why is NO study being done on the effects of the Fukishima radiation and our West Coast weather?
2. If most of the southwest was a desert for many thousands of years, and we humans happened to move in during an abnormal wet period, how many trillions are we willing to steal from our grandkids to keep kicking the can?
3. Why do we continue to support and subsidize MORE building and population growth in a DESERT?
4. Why are the Feds tearing out hydroelectric dams when we are told (over and over) we need green energy alternatives?
5. How can anyone still think we are going to go back to “normal,” anytime soon?
Fuck Californication full of Dims. The Minnie’s will rise up and save us all don’t worry. But first they must figure out how to get out of the basement, then taking care of things like the drought will be a breeze.
According to clammy this is the group that is going to rise up and do away with the boomers. It’s going to be a pretty tough row to hoe when a third of them depend upon a boomer for their next meal.
Why are so many young adults in America living with their parents? According to a stunning Gallup survey that was recently released, nearly three out of every ten adults in the United States under the age of 35 are still living at home with Mom and Dad. This closely lines up with a Pew Research Center analysis of Census data that looked at a younger sample of Americans which found that 36 percent of Americans 18 to 31 years old were still living with their parents
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/29-percent-of-all-u-s-adults-under-the-age-of-35-are-living-with-their-parents
last ime I mentioned plants, some assholes assumed I was a Mexican gardener. actually, I learned xeriscape techniques in neal weisenberger’s class and the plants I mentioned are drought tolerant plants. I covered my backyard with pavers and removed over half the lawn in the front yard. I don’t care that it doesn’t look like a traditional lawn, it saves water. a guy offered to fix my sprinkler system and I said n because I would rather water with my water hose, at least I know I won’t be watering the front yard longer than 10-15 minutes.
sensetti says:
“Fuck Californication full of Dims.”
fuck you Sensetti, just fuck you. california is full of all kinds of people. do you ever run out of ignorant things to say?
Chin fuck you. I don’t give a damn about Blue State and or what your dumbass thinks. How about that?
Muck says what I said, and gets tons of thumbs up and a nice yellow tinted post. Me? I provide facts, figures, logic to support my case, and get diddly squat. My talent and vast intellect are often wasted on you shit throwing monkeys.
Do I ever say anything bad about Arkansas? Ever?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ybj2BBnbS4&feature=player_detailpage
Chen – you really need to grow a pair, and stop being a whiny ass. Plus you look stupid defending California. No one in their right mind does that.
California is full of “Dims” as Sensetti calls them. California is overrun by the bastards, yet you go all “fuck you Sensetti” for him pointing it out. That is plain idiotic.
You may not be one of them, but you live in a state full of them. Hell, you cannot take a piss in LA or SF without splattering one of them. California is the land where the fucking dimwitted go to be with their own.
The only non-dimwitted in California are the ones feeding off the dimwitted.
Chen – he did not mean you – at least at first. But if you are so deluded that you do not see how full of dimwits California is, maybe he did mean you.
llpoh says:
“Muck says what I said, and gets tons of thumbs up and a nice yellow tinted post. Me? I provide facts, figures, logic to support my case, and get diddly squat. My talent and vast intellect are often wasted on you shit throwing monkeys.”
You used too many word Llpoh, big words too. Makes it hard for folks who have to mouth the words. Why don’t you dumb it down a bit for the knuckle draggers?
El Coyote can deal with that, but Chen in control now and Sensetti pissed him off previously. California is the 8th largest economy, half the USA is living off Cali’s revenue sharing monies. You niggers ought to be kissing Cali’s feet.
For fuck sake, will you stick to one name around here. Hell, I have grown quite fond of El Coyote, but I damn forgot he is also chen. And I almost went all feral as a result, forgetting who the chen was underneath. But I was just trying to poke a little and see what happened. That chen fella has been posting some ok stuff.
But if chen wants to prod sensetti by yapping about hillbillies and such, I suspect he will get a rise out of old sensetti. He is a bit tetchy that way. Good to remember these things. Never know when it will come in handy.
Wonder how Calif will do if it never rains again. The mexicalis will be right in their native element, but whitey will be in for a long, hard time of it.
To put it in a nicer way, Your comment is insensitive, Sensetti, the state is experiencing a severe drought which will affect not only the farmers who are without water now but the rest of the country as crops are not available. It is a very cavalier attitude based on your dislike of California politics.
I am reminded of a drunk on the bus, he was coming home from a bender across the border. hung-over and feeling a bit disgusted with himself he said, ‘Juarez, give me a dime and it’s yours’. A couple of young ladies who had relatives there replied, ‘It isn’t yours to sell’.
Hope I didn’t offend you, Sensetti. I figured you had thicker skin.
Chen you found the only Gay Guy in the State and posted his rant , absolutely perfect, everything he said is true. I don’t apologize for hating Blue States that hand us shit like Obama and Obamacare. Oh yea, the gay guy forgot to mention the world headquaters for the KKK is in Harrison, biggest ding on the State, I can’t believe he missed that.
I have donated enough money to the Republican Party here in this State to get hand written invitations and personal phone calls to dinner parties, I have politely turned them all down. I promised Pryor I was going all in if he voted for Obamacare,he did, and I am keeping my word to him, so I’am putting my money where my mouth is. This shits personal to me and I am not sitting back on my hands anymore, letting the Dims come after everything I have worked for. Fuck them and their blue States.
I would not trade my 1000 acre backyard for any part of California, I have all the water I need. See those hay fields on the far side of the river, they go on forever, flood plain, no houses for miles.
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Hillbillies are OK by me.
My favorite memory of Arkansas is a certain gas station by the highway, we broke down on the way to Chanute AFB and I hiked back 3 miles to a gas station I had last seen. The guy looked to me like Clint Easwood, he towed us back to his place where a black guy was working on the ground behind the station. He soon got us going again. Then on the way back to Texas we lost acceleration, I remembered the gas station and we managed to limp over there, Clint told me someone put water in the gas. Nice people in Arkansas.
‘Twas I above
My memories of Arkansas are not fond. I was quite happy to see the Leaving Arkansas sign in the glow of my taillights on my way to Nashville. Not being a native Hog, I was not treated well in Hogland. But I am sure it is fine if you are a native.
Q: What do a divorce in Arkansas, a tornado in Kansas, and a hurricane in Florida have in common? A: Somebody’s fixin’ to lose them a trailer.
Q: What do you get when you have 32 Arkansasians in the same room? A: A full set of teeth.
Q: What’s the most popular pick up line in Arkansas? A: Nice tooth!
Q: What’s the best thing to ever come out of Arkansas? A: I-40.
Q: What does the average Arkansas State University student get on his SAT? A: Drool.
Q: How do you casterate an Arkansas Razorback fan? A: Kick his sister in the mouth
Chen in 1986-87 I lived in California,I lived in El Cajon first, then I moved to Bakersfield and then I moved to Cameron Park just west of Placerville. That’s some beautiful country up around Placerville. Spent the whole summer of 87 on lake Tahoe. Ex wife was selling insurance at least that’s what she told me she was selling. I was kicked back smokin Humboldt County’s finest drinking some fine hooch and cruising the Lake. Had a blast, only good thing that bitch ever did for me three months on Tahoe, I paid for it many times over.
sensetti says:
“only good thing that bitch ever did for me three months on Tahoe, ”
besides leaving your sorry ass. been there, bro.