We’re being told that Bidenomics is working and that inflation is under control.
Yet, when we see articles about shoppers in America paying $7 for an apple, it’s hard to make peace with the narrative the current administration is trying to convince its populace of.
That was the case last week when a Boston-based influencer took to Tik Tok to claim that she paid $7 for an apple – and only an apple – at a Whole Foods, according to a report by the NY Post.
From Brandon Smith
I don’t think I can overstate the danger that the U.S. economy is in right now as we enter 2022. While most people are caught up in the ongoing drama of Covid-19, a real threat looms over the nation in the form of a stagflationary tidal wave. The mainstream media is attempting to place the blame on “supply chain disruptions,” but this is a misrepresentation of the issue.
The two factors are indeed intertwined, but the reality is that inflation is the cause of supply chain disruptions, not the result of supply chain disruptions. If we look at the underlying stats for price rises in essential products, we can get a clearer picture.
Before I get into my argument, I really want to stress that this is a truly dangerous time and I suggest that people prepare accordingly. In just the past few months I have seen personal expenses rise at least 20% overall, and I’m sure it’s the same or worse for most of you. Safe-haven investments with intrinsic value like physical precious metals are a good choice for protecting whatever buying power your dollars have left…
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is officially at the highest levels in 40 years. CPI measurements often diminish the scale of the problem because they do not include things like food, energy and housing which are core expenses for the public. CPI calculations have also been “adjusted” over the past few decades by the government to express a more positive view on inflation. If we look at the inflation numbers at Shadowstats, calculated according to the same methods they used in the 1980’s, we see a dramatic increase in CPI which paints a more dire (but more accurate) picture.
Continue reading “The Fed Just Guaranteed a Stagflation Crisis in 2022 – Here’s How”
Yesterday we explained why with prices already soaring, global inflation was about to go into overdrive as the leading food price indicator that is the Bloomberg Agri spot index hit the highest level in six years.
Wholesale American beef prices jumped 6% to a record high of $330.82 per 100 pounds, a 62% increase from the lows in February, according to Bloomberg, citing new USDA data.
The surge in beef prices comes at a time when the nation’s food supply chain network has been severely damaged by meatpacking plants going offline due to virus-related shutdowns and worker shortage. Bloomberg highlights the latest plant closures in the map below:
Continue reading “Beef Prices Soar To Record High As Meatpacking Plants Shutter”
From Birch Gold Group
The monetary “moon shot” taken by the Federal Reserve two weeks ago – in which they committed to adding an historic amount of liquidity to the markets – appears to have set the stage for some potentially nasty price inflation in the coming weeks and years.
In the near term, it appears some food prices are rising dramatically. Robert Wenzel explains why he thinks the first signs are happening:
The Federal Reserve is pumping massive amounts of new money into the economy and, at the same time, the production of goods and services has declined. Less supply and more monetary demand is a prescription for higher prices.
The Fed “moon shot”, plus the economic shutdown, sure seem like a one-two punch that could send prices soaring.
Continue reading “Soaring Food Prices May Signal U.S. Return to “Inflation Nation””
The ‘patient’ Fed has been lamenting the “lack of inflation” for far too long. It is about to get its wish.
American food merchants are struggling to import fruits and vegetables from Mexico as wait times at port of entries along the Mexico–US border have surged because of a shift in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel away from the port of entries to remote regions of the border to fight illegal crossings. As a result, shipments of food have dramatically declined in recent weeks, and the result is an imminent spike in imported food prices in the coming months that could put a sizeable dent in consumer wallets.
Continue reading “Americans Brace For Shock Surge In Everyday Food Prices”
It’s that time of year again. It’s open enrollment for health plans at my employer. They are biggest employer in Philly and have the most leverage possible with the insurance companies. They have such good leverage that my premiums are going up “only” 9.8% this year for a basic HMO plan. Based on what I hear from others, I should be thankful for just a 9.8% increase.
This isn’t a new development. Since I’ve been tracking all my expenditures using Quicken since 1991, I know exactly what my annual health insurance costs have been every year. Obamacare was passed in 2009 and began to be implemented in 2010. Obama declared that families could expect $2,500 of savings per year. I know for a fact my annual medical expenses were $2,000 higher in 2015 than they were in 2010.
Once upon a time, much of the state of California was a barren desert. And now, thanks to the worst drought in modern American history, much of the state is turning back into one. Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century that the state of California had seen in 1000 years. But now weather patterns are reverting back to historical norms, and California is rapidly running out of water. It is being reported that the state only has approximately a one year supply of water left in the reservoirs, and when the water is all gone there are no contingency plans. Back in early 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency for the entire state, but since that time water usage has only dropped by 9 percent. That is not nearly enough. The state of California has been losing more than 12 million acre-feet of total water a year since 2011, and we are quickly heading toward an extremely painful water crisis unlike anything that any of us have ever seen before.
But don’t take my word for it. According to the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti “is the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine”. What he has to say about the horrific drought in California is extremely sobering…
As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows. We’re not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we’re losing the creek too.
Data from NASA satellites show that the total amount of water stored in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins — that is, all of the snow, river and reservoir water, water in soils and groundwater combined — was 34 million acre-feet below normal in 2014. That loss is nearly 1.5 times the capacity of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir.
Statewide, we’ve been dropping more than 12 million acre-feet of total water yearly since 2011. Roughly two-thirds of these losses are attributable to groundwater pumping for agricultural irrigation in the Central Valley. Farmers have little choice but to pump more groundwater during droughts, especially when their surface water allocations have been slashed 80% to 100%. But these pumping rates are excessive and unsustainable. Wells are running dry. In some areas of the Central Valley, the land is sinking by one foot or more per year.
Are you starting to understand why so many experts are so alarmed?
Continue reading “California Is Turning Back Into A Desert And There Are No Contingency Plans”
Grandma Yellen, Federal Reserve Presidents, Wall Street bankers, CNBC talking heads and Ivy League economists are terribly worried about falling prices. Are you?
New Yorkers are bringing home the bacon — but can’t afford the beef.
The prices of supermarket staples such as meat, milk and butter are skyrocketing.
US Labor Department data show the bill for butter surged 23.7 percent over the last 12 months. Meat rose 13 percent in the last year, with beef jumping 17.8 percent — the biggest boost since January 2004.
Meanwhile, fresh fruits other than apples, bananas and oranges increased 9.5 percent and whole milk rose 8.7 percent.
“Our paychecks stay the same, but the food prices keep going up,” fumed Jody O’Toole as she shopped at the Associated Supermarket at Eighth Avenue and 14th Street. “You still gotta feed your family, but meat and milk are too much.”
Colleen Vincent, who lives with her mother in Brooklyn, said she’s avoiding meat and sticking to canned goods and cabbage, which she turned into three meals last week.
“I don’t do big grocery shopping trips anymore,” said Vincent, 37. “I have to buy something that gives me more bang for my buck.
“We used to buy beef — now it’s a special treat,” she added. “There are other things I want out of life. I don’t want to spend everything on food.”
Steve Gould, 68, was picking up seltzer water, bananas and yogurt and said he refuses to buy anything unless it’s on sale.
“I want people to stick their heads out the windows like they did in the movie ‘Network,’ and say, ‘I’m mad as hell and not going it take it anymore,’ ” Gould said.
At Associated, a gallon of whole milk was going for $3.99, an eight-ounce package of Breakstone butter was $3.39 and ground beef was $4.19 a pound.
In Chelsea, the Gristedes on 26th Street and Eighth Avenue sold milk for $4.99 a gallon, eight ounces of Breakstone butter went for $3.49 and ground beef was $8.49 a pound.
In Part One, I asked questions your keepers don’t want to answer truthfully, while providing the contextual setting for how our over-populated world is progressing relentlessly towards a future of war and totalitarianism.
“Where the republican or limited monarchical tradition is weak, the best of constitutions will not prevent ambitious politicians from succumbing with glee and gusto to the temptations of power. And in any country where numbers have begun to press heavily upon available resources, these temptations cannot fail to arise. Over-population leads to economic insecurity and social unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more control by central governments and an increase of their power. In the absence of a constitutional tradition, this increased power will probably be exercised in a dictatorial fashion.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958
Huxley wrote his dystopian masterpiece in 1931 before the rise of Stalin, Hitler and Mao and their murderous totalitarian empires, sustained by torture, mass murder, surveillance, and fear. Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948, after living through the nightmare of World War II and witnessing the malevolent systematic terrorism inflicted upon innocent populations by psychopathic tyrants like Hitler and Stalin. World War II killed 65 million people. Stalin’s purges killed 20 million Russians, and Mao murdered 45 million of his own people. It appeared that Orwell’s gruesome vision of a future of brutality, surveillance, and fear would come true.
Instead, Huxley’s vision gained ground in the post war world of cheap oil, mass production, consumerism, and TV advertising. It was found that government through terror works on the whole less well than government through the non-violent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women and children. Propaganda, amusements, materialism, easily accessible debt, and relentless media messaging convinced the masses to love their enslavement and never dream of revolution. It worked as long as energy and debt remained cheap and plentiful.
The 4.4 billion increase (157%) in the world’s population since Huxley’s warning in 1958 is attributable to vast supplies of cheap easily accessible oil, natural gas and coal, which have allowed technological and agricultural advancements that have vastly expanded food production, water purification, global transportation, and medical advancements. With the peak in traditional worldwide oil production reached around 2005, and modest subsequent production increases obtained only by mining tar sands, fracking shale and drilling in deep water at much higher production costs, the era of cheap plentiful energy has come to an end.
Propaganda and storylines about vast reserves and energy independence fail to acknowledge the concept of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI). Once it requires investing more than one barrel of oil in energy to extract one barrel of oil, the game is over. We are approaching the limits of growth because our remaining energy resources will require much more capital investment and higher prices for companies to make that investment. Oil prices were $25 per barrel when George Bush and the neo-cons launched their Iraq Freedom campaign in 2003. Eleven years later, with U.S. oil production at 44 year highs and consumption at 2000 levels, a barrel of oil is over $100 per barrel. The combination of increased demand from developing countries, vastly higher production costs, and global unrest in the areas of the world storing “our” oil under their sand will put a floor on prices, with spikes upward as resource wars flare up around the globe.
It is not a coincidence that the world economic system collapsed in 2008 after oil prices topped $140 per barrel. World food prices also spiked to all-time highs in 2008. The surge in food prices in 2011 to new highs was the impetus for the Arab Spring and social unrest across the Middle East and Africa. The FAO World Food Index spiked to levels only exceeded in 2011 earlier this year. Oil prices have surged as high as $106 and have averaged over $100 in 2014. Do you think it is just a coincidence that social unrest across the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe has surged in the last few months? Rising prices and the increasing scarcity of food, water and energy resources push the desperately poor towards revolution.
Societal strife, economic decline, poverty, lawlessness, and resource deprivation in third world countries result in dependency upon a central authority to sustain the masses. In the poorest countries without a long history of democracy, the people turn to a strong leader to save them. Before long too much power is accumulated in too few hands and totalitarian regimes are born. The world is awash in the blood spilled by dictators (North Korea, Egypt, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Iran, Tunisia, Syria, Sudan) and presidents in name only (China, Vietnam, Nigeria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Russia, Argentina).
Dreadfully poor people with no hope for a better future turn to radical religion, extremist ideas, and psychotic leaders. A full belly trumps freedoms and liberties. It is not surprising that despots proliferate in the poorest countries with the highest population growth rates. The so called developed world in the U.S. and Europe had been able to sidestep and even take advantage of these developing countries until the 2008 financial collapse. The oligarchs have treated the third world as slave plantations to be reaped, plundered and pillaged. Their banker solution to a crisis caused by the fraudulent issuance of debt products has been to redouble their looting and pillaging campaign through the issuance of even more debt in order to further enrich themselves at the expense of the many.
Huxley saw it beginning to happen even during the late 1950’s:
“Meanwhile impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958
I think Huxley underestimated the lengths to which a minority of criminal wealthy bankers, their crony capitalist corporate co-conspirators, and feckless bought off politicians would go in their sociopathic manipulation of the masses to gorge themselves upon the world’s resources and wealth. In 1958 the manipulators only had TV in its infancy and independent newspapers published by journalists who attempted to report the truth. They’ve come a long way baby.
The Deep State, Silent Government, Oligarchs, TPTB, or whatever term you want to employ to our Brave New World Controllers have mastered the art of propaganda, manipulation, distraction, and social engineering to such an extent the majority of Americans have come to love their techno-narcissistic, debt saturated, welfare/warfare, surveillance state. When a minority of evil minded men gain control of a nation’s currency, own and control the few remaining propaganda news outlets, run the mega-corporations selling toxic poison processed food and iGadgets to the masses on debt issued by Wall Street banks, pay-off the politicians writing legislation and tax codes, and brainwash the youth through government controlled education, your Brave New World nightmare has arrived.
Huxley believed that over-population was not an immediate threat to the personal freedoms of Americans and Europeans due to their long history under democratic constitutions. Of course our national debt of $276 billion in 1958 was only 57% of our annual GDP of $482 billion. The population of 175 million could easily be sustained, with ample supplies of energy, food and jobs. The standard of living for families rose consistently and an economy based upon savings, capital investment, and producing things flowed wealth across all classes – raising all boats. Banks accumulated deposits from citizens and leant money to small businesses. There were no stock options, derivatives, stock buybacks, or trading profits. People borrowed sparingly and saved for the things they wanted.
Huxley predicted trouble by the beginning of the twenty first century if the population of the U.S. continued to outpace the available resources to support that population. He was right again. The party ended in 2000.The National Debt has soared to $17.6 trillion, or 104% of GDP in 2014. Why did the debt go up by a factor of 64 while GDP only advanced by a factor of 35? In 1958, prior to the blossoming of the welfare/warfare state, there were little to no unfunded liabilities. Today the total exceeds $200 trillion. A country adding debt at this astronomical rate is a country consuming far more than it is producing. Depletion of resources, overconsumption, and economic decline lead to debt expansion and centralized government control. When 20% of all households depend upon food stamps to survive, your country has too many mouths to feed and a failing economic system designed to serve the oligarchs and impoverish the peasants.
Consumer debt outstanding in 1958 totaled $48 billion, all non-revolving debt mainly for auto purchases. The credit card did not exist. Consumer debt outstanding today totals $3.2 trillion. Has this 6,667% increase in consumer debt benefitted the average person or Jamie Dimon and his ilk? Is it a rational choice of consumers in a free capitalist market or is it a result of coordinated actions by the banking cabal and their captured government benefactors to enslave the masses in debt while keeping them dumbed down and distracted by electronic gadgets produced in slave labor camps overseas under the guise of globalization? Huxley didn’t anticipate Federal Reserve bankers and cowardly captured politicians purposefully inflating away 88% of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power as they expanded the welfare/warfare state through monetary manipulation, abandonment of gold backed currency and unfettered debt expansion. The result is real wages haven’t advanced in the last 40 years, while corporate profits reach record heights and a small cadre of oligarchs reap the rewards of debt enslavement of the many.
The Ponzi scheme system created by the invisible “leaders” of the supposedly free developed world required never ending growth to support the never ending issuance of debt in order to keep the fleecing of the masses operation running smoothly. This is where increasing population and resource depletion have thrown a monkey wrench into their printing press operation. The autocrats harvested energy and minerals resources from third world countries, while utilizing the catch phrase of globalization, as a cover for their wage arbitrage mechanism to continue their worldwide pillaging scheme. The Ivy League educated moguls are extremely smart when it comes to figuring out new and creative ways to screw the common folk, but their unparalleled hubris and arrogant disregard for humanity blind them to the ultimate consequences of their malevolent machinations. There will be blood and they will not escape unscathed. War is coming, but not the war they anticipate.
The definition of totalitarianism is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible. Our two party farce of a political system is aligned to control our lives through laws, regulations, rules, bylaws, procedures, tax codes, taxation, inflation, and debt, enforced by government apparatchiks, bureaucrats, politicians, bankers, police state thugs, and when all else fails – the military. While the masses were distracted by facebooking, texting, twittering, instagramming, taking selfies, playing Words with Friends, engaging make believe enemies on their PS3 or Xbox, watching the Kardashians on one of their 700 cable TV stations, or shopping for Chinese produced crap at one of our 1.5 million cookie cutter chain retail boxes, those in control of this country covertly turned the nation into a surveillance state while militarizing local police forces. They know the endless growth story is over. Our oppressors fear the repercussions when the masses realize it’s all been a big lie and they are left impoverished and hungry. They are attempting to instigate foreign wars, while preparing for the coming civil war.
The confusion, chaos, mayhem and war currently shaking the foundations of our planet are a direct result of too many people jammed into too small of a space with too few resources and too few opportunities for economic advancement. Poor, deprived, hungry people with nothing to lose begin to lose it. Revolution, civil unrest, radicalism, the rise of extremists and despots, and totalitarian regimes are the result. The invasion of Iraq was about oil. The overthrow of Gaddafi was about oil. The ongoing attempt to overthrow Assad is about a natural gas pipeline to Europe in order to isolate the Russians. The Ukrainian coup is about Russian natural gas and oil. The sanctions and saber rattling over Iran’s nuclear program is really about their oil. The United States is utilizing their military industrial complex and CIA assets to instigate turmoil and war around the world in an effort to gain control over the dwindling energy resources in the Middle East and Africa. Russia and China are blocking U.S. efforts at every turn, as the world inches ever closer to a major resource war.
Huxley’s Brave New World dystopian America had a good run from 1950 until 2000. Our keepers kept us fat, dumb, distracted, and in debt up to our eyeballs. Since 2000 Orwell’s 1984 dystopian Surveillance States of America seems to be taking shape, under the watchful eye of our very own Big Brother, the NSA. Fear, punishment, slogans (See Something Say Something) and appeals to non-thinking patriotism have replaced freedom, liberty, individual rights, the Constitution, personal responsibility for our own lives and questioning authority. The propagandists created the War on Terror as a way to keep the ignorant masses fearful and cowering behind the skirts of Big Brother. The 2008 financial collapse was another crisis that couldn’t go to waste. The Federal Government has expanded the spending of your tax dollars by 40% since 2007. The DHS concentrates on the internal enemy – you. The military industrial complex creates new foreign enemy threats every day – Hussein, Gaddafi, Ahmadinejad, Assad, and now Putin.
The monetary and fiscal policies of the country have remained in permanent crisis mode because the Ponzi scheme can’t be maintained without a constant debt fix. As our permanent state of crisis devolves into war, our remaining liberties will be stripped away in the name of safety, security and unquestioned support of the state. Huxley knew that we would consume, obey and submit until dictatorship became almost inevitable. Will you sit idly by while a small cabal of power hungry men destroys our country? Will you send your sons off to wars manufactured by tyrants as cannon fodder to further enrich the military industrial complex? Will you make a stand when they begin to round up subversives, dissenters, and malcontents under the guise of protecting you from domestic terrorists? Will you choose liberty and freedom over repression and descent into captivity and totalitarianism? The choice is yours.
“But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government. And permanent crisis is what we have to expect in a world in which over-population is producing a state of things, in which dictatorship becomes almost inevitable.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958
Are you a believer?
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
Or a truth seeker?
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.” – Aldous Huxley
For the second consecutive week, moderate to heavy rainfall brought additional drought relief from the Midwest southward across the central Plains into Texas. Meanwhile, drought conditions prevailed from California into the central and southern Rockies.
There were no changes made to the drought depiction in Alaska and Hawaii this week. In Alaska, cool weather and locally heavy showers were noted across much of the state, with streamflows in the northern Abnormal Dryness (D0) areas exhibiting some recovery. Additional rainfall over the ensuing weeks would likely warrant some D0 reduction. In Hawaii, some areas of leeward dryness are developing but remained fairly localized. In Puerto Rico, D0 was expanded into the northeastern quarter of the island where 90-day rainfall deficits (50 to 70 percent of normal) has resulted in streamflows drooping locally below the 10th percentile.
Conditions remained largely unchanged on the central High Plains during the monitoring period, as hot weather (readings as high as 100°F) offset the light to moderate showers (0.1 to 1 inch) which dotted western portions of the region. A small expansion of Extreme Drought (D3) in southwestern Kansas reflected increasingly poor vegetation health as indicated by satellite, with potential for additional degradations in this area if rain fails to materialize soon. Farther east, however, locally heavy downpours — with totals averaging 2 to locally more than 4 inches — resulted in some removal of Moderate (D1) and Severe (D2) Drought in central and southwestern Nebraska. In these areas, precipitation over the past 30 days has averaged 150 to 260 percent of normal. In Kansas, showers were mostly too light to warrant any additional improvement on top of last week’s drought reduction, though locally heavy downpours (2 to 4 inches) allowed for minor decrease of Extreme Drought (D3) in southern portions of the state.
After last week’s beneficial showers, mostly dry, warm weather prevailed in the Moderate (D1) and Severe (D2) Drought areas of southwestern Louisiana. Soil moisture remains limited in these locales due to pronounced dryness over the past 90 days (locally less than 50 percent or normal). The rest of the Delta remained free of drought. NOTE: At the end of the period, locally heavy showers and thunderstorms developed over the Delta’s drought areas, and the resultant benefit —if any — will be addressed in next week’s U.S. Drought Monitor.
Drier-than-normal conditions prevailed over eastern portions of the region during the monitoring period, which coupled with declining streamflows led to an expansion of Abnormal Dryness (D0) in southeastern New Hampshire and neighboring locales. Precipitation over the past 60 days has totaled 50 to 70 percent of normal in the D0 areas, and streamflows have likewise dipped below the 20th percentile. In contrast, showers dotted the Mid-Atlantic region, with locally more than 2 inches of rain bordering areas with little — if any — rainfall. Overall, soil moisture remained adequate to abundant for pastures and summer crops.
Moderate to heavy rainfall further reduced or eradicated drought but submerged low-lying fields and caused additional river flooding in western and central portions of the region. Persistent showers and thunderstorms doused areas from central Nebraska into Iowa and northern Illinois with 2 to 4 inches of rainfall, with locally higher amounts. The rain was more than sufficient to warrant additional 1-category improvements over the western half of the Corn Belt. Despite the additional heavy downpours, long-term precipitation deficits linger (less than 70 percent of normal over the past 12 months) in west-central and southeastern Iowa; consequently, a small area of Moderate Drought (with a Long Term, or “L”, designation) remained where shortfalls are most pronounced. In contrast, short-term dryness (90-day rainfall averaging 50 to 70 percent of normal) led to a small increase of Abnormal Dryness (D0) in southeastern South Dakota.
Pronounced short-term rainfall deficits and above-normal temperatures led to an expansion of Abnormal Dryness (D0) in Kentucky and along the Ohio River. In the expanded D0 area, 30-day rainfall has totaled locally less one-third of normal, which coupled with temperatures up to 7°F above normal caused a rapid decline in soil moisture and streamflows. Farther south, locally dry conditions from east-central Georgia northward into western South Carolina warranted D0 expansion, with precipitation over the past 60 days tallying 35 to 60 percent of normal. Localized dryness and declining streamflows also led to the introduction of a small D0 area south of Asheboro, NC, where streamflows have dropped below the 10th percentile. In Florida, another round of locally heavy showers and thunderstorms (generally 1 to 4 inches, with some reports as high as 7 inches) facilitated the removal of the remaining D0 in southern-most portion of the state. The rest of the southeastern quarter of the nation saw scattered showers and thunderstorms, which were sufficient to prevent any introduction or expansion of D0.
Despite temperatures in the 90s, rainfall during the week was sufficient to warrant modest to significant reductions in drought from northern and central Oklahoma southward into Texas. Showers and thunderstorms dropped 2 to locally more than 4 inches of rain from the eastern Oklahoma panhandle southeastward into central Oklahoma and east-central Texas. In particular, there were numerous reports of more than 3 inches west of Oklahoma City, and several totals in excess of 7 inches southwest of Dallas-Fort Worth. Consequently, drought intensity declined in areas where the heaviest rain fell, although long-term impacts continue (i.e. reservoir storage and ground water supplies). Farther south, a slow-moving disturbance drifted north from northeastern Mexico along the Rio Grande River Valley, dropping moderate to excessive rainfall (2 to 5 inches, with localized amounts in excess of 8 inches) from Laredo to the western Edwards Plateau. Likewise, a separate area of showers and thunderstorms (1 to 3 inches) swept across Texas’ Trans-Pecos region later in the week. These two areas of rain resulted in notable decreases in drought intensity and coverage across southern and western Texas.
Variable conditions in the north contrasted with ongoing drought elsewhere. In addition, the return of hot weather in California and the Southwest accelerated moisture losses and increased irrigation requirements.
In northern portions of the region, a slow-moving Pacific storm generated locally heavy rain and mountain snow across the northern Rockies, with showers from this system (locally more than inch) spilling into northeastern drought areas of Washington. Consequently, modest reductions were made to drought intensity and coverage in the mountains and foothills of northeast Washington, where Water Year precipitation was mostly near normal (80-95 percent of normal). Appreciable rainfall bypassed southwestern portions of Columbia River Valley, where Moderate (D1) and Severe (D2) Drought were expanded to reflect poor crop conditions and much-below-normal Water Year precipitation (40-50 percent of normal). To further illustrate the drought’s impacts, the USDA-NASS reported Washington’s winter wheat slipped 1 percentage point to 27 percent poor to very poor as of June 22, with only 30 percent rated good to excellent.
Farther south, California and the Great Basin will most likely have to wait until the 2014-15 Water Year for drought relief. In northern and central California, Exceptional Drought (D4) reflected abysmal 2013-14 Water Year precipitation totals; from northern portions of the Coastal Range to Mt. Shasta, precipitation since October 1 totaled 30 to 50 percent of normal (deficits of 16 to 32 inches). The corresponding Standardized Precipitation Indices (SPI), which helps quantify precipitation in terms of drought and historical probability, are well into the Extreme (D3) to Exceptional (D4) categories. Similar precipitation rankings (D3 or D4 equivalent) are prominent for the past Water Year from San Francisco south to Santa Barbara and east to the Sierra Nevada, including most of the San Joaquin Valley.
In the central Rockies and Four Corners, there were no changes to this week’s drought depiction. Extreme Drought (D3) remains entrenched across west-central Arizona and along the Arizona-New Mexico border, with Water-Year precipitation in these locales totaling less than half of normal (locally below 30 percent of normal) .
Warm, humid, and unsettled conditions will persist from the central and southern Plains to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast Coast. Embedded within this large area of unsettled weather, the greatest potential for heavy rain will be over the Upper Midwest and northern Plains as well as the central and western Gulf Coast region. Showers are also expected across the Northwest — though the rain is expected to once again bypass primary Northwestern drought areas — and in the Northeast. The NWS 6-10 day outlook for July 1-5 calls for wetter-than-normal conditions east of the Mississippi and from the Four Corners into the central Plains as well as southern Texas. Conversely, drier-than-normal weather is expected from the Northwest east to the northern Plains. Above-normal temperatures are anticipated across much of the nation, with cooler-than-normal conditions confined to the Upper Midwest, Texas, and the coastal Pacific Northwest.
Author(s):
Eric Luebehusen, U.S. Department of Agriculture
The politicians, Wall Street shysters, and the corporate MSM sure are running out of feel good propaganda to keep the sheep docile. How high do food and energy prices need to go before even the sheep get the picture?
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/12/2014 08:02 -0400
Now that 25 year old math PhD HFT programmers have finally figured out what this thing called Iraq is, and why headlines around it should factor into algo trading signals – especially those of crude oil – here, for their benefit is a summary of the latest events in Iraq, and also for everyone else confused why crude is back to levels not seen since last summer.
In broader terms (via RanSquawk):
And in detail:
As the WSJ reports, after hard core Al Qaeda spin off ISIS (no relation to Sterling Archer) took over Saddam’s home town of Tikrit yesterday, Iraq edged closer to all-out sectarian conflict on Thursday as Kurdish forces took control of a provincial capital in the oil-rich north and Sunni militants vowed to march on two cities revered by Shiite Muslims. Kurdish militia known as peshmerga said they had taken up positions in key government installations in Kirkuk, as forces of the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki abandoned their posts and fled in fear of advancing Sunni militants, an official in the office of the provincial governor said.
Reuters adds that “The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga,” citing Jabbar Yawar. “No Iraqi army remains in Kirkuk now.”
This in turn has put the output of the key Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, with a 1.6MM bbls/day capacity, at risk.
The militia were operating out of the headquarters of the Iraqi army’s 2nd Division. The official said western parts of Kirkuk province were still under the control of fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot.
Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, a spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, said the al Qaeda-inspired group would advance on Karbala and Najaf, as well as the capital Baghdad, the Associated Press reported, citing an audio statement.
However, as we showed yesterday, the final ISIS target is none other than the city of Baghdad, and the overthrow of the Iraq government entirely.
In Tikrit, militants have set up military councils to run the towns they captured, residents said.
“They came in hundreds to my town and said they are not here for blood or revenge but they seek reforms and to impose justice. They picked a retired general to run the town,” said a tribal figure from the town of Alam, north of Tikrit.
“’Our final destination will be Baghdad, the decisive battle will be there,’ that’s what their leader of the militants group kept repeating,” the tribal figure said.
The powerful Shiite leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, urged his followers on Wednesday to form military units to defend the two cities, which along with Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia are considered sacred by Shiites.
Before he suspended its operations in 2008, Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army, once estimated to have nearly 60,000 members, played a major role in the country’s Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict.
His call for military mobilization came after Mr. Maliki said the government would arm citizens who volunteer to fight militants, after the fall of Mosul on Tuesday.
Security was stepped up in Baghdad to prevent the Sunni militants from reaching the capital, which is itself divided into Sunni and Shi’ite neighborhoods and saw ferocious sectarian street fighting in 2006-2007 under U.S. occupation.
* * *
The Kurdish capture of Kirkuk instantly overturns the fragile balance of power that has held Iraq together as a state since Saddam’s fall.
Iraq’s Kurds have done well since 2003, running their own affairs while being given a fixed percentage of the country’s overall oil revenue. But with full control of Kirkuk – and the vast oil deposits beneath it – they could earn more on their own, eliminating the incentive to remain part of a failing Iraq.
Maliki’s army already lost control of much of the Euphrates valley west of the capital to ISIL last year, and with the evaporation of the army in the Tigris valley to the north this week, the government could be left in control only of Baghdad and areas south.
The surge also potentially leaves the long desert frontier between Iraq and Syria effectively in ISIL hands, advancing its stated goal of erasing the border altogether and creating a single state ruled according to mediaeval Islamic principles.
Maliki described the fall of Mosul as a “conspiracy” and said the security forces who had abandoned their posts would be punished. He also said Iraqis were volunteering in several provinces to join army brigades to fight ISIL.
In a statement on its Twitter account, ISIL said it had taken Mosul as part of a plan “to conquer the entire state and cleanse it from the apostates”, referring to the province of Nineveh of which the city is the capital.
Militants were reported to have executed soldiers and policemen after their seizure of some towns.
* * *
And while all of the above explains oil’s spike today, now that the world has yet another geopolitical hotzone to follow, following the China-Japan naval conflict, the China-Vietnam escalation, the Thailand martial law, the Ukraine civil war and now the Iraq collapse, expect the USDJPY rigging crew to ignite enough momentum to send the S&P 500 to fresh all time highs.
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) A new report issued by the World Bank (1) warns that food prices are skyrocketing globally, with wheat up 18 percent and corn up 12 percent this quarter. Ukraine, one of the largest wheat exporters in the world, has suffered a 73 percent increase in domestic wheat costs. Argentina has seen wheat prices skyrocket 70 percent.
According to the World Bank, these price increases have been caused primarily by three factors: 1) Sharply higher demand for food in China, 2) U.S. drought conditions that hammered wheat production, and 3) unrest in Ukraine due to the near state of war with Russia.
According to the World Bank, rising food prices have caused 51 food riots in 37 countries since 2007. These include Tunisia, South Africa, Cameroon and India, among other nations.
“Food price shocks can both spark and exacerbate conflict and political instability,” warns the report.
A World Bank blog entry by Senior Economist Jose Cuesta entitled “No Food, No Peace” (2) warns that “It is quite likely that we will experience more food riots in the foreseeable future… food price shocks have repeatedly led to spontaneous — typically urban — sociopolitical instability.”
The following chart shows from the World Bank shows the sharp trend toward increased food prices worldwide:
What the World Bank is leading to (but not quite saying) is that hunger leads to revolution. When the People are starving in the streets, there is political unrest that can easily turn violent. Because this is a fundamental human reaction, it is just as true in the United States, UK and other first-world nations as it is in Cameroon or India.
American investigative journalist Alfred Henry Lewis (1855-1914) famously said, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” He went on to explain, “It may be taken as axiomatic that a starving man is never a good citizen.”
What he means is that hunger dispels the illusions of a polite society and unleashes the desperate animal-like nature that lurks inside all human beings. A starving man trying to feed his starving children will at some point abandon all law and order, doing anything necessary to keep himself and his children alive, including engaging in robbery, assault and murder.
Stated another way, the only reason most people obey laws and agree to live in a socially polite manner is because their bellies are full. Take away the food and all illusions of social friendliness vanish in about nine meals (three days). No local police force can hope to control the actions of the starving masses, regardless of how obedient the population once was when food was abundant.
Many are now warning about the coming collapse in the food supply. These warnings include all the following factors:
* EBT CARDS are the federal government’s “food stamp” system that distributes money to over 47 million Americans who use that money on debit cards to buy food. The EBT system depends entirely on the financial solvency of the federal government, an empire steeped in over $17 trillion in debt and constantly on the verge of a financial wipeout. When the day comes that the feds stop funding the EBT cards, food riots are imminent. EBT cardholders have already ransacked a Wal-Mart store, even in good times! (Once the EBT entitlements are cut off, EBT card holders will simply ransack the same stores they used to visit as customers. Once those stores run out of food, U.S. cities will devolve into all-out street warfare.)
* HYDROLOGIC CYCLE SCIENTISTS are warning that much of the food production taking place in the world today — across the USA, India, China, etc. — depends entirely on fossil water extraction from underground aquifers. Those aquifers are being rapidly depleted, some dropping more than a foot each year. Once this fossil water is used up, it’s gone for hundreds or thousands of years. Entire breadbasket regions of the world (such as the U.S. Midwest) will be turned into agricultural deserts. Already, much of Texas and Oklahoma is returning to Dust Bowl conditions.
* ENVIRONMENTALISTS warn that climate change will cause radical weather patterns (droughts, floods, freezes) that devastate the food supply. It is undeniable that radical weather has already caused unprecedented destruction of U.S. food production over the last 18 months. (The underlying causes of such weather patterns, however, remain hotly debated.)
* GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS are genetically vulnerable to disease because they are mono-culture crops with little genetic diversity. Nearly all corn grown in the USA, for example, is genetically modified corn with a near-identical genetic makeup. The situation is obviously ripe for precisely the kind of disease wipeout we’re already witnessing with global banana crops.
* ECONOMISTS are warning that the global money supply is on the verge of collapse. Once it collapses, banking would go down with it, destroying the infrastructure that people use to buy food. If grocery stores can’t conduct financial transactions, they can’t buy inventory to retail to the public, for starters. To stay informed on this subject, read up at www.TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com or www.SHTFplan.com or www.SteveQuayle.com
* PERMACULTURE advocates are warning that the global seed supply has been deliberately collapsed by biotech companies which routinely buy up small seed companies and shut them down. The intention is to create seed monopolies and eliminate competing alternatives to patented, corporate-controlled seeds. The answer to all this, by the way, is found in the wisdom of people like Geoff Lawton who teaches decentralized, abundant food production based on permaculture design science. (Really, Geoff’s wisdom can save our world if embraced as a replacement for corporate agriculture…)
In other words, there are economic, hydrologic and genetic reasons why today’s abundant food supply will come to an abrupt end. The cheap, easy food you buy at the grocery store right now is a temporary illusion of cheap food based on unsustainable agricultural practices that use up fossil water, destroy topsoil and poison the environment.
Even the U.S. government’s subsidizing of food through its runaway food stamp program is a temporary artifact of a nation headed for an inevitable debt collapse. Learn more from www.TrendsResearch.com
It is therefore a mathematical and physical certainty that this illusion of cheap, plentiful food will soon be shattered. And in its wake, we will be left with a starving, desperate population with nothing to lose by marching in the streets or staging a violent revolt.
Everywhere that this happens will see cities turned into death traps. Because of the centralized corporate farming model that now dominates first-world economies, food production (and even farm land) is controlled by very small number of corporate operations. This is the opposite of food security.
A nation practicing food security would encourage home gardens and support decentralized food production that includes urban food production. Interestingly, nations like Cuba and Russia have encouraged precisely these practices, which is why they are more resistant to a food supply collapse.
In the United States, however, home gardeners have been threatened with arrest. People who produce real food are often raided at gunpoint by government authorities. Farmers who try to produce clean, non-GMO crops are sued by companies like Monsanto whose seeds pollute their farm land.
Government and corporate entities have colluded in the United States to monopolize food production, thereby centralizing it in a way that compromises food security. The day of Americans being told to “plant Victory Gardens” during World War II are long gone. Today, we’re told to obediently line up and eat genetically modified soybeans or drink hormone-contaminated cow’s milk. Government now demands our food obedience and actively works against individuals who try to produce their own food at the local level.
This makes America wildly vulnerable to disruptions in the food supply. While many nations can manage to get by thanks to home gardens and decentralize food production, the United States of America has allowed government and corporations to structure the national food supply system into a precarious, non-fault-tolerant configuration that’s practically begging for collapse.
Just one disruption in the system — a failed power grid, failed fuel refineries or a failed financial transaction infrastructure — would collapse food availability nationwide, sending the population into a near-immediate state of desperate starvation. Martial Law would no doubt quickly follow, after which Americans would be ordered to starve to death at the hands of FEMA instead of starving to death on their own.
The federal government already knows everything I’m telling you here. That’s why on march 16, 2012, President Obama issued an executive order entitled, “NATIONAL DEFENSE RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS.”
You can read the official White House press release admitting this right here.
This executive order states that the President alone has the authority to take over all resources in the nation (labor, food, industry, etc.) as long as it is done “to promote the national defense.”
The proclamation gives the Secretary of Agriculture full authority to seize all “food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer.”
The Secretary of Defense is given control over all “water resources,” and the Secretary of Commerce is given control over “all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.”
The federal government sees what’s coming, in other words, and has already laid claim to all YOUR food, farm land, livestock, fertilizer and farm equipment, among other food-related assets.
If, after reading this, you aren’t double-checking your secret storable food stockpiles, you’re crazy. As a small plug if you want to help support Natural News, we offer the world’s only certified organic long-term storable non-GMO freeze-dried fruits (plus some FD organic veggies) at the Natural News Store.
Sources for this article include:
(1) http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/pu…
(2) http://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/no-food-no…
The BLS is thrilled with this news. The price of ground beef didn’t really go up 15% because you switched to pink slime instead. I see bowel deflation in our future.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/25/2014 10:29 -0400
A few months ago we reported that while the Fed is seeing nothing but hedonic deflation as far as the eye can see, food prices – for whatever reason but “certainly not” due to trillions in liquidity entering a close system so just blame it on the weather – were soaring to record highs. Among them was the price of beef, which in 2014 alone has soared by the most in over a decade. This led the US Department of Agriculture to warn of “sticker shock” facing home chefs on the eve of the Memorial Day holiday weekend, the unofficial start of the U.S. summer grilling season.
According to the USDA, reported by Reuters, conditions in California could have “large and lasting effects on U.S. fruit, vegetable, dairy and egg prices,” as the most populous U.S. state struggles through what officials are calling a catastrophic drought. Alas, the USDA had nothing to say about the Fed’s unprecedented desire to reflate the US economy which is still suffering from the catastrophic depression which started nearly 7 years ago.
More:
The consumer price index (CPI) for U.S. beef and veal is up almost 10 percent so far in 2014, reflecting the fastest increase in retail beef prices since the end of 2003. Prices, even after adjusting for inflation, are at record highs.
“The drought in Texas and Oklahoma has worsened somewhat in the last month, providing further complications to the beef production industry,” USDA said.
Beef and veal prices for the whole of 2014 are now forecast to increase by 5.5 percent to 6.5 percent, a sharp advance from last month’s forecast for a 3 to 4 percent rise. Pork prices are set to rise by 3 percent to 4 percent, up from a 2 to 3 percent advance expected a month ago.
The USDA said overall U.S. food price inflation for 2014, including food bought at grocery stores and food bought at restaurants, would rise by 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent in 2014.
That is up from 2013, when retail food prices were almost flat, but in line with historical norms and unchanged from April’s forecast.
“The food-at-home CPI has already increased more in the first four months of 2014 then it did in all of 2013,” USDA noted. At-home spending accounts for about 60 percent of the U.S. food CPI.
Ok we get it: soaring food prices are not only already here but are set to surge even more, especially for those who rather eat real meat than mystery meat dispensed with largesse at your favorite $0.99 fast food outlet.
So what are food processors to do facing soaring meat input costs and unwilling to suffer bottom line hits? Why, return to that old staple of unknown origin of course.
Here comes Pink Slime… again.
According to the WSJ, “finely textured beef, dubbed “pink slime” by critics, is mounting a comeback as retailers seek cheaper trimmings to include in hamburger meat and processors find new products to put it in.”
Proving that popular memory lasts at best a couple of years, it was only in 2012 when sales of pink slime, processed from beef scraps left after cattle are butchered, collapsed in 2012 after a “social-media frenzy spurred by television reports raising questions about its legitimacy as a beef product. The ingredient’s two largest producers, Beef Products Inc. and Cargill Inc., closed plants that made it and cut hundreds of jobs—while defending the product’s quality and pointing out that the U.S. Department of Agriculture deems it safe.”
What really allowed the scrapping of pink slime, however, was the broad decline in prices of non-alternative meat, as in the real deal. However, now that meat prices are soaring again (all weather mind you, nothing to do with the Fed), it is time for US consumers to eat “hedonically-cheap” “meat” once again.
Today, Cargill sells finely textured beef to about 400 retail, food-service and food-processing customers, more than before the 2012 controversy, though overall they now buy smaller amounts, company officials said. Production of finely textured beef at Beef Products has doubled from its low point.
The resurgence is being driven, in part, by an aversion to something many consumers and companies find even less pleasant than the pink-slime nickname: red-hot prices. Prolonged drought in the southern Great Plains has shrunk U.S. cattle supplies to historic lows. The retail price of ground beef soared 27% in the two years through April to a record $3.808 a pound, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That means serious sticker shock for U.S. consumers preparing to fire up their barbecues for Memorial Day weekend—the traditional start to the summer grilling season. The week leading up to the Monday holiday is typically one of the biggest sales periods for ground beef, with an estimated 160 million pounds likely to be sold during that stretch this year, according to CattleFax, a Colorado-based research firm.
How much of that burger meat contains finely textured beef isn’t clear. Prior to the flurry of media attention in 2012, Beef Products estimates, the ingredient was in as much as 70% of the ground beef sold in the U.S. at retail and in food service. Cargill and Beef Products decline to give a similar estimate now, but they say sales have rebounded sharply from their 2012 lows.
So… 100%? But at least the Fed will soon be able to claim that “food” (or byproducts rather, but who cares) prices are plunging, even as it itself announced that food prices in its cafeteria have soared by up to 33% as Zero Hedge reported yesterday.
Meanwhile, it’s a feeding frenzy, pardon the pun, out there by those who know too well that Americans don’t really care what they shove in their mouths as long as it i) tastes kinda meaty and ii) is cheap.
“Two years ago, no one would return our calls,” said Jeremy Jacobsen, spokesman for BPI, which closed three of its four plants in operation in 2012. “Now some of those same people are calling us unsolicited, and we don’t have the sales staff to maintain the new business.”
Finally for those who may have forgotten the prehistory of Pink Slime, here it is again. First, a look at how it is made.
And its recent turbulent history.
The ingredient began attracting wider attention last decade. A 2009 New York Times article cited a 2002 email by a USDA microbiologist who called the product “pink slime.” TV chef Jamie Oliver used the epithet in an on-air critique in 2011. After ABC News reports in 2012 scrutinized the product, a public backlash ensued, spread through social media. That prompted several supermarket chains, including Kroger Co. and Supervalu Inc. to drop the beef additive from their meat cases. Neither Kroger nor Supervalu sell the product today.
Critics were partly repulsed by images of the product—some of which the industry says were false—and by the idea of using chemical treatments such as ammonia gas on food products. Supporters of finely textured beef pointed out that many foods contain similar traces of ammonia naturally. BPI says it uses a form of the chemical called ammonium hydroxide. That compound falls under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “generally recognized as safe” category, which means they are safe when used as intended.
Officials including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack defended the product’s safety. But its sales fell so sharply that they effectively reduced total U.S. beef supplies by 2% in 2012, according to agricultural lender Rabobank.
BPI, based in Dakota Dunes, S.D., said it lost contracts with 72 customers, many over the course of one weekend in March 2012, forcing its production to slide below one million pounds a week at their nadir that year. Customers were “dropping like flies,” said Mr. Jacobsen, the BPI spokesman.
BPI in 2012 sued ABC and several other defendants for defamation in South Dakota Circuit Court, seeking at least $1.2 billion in damages. The state’s Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed a decision by a lower court to let the case proceed, denying an appeal by ABC. The case hasn’t gone to trial. Jeffrey Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said the news organization continues to vigorously contest the charges.
At Cargill, about 80% of sales of the product evaporated “overnight” in 2012, said John Keating, president of Cargill Beef. The company ceased production at a plant in Vernon, Calif., in 2012, laying off about 50 workers. Mr. Keating said the lost business also contributed to Cargill’s decision last year to idle a beef-processing plant in Plainview, Texas, where about 2,000 people were laid off. At other plants, production slowed.
Cargill’s meat processors and chefs have been working with its customers to find new uses, such as frozen meatloaf and sausages, though 90% to 95% continues to go into ground beef, Mr. Keating said. Earlier this year Cargill, based in suburban Minneapolis, began to label boxes and packages of ground beef containing the product. Mr. Keating said the labels haven’t much affected Cargill’s ground-beef sales.
“It’s a product we’re working very hard to reintroduce,” Mr. Keating said.
And a product which the Fed will be delighted when it is reintroduced because remember: it is all about hedonics. And there is nothing in the Fed rulebook that says replacing meat with “meat” if only to keep prices lower, is a bad thing. As long as the Fed academics running the centrally-planned economy get to keep eating the real thing of course.
This is not a story from some gloom and doom website. It’s from The Weather Channel. Get ready for much higher prices. I hear cat food doesn’t taste that bad.
Stephen NeslagePublished: May 22, 2014, 3:23 PM EDTweather.com
Walk into any grocery store in America and there’s a good chance the fresh produce you see there was grown in California. Up to half of the nation’s fruit, nuts and vegetables are grown in the Central Valley, one of the planet’s most fertile growing regions, between Los Angeles and Sacramento.
Now, for the first time this century, the entire state is in severe to exceptional drought.
“It’s really depressing for us to leave ground out. We’re still paying taxes and payments on everything that’s non-production,” said Gene Errotabere, whose family has farmed the valley since the late 1920s. “I mean, it’s this whole valley. It’s just a breadbasket of our whole country here, and to see this much ground being fallowed is not something I like to see.”
(MORE: Texas Town Forced to Drink Toilet Water Because of the Drought?)
Errotabere says his farm is in uncharted territory and on the verge of catastrophe. Thirty percent of his fields have been fallowed this year, and if these conditions continue, more growing operations could be shut down.
“If we have one more year like we had these past two years, it’s going to be devastating out here. … We’ll probably have 60 to 65 percent of our production out next year.”
The consequences are staggering near towns like Mendota. Dried-up fields blow dust into the sky. River beds and canals, once full of water, are now full of dead weeds and rattlesnakes. Fruit orchards along Interstate 5 look like burned piles of firewood. Workers who used to make a living picking fruit and working machinery now stand in government supported food lines to feed their families. No water means no jobs.
Mendota Mayor Robert Silva doesn’t mince words when discussing the disaster.
“Roughly about 40 percent unemployment … it’s higher than normal right now because of the water situation and farmers not planting. It’s indication that it’s going to be close to maybe 55 percent by the time situation is over.
“It’s ugly to see people standing in line because they’re out of a job.”
USGS Photo
A pole is marked with the land levels in Mendota, California, showing the drastic sinking of the land for nearly a century.
The San Joaquin River runs through the heart of this arid growing region and in a normal year would flow with fresh snow melt from the Sierra. But there’s little snow in the mountains, and little water in the river.
“Imagine washing the dirt off your driveway. That’s what the water is like in the San Joaquin River,” said Jeff Holt, a restoration biologist with River Partners in California, who got emotional when he looked at what’s left of the river. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen it. There’s no water for anything.”
To combat drought conditions, farmers and cities use water wells to tap underground aquifers. But those aquifers are overused and the rapidly declining water levels are causing the once water rich cavities to collapse in a process known as subsidence.
A recent report from USGS hydrologist Michelle Sneed paints a grim picture: A valley the size of Rhode Island is sinking.
(WATCH: California Now in the Deepest Stages of Drought)
“About 11 inches a year … is among the fastest rates ever measured in the San Joaquin Valley,” she said. “It’s a very large subsidence bowl. We were also surprised the high rate of subsidence.”
It’s irreversible damage. One area near Mendota is nearly 30 feet lower than it was in 1926, increasing the risk for infrastructure damage and even severe flooding in the future.
“This subsidence is permanent,” said Sneed. “If water levels come back up, the subsidence will not be recovered. The land will stay subsided.”
The San Joaquin River is almost completely dried out near Kerman, California. (Stephen Neslage for weather.com)
