Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer
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FOOD SHORTAGES?
Tag: food shortages
Global Food Prices Rise As Famine Threat Emerges
Food prices continue rising during the coronavirus pandemic, jeopardizing food security for tens of millions worldwide.
On Thursday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations said world food prices rose for the fourth consecutive month in September, led by surging prices for cereals and vegetable oils, reported Reuters.
FAO’s food price index, which tracks the international prices of the top traded food commodities (cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat, and sugar), averaged 97.9 in September versus a downwardly revised 95.9 in August.
FAO’s cereal price index jumped 5.1% in September and is 13.6% above its value one year earlier.
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The Supply Chain Is Broken And Food Shortages Are Here
Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper,
If you are a reader of this site, you might be more interested in the food supply chain than most, at least when things are good. So, if you have been paying attention recently, you might find that there have been some severe disturbances in that supply chain.
Several months ago, the immediate disruptions began at the beginning of the COVID-19 hysteria, when factories, distribution centers, and even farms shut down under the pretext of “flattening the curve.”
As a result, Americans found necessities were missing on the shelves for the first time in years. Items like hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes were, of course, out of stock.
Food Shortages Set in Motion by Politicians
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
Absolutely everything is connected. Governments always function linearly and never understand that cycle exists. I got along with Margaret Thatcher because she kept an open mind. This is her address from our World Economic Conference. Here, she admits that governments think in trends, but perhaps they should think in cycles.
Once you see that everything is connected, it becomes so easy to grasp the fact that a single decision will set off a chain reaction that becomes unstoppable. Because politicians think in a linear manner, they do not comprehend the basic principle from physics which applies to everything. Newton’s third law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
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Beef Prices Soar To Record High As Meatpacking Plants Shutter
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:
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Tyson Foods Warns “Food Supply Chain Is Breaking”
News feeds in April have been inundated with food supply chain disruption stories due to coronavirus-related shutdowns. At least a third of US meatpacking facilities handling hogs have shifted offline this month, other plants that process cows and chickens have also shuttered operations, forcing farmers to cull herds and flocks. This is because each plant closure diminishes the ability for a farmer to sell animals at the market, leaves them with overcapacity issues similar to the turmoil facing the oil industry. Only unlike oil where pumped oil must be stored somewhere (as one can’t just dump it in the nearest river) even if that ends up costing producers money as we saw last Monday when oil prices turned negative for the first time ever, food producers have a simpler option: just killing their livestock.
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American Farms Cull Millions Of Chickens Amid Virus-Related Staff Shortages At Processing Plants
A significant concern that readers should have during an economic collapse and pandemic is food security. We’ve noted over April that troubling news is developing deep inside America’s food supply chain network, suggesting shortages and rapid food inflation could be ahead.
The reason behind the disruptions begins with meatpacking plants across the country are shuttering operations because of virus-related issues. At the moment, we’ve reported at least 10-12 large operations have gone offline in the last several weeks, which could result in pork shortages in the first or second week in May.
“Almost a third of U.S. pork capacity is down, the first big poultry plants closed on Friday and experts are warning that domestic shortages are just weeks away,” reported Bloomberg.
Pork Shortages To Strike America In Two Weeks
Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer
We have some troubling news developing deep inside America’s food supply chain network, suggesting rapid food inflation could be dead ahead.
In the last several weeks, six major US meatpacking facilities have shuttered operations because of the coronavirus outbreak. That means 15% of America’s hog-slaughtering capacity has been shifted offline, and there is an additional risk that beef and poultry capacity could be reduced in the weeks ahead, reported Bloomberg.
With every virus-related plant closure, farmers have been denied access to meatpacking facilities/slaughterhouses, resulting in herd overcapacity and suggests euthanizing hogs could be next.
Continue reading “Pork Shortages To Strike America In Two Weeks”
Food-Shortage Fears Well-Founded? Tyson Closes Nation’s Largest Pork Plant Over COVID Concerns
Food-security remains a significant problem during coronavirus lockdowns. The next big issue unfolding is the shuttering of the nation’s food plants could drive food inflation sky high.
On Wednesday, Tyson Fresh Meats, the beef and pork subsidiary of Tyson Foods, released a statement that said its plant in Waterloo, Iowa, will suspend operations until further notice.
FOOD SHORTAGES
Guest Post by Ol’ Remus
Essays are like grand juries, there’s no cross examination or exculpating facts. So it is with the current alarms about bad planting weather and a global famine. Writers like to cite big numbers, but how significant is the loss of, say, a million acres of row crops, for instance? Is it a national calamity or a manageable excursion? How about five million acres?
How many productive acres are lost to weather in an average year? How much of that acreage would have produced an unwanted surplus? Are the numbers reliable or are they as manipulated as the employment numbers? How close are the afflicted farmers to the crop insurance breakpoint? Is DC still paying farmers not to grow food? How much are we giving away as foreign aid?
Then there are the readers of such essays. I’m an unreasoning paranoid about food and I’m not alone in this. Some essays seem calculated to rattle me, or it could be the writer is more paranoid about food than I am. Either way I’m left wanting to take a tin can and go looking for edible roots or some esoteric berry that kept the early trappers alive … or a “manager’s special” at the supermarket, so six months hence I can snicker at articles for the unprepared: “Twelve Surprising Edibles in Your House Right Now—leather upholstery isn’t all there is”.
There’s bad news from elsewhere on the planet. Here are the commonly cited doomer facts about east Asia, from
