Food Crisis 2011

Food Crisis 2011? 14 Disturbing Facts That Make You Wonder If The Coming Global Food Shortage Has Already Begun


http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/food-crisis-2011-14-disturbing-facts-that-make-you-wonder-if-the-coming-global-food-shortage-has-already-begun

Will 2011 be the year that we point to as the beginning of the great global food crisis? Food prices are soaring, supplies are very tight and already we have seen some very intense food protests flare up around the globe this year. When people don't have enough to eat, they tend to become very desperate, and unfortunately it looks like the global food situation is not going to improve much any time soon. Right now the world is really struggling to feed itself, and with each passing day there are even more mouths to feed. It is being projected that the population of the world will reach 9 billion people by the year 2050. There are already way too many people starving to death around the globe, and unfortunately starvation is only going to become more rampant as food supplies get even tighter. Some of the key food producing provinces in China are facing their worst drought in 200 years. Flooding has absolutely devastated agricultural production in Australia and Brazil this winter. Russia is still trying to recover from the horrific drought of last summer. Global weather patterns have gone haywire over the past 12 months, and this is putting immense pressure on a global food system that was already on the verge of a major breakdown.


The following are 14 facts that make you wonder if the coming global food shortage has already begun....

#1 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. corn reserves will drop to a 15 year low by the end of 2011.

#2 The United Nations says that the global price of food hit another new all-time high in the month of January.

#3 The price of corn has doubled in the past six months.

#4 The price of wheat has roughly doubled since the middle of 2010.

#5 According to Forbes, the price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.

#6 The United Nations is projecting that the global price of food will increase by another 30 percent by the end of 2011.

#7 Due to all of the unprecedented flooding, the winter wheat crop in Australia has been absolutely devastated.

#8 This winter Brazil was hit by some of the worst flooding that nation has ever seen. This has substantially hampered food production in that country.

#9 Russia, one of the largest wheat producers on the entire globe, is still feeling the effects of last summer's scorching temperatures. In fact, Russia is actually importing wheat this winter to sustain its cattle herds.

#10 China is busy preparing for a "severe, long-lasting drought" that is projected to have a huge impact on several provinces. In fact, Chinese state media says that the eastern province of Shandong is dealing with the worst drought it has seen in 200 years. The provinces being affected by this severe drought grow approximately two-thirds of the wheat in China. The following is a very short video news report about the horrible drought that China is going through right now....



#11 It appears that Chinese imports of corn will be about 9 times larger than the U.S. Department of Agriculture originally projected them to be for 2011.

#12 Approximately 1 billion people around the world go to bed hungry each night.

#13 Somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds, and 75 percent of those are children under the age of five.

#14 As food has become increasingly scarce around the world, many companies have started using whatever kinds of "fillers" that they can think of in their "food" products. For example, Raw Story is reporting that some companies in China have actually been mass producing "fake rice" that is made partly of plastic. According to one Chinese Restaurant Association official, eating three bowls of this fake rice is the equivalent of consuming an entire plastic bag.

Ethanol to take 30 pct of U.S. corn crop in 2012: GAO

Proof that the world food crisis is preplannned. No reason to use food to make energy for our cars.

Reuters) - Almost a third of the U.S. corn crop will be used in five years to produce fuel ethanol, possibly raising animal feed costs for farmers and meat prices for consumers, a new government report warned on Monday.

Assuming U.S. ethanol production continues to expand to the Energy Department's projected 11.2 billion gallons by 2012, about 30 percent of the corn crop will be needed for the fuel supply, according to the Government Accountability Office.

"Using more corn for energy production will likely exert additional upward pressure on corn prices, potentially influencing livestock feed markets and meat prices," the GAO said in a report to Congress.

This article was written in 2007. This is what it said....

About 27 percent of this year's corn crop will be used to make ethanol, according to the Agriculture Department. Corn prices are projected to average between $3 and $3.40 a bushel, making up an estimated 74 percent of the cost of producing ethanol, the GAO said.

Fast forward to 2011. Current prices are at $7 per bushel. Doubled. in 4 years! And going higher....much higher!

The supply of corn keeps getting smaller

675 million bushels of corn may seem like a lot, but that is only an 18 day supply for the US grain market, and that is the reason corn prices pushed above $7 Wednesday on the CME. March corn did not close above that level, but settled at $6.98 per bushel following USDA’s February Supply and Demand report that indicated the ethanol industry was refining corn faster than previously thought.

Corn, beans and wheat prices have all been rising, but so has the price for ethanol. A year ago, ethanol was in the $1.70 per gallon range, but Wednesday closed at $2.457 per gallon, the highest it has been since the early summer price spike in 2008 when it exceeded $2.80 per gallon.

The result of the ethanol industry’s demand for corn tightens down the supply, says University of Missouri marketing specialist Melvin Brees. In his Crop Report Commentary Brees says USDA economists raised corn use by 70 million bushels and 50 million of that was added to ethanol refining. The 745 million bushel ending stocks were lowered to 675 million, and that is 5% of the expected use for the current marketing year. Actually it parallels the tight corn supply of the 1995-96 season and is the least stocks to use ratio in the past 50 years.

USDA also cut back its estimate of global corn stocks to a 54 day supply, which is the least in 37 years, and may continue to ratchet that down as the droughty Argentine yields are known. The global estimate is now 122.5 MMT, which is a continuation of the lower estimates for feed grain supplies around the world. Brees says the USDA raised its estimate of the price range for the 2010 corn crop to $5.05 to $5.75. While much higher prices for corn currently are being offered, market analysts say the bulk of corn was sold at lower levels, pulling down the overall season average, with little free supplies left to be marketed.

As corn prices continue to push higher, so will soybean prices, in an effort to keep pace with the spring race to buy acres. While the USDA did not change any of the soybean supply and demand projections, March soybeans closed 16.75 cents higher on the day and November beans close 19.5 cents higher, but did not push through the $14 mark for new crop beans. Since USDA retained its 140 million bushel estimate of the 2010 carryout, global soybean stocks held steady. Declines in the Argentine bean crop were offset by increases in the Brazilian bean crop. Currently, the season average for soybeans is estimated from $11.20 to $12.20

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-news/latest/The-supply-of-corn-keeps-getting-smaller.html

Mexico's Big Freeze, Crop Devastation Worst in 50 Years

The 25 Countries Whose Governments Could Get Crushed By Food Price Inflation


http://www.businessinsider.com/governments-food-price-inflation-2011-1#


Food inflation is now a reality for much of the world. It contributed to the overthrow of the Tunisian government, has led to riots across the Middle East and North Africa, driven up costs in China and India, and may only be getting started.

Whether you blame a bad crop or bad monetary policy, food inflation is here.

Nomura produced a research report detailing the countries that would be crushed in a food crisis. One, Tunisia, has already seen its government overthrown.

Their description of a food crisis is a prolonged price spike. They calculate the states that have the most to lose by a formula including:

Nominal GDP per capita in USD at market exchange rates.
The share of food in total household consumption.
Net food exports as a percentage of GDP.
We've got the top 25 countries in danger here and the list, including a major financial center, may surprise you.

con't on link

Fresh produce prices to double or triple following freak freezes - is Earth in a magnetic pole shift?

http://www.naturalnews.com/031327_food_prices_pole_shift.html

A theory of what's happeningI'm not going to go into all the details here, but from what I've been reading and researching about a number of seemingly-unrelated events, some clues that might explain their commonality begin to emerge. It all seems to lead to the theory that this is all being caused by the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field.

The magnetic field is shifting, you see. It's in the process of flipping, as it has done many times throughout Earth's history. As explained on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomag...):

"The Earth's magnetic north pole is drifting from northern Canada towards Siberia with a presently accelerating rate -- 10 km per year at the beginning of the 20th century, up to 40 km per year in 2003, and since then has only accelerated."

I recently wrote about how an airport in Tampa, Florida recently had to renumber its runways to account for the unexpectedly rapid shifts in the Earth's magnetic poles (http://www.naturalnews.com/030996_b...).

That same story discusses the theory of how the weakening magnetosphere may have allowed high altitude sub-zero air carrying toxic space clouds called Noctilucent clouds to invade the lower atmosphere, causing the sudden death of birds that we've been seeing reported across the globe. (This theory, however, does not account for the unexplained deaths of fish.)

The other side effect of this is the introduction of extremely cold temperatures from high altitude (or low orbit) space clouds that could be reaching into the lower atmosphere and spreading from the North Pole down through areas that would normally never see such low temperatures. This may explain the "freak weather" that's killing the produce and driving food prices through the roof.


How Earth's magnetosphere impacts your dinner plate
Of course, it's all just a theory so far, but here's the theory in a nutshell:

Weakening Earth's magnetic field (which is what happens during the magnetic pole shift transition) causes extreme cold to break into Earth's lower atmosphere, which causes freak cold weather events to spread far and wide, which causes the destruction of food crops.

Theoretically, this could even lead to a rapid ice age taking over the planet, almost like something out of a Hollywood movie. Such a scenario would obviously be devastating to the human population across the planet as billions would starve from a lack of food. (That would no doubt fulfill Bill Gates' mission of reducing the world population, eh? Who needs vaccines when you've got sub-zero space clouds?)

The Earth's magnetosphere, you see, is a vital protective force field that protects life on Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet...). Without the magnetosphere, we would not only be fried by cosmic radiation; Earth's atmosphere would also be slowly blown away by the solar wind, leaving Earth looking a whole lot like Mars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind).

The magnetosphere is believed to be generated by the Earth's core. As Wikipedia explains, "The internal field of the Earth (its "main field") appears to be generated in the Earth's core by a dynamo process, associated with the circulation of liquid metal in the core, driven by internal heat sources."

We know from studying lava flows of basalt rock that the Earth's magnetic field has "flipped" many times in the past. Interestingly, a scientific study published in the journal Nature and entitled "New evidence for extraordinarily rapid change of the geomagnetic field during a reversal" reveals that the Earth's magnetic field has, in the past, shifted by as much as six degrees in just 24 hours. (http://www.nature.com/nature/journa...)

At that pace, the magnetic poles would be completely reversed in just 30 days.


A magnetic flip isn't pretty
This NASA page shows an interesting picture of what happens during a "magnetic flip" (http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lo...). It explains:

"Magnetic lines of force near Earth's surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places. A south magnetic pole might emerge over Africa, for instance, or a north pole over Tahiti. Weird. But it's still a planetary magnetic field, and it still protects us from space radiation and solar storms."

This magnetic pole shift (or "magnetic flip") could allow extreme cold to abruptly enter the lower atmosphere, perhaps even reaching all the way down to the Earth's surface. The magnetic field isn't "clean" and "smooth," you see. Here's an image of the current magnetic map of the planet: http://gravmag.ou.edu/mag_earth/mag...

Notice how it has holes in it? It's not completely smooth and uniform as you might expect. In fact, magnetic "holes" can easily appear and then disappear anywhere on the planet as the flows of metal in the Earth's core shift around. These holes can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few decades, depending on what's happening in the planet's core. During short-lived magnetic turbulence, a particular region on the planet can "lose" its magnetic field (it's neither North nor South but neutral). This results in a magnetic "gap" that creates a vulnerability. The general consensus is that the greater danger here is exposure to cosmic radiation, but there is also the possibility that freezing cold space clouds may also be influenced by the magnetosphere (or the gaps therein).



Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031327_food_prices_pole_shift.html#ixzz1DwszfnQp

Climate Change May Cause ‘Massive’ Food Disruptions

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-02-15/climate-change-may-cause-massive-food-disruptions.html

Global food supplies will face “massive disruptions” from climate change, Olam International Ltd. predicted, as Agrocorp International Pte. said corn will gain to a record, stoking food inflation and increasing hunger.

“The fact is that climate around the world is changing and that will cause massive disruptions,” Sunny Verghese, chief executive officer at Olam, among the world’s three biggest suppliers of rice and cotton, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. “We’re friendly to wheat, corn and soybeans and bearish on rice.”

Shrinking global food supplies helped push the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization’s World Food Price Index to a record for a second month in January. As food becomes less available and more expensive, “hoarding becomes widespread,” Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at FAO, said Feb. 9, predicting prices of wheat and other grains are more likely to rise than decline in the next six months.

Corn futures surged 90 percent in the past year, while wheat jumped 80 percent and soybeans advanced 49 percent as the worst drought in at least half a century in Russia, flooding in Australia, excessive rainfall in Canada, and drier conditions in parts of Europe slashed harvests.

‘Inflame’ the Market

Corn may be the best-performing agricultural commodity, surging to a record in the first half, while wheat will advance as increased government purchases help “inflame” the market, said Vijay Iyengar, managing director of Agrocorp International, who’s traded agricultural commodities since 1986.

Global warming may help lift the prices of corn, wheat and rice by at least two-thirds by 2050, a study by the International Food Policy Research Institute showed in December. “There is an increasing likelihood of a food crisis globally due to climate change,” South Korean President Lee Myung Bak told his secretaries on Feb. 7, according to a statement.

Last year was the warmest on record, together with 2005 and 1998, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization said.

May-delivery corn, trading at $7.0575 a bushel at 6:45 p.m. Singapore time, was 12 percent below its record in 2008, when declining food supplies caused riots in 30 countries including Haiti and Egypt. May-delivery soybeans fell 0.2 percent to $14.13 a bushel, while wheat for delivery in the same month slipped 0.6 percent to $8.985 a bushel. Rough-rice for March delivery declined 2.4 percent to $15.36 per 100 pounds.

Food Riots Threaten Latin America on Surging Commodities in UN Assessment

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-16/latin-america-africa-most-at-risk-from-riots-as-food-prices-rise-un-says.html

Countries in Latin America and Africa, including Bolivia and Mozambique, are most at risk of food riots as prices advance, the United Nations reported.

The past month’s protests in North Africa and the Middle East were partly linked to agriculture costs. World food prices climbed to a record in January, the UN said on Feb. 3. Food prices are rising to “dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people” globally, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said yesterday.

“The low-income food deficit countries are on the front line of the current surge in world prices,” Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said in an e-mail Feb. 14. Other countries where expensive food imports may become a “major burden” include Uganda, Mali, Niger and Somalia in Africa, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Asia and Honduras, Guatemala, and Haiti in Latin America, he said.

Wheat traded at a record in Zhengzhou, China on Feb. 14 and the grain, corn and soybeans rallied to the highest levels in 2 1/2 years in Chicago the past week. Governments from Beijing to Belgrade are raising imports, limiting exports or releasing supply from stockpiles to curb inflation.

Higher prices of wheat, rice, sugar and dairy products helped push the FAO’s Food Price Index to a record last month. Protests in North Africa have driven Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile after 23 years in power and forced Hosni Mubarak to resign as Egypt’s president and hand power to the army.

Food Crisis
North Africa is “still vulnerable, even more so than before as situations are uncertain and domestic price stability depends on the good functioning and continuation of subsidy programs, such as in Egypt,” Abbassian said in response to the question on which countries are most at risk of food riots.

The world faces a “real risk” of a food crisis as agriculture-commodity prices climb, increasing the likelihood of riots in developing countries, French Agricultural Minister Bruno Le Maire said earlier this month. Rising prices have pushed 44 million more people into “extreme” poverty in developing countries since June, the World Bank estimates.

Goldman View
Food prices are going higher because there is competition for limited arable land to boost supplies, said Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in London.

“Each time there were food price spikes in the last decade, there would be rotation from one crop to the next, meaning you would go from a bull market in one crop to the next crop each year,” Currie said in an interview yesterday. “What is different this time is that there is less capability to rotate land because strong demand is exhausting total arable land.”

Higher food costs helped provoke deadly riots this year in countries including Algeria, and at least 13 people died in Mozambique last year in protests against plans to increase bread prices. The U.S. State Department estimates there were more than 60 food riots worldwide from 2007 to 2009.

Global wheat harvests may trail demand for a second year, spurring “widespread” hoarding and further price gains, Abbassian said last week. Wheat production needs to increase at least 3 percent to 4 percent, he said then.

Wheat Production
Global wheat production will probably drop 4.3 percent to 653 million metric tons in 2010-2011 from the previous year, while demand may expand 1.2 percent to 667 million tons, the FAO said in December. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates output at 645.4 million tons and demand at 665.2 million tons.

“The world needs wheat production in the 690 level next year or things shall truly become tight,” Dennis Gartman, an economist and the editor of the Suffolk, Virginia-based Gartman Letter, said on Feb. 14. “Stronger economies take greater sums of grain to meet rising demand or prices shall have to rise to ration supplies.”

About 42 percent of the total area planted with wheat in China’s eight major producing provinces has been hurt by a dry spell that may last into the spring, Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said Feb. 9. China is the largest wheat consumer, representing about 17 percent of global use in the year to June 30, according to data from the London-based International Grains Council.

Russia’s Drought
Prices gained after drought slashed Russian production, floods eroded crops in Australia and Canada and dry weather threatened U.S. output.

Wheat reached $9.1675 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on Feb. 14, the highest price since August 2008 for a most-active contract, and has surged 76 percent the past year. That compares with an 88 percent gain for corn and a 47 percent increase for soybeans.

The crisis is global. Bolivia will tap central bank reserves to spur agricultural production and stockpile food, Finance Minister Luis Arce said on Feb. 10. Protests over sugar shortages and rising transport costs prompted President Evo Morales to cancel his participation at an event in the mining city of Oruro last week. Faster inflation caused by rising food prices is becoming a global problem, Arce said.

Still, higher food prices will prompt increased investment in agriculture research, development and infrastructure, Cargill Inc. Senior Vice President Paul Conway said yesterday at a conference in Birmingham, England. Improved technology and investments to attract young people into agriculture will enhance yields and help the world’s farmers feed a population that’s expected by the U.K. government to rise to 8 billion by 2030, he said.

This is an excellent thread Micjer. Thank you for putting all this information together.

Thanks Carol.

This is shaping up to have massive consequences.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Chinas-wheat-crop-at-risk-world-wary/articleshow/7490455.cms

China's wheat crop at risk, world wary


Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that more than two-thirds of China's gigantic wheat crop may be under risk "because of substantially below-normal rainfall" this winter.

The affected areas in the northern plains of China produced over 75 million tonne of China's total production of 112 million tonne of wheat last year. Any shortfall in Chinese production would have serial effects on availability and prices of wheat around the world.

Global food prices have been silently climbing upward through the past six months and with production and consumption very finely balanced, any disruption in production may wreak havoc with prices. Already, food prices are touching the record levels set in 2008 although prices of rice—the world's largest staple food— are still below those levels.

High food prices have been feeding growing restlessness and anger in a swathe of countries including West Asia. Egypt had experienced an 18.5% rate of inflation driving up prices of all food commodities except bread which is subsidized by the government to the tune of $1.5 billion annually. This was a major contributory factor to the 18-day uprising that dislodged the three-decade-long dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Protests against high food prices have taken place in Oman, Israel and Jordan and have contributed to political unrest in Yemen, Tunisia and Algeria.

Wheat flour prices were 16% higher than a year ago in China driven by fears of drought. The Chinese government has announced a $1.96-billion package to fight drought, including attempts to create artificial rain by cloud seeding.

Apart from staples, sugar prices are running at 30-year highs. Weather-related disruption in Australia, Brazil and China has caused international refined sugar prices to reach 35.6 cents per pound. The average price for sugar in 2010 was 27.78 cents per pound. The last time sugar prices reached these sky-high levels was in 1980.

Meanwhile, the World Sugar Committee, representing leading traders, wrote to the ICE futures commodity exchange blaming parasitic speculators for the high prices of sugar.

Nervous governments across the world are trying to stem the tide in different ways. Several countries in West Asia are stocking up on foodgrain. Iraq, where agricultural production has declined considerably, has placed orders for 300,000 tonne of wheat from the US, with options for another 100,000 tonne. Jordan and Lebanon submitted tenders for 100,000 tonne and 22,500 tonne respectively. Algeria, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia too placed large orders recently. Others, like Russia, have banned exports. Vietnam has devalued its currency, the dong, by 9% to curb inflation.

All these point to an impending crisis in food availability and prices that could lead to further turmoil globally.

It's really time now to eat what we grow and grow what we eat

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/It-s-really-time-now-to-eat-what-we-grow-and-grow-what-we-eat_8396866


The severity of the impact will be greatest in the net food importing regions, such as the Caribbean.

Mr Jeffrey Sachs argues that Africa is the most vulnerable because there is already widespread hunger and because the continent has been bypassed by the Green Revolution. The yield of 1.1 tonnes per hectare in tropical Africa is less than a third of the yields achieved in Asia and Latin America. Mr Lester R Brown of the Earth Policy Institute notes that each day there are 219,000 additional mouths to feed.

To cope with escalating food prices, Jamaica has to increase domestic food production and substitute local foodstuffs for the increasingly costly imported items. Farmers have an opportunity to expand production because the jump in the cost of imported food will increase the demand for local food. Increased production could save foreign exchange, generate employment and improve rural development. Let us see if the agricultural community will rise to the challenge.

Substitution can only deal with a part of the problem because there are no easy substitutes for wheat and corn for human consumption and for products, notably chicken, which depend on animal feed made from imported grain.

Consumers can make a significant contribution if in making their choice of food they spend their money wisely in both economic and nutritional terms. When we consume locally produced food we employ Jamaicans, and when we eat imported food we employ foreigners and pay them in foreign exchange.

Great thread - very informative! It is interesting to see how an awareness of this situation is starting to trickle into mainstream forums. I just visited a coupon/contest/savings forum this morning and someone started a thread similar to this (though not nearly as in-depth). Some people who replied are in agreement, others have their head in the sand and/or think it's fear mongering. At least the discussion is being held - that's progress.

This is an interesting story. Fast Food restaurants stopped serving tomatoes unless requested due to shortage.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110221/BIZ01/102220336/Weather-hurting-tomato-supply?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|News

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-21/record-u-s-cattle-hog-prices-seen-on-shrinking-herds-increased-demand.html


Record U.S. Cattle, Hog Prices Seen on Shrinking Herds, China

U.S. livestock prices may reach records in the next two quarters as farmers reduce herds while China imports the most pork since at least 1992 and the largest amount of beef in three years, according to Societe Generale.

Lean-hog futures will climb to a record $1.10 a pound in the second quarter and live cattle prices will be at an all-time high of $1.30 a pound by the third quarter, Societe Generale SA said in a report. The bank correctly forecast higher grain prices in May. Chinese imports of pork will gain 5.7 percent in 2011 and beef purchases will advance 43 percent, U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates show.

World food prices rose 28 percent in the past year, reaching a record in January, according to the United Nations. Riots partly linked to food inflation ended Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year rule in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade- long rule in Egypt. Finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations last week signaled concern that surging commodity costs are driving inflationary pressures around the world.

“Meat will start to have an impact on the price index and start to put a pinch on the consumer’s pocketbook,” Jason Britt, president of Central States Commodities Inc., a brokerage in Kansas City, Missouri, said by phone on Feb. 17. Britt correctly forecast a rally in hog prices in 2008.

Live cattle for April delivery closed at $1.1515 a pound in Chicago on Feb. 18. Hogs climbed to 92.275 cents a pound. Hog futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have jumped 31 percent in the past year and live cattle prices climbed 24 percent over the same period.

Hog Herd
The hog-breeding herd in the U.S. totaled 5.778 million head as of Dec. 31, down 1.2 percent from a year earlier, USDA data show. The U.S. cattle herd shrank to 92.582 million head as of Jan. 1, the smallest size in 53 years, as feed costs climbed and beef producers slaughtered more animals to take advantage of higher prices, the USDA said on Jan. 28.

Corn surged 93 percent in the past year, soymeal gained 37 percent and wheat rose 73 percent.

Wholesale pork, up 29 percent in the past year, and beef, 16 percent higher, will have to gain another 50 percent, as will cattle and hog futures, to keep up with increasing grain prices, Robbert Van Batenburg, an analyst at Louis Capital Markets in New York, said by phone on Feb. 17.

Corn prices won’t fall until after the U.S. harvest, as long as it’s a bumper crop,” Art Barnaby, an agriculture economist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, said during an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday” with Tom Keene this week. Higher grain costs will be reflected in the cost of producing meat, he said.

‘Painful’ Climb
“A lot of recipients of these price increases have faced painful upward momentum, and it’s not going to end,” Van Batenburg said. “This tends to be the last area where you’d see the price increases as a result of the broad-based rally in all commodities.”

Tyson Foods Inc., the largest U.S. meat processor, said in a Feb. 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission it expects chicken operating margins to narrow as grain costs rise $500 million this fiscal year. It will cut costs and raise prices to help its chicken unit “remain profitable” in 2011, it said in the filing.

The price that packers such as Tyson receive for pork has risen about 30 percent in the past year as hog herds have shrunk, according to the USDA.

Clinton: Too much ethanol could lead to food riots

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9LJCPU01.htm


Former President Bill Clinton on Thursday warned farmers that using too much corn for ethanol fuel could lead to higher food prices and riots in poor countries.

Clinton told farmers and Agriculture Department employees that he believes producing biofuels such as corn-based ethanol is important for reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. But, he said, farmers should look beyond domestic production and consider the needs of developing countries.

"We know that the way we produce and consume energy has to change, yet for farmers there are no simple answers," he said. "There is a way for us to do this and to do it right."

Clinton's foundation has worked to develop agribusiness in African countries such as Malawi and Rwanda. He said the United States needs to look at the long term, global effects of its farm policy.

"I think the best thing to say is we have to become energy independent, but we don't want to do it at the cost of food riots," Clinton said.

Food prices to skyrocket, riots could follow, suggests USDA


Tuesday, March 01, 2011 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer

The warning serves as a wake-up call to Americans to take back their land and begin growing more food on the local and regional scale. According to statistics from Farm Aid, a family farming advocacy group, roughly five million US farms have been lost since the 1930s, and about 330 farmers every week leave their land. If this trend continues, the situation will only worsen.

Factory farming operations have essentially replaced local farming throughout the country. And government policies like subsidization of genetically-modified (GM) crops only continues to drive small-scale farmers off their land and exacerbate the problem.






http://www.naturalnews.com/031545_USDA_food_prices.html


http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=FF65E429DB859424A3AFE8FDA3FE05CE

Cocoa Surges to 32-Year High on Ivory Coast Political Unrest

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-18/cocoa-jumps-to-32-year-high-on-turmoil-in-ivory-coast-world-s-top-grower.html

Cocoa futures jumped to a 32-year high on mounting political unrest in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer.

The only way to resolve the Ivorian presidential-election dispute is to organize protests similar to those that ousted Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, according to the prime minister appointed by Alassane Ouattara, recognized internationally as the winner of Ivory Coast’s Nov. 28 vote. Units of at least six international banks closed this week amid security concerns.

“Things are starting to rumble up again,” said Drew Geraghty, a commodity broker at ICAP Futures LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey. “People are afraid of the potential for increased unrest.”

Cocoa for May delivery climbed $61, or 1.8 percent, to settle at $3,499 a metric ton at 12:06 p.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. Earlier, the price reached $3,511, the highest for a most-active contract since February 1979. The commodity has gained 25 percent since late November.

22 ways to fight rising food prices

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41646620


Food, clothing and shelter generally top the list of basic human needs. While shopping at a discount store instead of the mall generally takes care of the clothing issue, and living in a small apartment instead of a McMansion can address your housing situation, rising world food prices can lead to some significant challenges in the food department.

Everything from rising transportation costs to the development of biofuels, such as biodiesel, push up the cost of food and put a pinch on consumers' wallets.

While the need to eat isn't something you can avoid, there are some steps you can take to keep the costs in check.

22 listed on link.......

One Family In California Grows 6,000 Pounds Of Produce On Just 1/10th Of An Acre

SNIP
"If you work hard and get prepared, you can survive the economic nightmare that is coming. All over the United States and around the world there are millions of people that are learning how to become more self-sufficient. For example, there is one family that is actually producing 6000 pounds of produce on just 1/10th of an acre right in the middle of Pasadena, California. In fact, they grow so much food that they are able to sell much of it to restaurants in the area. Video of this incredible "urban homestead" is posted below. The key is to start with what you have. The family in the video below would like to have a large acreage, but for now they have turned what they do have into an absolute miracle. Yes, a horrific economic nightmare is coming to this country, but you don't have to be afraid. One of the main reasons why so many of us are trying to warn people about what is coming is so that they will wake up and take massive action to become self-sufficient like the people in the video below have.

END SNIP
the rest at :

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/yes-you-can-survive-the-coming-economic-nightmare-one-family-in-california-grows-6000-pounds-of-produce-on-just-110th-of-an-acre

enemyofNWO wrote: One Family In California Grows 6,000 Pounds Of Produce On Just 1/10th Of An Acre

SNIP
"If you work hard and get prepared, you can survive the economic nightmare that is coming. All over the United States and around the world there are millions of people that are learning how to become more self-sufficient. For example, there is one family that is actually producing 6000 pounds of produce on just 1/10th of an acre right in the middle of Pasadena, California. In fact, they grow so much food that they are able to sell much of it to restaurants in the area. Video of this incredible "urban homestead" is posted below. The key is to start with what you have. The family in the video below would like to have a large acreage, but for now they have turned what they do have into an absolute miracle. Yes, a horrific economic nightmare is coming to this country, but you don't have to be afraid. One of the main reasons why so many of us are trying to warn people about what is coming is so that they will wake up and take massive action to become self-sufficient like the people in the video below have.

END SNIP
the rest at :

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/yes-you-can-survive-the-coming-economic-nightmare-one-family-in-california-grows-6000-pounds-of-produce-on-just-110th-of-an-acre

It is beautiful garden they made in sub of LA. Nice to see that people are following their heart. They are fed up with lies and starting to work in right way for right reasons. All around them will benefit. A few days ago students from UC San Diego were invited to party in organic little farm in La Jolla next to camp. All goodies were shared with students. It was great event. It is shame that California used to be feeding all country, now being under one of actors can not sufficiently water farms in the valley, many farms are closing and shrinking. Thanks to hard working mexicans and persian stores. They have great products and more organic than supermarkets. Only recently americans started to shop in those local stores. The sad part is that in huge american supermarkets only 3 meter shelf is organized with organic vegetables and a few fruits. All other are junk. But those shelves are least popular. It is hard to believe how ppl are ignorant. Thanks enemyofnwo for posting this!

Banana disease with strange symptoms hits the Lake Zone

http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/sunday-citizen/-/8810-banana-disease-with-strange-symptoms-hits-the-lake-zone


. Perhaps the only difference between the banana bacterial wilt disease and HIV is that the former attacks banana plants while the latter affects human beings. The disease already poses a great threat over food insecurity the whole of Kagera and neighbouring regions in the Lake Zone engaged in banana farming.

The consequences of the wilt disease have been quite devastating in just few years of its outbreak, drawing similar attention from both local and international communities that are scratching their heads to reverse its effects.

It is almost seven years since it broke out in some parts of Kagera region, but the disease has already depleted several hundreds of acres of banana plantations mostly in Bukoba rural and Muleba districts, as a result of spreading over from Uganda where it was reported a few years earlier.

Climate change takes toll on coffee growers

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014412762_climatechange06.html


Farms producing less

Near the crest of a hill on a farm named La Edda for his mother, Francisco Flores bends a knee to touch the curled, yellowed leaves of a young coffee tree, one of hundreds on a windswept ridge where coffee grew strong two decades ago.

"They live, but they don't produce," Flores explains. "I have an ache in my heart. It's very difficult to see coffee businesses that went from generation to generation to generation, closing."

Costa Rica has 25 percent fewer acres planted in coffee than it did a decade ago, according to the national coffee agency iCafe. Roughly 10,000 farmers have quit coffee, some converting their land to pasture for cattle or dairy businesses.

The remaining coffee farms produce less, with yields down 26 percent in a decade.

Weather is only one problem. Costa Rica also has too many old coffee trees, and farmers' costs have risen because of a labor shortage and devalued currency.

Still, climate change represents about a quarter of the problem and is expected to worsen, says Ronald Peters, executive director of iCafe.

Weather sends produce prices soaring


http://www.cantonrep.com/stark/x1512119937/Weather-sends-produce-prices-soaring

Consumers always find some produce temporarily scarce and more expensive in winter. This year, it’s historic.

The National Weather Service reports this is the first time in 50 years that vegetable crops in Florida, Texas and Mexico were damaged by winter frost at the same time. This has driven up prices of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and bell peppers, and it causes vendors to scurry to find an alternate supply.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture notes that wholesale prices for many fresh vegetables have doubled since January.

Jeff Custer, assistant produce manager at Acme Fresh Market, 2905 Whipple Ave. NW, reports tomatoes are retailing 20 to 25 percent higher than normal. Most varieties are up $1 a pound, to $2.69. His grape tomatoes are $3.99 a pound.

“Availability has been hit-or-miss. Our buyers are purchasing them wherever they can find them,” he said.

Acme usually offers Florida sweet corn in March, but hasn’t found any.

Lettuce is selling for $3 a head. Custer said cases of lettuce are 30 percent smaller with the same number of heads. “I’ve never seen that in my 31 years in this business,” he said

Food prices heading for second-biggest jump in past two decades


http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-resources/beef-retail/Food-prices-heading-for-second-biggest-jump-in-past-two-decades-117535819.html


Food prices this year may rise by the second-highest annual rate in the past 21 years because of tight grain and animal supplies and escalating energy costs, University of Missouri economists Scott Brown and Pat Westhoff said.

Following two years of very subdued prices, U.S. food inflation is expected to reach 4.2 percent in 2011, Brown and Westhoff wrote in a report that was presented to Congress March 7. Click here for the full report.
In 2010, food prices on average rose 0.8 percent, the smallest annual increase since 1962, according to U.S. Labor Department data. Food prices inflated 5.5 percent in 2008, the largest gain since 1990.

Rising food prices reflect the farm economy’s recovery from the 2008-09 recession, said Brown and Westhoff, who are with Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.

“Commodity costs will take much of the blame for expected higher food prices in 2011 and 2012,” Brown and Westhoff said in the report, though they noted that farm values account for only about 15 percent to 20 percent of finished product prices.

“There is a strong correlation between the cost of food and the cost of transforming raw farm products into consumer-ready foods, regardless of farm commodity price levels,” they said.

Inflation in beef, pork and dairy products is outpacing most other food categories. This reflects smaller animal inventories, strong exports and a recent surge in feed costs that is discouraging herd expansion. U.S. beef production this year is expected to be the lowest since 2005 as high grain prices lead to intensified competition for land, Brown and Westhoff said.