Food Crunch
HOLLY NOTE: It's clear that the price of all grain-based foods are skyrocketing and will remain high for the next decade, according to analysts. You hear numerous reasons for these price escalations from higher global demand and biofuels to natural disasters of drought, tornadoes and hail - all of which regularly rake the Midwest, our nation's breadbasket. With increasingly chaotic, violent weather, expect to see more crop damage. We're already off to a ripper tornado year with 89 twisters in the first 10 days of January! Extremely unusual.

Price increases are showing up in cereals, bread, crackers, baked goods, cooking oils and fats, pet food, milk, eggs, soy-based foods, and beef, pork, poultry and mutton - since grains are livestock's main food. Food products made with any of the above ingredients will see a price hike as well.

In reading ‘Panic Buying’ in the Grain Markets, two statements stood out:

The world is eating more than it produces and food prices may climb for years because of expansion of farming for fuel and climate change, risking social unrest, experts at the International Food Policy Research Institute concluded in a new report issued last month.

and

Export sales of U.S. wheat are ‘beginning to look like panic buying’ according to some commentators. Overseas buyers are purchasing grain, anticipating the U.S. will run out of wheat.

It would be very clever to stock up now - heavily - and pack for long-term use. any grain products you need. It's easy, it's great insurance and saves you money.




January 12, 2008

"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil - it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically."

Full story click here:

The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices, which have risen 2% in the past year.

At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn -- the main staple of the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past 15 months, closing at US$4.66 a bushel on the CBOT yesterday -- its best finish since June 1996.

This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but also the price of meat, with feed prices for livestock also increasing.

"You're going to have real problems in countries that are food short, because we're already getting embargoes on food exports from countries, who were trying desperately to sell their stuff before, but now they're embargoing exports," he said, citing Russia and India as examples. "Those who have food are going to have a big edge."

With 54% of the world's corn supply grown in America's mid-west, the U.S. is one of those countries with an edge.

http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2008/01/food-crunch.html