Bringing in the Sheaves

by freeacre

This is a “last call” announcement for those who may not have stocked up as much as they are able on grains. All grains.

We knew it was coming – the push for ethanol would create a shortage of corn, thereby driving up not only the cost of corn meal, but the costs of meat and poultry as well, since the animals eat corn, too. Well, here we are. The people of Mexico have been rioting in the streets due to the sharp increase in the cost of corn for tortillas. The prices of cornmeal, wheat flour, and rice in the supermarkets have risen alarmingly. And, there is no end in sight.

Regarding rice, this piece from David Ignacias, Washington Post, April 3, 2008:

“You may have missed the front-page article in the New York Times last Saturday, with the one-column headline written in clipped newspaperese: "High Rice Cost Creating Fears of Asia Unrest." But this little story could be an early warning of another big economic problem that's sneaking up on us.

The new danger is global inflation -- most worryingly in food prices, but also in prices for commodities, raw materials and products that require petroleum energy, which includes almost everything. Prices for these goods have been skyrocketing in international markets -- at the same time the Federal Reserve and other central banks have been hosing the world with new money in their efforts to avoid a financial crisis.

That's an explosive mixture. It risks a kind of inflation that would trigger panic buying, hoarding and fears of mass political protest. Actually, this is already happening in Asia, according to the Times.

The price of rice in global markets has nearly doubled in the last three months, reports the Times's Keith Bradsher. Fearing shortages, some major rice producers -- including Vietnam, India, Egypt and Cambodia -- have sharply limited their rice exports so they can be sure they can feed their own people.”

Did you get that? The main nations that have been exporting rice are going to stop doing so. They need to feed their own people first. Yikes!

Then, there is the wheat catastrophe….

Why food prices will go through the roof in coming months
By F. William Engdahl
Online Journal Guest Writer

“A deadly fungus, known as Ug99, which kills wheat, has likely spread to Pakistan from Africa, according to reports. If true, that threatens the vital Asian Bread Basket including the Punjab region.

The spread of the deadly virus, stem rust, against which an effective fungicide does not exist, comes as world grain stocks reach the lowest in four decades and government subsidized bio-ethanol production, especially in the USA, Brazil and EU are taking land out of food production at alarming rates. The deadly fungus is being used by Monsanto and the US Government to spread patented GMO seeds.

Stem rust is the worst of three rusts that afflict wheat plants. The fungus grows primarily in the stems, plugging the vascular system so carbohydrates can't get from the leaves to the grain, which shrivels. Ug99 is a race of stem rust that blocks the vascular tissues in cereal grains including wheat, oats and barley. Unlike other rusts that may reduce crop yields, Ug99-infected plants may suffer up to 100 percent loss.

The FAO warns that the explosive growth in acreage used to grow fuels and not food in the past three years is dramatically changing the outlook for food supply globally and forcing food prices sharply higher for all foods, from cereals to sugar to meat and dairy products. The use of cereals, sugar, oilseeds and vegetable oils to satisfy the needs of a rapidly increasing biofuel industry, is one of the main drivers, most especially the large volumes of maize in the US, wheat and rapeseed in the EU and sugar in Brazil for ethanol and bio-diesel production. This is already causing dramatically higher crop prices, higher feed costs and sharply higher prices for livestock products.

Ironically, the current bio-ethanol industry is being driven by US government subsidies and a scientifically false argument in the EU and USA that bio-ethanol is less harmful to the environment than petroleum fuels and can reduce C02 emissions. The arguments have been demonstrated in every respect to be false. The huge expansion of global acreage now planted to produce biofuels is creating ecological problems and demanding use of far heavier pesticide spraying while use of biofuels in autos releases even deadlier emissions than imagined. The political effect, however, has been a catastrophic shift down in world grain stocks at the same time the EU and USA have enacted policies which drastically cut traditional emergency grain reserves. In short, it is a scenario preprogrammed for catastrophe, one which has been clear to policymakers in the EU and USA for several years. That can only suggest that such a dramatic crisis in global food supply is intentional.”

So, demand is outstripping production for corn, rice, and wheat, which form the foundation for much of the food supply for humans as well as their livestock. This is no longer a prediction. This is right now. If there is a doubt in your mind, just go to your closest grocery store and check out the prices. They have practically doubled.

But, it’s going to get worse. If the ethanol and the wheat rust, and the increased demand weren’t enough, other factors are lending themselves to this dismal picture as well. Peak Oil is drastically raising the price of gasoline, which raises the production costs of growing the grains, as well as dramatically adding to the costs of transporting it to the stores.

Climate change is also having an increasing effect. Torrential rains, tornados, and drought are also taking a big toll on the production side. When is this going to lead to starvation and death? It already has. The United Nations has issued an alarming report that the prices of food for disaster relief in Africa and other desperate places is making relief efforts too expensive to feed the many who rely on their efforts.

And, if all that weren’t enough, the financial brain trust has manoeuvred the dollar into a rate of inflation that has devalued the dollar to the point where the dollar has approximately 40 percent of the purchasing power that it had when “The Decider” took office.

In terms of grain, we are toast.

So, get it now, before the third shift at Albertson’s sneaks in and raises the prices beyond what any working class person can afford.

Eventually, we just may have to do with much less bread, pasta, rice, and those animals that eat grain.

Of course, the overlords will be conspicuously consuming despite it all. Have you seen the slick stories lately about the yuppie scum going green? Yeah, taking a year or two off from Wall Street and purchasing ranches and building state-of-the-art solar and wind powered, cork-floored eco houses, etc. etc.

…. Well, aren’t they special? They’ll probably be eating buffalo from their own herds, and running their Hummers on olive oil. . . but I digress.

Back to real life: We can grow switch grass in our yards to feed our animals. Actually, chickens who eat less corn and more grasses produce eggs that are better for you anyway. And, if we switched to rabbit instead of beef as a main source of protein, we wouldn’t need to use any corn and the meat would be much leaner and lower in cholesterol than beef. Plus, rabbits can be raised locally and wouldn’t require as much gasoline to transport. You can feed them leftover greens from the garden, carrots, and things that you can grow in your backyard. They don’t produce all that nasty methane that pollutes the atmosphere, and their manure is the only one that can go directly into the garden for fertilizer without a waiting period.

Of course, we always have the option of going vegetarian. But, being a vegetarian without wheat or rice or cornmeal, leaves one eating beans and greens for the most part. Personally, my system can’t handle it.

Human beings are very adaptive to their environments, though, when necessary, fortunately. When studying the healthiest people in the world, according to Diane Schwarzbein, M.D. (my favourite nutritionist) you’ll find the Inuit’s, the French, the Tibetans, and the rural Chinese and Africans. These people have much less chronic and degenerative disease than we do. The funny thing is that they all eat a very dissimilar diet, upon first glance. The French drink wine. The Tibetans do not. They sip yak butter tea all day. The Inuit’s eat whale blubber and fish and hardly any vegetables. But, upon further examination, they do have a couple of things in common: they eat what they can pick, gather, hunt or fish. And, they have stuck to a traditional diet rich in good fats. No high carb, low fat diets for them.

So, maybe this shortage of grain will benefit us in the long run anyway. After all, it was when people began to grow grain in a big way and it was stockpiled by the pharaohs or priests to be doled out to the subservient populations that this whole hierarchical death trap began in the first place. But, the transition period is going to get rough.

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