WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-03-14 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: JoAn
Submitted by Adriana Stuijt:
– “There’s a lack of staple-food supplies worldwide – all at once…”
March 14 2008 — Wheat futures prices have tripled since 2004, corn (maize) prices have almost tripled since 2005, and soybeans have tripled since 2006.
Meanwhile, crude oil is up merely 60% in the past three years, which makes it seem very bearable in comparison.
US stock prices have barely eked out a 10% advance since 2005, underscoring the diminishment of US power.
Rice prices in Asia surged to a 20-year high this week — more than $18 per hundred pounds — as countries that have the most are hoarding it for their own people.
Vietnam, India and Egypt have restricted exports to keep local markets stocked.
Thai, Philippine and Indonesian officials are warning of civil unrest if the flow of rice does not increase.
Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan in recent weeks have restricted wheat exports as well, slapping on big tariffs to make sure shelves are stocked in their homelands amid soaring prices.
A major Russian grains-company chief told Reuters that his country “is in a condition that has never happened before.”
Higher prices are not meeting any resistance from desperate buyers.
Most unusual about this phenomenon, according to BMO Financial Group strategist Don Coxe, is that until now, food crises in world history were regional concerns that arose from crop failures, war or pests.
Once global trade of grains got going in the 19th century in a major way, food shortages in one country were ameliorated by imports, he said.
What’s happening now is a lack of supply everywhere at once.
The United Nations reports that the total area devoted to crops worldwide had risen by 0.3% annually since 1961, to 3.8 billion acres through the latest survey.
But the growth has stalled to 0.1% annually in the past decade.
Unlike energy, you can’t drill deeper in the ocean or under Arctic tundra for more food.
Also, surging income growth among emerging middle classes in China, India, Southeast Asia and South America has boosted demand for meat protein, and feed for new Asian cattle ranches and pig farms is putting intense pressure on the world’s corn (maize) supply.
DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA, BAD HARVESTS IN SOUTH AMERICA:
Of course, the weather plays a role, too. A terrible drought in the breadbasket of Australia over the past two years has combined with bad harvests in Argentina and Brazil to create some of today’s shortfall.
Shortages are real:
RICE: LOWEST IN 25 YEARS:
The Financial Times reports that rice stocks have fallen this year to about 70 million tons, the lowest level in 25 years and less than half the total held in global inventories in 2000.
WHEAT: LOWEST IN 30 YEARS:
Wheat inventories, called “carry-overs” in the trade, are at 30-year lows even though world wheat production was actually up 1% last year.
In the past year, reports show, wheat inventories in the European Union have plunged to 1 million tons from 14 million tons.
A leading Canadian fertilizer executive told analysts recently that according to his company’s calculations, global grain reserves are “precarious,” at just 1.7 months of consumption, down from 3.5 months of reserves as recently as 2000.
IF US MIDWEST CROPS FAIL – WE ARE FACING A WORLDWIDE CRISIS…
Now the really bad news is that we might actually have been lucky in the past few years, as global warming has lengthened growing seasons in the American Plains, sometimes called the Saudi Arabia of corn.
BMO’s Coxe notes that the U.S. Midwest has enjoyed 17 straight years without significant crop failure, the longest winning streak on record. If this fortunate run ends soon, we’ll likely face a worldwide crisis.
IT COULD HAPPEN THIS YEAR:
Some researchers, including climatologist Elwyn Taylor of Iowa State University, believe it could happen this year, as La Ni(241)ña conditions are emerging at a time when the Midwest has become vulnerable due to a drought creeping up from the South.
Food prices are already way up in North America but not as much as feed prices because manufacturers, processors and retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores (WMT.N) have found ways to hold the line by cutting expenses.
But they can dam up the flood of food inflation for only so long.
Just this week, Procter & Gamble (PG.N) announced it was raising prices on many of its foods products, including Folgers coffee.
J&J Snack Foods said it would lift prices by as much as 12% in April to offset costs, and local newspapers have been rife with stories about pizzerias both raising prices and cutting back on crust thickness and cheese quantities.
Joseph R. Dancy, who teaches law at Southern Methodist University and runs a small hedge fund, lays the immediacy of the crisis directly on ethanol-production mandates in an energy bill recently passed in the U.S.
The bill, intended to boost America’s energy independence (from the Middle-East), is expected to push as much as 31% of the U.S. corn crop into biofuels production, up from 24% last year.
In other words, at the exact moment we most need corn (maize) on our plates, it is being funnelled into cars.
A full tank of gas requires the equivalent of a quarter of a ton of raw foodstuffs, enough to feed one person bread for a year.
Coxe’s solution: As a first step, shut down all ethanol plants immediately.
“It’s criminal to burn corn for fuel when we are out of food,” he said.
In a particularly pernicious development, he noted that a big boost in demand for soybeans for use as biodiesel in Europe has driven up the price of palm oil in Southeast Asia, where it is the main source of protein for the poor.
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?FORM=CXTFIN&setlang=en-CA&q=BMO%20Financial%20Group&mkt=en-CA
http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca/Investing/JonMarkman/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=6424206