Posted on 01/16/2013 9:56:13 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
What is the trigger for a revolution? Sometimes it a brutal act of repression. Sometimes it a lost war, or a natural catastrophe, that exposes the failings of a regime.
But more often than not, it is soaring food prices.
The easiest prediction to make for 2013 is that everything we eat will once again rise sharply in price. So where will the revolutions start this year? Keep an eye on Algeria and Greece — and if you want to feel very nervous, Russia and China. And if you are smart, keep your money out of those countries as well. Reuters Food prices around the world could soar this year if there’s a repeat of 2012’s drought in the American Midwest. The link between the cost of feeding your family and political turmoil is too well-established to be ignored. We saw it most recently with the Arab Spring of 2011. The uprisings that deposed the autocracies of the Middle East had their roots in food inflation. Most of the Middle East countries import 50% or more of their food, making them acutely vulnerable to rising commodity prices. In Egypt the food inflation rate hit 19% in early 2011. For President Hosni Mubarak that was game over. The regime was finished.
It goes back much further than that, however. Failed harvests in France in 1788 and 1789 meant that the cost of bread soared. From taking 50% of the average working man’s wages it went up to 88%. The result? The French Revolution. The economists Helge Berger and Mark Spoerer have pinned the European revolutions of 1848 on the soaring price of wheat. Likewise, a shortage of food and soaring prices led to strikes in Petrograd in 1917 — and sparked the Russian Revolution...
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Just as a side note, I went to the local WalMart tonight and noticed the cheapest canned veggies (store brand) has gone from 67 cents two days ago to 94 cents.
Of course their isn’t any food inflation under the messiah’s regime...
Food prices and availability would be the least of my worries.
I live in the vegetable capital of Cebu.
I go to the market each day where I see mountains of veggies from many vendors. Rice is everywhere for less then $1 per kilo.
I buy bananas, mangos, and oranges for five cents. There is abundant fresh fish, pork, and chicken.
In the US, you are dependent on a very long supply chain from farm or sea to your house. I have only one intermediary from source to my tummy.... the cute girls that weigh my selections and tell me what I owe.
Be there as soon as I can.
Thank goodness I have an Aldi about to open in a month or so even closer than my nearest Wal-Mart.
That’s a dramatic increase! I’m set to go to Walmart for beets in a jar, because last week Walmart’s standard price for the same brand was $1.44 which Kroger’s sells for $1.95.
Now I’m wondering whether those beets will still be the same price.
Ethanol and bio-fuel mandates tie the world price of oil to the price of the grain crops involved. To a lesser extent this tie-in projects into the entire food chain that involves anywhere those crops are used and where those crops can be substituted such as in animal feed.
There is no better example than US corn production where over 40% goes to making ethanol for motor fuel use.
This is motivated by both the farm lobby in the direct benefits from higher crop prices and in leftist (er, now “progressive”) eco-dynamics because of “sustainability”.
Well in my opinion converting something that we cannot eat into fuel while using edible grain crops for food is far wiser. When we use up the ocean of coal the US is sitting on, if we don’t have yet some other high-tech energy source like LENR, then we can fall back on burning corn. But that is over 100 years in the future.
Meanwhile bone-headed policies that tie the price of food to their value as a source of motor fuels is certainly not “sustainable” given that it already was a key reason for the revolution in Egypt. And we will rue the day when the Muslim Brotherhood took over power there.
We could fix this in moments by ending the ethanol mandate, which consumes at least a third of our corn and a lot of our farmland. World grain prices would drop. (Beef and ham, too.)
A bag of chips is 4 dollars.
With the recent increase in demand for ammo, the cost of the lead must be rising as well. Cheap Chinese "food" prices will have to rise as well, unless they switch to other additives.
At least if ammo makes the cost of lead go up, it might not show up in Chinese "food"!
Almost none of the food in a Wal-Mart or any other US grocery store originates in China. Gadgets, geegaws, clothing, etc perhaps, but food? I know it’s popular and fun to hate Wal-Mart, but at least get your facts straight.
Most of the Walmart brand packaged food I’ve looked at only says “Distributed by”, not “Made in” or “Product of”. If they don’t want to tell me where it comes from, I assume it’s China. It’s not worth the risk, IMO. This behaviour is not specific to Walmart, BTW.
Do you seriously believe it is more economical to ship canned or packaged food all the way from Central Asia versus California, Iowa, Minnesota or Idaho? And do you think that Wal-Mart or any other retailer wants dead customers, scandals and lawsuits? For a “conservative” site there sure are a lot of people here who side with Michael Moore, the unions and the environmentalist left.
Look at the product labels. You’ll find plenty of food labelled as “Product of China”, though a lot of those now hide the fact by saying it is “Distributed by” something in the USA. Why are they hiding where it’s from?
Yes, shipping is amazingly cheap compared to growing and/or harvesting food using safe, sanitary methods.
And learn some manners.
LMA.
“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmQhkCEwHmo";
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Thanks for that link. I have never been to that resort, and do not even know where it is...probably on Mactan, near the city. Like most travel videos, I am sure it is quite embellished.
While Cebu is rated by Travel and Leisure Mag. as the third best island in Asia, that resort does not represent the island.
My life is much more that of a native here.
My town:
Dalaguete.gov.ph
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