Posted on 03/27/2015 8:14:00 AM PDT by Kartographer
It is in this environment of extreme financial risk and perpetually spiraling food prices where we consider the proposition of food as an investment asset class. We begin by looking at the “fundamentals” of this market/investment class. And what we see (from this perspective) is extremely encouraging: food prices consistently soaring by roughly 20% per year, and significantly more for some categories of food (notably meat products).
With soaring food costs being a serious drain on the budgets of most families, our challenge is to find some way of turning this financial drain into a means of preserving/protecting our wealth: by investing in food. Regardless of one’s economic bracket; this is an investment opportunity which can be pursued by all of us.
(Excerpt) Read more at sprottmoney.com ...
Our beef consumption is way down. 80/20 ground beef is now around $4 a pound where we are at. I’ve been seeing a lot more 73/27 ground beef on the shelves and even that’s $3.30 a pound on sale. I shop the clearance section in the meat department. Buy what I can and freeze it.
It’s amazing how much the prices of everything have shot up across the board. 4-5 years ago I could spend $400 a month for the four of us in a month. Now I’m spending $600+ a month and we aren’t eating as well. I shop at multiple stores depending on sales, use coupons, and use club cards to maximize our savings. If it’s not on sale, I don’t buy it. We grow some of our own produce and herbs to cut costs as well but at some point we’re going to run out of ways to cut costs.
The EBT folks I see in line seem to be handling everything ok though.
“... has cut back on beef consumption..”
Yes. Looking in the freezer is just sad. Two shelves used to be devoted to beef, one to chicken and one to pork. Today, it’s one shelf for chicken stock, one for chicken, one for pork and one for whatever meat. I’m desperately holding onto the last package of “reduced soon to expire” ground beef bought about 10 months ago and three small beef roasts from a sale. That’s it for beef. Thankfully, we have some free venison so that has made up for not having beef - do NOT substitute it for beef tacos. People used to spend time looking over the meat prices before putting a package in their grocery cart but now days, they grab what they want without a glance at the price. Yeah, weird but guess it is that they have given up and don’t want to see the price.
Restocked a little tuna last week when it was on sale. It wasn’t on sale last Easter so it’s been two years since I’ve bought any. No sale this week but crossing fingers for next week. Only able to get 21 cans as that’s all they had. Drain out the 50% that’s water (here, kitty kitty!)and it was still expensive coming to $5.33/lb for canned store brand tuna.
Don’t speculate with food, or you will lose. Since the turn of the 20th Century, the US has had such an overabundance of food that it is an economic problem.
Even at the height of the Dust Bowl, when tens of thousands of farms were wiped out from Texas to Canada, there was still a crushing surplus of food. When the Great Depression-era deflation hit (currency shortage), food was worth less than it cost to bring it to market.
So, at the same time as corn was being burned as fuel, people in the cities worried about starving.
FDR intervened, with emphasis on reducing the surplus *first*, and then providing some of the surplus to soup kitchens to feed the hungry and unemployed. Only by reducing the surplus could agriculture hope to recover.
So FDR created the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, and one of their first acts was to drive, with armed police, from farm to farm, killing and burying pigs in the highly decentralized pork industry.
The FSRC killed and destroyed SIX MILLION pigs, and that was just the start. Farms entire harvests were confiscated and destroyed, and the families told that they were no longer farmers, but to move to the city, or starve.
Everyone today should remember the vast amount of corn that was set aside to produce ethanol. While it did drive up prices in many things *some*, there was no real crisis. It barely made a dent in our food supply.
Yet enough ethanol was produced to support every gas station in the US, with perhaps 10% of the fuel they sold.
In 2014, 136.78 billion gallons of gasoline were sold in the US. Imagine how much corn was needed to produce the ethanol one tenth of that, 13.7 billion gallons?
Less steak, more ground beef mixed in with pico de gallo or peppers and corn as fajita filling.
Stocking up on keystone meats ground beef and chopped beef.
If you live near an Albertsons, they are getting rid of their dollar aisles, which means canned beef in gravy, chicken, spam equivalent for 15% off while it lasts. I stocked up on that.
More chicken and turkey, but even that is expensive.
My husband said he was listening to Clark Howard the other day who said that inflation over the past year has been zero. What?? He must be using government numbers.
“The ability to grow or hunt food is even more valuable.”
There are a whole bunch of cows near the house, just standing in a field. You don’t even need to hunt them.
We just cut back on eating meat. I use less than before in soups and sauces. We eat more vegetables now. Getting creative on beans and rice has been helping too.
My goal is to reduce the amount of meat and wheat I eat, so help me Pete.
It’s hard to combine atkins with vegetarian.
Atkins is a cult.
The fellow writing the article is not well grounded in knowing where to store food. In two places he suggests storing food in a garage. Here are his words about garages:
“For those (more fortunate) individuals able to devote entire rooms (or perhaps a garage) to such investing;...”
“For homeowners, who have considerable living space, but (for whatever reason) have little storage space available for food investing; building a structure for food storage, such as a shed or (expanded) garage is a cost outlay which would likely pay for itself over a relatively short-term period.”
A shed or garage will have high temperatures and that causes food to spoil rapidly, even twenty year food deteriorates at a rapid pace. Cool/cold temperature is required for maintaining the shelf life of any food. Plus, varmints (think rats, raccoons, squirrels, etc.) will get into stored food if left where they can get to it. Many people leave their garage doors open and that is a feast for varmints. Never store food in a garage or other outside location. This guy’s food is going to be spoiled or eaten by varmints.
I recall reading about Mormons who are required to store food. The church had to counsel their members because members were using their garages to store their food.
Store food in the coolest place you can manage. Heat is a destroyer of food.
Most farms now days are corporate farms and they suffer the same ups and downs as any corporation no matter what goods or services they sell.
Most rural and semi-rural, which was a good potion of America at the time of the great depression survived because they had truck gardens, and backyard chicken coops and farmers selling on the side of the road or even door to door.
My grandmother had a egg man in the early 60’s and also sold fresh garden vegetables in season.
I’m done giving a few cans to my neighbor who refuses to listen and stores food in a H-O-T Texas garage.
Chicken is the new beef and roadkill is the new chicken. Welcome to Obamaville!
“I’m done giving a few cans to my neighbor who refuses to listen and stores food in a H-O-T Texas garage.”
I think your neighbor wouldn’t “pass” an IQ test. :o)
In Texas, everything roasts in Texas heat. The summer I had my husband in five different hospitals, 2011), the temp every day was between 105-107 (that was July and August). By the time I made the trip home everyday, I was so hot I could not eat for several hours and then didn’t eat much. Food in cans in a garage in that kind of heat, would not last a summer.
Yes, keep your cans, there is no point in giving cans that will go bad in heat.
I was only buying beef one sale, and that wasn’t too often at $4/lb for a roast being a sale. So we got on a waiting list for half a beef with a local farmer, and split it with our daughter.
Our half was 70 lbs of lean beef @ $3.01/lb. Includes roasts, steaks, and ground beef. Lean ground beef here is about 5 bucks not on sale.
We don’t buy any meat that is not one sale. We are also growing much of our own produce now, so we have been able to keep our grocery budget stable for now without eating up all the preps and not really changing our diet.
We haven’t had to buy any corn this year, because we grew our own last summer, and froze after cutting it off the cob.
No one has ever said to eat gold. You invest in food first, then water, clothing, tools, guns, ammo and then precious metals. But you already knew that.
The Germans have a good idea by traditionally setting aside some land near the cities, for individuals to have small gardens, which produce a lot of fresh food for their families.
This being said, if you look at a suburban area with front and back yards, you have a lot of premium land. And acting in cooperation to produce varied crops year around, they could go a long way in feeding not just their suburb, but even having extra food of limited varieties.
>>Store food in the coolest place you can manage. Heat is a destroyer of food.<<
Same goes for water.
Why has beef gotten so high in price? Hamburger is the price a good steak use to be. Bacon went up too but I found it cheaper at Grocery Outlet.
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