Ann Barnhardt: DOUBLE RED ALERT (Soros buying up farmland)

Two HUGE intel leads in my email box this morning from way-back contacts that I've had for years, that are actually somewhat connected concepts.

1. File this one under "Now It All Makes Sense". A Missouri farming and ranching contact just got off a conference call wherein he was informed that the federal government is sending out letters to all of the flooded out farmers in the Missouri River flood plain and bottoms notifying them that the Army Corps of Engineers will offer to BUY THEIR LAND.

Intentionally flood massive acreage of highly productive farmground. Destroy people's communities and homes. Catch them while they are desperate and afraid and then swoop in and buy the ground cheap. Those evil sons of bitches.

2. Speaking of evil sons of bitches, George Soros appears to be "investing" in farmground through the same puppet company that he used to get into the grain elevator and fertilizer business. The company is called Ospraie Capital Management and is buying up farmground in a joint venture with Teays River Investments as a partner. Here is that announcement:

Click Here: http://www.absolutereturn-alpha.com/Article/2242566/Ospraie-Launches-JV-Agriculture-Fund.html

Okay. Here's the connection. This Ospraie outfit was a hedge fund specializing in commodities that was started and run by some cocky child who didn't know how to trade bear markets and got his butt kicked into next week in the grain market of 2008. He also lost a fortune trying to trade RARE EARTH METALS. In fact, it was so bad that he had to shut his fund down because he had promised his investors that he would give them all of their investment money back if the fund lost more than 30% in one year. Whoopsie.

But it appears that Soros swooped in and saved the day because this Ospraie is the "co-investor" with Soros that bought the remnants of ConAgra's trading operation and renamed it . . . Gavilon. In the industry, it is widely acknowledged that Ospraie IS Soros. That three-page article citation is here, copy and paste the URL into your address bar:

As you probably remember, Gavilon just recently bought both DeBruce Grain out of Kansas City and the biggest grain elevator company in the Pacific Northwest, thus making Soros (who is the money behind Gavilon through both his own Soros Fund Management AND his de facto control of Ospraie) the third-largest grain company in the U.S. with 280 million bushels of storage capacity, behind only Archer Daniels Midland (542 million bushels storage capacity) and Cargill (344 million bushels storage capacity). That citation is here:

http://www.world-grain.com/News/News%20Home/Features/2010/12/A%20powerful%20signal.aspx?p=1

Bottom line: Soros, through Ospraie, is buying up farmground. Please also note that the hotlink citation above is dated June 26, 2009. My contact says this has been going on for two years - and also remember what I told you about farmground prices inflating wildly, especially in Illinois. I have personally confirmed farmground in Illinois selling for $13,000 per acre within the last month, whereas that same kind of ground in Illinois was going for $5500 per acre the day Obama was inaugurated.

US Army Corps of Engineers:

Project Locations (interactive)
http://www.usace.army.mil/recovery/Pages/ProjectLocations.aspx

Ties to the Recovery Act
“Recovery Act-funded Civil Works projects released “
http://www.usace.army.mil/recovery/Pages/CWProjectsReleased.aspx

Mississippi River and Tributaries Project List
http://www.usace.army.mil/recovery/Documents/MRTApr10RIOOMBupdatedv1.pdf

Executive Office, Acting General, Chief of Staff info
http://www.usace.army.mil/HQExec/Pages/WelcometotheExecutiveOffice.aspx

Industry News - Army Corps of Engineers defends handling of Missouri River
Source : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Date : 2011-06-13

By Bill Lambrecht, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
June 13—WASHINGTON — A high-ranking Army
http://www.wef.org/about/StoryPage.aspx?story_id=160196555

WEF Spotlight
EPA Webcast Will Introduce National Pretreatment Program
Introduction to the National Pretreatment Program, an EPA webcast slated for Thursday, June 30, 2011 from 1:00-3:00 pm Eastern time, will provide a brief overview of the program for interested parties and those unfamiliar with its requirements.
http://www.wef.org/

June 14th, 2011 5:30 AM
Midwest Katrina: Did the Army Corps of Engineers Cause the Midwest Flooding of 2011?
by Duane Lester
http://www.allamericanblogger.com/16129/midwest-katrina-did-the-army-corps-of-engineers-cause-the-midwest-flooding-of-2011/

From the article:

“Iowa Governor Terry Branstad also questions the Corps decision making:

Gov. Terry Branstad on Friday became the second major official to criticize the way the Army Corps of Engineers has managed the Missouri River.

Branstad said that the focus now should be on preventing, then recovering from flooding, but that officials should examine what could have been done to prevent the far higher-than-normal releases of water that will soon threaten communities in Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri.

And:

Last week, a unified Missouri congressional delegation invited an Army Corps general to their state with a pointed message from Missourians “who believe this disaster could have been mitigated with better planning and coordination on the part of the Corps of Engineers.”

Upriver, anger has risen with the water. Two former South Dakota governors, both Republicans, accused the corps last week of failing to keep flexibility to handle the spring rains and heavy snowmelt.

One of the former governors, Bill Janklow, characterized the corps as ‘slow-witted.” Another ex-governor, Mike Rounds, asserted in an interview Friday that corps brass ought to be held accountable for rising water threatening his state and his own home.

“I’m muddy, I’m wet,” said Rounds, after returned from checking on water lapping at his evacuated home, near Pierre.

“You can’t come into May with so much water in the upper reservoirs knowing that you have significant snowpack on the ground and assuming it will not rain,” said Rounds, who left office in January after two terms.

The Corps has said they did just as their manual said they should do, but that’s difficult to believe. Emergency reservoirs where flood waters were supposed to go were kept nearly full, and when Montana received a years worth of rain in a couple of days, followed by melting snow, the Corps suddenly found themselves overwhelmed with water.

An investigation by the Great Plains Examiner revealed troubling information:

Corps of Engineers officials denied both of those assertions and insisted that they have been operating in “flood-control mode” at Garrison Dam since the beginning of the year. But public records maintained by the agency tell a different story about the way the dam was managed during the two months prior to the flood.

To gather the information for this report, the Great Plains Examiner spent nearly two weeks comparing sets of data on release rates and storage levels recorded by the Corps of Engineers as far back as 1967 when the dam began operating. Additional research included studying operations manuals that guide the agency’s decisions and interviewing dozens of local leaders, federal officials, biologists and hydrologists from North Dakota and across the U.S.

Daily logs kept by the Corps of Engineers show that the agency began 2011 on an aggressive schedule to draw down the levels at Lake Sakakawea, releasing high amounts of water through the dam in January, February and the beginning of March. The average release of about 25,000 cubic feet per second during the first two-and-a-half months was almost twice as much as the average rate for that time of year.

Instead of continuing that pattern, though, the agency curtailed the releases from March 20 until May 5, allowing the reservoir to rise to about eight feet above average for that time of year while the river ran through Bismarck at its seasonal low point. Prior to slowing the release rate, the Corps had received data showing above-average snowpack in the mountains overlooking the upper river basin.

Everything changed rapidly in mid-May when heavy rain in Montana forced the Corps of Engineers to start draining Lake Sakakawea to avoid overflowing the dam.”

At the time of this writing, the Corps is scrambling for political cover, repeatedly denying that it had any advance warning of the potential for this catastrophe. The official word is that everything was just fine until unexpectedly heavy spring rains pushed the system past the tipping point.

What. complete. utter. bullshit.

The area around the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone has has an all time record snowfall this year.

Snowfall levels in other parts of the watershed have not exactly been top secret, either. Anyone with their eyes open and even marginally observent (like a 5 year old) can tell you snow melts in the spring. Record snowpack=record runoff.

This is mismanagement, whether through incompetence or through malevolence, the results will be the same for thousands of households up and down the River.

But wait, there's more!!!

Cereal grain crops this year are going to suck, to put it mildly.

Much of the Durum growing area in the US has been too wet to till, some of it is still under water. Bottomland remains inundated upstream, with nearly daily rainfall, and again tillage is difficult. For those crops which did get planted in time and haven't been drowned out, fungal diseases are already starting to show up.

I would heartily recommend buying pasta, rice, flour, and such staples.

Oil seeds aren't faring much better, Safflower, Rapeseed (Canola), Sunflower, and Soybean crops will hurt, too. Even hay crops which normally might have two or three cuttings will have at least one less, as the land is under water.

Food prices are going to go up, beyond what the normal rise would have been from inflation.

Meat will go down as the herds are trimmed, then go back up as fewer animals will be available for slaughter.

Read the writing on the wall.

The distress on farmers will continue, CofE watershed mismanagement will cause many to lose their farms, especially if hundreds of thousands of dolllars worth of equipment were flooded out.

Soros, ADM, Monsanto, Cargill, and the other big operators will be along to pick up the scraps for a song, and food supplies will be largely controlled by even fewer.

Whether perpetrated through ignorance or malice, the damage is done.

I do recall that other high snowfall years were not a problem, and have never seen the river this high. When one considers the high altitude snowpack has not really started melting, this brings a new twist to the concept of 'disaaster management'.

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