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U.S. seeing worst food inflation in 17 years
MSNBC ^ | 4/15/2008 | Max Pasion AP

Posted on 04/15/2008 11:59:53 AM PDT by stockpirate

NEW YORK - Steve Tarpin can bake a graham cracker crust in his sleep, but explaining why the price for his Key lime pies went from $20 to $25 required mastering a thornier topic: global economics.

He recently wrote a letter to his customers and posted it near the cash register listing the factors — dairy prices driven higher by conglomerates buying up milk supplies, heat waves in Europe and California, demand from emerging markets and the weak dollar

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: golbalwarming
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To: jennyjenny

Excellent point.


21 posted on 04/15/2008 12:18:24 PM PDT by verity ("Lord, what fools these mortals be!")
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To: webheart
Organic graham crackers, real key limes, eggs from free-range chickens, imported French butter . . . I'll take it for $24.50.

Love your comment re the crust.

22 posted on 04/15/2008 12:21:15 PM PDT by firebrand
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To: fweingart
After doing some research on this, I came across this little nugget:

On a side note. China has been operating a signal intelligence station in Bejucal, south of Havana since 1999. This facility has numerous satellite communications antennas which could be utilized for the interception of military and civilian communication traffic in the United States. The Chinese also intercept US military satellite communications at a facility located northeast of Santiago de Cuba. China also provided the Cuban government with sophisticated antennas to block Radio Martí signals.

So we will threaten the Russians with Nuclear retaliation, but we allow the Chinese off the hook why?
23 posted on 04/15/2008 12:23:21 PM PDT by steel_resolve (I stand with the Tibetans.)
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To: Slapshot68

Remember, it’s not just the dims. There are plenty of RINOs in the upper midwest buying the farm vote with this nonsense.


24 posted on 04/15/2008 12:26:13 PM PDT by lesser_satan (Vote McCain - The Choice who Sucks Less!)
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To: traintown57
“Is it just a coincidence or could it have something to do with the fact that Republicans took over Congress in 1992(16 years ago)and controlled it until 2006?”

Well, Mr or Miz newbie troll, your guys are in power. His price went up on your watch.
When your boy wonder, Obombom or the Hildabeast takes over, it will take 25 bucks just to pay the taxes, or Key Limes may be put on the endangered species list.

25 posted on 04/15/2008 12:26:37 PM PDT by AlexW (Reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia. Happy not to be back in the USA for now.)
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To: stockpirate

A new farm bill, stalled in Congress, would expand farm subsidies for Farmers NOT TO Plant.

Currently we force 38m acres out of production.

And congress wants to increase that amount.


26 posted on 04/15/2008 12:30:38 PM PDT by NoLibZone (Duncan Hunter- The very Govts unwilling to support us in the WOT got the Fuel Tanker Deal)
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To: traintown57

Please list the steps taken by Dims to keep prices lower.


27 posted on 04/15/2008 12:32:21 PM PDT by NoLibZone (Duncan Hunter- The very Govts unwilling to support us in the WOT got the Fuel Tanker Deal)
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To: stockpirate

Europeans know hunger more than Americans. Except for the Great Depression, America has never gone hungry. Europeans will protect their farmers by any means they can, the rest of the world be damned, because there still is a generation who remembers WWII. Americans have bastardized our farm programs - to insure stable food prices to the rich and poor - through bad politics and stupid lawmakers. We are now reaping the results of senseless environmental policies and ignorant lawmakers who still think milk comes from a little carton box.


28 posted on 04/15/2008 12:59:35 PM PDT by caisson71 (Times change, values don't.)
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To: traintown57; NoLibZone

Welcome to FreeRepublic.


29 posted on 04/15/2008 1:00:42 PM PDT by Obadiah (I dream of the day when chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned!)
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To: Slapshot68
Enjoy your ethanol, Libs.

What does ethanol have to do with it? Is ethanol (corn) pushing up gasoline, insurance, taxes, education, cable, electric, home heating. Can economists blame CORN for the dollar devaluation? Bankers for the debt crunch, corn? Jobs being off-shored, etc...?

Yeah likely the libs, but ethanol?

30 posted on 04/15/2008 1:05:21 PM PDT by Realism (Some believe that the facts-of-life are open to debate.....)
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Comment #31 Removed by Moderator

To: Argus

Great Read:

Fuel or folly? Ethanol and the law of unintended consequences

Cinnamon Stillwell

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

In the pantheon of well-intentioned governmental policies gone awry, massive ethanol biofuel production may go down as one of the biggest blunders in history. An unholy alliance of environmentalists, agribusiness, biofuel corporations and politicians has been touting ethanol as the cure to all our environmental ills, when in fact it may be doing more harm than good. An array of unintended consequences is wreaking havoc on the economy, food production and, perhaps most ironically, the environment.

Biofuels are fuels distilled from plant matter. Ethanol is corn-based, but other common biofuel sources include soybeans, sugar cane and palm oil, an edible vegetable oil. In the search for alternatives to fossil fuels, many countries have turned to biofuels, which has led to a booming business for those involved. In the United States, ethanol is the primary focus and, as a result, corn growers and ethanol producers are subsidized heavily by the government.

But it turns out that the use of food for fuel is wrought with difficulties. Corn, or some derivative thereof, is a common ingredient in a variety of packaged food products. So it’s only natural that, as it becomes a rarer commodity due to the conflicting demands of biofuel production, the prices of those products will go up. The prices of food products containing barley and wheat are also on the rise as farmers switch to growing subsidized corn crops. During a time of economic instability, the last thing Americans need is higher prices at the grocery store, but that’s exactly what they’re getting.

At the same time, corn is the main ingredient in livestock feed and its dearth is causing prices of those products to rise as well. Farmers have had to scramble to find alternative sources of feed for their livestock and, in some cases, have had to sell off animals they can no longer afford to feed. This, in turn, has led to an increase in the price of meat and dairy products for consumers.

The hit on the livestock industry has also affected jobs, with countless employees being laid off due to the downturn. Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., the nation’s largest chicken producer, announced in March that it was closing a North Carolina chicken processing plant, and six of 13 U.S. distribution centers, due to the jump in feed costs. Even Iowa, the state that produces the most corn and therefore the supposed beneficiary of new jobs due to ethanol production, has seen its unemployment rate rise over the past year. The plant layoffs and closings already underway due to global competition and the fluctuating market have continued unabated.

Another adverse impact of ethanol production is potential water shortage. One gallon of ethanol requires four gallons of water to produce. According to a recent report from the National Research Council, an institution that focuses on science, engineering, technology and health, “increased production could greatly increase pressure on water supplies for drinking, industry, hydropower, fish habitat and recreation.”

Not only is ethanol less productive than gasoline as a fuel source, its production is hurting the environment it was intended to preserve, particularly in the Third World. The amount of land needed to grow corn and other biofuel sources means that their production is leading to deforestation, the destruction of wetlands and grasslands, species extinction, displacement of indigenous peoples and small farmers, and loss of habitats that store carbon.

Scientists predict that the Gulf of Mexico, already polluted by agricultural runoff from the United States, will only get worse as demand for ethanol, and therefore corn, increases. Meanwhile, rain forests throughout Central and South America are being razed to make way for land to grow biofuel components. Tortilla shortages in Mexico, rising flour prices in Pakistan, Indonesian and Malaysian forests being cut down and burned to make palm oil, and encroachments upon the Amazon rainforest due to Brazilian sugar cane production — all these developments indicate that biofuels are turning out to be more destructive than helpful.

The latest issue of Time magazine addresses the subject in frightening detail. Michael Grunwald, author of the cover story, “The Clean Energy Scam,” posits a worldwide epidemic that could end up being a greater disaster than all the alleged evils of fossil fuels combined. As he puts it:

“Deforestation accounts for 20 percent of all current carbon emissions. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources — cars, power plants, factories, even flatulent cows — it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. That means limiting the expansion of agriculture, a daunting task as the world’s population keeps expanding. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expanses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations — and it’s only getting started.”

Accordingly, the United Nations has expressed skepticism about ethanol and other biofuels. But the European Union seems to have bought into the biofuel craze with proposed legislation to mandate its use. This proposal has set off alarm bells in the United Kingdom, particularly with the British government’s chief science advisor, Professor John Beddington, who has warned that a food and deforestation crisis is likely to overtake any climate concerns. “The idea that you cut down rainforest to actually grow biofuels seems profoundly stupid,” he stated. Similarly, the British government’s top environmental scientist, Professor Robert Watson, called the policy “totally insane.”

Some British environmentalists apparently agree, as do members of the American environmental movement. As noted in the aforementioned Time article, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Nathanael Greene, the author of a 2004 report that rallied fellow environmentalists to support biofuels, is “looking at the numbers in an entirely new way,” now that biofuel production exists on such a large scale.

None of this has deterred American politicians from jumping on the ethanol bandwagon. No doubt, they see it as a means of garnering political support from the farm lobby and in particular ethanol producers, to whom they have provided generous federal subsidies. Indeed, President Bush, who according to his 2006 State of the Union address is a switchgrass enthusiast, has signed a bipartisan energy bill that will greatly increase support to the ethanol industry, as well as mandating the production of 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022.

In an election year, there has been no shortage of environmental platitudes aimed at voters and, inevitably, ethanol has been a mainstay. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been singing the praises of ethanol in Iowa, while her rival, Barack Obama, merely criticized her for not doing so earlier. Republican candidate John McCain, once an ardent opponent of ethanol, has suddenly become a convert.

The motto among both Democrats and Republicans on this issue seems to be “If it sounds good, push it,” and a gullible public — seduced by climate change hysteria and a “Going Green!” advertising onslaught — is buying into it.

While the search for alternatives to fossil fuels, and in particular the dependence upon foreign sources thereof, is laudable, future avenues must be considered more carefully. As the looming ethanol disaster has demonstrated, yet again, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/04/02/cstillwell.DTL


32 posted on 04/15/2008 1:27:36 PM PDT by rightinthemiddle (The Mainstream Media Controls Our Party. Go, RINOS!)
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To: NonValueAdded

“The inflation numbers we were seeing were BS.”

There are folks here who trust the reported CPI numbers. It simply baffles me.


33 posted on 04/15/2008 1:30:09 PM PDT by WoofDog123
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To: steel_resolve

“but we allow the Chinese off the hook why? “

Follow the money.

1) They help fund the congress’s annual budget deficit.
2) They allow US multinationals to produce or buy goods far cheaper than almost anywhere else with the infrastructure to compete, and on a scale no-one can match.
3) They have presumably bought our political class as well, the 1996 elections were just the start. The Hsu incident (which has disappeared as an active issue) should make that clear to those who choose to believe otherwise.

In short, the US has been sold (and sold out) by our political class and the major multinationals who are either based or do business here.


34 posted on 04/15/2008 1:33:35 PM PDT by WoofDog123
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To: stockpirate

I don’t suppose anyone buying a $20 or $25 dollar pie is worried about inflation.


35 posted on 04/15/2008 1:43:18 PM PDT by OeOeO
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To: Realism
>>Yeah likely the libs, but ethanol? <<

My thoughts exactly. It's a piecemealed logic at best to overlook the ever-rising prices of diesel and gasoline used in the harvest and transport of the limes. Even the interest in ethanol can be blamed on high gasoline and diesel prices.

36 posted on 04/15/2008 1:59:55 PM PDT by Muleteam1
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To: Muleteam1

Yeah, I was just reading an article about a shortage in global grain production and stocks. In this study they chose rising temperatures and globull warming as the decisive culprit for the food shortages.


37 posted on 04/15/2008 2:07:49 PM PDT by Realism (Some believe that the facts-of-life are open to debate.....)
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To: stockpirate

High labor costs, etc., the cost of doing business in N.Y. city not a few bucks for ingredients for a key lime pie. Check the other posting, folks. According to the pie maker it’s heat waves in California and Europe, falling dollar, blah blah blah.


38 posted on 04/15/2008 2:52:33 PM PDT by count-your-change (you don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: Realism
I can't speak for the rest of the world but for the U.S. who still has significant amounts of farm land, the last census revealed that farm kids are just not staying on the farm. Just yesterday I (a retired 60 year old) was offered a job at $100 a day driving a grain combine because the owner can't find dependable workers. His employees last summer tore the automatic transmission out of his tool truck in Colorado and one left the diesel tank cap off one of the semi-trucks during a rainstorm and very expensive injector work was required.

This all doesn't speak well for the continued health and welfare of the human species at least in America.

39 posted on 04/15/2008 6:17:04 PM PDT by Muleteam1
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