Free Republic

Direct from Drought.gov: After two water years of dry conditions, both California and Nevada are now 100% in drought. And with dire drought conditions, rapidly decreasing snowpack, and low reservoir levels, concern for wildfire season is growing. Read the drought status update to learn more. This is a dry spell not seen since the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl days. Because of the drought, Americans very likely will experience a shocking food shortage very soon. As explained in my previous article, drought is also affecting Arizona, and Colorado and the prairie states like Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. However,...

Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson is more concerned about a cyberattack crippling the government than another Jan. 6-type assault on the Capitol, she said in an interview aired Saturday on CNN. “Our networks ... have attempted intrusions every single day. And so, cybersecurity for me is a much greater concern than the prospect of thousands of people storming the West Terrace,” Gibson said. Gibson’s comments come in wake of several significant cyberattacks on critical U.S. infrastructure, including a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline that crippled East Coast fuel supply last month and another on a major U.S. meat...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...

Back in December, SocGen's resident market skeptic Albert Edwards shared with the world why he is starting to panic about soaring food prices. And since that was before food prices really took amid broken supply chains, trillions in fiscal stimulus and exploding commodity costs, off we can only imagine the sheer terror he must feel today. A United Nations index of world food costs climbed for a 12th straight month in May, its longest stretch in a decade, rising to the highest in almost a decade, heightening concerns over bulging grocery bills. All five components of the index rose during...

Many of the pandemic-related food price increases are related to supply chain disruptions and labor shortages.The cost of food at grocery stores that steady increased as a result of the pandemic are now reaching record highs.The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported Thursday that prices in May represented the biggest "month on month gain since 2010.The Los Angeles Times recently reported the price of seafood increased of 18.7% over a 13-week cycle that ended in late April. In addition, the NielsenIQ report recently found prices in 50 out of the 52 food categories tracked has...

A Regina woman says her bank account was drained after what seemed like an ordinary pizza delivery. Tara Miller ordered pizza from a Regina restaurant at around 2:30 p.m. CST Saturday. About half an hour later, she received her pizza and everything else she ordered alongside it. She said everything about the interaction was pretty straightforward. She tipped the affable delivery man $5. She said she has had many experiences with the same restaurant in the past and nothing had ever gone awry. It wasn't until a few hours later when she checked her bank account that she noticed something...

...the authors of a new article in Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, have some potentially upsetting news for local food aficionados: 'Local food' cannot simply be equated with 'sustainable food'; in most cases, it neither can ensure food security nor does it necessarily have a lower carbon footprint. For the environmental sustainability of food systems, many more factors matter than just transportation, not least consumers’ dietary choices … In terms of economic sustainability, selling via short supply chains [those with few intermediaries between farmer and consumer] into local markets can benefit certain farmers, while for other producers it...

As the sabbatical year approaches, many experts warn that the earth’s bounty will not suffice to feed the world. But prophetic messages and rabbinic wisdom putting the looming crisis in a redemptive framework paint a different picture. EXPERTS: GLOBAL FAMINE IS IMMINENT Last year, many experts were predicting severe global food shortages. In November 2020, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reported that 690 million people were undernourished and 130 million additional people risked being pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of the year. But these dire predictions were exacerbated even further by the pandemic. “Ironically,...

Anyone notice if new car dealers lots are as empty as in my hood? How about grocery stores, especially the meat section. I smell a crisis if our supply chain is not improved...

Surprisingly, the virus affects only the countries that may have a capacity to control China’s hegemonist ambitions and not those securing aid and assistance from it. It is widely suspected that the COVID-19 virus was manufactured in a laboratory in China and was let loose on the world. It is China which is thus claimed to be largely responsible for the loss of more than 3.3 million lives and causing untold suffering to a far greater number of people. If we look at the list of death by countries, we will see that over half a million died in USA,...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...

Just in time for picnic-table trivia, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences rewrites the origins of domesticated watermelons. Using DNA from greenhouse-grown plants representing all species and hundreds of varieties of watermelon, scientists discovered that watermelons most likely came from wild crop progenitors in northeast Africa. The study corrects a 90-year-old mistake that lumped watermelons into the same category as the South African citron melon. Instead, researchers, including a first author now at Washington University in St. Louis, found that a Sudanese form with non-bitter whitish pulp, known as the Kordofan melon (C....

In a drastic move signaling California's looming drought crisis, federal water managers announced Wednesday they're cutting water allocations to farms and cities again. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which supplies water in California through the Central Valley Project, said it expects to cut its delivery to the urban areas it serves by more than half, allocating 25% of the contracted amount rather than the 55% that was announced earlier. Water districts in the San Francisco Bay Area that have contracts with the Central Valley Project and are affected by the cut. The federal government also announced that their water allocations...

America’s biggest cash crop has rarely been more expensive. Corn prices have risen roughly 50% in 2021 and a bushel costs more than twice what it did a year ago. Corn has been one of the sharpest risers in the broad rally in raw materials that is prompting companies to boost prices for goods and fueling concern among investors that inflation could hobble the post-pandemic economic recovery. Lumber prices have shot to more than four times what is typical, pushing up home prices and obliterating renovation budgets. Copper, a cog of industry found throughout the home and in electronics, hit...

A tweet by NBA legend Dominique Wilkins saying an Atlanta restaurant discriminated against him Saturday was shared on social media thousands of times within a couple of hours, but Le Bilboquet in Buckhead says it was enforcing its dress code. The Atlanta Hawks superstar and Basketball Hall of Famer tweeted: “In my many years in the world, I’ve eaten at some of the greatest restaurants in the world, but never have I felt prejudice or been turned away because of the color of my skin, until today in #atlanta In @LeBilboquetAtl.” He ended the tweet with the hashtag #turnedawaybecauseimblack.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has set her sights on changing how the world produces and consumes food in order to counteract a trio of threats: carbon emissions, disease outbreaks and animal suffering. In a video posted on Twitter on Saturday, Thunberg said the environmental impact of farming as well as disease outbreaks such as COVID-19, which is believed to have originated from animals, would be reduced by changing how food was produced. "Our relationship with nature is broken. But relationships can change," Thunberg said in the video marking the International Day of Biological Diversity.

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...

A TikTok user is going viral after revealing how to “always” get fresh, hot French fries at McDonald’s. The answer? All you have to do is ask. ... ...when ordering the drive-thru or checkout line, you can simply ask to have your fries made fresh. ... ...McDonald’s even has a menu designation for made-to-order food. ... ..."I work at McDonald’s, you can literally ask for anything fresh and we’ll do it,” one commenter wrote. “Been doing this forever, make sure your cookies are fresh too,” another added. Some users, however, were upset that customers would have to ask for fresh,...

A new paper in JNCI Cancer Spectrum, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that several non-genetic factors — including greater red meat intake, lower educational attainment, and heavier alcohol use — are associated with an increase in colorectal cancer in people under 50. In the United States, incidence rates of early-onset colorectal cancer have nearly doubled between 1992 and 2013 (from 8.6 to 13.1 per 100,000), with most of this increase due to early-onset cancers of the rectum. Approximately 1 in 10 diagnoses of colorectal cancer in this country occur in people under 50. Researchers have observed the rise particularly...

What will be the results of a Pelosi/Biden government? Many think there will be inflation. Milton Friedman taught us that “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” The $2Trillion Covid relief plus the !5% minimum wage plus the forgiveness of college loans all pump money into the economy. Those actions are the very definition of monetary phenomena. The Bureau of Economic Analysis keeps us informed on the inflation rate but fails in one respect. The inflation information provided leaves...