Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year, Potash Says Bloomberg.com
February 20, 2008
Christopher Donville

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...g&refer=canada

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Grain farmers will need to harvest record crops every year to meet increasing global food demand and avoid famine, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. Chief Executive Officer William Doyle said.

People and livestock are consuming more grain than ever, draining world inventories and increasing the likelihood of shortages, Doyle said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Global grain stockpiles fell to about 53 days of supply last year, the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1960, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

``If you had any major upset where you didn't have a crop in a major growing agricultural region this year, I believe you'd see famine,'' Doyle, 57, said in New York............

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...g&refer=canada

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

yeah, that is what i have been telling people for the last 6 months. better get stocked, or get ready to be skinny.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

amen fullpower. beans and bullets. tearing up more of the yard for veg garden this year. stocked up good @ costco today. start feeding those ducks behind the shop, they are mighty tasty!

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

So much for trying to take a day off from reading bad news and trying to blend in with the other sheep... :sheep: :thumpdown

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Time to double up on the stocking efforts.

Went to wally world today for oil and other misc stuff. Took the opportunity to buy canned hams, sardines, and LOTS of CRISCO.

Dont forget, all the beans and flour in the world is gonna be hard to cook without oil or grease!

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

1) Stop exporting food to China and India.

2) Stop producing ethanol from food.

3) TS hits TF in China and India.

4) Poblem solved. At least for the US and europe. :bear_thumb:


:tongue_ma:

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

I think there will be food here, but the prices are going to keep going up. The people barely able to eat now are the poor souls who may not have food.

That chaps me so much I wish we would not only stop with the ethanol, but also grain finishing beef so more grain went to humans. Cattle do just fine without grain, except for dairy cows. But beef does not really need to be produced in a manner that creates starvation somewhere in the world. Only in a world run by psychopaths can doing that be considered ho hum.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

The US is unable to control its own markets. The price of domestic mine output, petroleum, and farm produce are increasingly under the influence of the 800 pound gorilla to the East. We may find ourselves priced right out of the market, unable to afford the gasoline from our own refineries, grain from our own farms. Like Ukraine in the 1920's a famine in what was the breadbasket of eastern Europe.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

straight from doomberg.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Famine won't happen in USA unless diesel-based transport methods (semi-trucks, railways) go offline. We have one of the largest agricultural industries on the planet.

Asia, Africa, poor parts of South America on the other hand... Well, I don't think much of us live over there.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

It wont be about whether or not there is enough to eat, it will be about whether or not you can afford to eat.

With China, and other countries purchasing large contracts for wheat and grains we will have to outbid for what is left.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

The US is a net importer of food. As hypertiger would say "you all consume more than you produce".

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Yes, we are quickly becoming more of a burden on the rest of the world than we are worth. We produce nothing, but consume ever increasing amounts of resources and wealth, we are, by definition, parasites.

Once the other nations of the world fully recognize this, we are truly doomed.


par�a�site Listen to the pronunciation of parasite
Pronunciation:
\ˈper-ə-ˌsīt, ˈpa-rə-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle French, from Latin parasitus, from Greek parasitos, from para- + sitos grain, food
Date:
1539

1 : a person who exploits the hospitality of the rich and earns welcome by flattery 2 : an organism living in, with, or on another organism in parasitism 3 : something that resembles a biological parasite in dependence on something else for existence or support without making a useful or adequate return

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Food control is people control - don't think for one minute that's not part of the plan.

http://ruralheritage.com/stop_nais/readers05.htm

http://www.rense.com/general67/starve.htm

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Nope, either a coincidence, or alot of people are starting to stock up. I hope it is the latter.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Partially true. Our balance of payments in dollars is negative for food, we import by air freight expensive fruit and salads from South America, etc.

Our net exports on a caloric basis are positive. We export a lot of carbs; grain, potatoes, etc.

The US makes obesity a world affair.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

http://www.farmersguardian.com/story...torycode=16518

Just how expensive is our wheat in reality?

Regulars - FG | 22 February, 2008
VIEWPOINT: By Jim Webster


People have commented to me that wheat is getting a bit expensive, and I suppose that, in a way, it is.

Yet it is amazing what you discover when you start poking about.
Looking back to Periclean Athens, if your estate could produce more than 200 medimnoi of wheat you were a full citizen and were expected to serve as a Hoplite with your own equipment.

If your estate could produce over 300 medimnoi of wheat then you were gentry indeed and were expected to keep a horse and turn up on that to fight! Obviously we are talking big money here; after all 200 medimnoi of wheat was worth 600 drachma.

For a chance at that sort of land young Greek men with no land of their own sailed to Egypt to serve in the army of the Ptolemies (Cleopatra and her family) because they would be given on retirement enough land to put them into the 200 medimnoi category.

The thing that makes this interesting is that 200 medimnoi is eight metric tonnes of wheat! Even at its most expensive recently, you�d still get change from �1,700.

In Athens, if you were really wealthy, they would ask you to pay for a trireme, the standard warship of the period.

You paid for maintenance and the crew�s wages (5,000 drachma or 66 tonnes of wheat) and it you got it sunk you might have to buy a new one (again about 5,000 drachma or 66 tonnes of wheat. Oliver Walston could be getting a call from the First Lord of the Admiralty asking him to provide us with a carrier task force at that rate.

Now wheat yields have increased, in Egypt, fertile with the annual flooding of the Nile, yields were reckoned to be 445kg per acre for wheat.
Farmers in other parts of the world huddled together in bars and consoled each other that Egyptians were doubtless liars and no-one ever got more that 300kg per acre.

The big change though is in wages. At this period the wages for the average family, small farmers or village craftsmen, if paid in wheat, would have been 727kg a year. That would have fed them and their families and they could have traded a bit to buy some beans, lentils and perhaps the occasional goat while the wife made the family�s clothes from wool she bought and spun herself.
You might wonder why I labour the point. To put it simply, the last couple of centuries, probably since the opening up of the Americas, have seen the price of food fall to unprecedented levels.

Compared to our ancestors either we are unbelievably, fabulously rich, or the price of food is so incredibly cheap as to be incomprehensible to anyone born before 1500 AD.

Socrates, the great philosopher, once served as a soldier (as a citizen he felt he should, even though he wasn�t wealthy enough for it to be obligatory) and it was commented by his friends that he did this even though his sole asset was his house worth 500 drachma, or six and a half tonnes of wheat.

Wander into Athens now and see how many houses you can buy with seven tonnes of wheat?

Indeed, I remember one comment made about England at the time of Napoleon, where the yield from an acre would pay a farmworker for a year, now it might just pay him for a week.

So, we have built a civilisation on food being almost obscenely cheap.
For most of human history food was expensive and you literally �ate bread by the sweat of your brow�. Yet for the last 200 or so years we have turned everything upside down. Imagine it, wheat at �60 a tonne, so cheap I know people who rigged up systems to burn it as solid fuel in their central heating boilers.

So where are we now? Just reading around can be worrying. Oil is now being predicted to reach $105 a barrel by the end of this year.
Because we are using all the oil we can produce now � and may indeed have hit �peak oil� � when people use biodiesel they aren�t substituting for oil, they are adding to the total available.

Some pundits point out that whereas six years ago we used 12 million hectares to produce biofuels, now we use 80 million hectares. At the moment this provides for 3 per cent of world energy needs but by 2030 biofuels will need to provide for 10.6 per cent of world energy needs. This is nothing to do with global warming and carbon footprints, this is just to ensure that we don�t run out of fuel.

It probably took 150 years for our civilisation to swing from a man�s annual wage being the yield of one acre, to that same acre paying him for a week. I wonder how long it will take to swing back?

Obviously we can try and push for increased yields, but to match the scale of increase we have seen since they huddled in gloomy bars and decided the Egyptians were liars if they said they got over 400kg an acre, we would have to hit 20 tons an acre. GM is not going to deliver that.

So personally I don�t think that wheat is dear, I don�t think it is dear at all.

� Jim Webster farms beef and sheep on 150 acres at Barrow-in-Furness and is a past president of Cumbria CLA.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

I agree with your views, I have little if any meat in my survival preps, mostly grains and beans.

Only in Amerika would a landowner tie up several acres of otherwise productive land for a bovine latrine.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Yeah......but dang if they aren't TASTY TOILETS when you get 'em on the grill...... :D

http://www.digistash.com/data/026a39...71_p55224.jpeg

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Andy...that bunch of burger must have seen a grill a long time ago...that picture's been around for a long time! Please tell me it's not still upright!!!

We just did up a couple of Angus last week...thought we'd try them...won't happen again, what a high-strung breed! Couldn't wait to get them in the freezer!

Hogs are next month, then we're topped off again for a while. Good thing. I HATE buying meat that I can raise...

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But according to one of my former socialist political science professors, that's a good thing. According to him the U.S. should import all of its food from international markets.:stupid:

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That won't be a problem for the new democrat president (Hillary). It'll create an opportunity to increase gov't control of food, it's pricing and distribution. The more people they can make dependent on government, the more they can expand the size and scope of the government, which is very beneficial to career politicians and their families

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Despite the high infant mortality rates, the third world will continue to produce more people. Once the sustainable resources run out, or economically viably affordable resources run out, people begin to starve. It really is that simple. Only China has taken serious steps with the one-child policy to curb unsustainable population growth.

The food production system of the world is under strain, it can be enhanced and improved a great deal, but there has to be an incentive, and the worst off people of the world are also the least able to provide for themselves when resource limits start being hit. eg. They can't afford the tonnes of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, we use to grow food, yet have arable land.

I think I'll see some terrible things in my lifetime when a large proportion of the poorer world dies off due to failing to establish the most basic of needs.

As with any other organism on the planet, once we outnumber the available resources, only one thing begins to happen, and that is die-off.

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Wars engineered by TPTB can facilitate that die-off.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

As time goes by priorities will change.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

No doubt they will. I read the other day the conversion of grain protein rates to animal protien.....not vouching for accuracy, but here's what it said:

Beef: 5.8 to 1
Hog 3.2 to 1
Chicken 1.5 to 1
Fish 1.2 to 1


Given that, my future farm would probably change from a beef raising deal to a milk cow or two, some hogs, some chickens, and the fish I already have in two ponds. The excess pasture that was used to graze beef will be converted to grain like corn/oats.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Andy, that conversion ratio makes sense.
I know you've only got X amount of available pasture for the proposed milk cow/grain production.
Any ideas how that acerage would get divided up to provide for your new needs?
Just curious...thanks for your reply, throw another log on the fire and enjoy what's left of this weekend.
brewer

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

Brewer:

I have 6 acres for pasture now, which will support about one cow per acre during normal pasture season.......I buy my hay after raising/bailing my own for some time, and figuring it isn't worth my time for what I can buy it for.

BUT assuming I had to go back to it, I would figure no more than 1 cow per 2-3 acres.....1/2 to pasture in spring-fall, and then the hay off the other 1/2 to carry thru the winter. So, I wouldn't try to carry more than one milk cow, and sell/trade/slaughter the calves she had early on......and just do without milk when she had her dry period...or trade for milk....or maybe can some for that ). Even one small cow would produce more milk than we'd drink, the excess would go to raise pigs.

That would free up 3-4 acres for other crops. Probably rotate corn/oats with clover hay.

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Ahahahaaa.....yeah....he went in the freezer several steers back....but I have the pic on file, so I drag it out when the mood suits.....I'll try to get a pic of the Black Angus/Belted Galloway cross that is going next. We're just about down the last of the last beef.

Re: Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year
 

No, the poor will continue to get fatter, at least in the West.

The really cheap food is the worst for us, with refined flours and high-fructose corn syrup. Storing, and using whole grains, as many of the preparation-minded are apt to do, is an unfamiliar--no, alien--concept for most Americans. I read every label, and if it uses corn or synthetic sweeteners, I don't buy it. That costs me more.

Processed foods usually have a longer storage life, thanks to preservatives, high amounts of sugar, and ridiculous amounts of salt. At some point we can anticipate out of season fruits and veggies to stop being flown in to our markets; only goods capable of lasting through a sea cargo trip will come in (for most of us; the rich will be able to get whatever they are willing to pay for, natch).

I can't remember the author, but I remember reading a Christmas story where the author, driving down a rural road, picks up a local boy who is hitchhiking. the timeframe is the late '30s. The narrator asks him what he got in the way of presents, and what jumped out at me was "an orange". It took me a long time to realize that for a long time oranges and bananas and mangoes were exotic, limited-season items. I remember vacations to Florida as a kid in the '70s, and we'd always bring back big sacks of oranges.

Some people will learn to budget their food money and buy rice and beans, but I predict that death from diabetes will soon outstrip every cause of death except heart disease as the largest American killer.