View Single Post
  #10 (permalink)   Report Post  
Posted to rec.food.cooking
George Shirley George Shirley is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,906
Default Costs of food, was: Annual weather rant

Gregory Morrow wrote:
> Puester wrote:
>
>> Gregory Morrow wrote:
>>
>>> Don't forget, this is a drag for the farmers, too. They are ready to
>>> start getting their crops in and it's still KRUMMY weather. Hope this
>>> cold wet spring doesn't lead eventually to higher food prices...

>> If it's not weather causing inflation, it will be something
>> else:
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/3m9sdl

>
>
>
> Interesting, Gloria, thanks. What will Walmart do...???
>
> I grabbed this from another newsgroup. And the ABC evening nooze
> tonight had a feature on "food inflation", e.g. rice up 147% in the
> past year, dairy up 80%, etc. Poor people are rioting in Africa,
> India, etc. And I'm surprised food here in the wealthy countries is
> not a LOT higher:
>
>
>
> "April 9 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. vowed to supply the Philippines with
> as much
> rice as the world's biggest buyer of the cereal needs after some of
> the
> largest exporters cut sales to safeguard domestic stockpiles.
>
> Rice, the staple food for half the world, has doubled in price in the
> past
> year as China, Egypt, Vietnam and India, representing more than a
> third of
> global shipments, reduced sales to secure domestic supplies. The price
> of
> the cereal in Chicago rose 1.7 percent today to $20.825 per 100
> pounds,
> below the record $21.60 per 100 pounds yesterday.
>
> The Philippines is tightening controls over domestic sales and
> boosting
> overseas purchases to curb price rises and avoid the kind of unrest
> experienced by some African countries. The government plans to buy
> more rice
> at tenders in April and May.
>
> U.S. rice exports, the third largest behind those of Thailand and
> Vietnam,
> were forecast to jump 22 percent to 3.58 million tons in the year
> ended July
> 31, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said March 11."
>
> </>

I live in rice growing country and have watched the acreage planted in
rice go down by about 75% since the mid-sixties. Government controls on
"allotments", control of acreage, price controls, etc pretty much doomed
the rice industry in Texas and Louisiana. It became more attractive for
the farmer to raise soybeans, sugar cane, and even crawfish.

Sugar cane went down for a long time due to other nations subsidizing
their cane crops and put ours out of business for many years. Cane has
made somewhat of a comeback but not as much as previously.

We're going to see the same thing with corn (maize) due to push/rush to
make ethanol for automotive purposes. You're doing to see basic prices
going up over the next ten years but we're still subsidizing many
farmers, particularly dairy with our tax dollars.

Don't buy gold as an inflation hedge, buy food.

George