“Due To A Poor Harvest Season, We Are Experiencing Shortages On Many Of Our Canned Vegetable Items”

July 16, 2019 by Michael Snyder



I know that this headline is alarming, but it is actually a direct quote from a notice that was recently posted in a Kroger supermarket. And as you will see below, similar notices are being posted in the canned vegetable sections of Wal-Mart stores nationwide. I would encourage you to examine the evidence in this article very carefully and to come to your own conclusions about what is happening. At this moment, social media is buzzing with reports of shortages of canned vegetables all around the country. But so far, the mainstream media is being eerily quiet about all of this. Is there a reason why they aren’t saying anything? For months, I have been reporting on the extremely bizarre weather patterns that are causing crop failures all over the planet. But I certainly did not expect that we would already begin to see product shortages on the shelves of major U.S. supermarkets this summer. What I am about to share with you is shocking, but the truth needs to get out. For those that share my articles on your own websites, I know that all of the images in this article are going to be an inconvenience, but it is imperative that you include them when you republish this article because they tell a story. All of the images are taken directly from Facebook, and they prove that we are now facing a nationwide shortage of canned vegetables.

So let’s get started.

This first image was posted on Facebook by Scott L. Biddle, and it shows a “product shortage” notice that was posted in the canned vegetable section of a Wal-Mart in Tennessee…



All the way over on the west coast, similar notices were photographed by Gina Helm Taylor in the state of Oregon on July 12th…



And here are a couple of notices that Daniel Moore was able to photograph during his lunch break at his local Wal-Mart…



It appears that the exact same notices were sent to Wal-Mart stores all across America. Here is another one from Carol Guy Hodges…



And lastly, here is a photo that was shared by Randy Sevy…



This certainly isn’t the end of the world, and we can definitely survive without canned vegetables for a few weeks.

But as crop failures around the globe continue to intensify, will shortages such as this start to become increasingly common?

Earlier today, I received a very detailed email from a reader that had some excellent intel about what was going on at his own local Wal-Mart. The following is an excerpt from what he sent to me…


This is alarming in and of itself, however, they are experiencing shortages across most product categories. The only information I could find online was pointing to a driver shortage. I noticed the shortage over the holiday weekend and returned this past weekend to take a closer look. There were problems with paper products, OTC medications, pickles (everyone wanted pickles?), lunch meats and hot dogs, vinegar, produce, alcohol, eggs, cereal, and feminine hygiene products. None of these items had signs like those posted in canned veggies, instead there were small tags placed over the original price tag the say “out of stock” in very small print.

While a driver shortage could cause issues, it’s a little odd to me that there are 12 packs of toilet paper and 6 packs of coke but no 24 packs of either. One of the items being restocked were more of the 12 packs of toilet paper. Does a driver shortage account for this? Another oddity is that one Walmart may have pickles but no tortillas while the exact opposite will be true for a different Walmart. The employees that would normally be stocking were instead counting products (manually) and pulling product to the front of the shelves. There was a six foot stretch of Cheerios along one shelf that was one box deep, hiding the empty shelves behind them.

One more item to note is that the first trip I made over the fourth of July weekend was to purchase canned corn. They had 9 cans of what I was looking for so I purchased them all. The following weekend they had restocked the same corn (there were 10 cans) but the price had increased almost 30%! The original purchase was for $1.44 while one week later the price had increased to $1.88.

Sadly, the economic law of supply and demand is going to continue to push prices higher.

And the tighter that food supplies become, the higher prices will go.

Since the mainstream media is being completely silent about this, many people on social media don’t have much information to go on. Speculation is rampant, and many are fearing the worst.

One Facebook user named Stephen Dubaniewicz believes that all of the product shortage notices at his local Wal-Mart could mean that a food shortage is on the way…



Hopefully we have some more time before things start getting really bad, but I would encourage you to use this time to get prepared while you still can.

For months, I have been documenting the problems that U.S. farmers have been experiencing due to all of the endless rain and flooding in the middle of the country.

But sometimes a picture is worth a thousands words, and this before and after photo from Nebraska speaks volumes…



We know that food production in the United States is going to be way below expectations this year.

And as I just showed you, it appears that a shortage of canned vegetables has already begun.

A full-blown crisis has not arrived yet, but perhaps one is a lot closer than many of us had anticipated.

This is a huge story, and I will continue to keep you updated.

That's a reason the wife and I are putting as much back and canning ourselves this year. So far we have canned over 60 quarts and 18 pints of Green Beans alone. Garden is still producing strong and it is only 50x50 feet big.

Folks need to find what they need now because the stuff to do it is getting hard to find and getting REAL expensive! For example flats have almost doubled in price from last year.

If you wait until the stores are empty before you plant a garden, you'll wait too long.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Local produce is terrible this year. Expensive and not worth eating. We had the wettest June on record. It's rained every day for a month and a half. Everything is water logged and rotting.

I was surprised that half my asparagus survived our deluge, and are actually thriving. I'll have a fair "second cut" which I use for trading with others. It won't be nearly as good as the harvest we usually have, but we won't be hurting - especially since most of us keep a years supply of produce on hand for emergencies.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I'm told there's a Rib Crib restaurant in Stillwater with a "We Finance" sign out front. The price of BBQ has skyrocketed.

Onward and upward,
airforce

There are thousands of acres of the Platte River in Nebraska that is not even planted this year due to 1-4’ of sand sitting atop the topsoil! The same is happening on the Missouri River, but they are still under water. A family that my brother knows said that the cost to reclaim the soil back to farmable condition is greater than the highly inflated land value.

I have a TINY garden (3 4x5’ beds) where I grow the few things my family uses the most. One of these is carrots. I have become an expert in growing them, and have even learned how to keep seed (which they produce the second year). If you know carrots, their seeds are tiny! I have about a quart of carrot seeds, plus that much more from this year’s harvest any day.

I have purchased one of those walk behind seeders with plates. Since I have a bulk of seed (which otherwise would be expensive) I will be planting a HUGE crop out at my family’s farm, and going out periodically to tend them.

Biggest need for most folks is Heirloom seeds that allow reproducing year after year. Unless you get Heirloom you will be buying 'Terminator Seeds'. These are under the control of the 6 companies that produce seeds and where you can't keep planting from the seeds you get from them as they are hybrids.

Next biggest need is a 7 quart pressure canner. Times were you could find one in EVERY complete kitchen. Today you are lucky is a yuppie millennial has a complete set of pots and pans. If you do find one at an estate or yard sale you can usually get its pressure gauge tested at your local county extension agents office either for free or a couple of dollars. They also do soil tests for folks so they can get their ground where it can grow things. Right now I am up to three pressure canners. One from the wife's Grandmother, one from my Mother, and the third I bought from an estate sale. This is probably the biggest expense folks will have.

I think the biggest expense is probably the jars. True, you only have to buy them once - but that one time is pretty painful.

A dehydrator is nice, but I found myself using ours less and less every year. I just haven't been able to keep dried foods as long as canned foods. I personally think dried foods taste better, but I doubt there's any difference in nutritional value between dried and canned.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Pressure canning is my next step. I’ve wanted to try canning deer this way. Going deer hunting this fall/winter for the first time. The old Lee Enfield is going to get some action with the scout scope all tuned up.

As for seeds, this week s a big thing for most “gardeners”, as these are becoming rarer these days. They know how to only grow tomatoes and peppers that they buy at the garden store already 1’ tall in pots. When I do run across these types, they are amazed at what I grow. If you keep seeds from most of the tomatoes and peppers you will not get true or even productive plants.

On the farms it is worse. Without access to internationally grown biotech seeds every spring 999.9 of a 100 farms would be put indefinitely out of commission growing only weeds. This is my greatest fear, is that the nation’s (and world’s) breadbasket is just one disrupted planting season away from famine.

I’ve often wondered about storing several 55 gallon barrels with CO2 full of open pollinated corn, wheat, oats, and several edible beans... out on the farm to be able to plant a crop. Beyond food value, this crop would be worth its weight I. Good as seed to farmers desperate to have a crop the second year. Such a growing gold mine would be well worth a local militia guarding.

Shock Survey: 12% Of U.S. Corn Farmers Didn’t Get Their Crops Planted, 48% Expect “Below-Average Yields This Harvest”
So now that crops are failing all over the planet, what are we going to do?


By Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream Thursday, July 25, 2019

Crops all over America are failing, and the true extent of this crisis is starting to become clearer.

Months of endless rain and nightmarish flooding prevented many farmers in the middle of the country from getting their crops planted on time, and millions of acres didn’t get planted at all. And if all that wasn’t enough, this month record high temperatures have been absolutely brutal for vulnerable young crops across the Midwest. We shall see how the rest of the summer goes, but at this point it appears that yields are going to be way, way below expectations, and that has very serious implications for all of us.

I told my readers that I would stay on top of this story, and things have deteriorated substantially since the last time I wrote about this.

Earlier, I stumbled upon a brand new AGPRO survey of U.S. corn farmers that seems to indicate that things are worse than almost all of us thought. According to that survey, 12 percent of U.S. corn farmers didn’t plant crops at all this year, and 48 percent expect “below-average yields this harvest”…

Forty-eight percent of U.S. farmers say they expect their corn crop will deliver below-average yields this harvest, according to a Farm Journal Pulse survey conducted on Tuesday.

Of the 1,082 farmers who responded to the survey, 12% say they didn’t get their crop planted. Only 10% of farmers surveyed say their crop is above average this year.

In other words, corn farmers are telling us that they aren’t going to grow very much corn this year.


When the elite get their wish and crash the economy, their escape plan to hide in their bunkers will implode on themselves.

And the latest USDA crop progress report confirms that. In particular, the numbers coming from the Upper Midwest are absolutely disastrous…

Minnesota: 21% of corn had silked by July 21, compared with the five-year average of 56%; 57% was rated good or excellent, the rest fair to very poor.

North Dakota: 10% of corn had silked by July 21, compared with the five-year average of 32%; 77% was in good or excellent shape, the rest fair to very poor.

South Dakota: 9% of corn had silked by July 21, down from the five-year average of 50%; 58% was rated good or excellent, the rest fair to very poor.

You can look at the raw numbers for yourself right here. Nationally, 35 percent of corn had silked as of July 21, but on July 21 last year that number was sitting at 78 percent.

That is less than half.

Earlier this year, there were some that were criticizing me for sounding the alarm about crop failures, but after these numbers what is happening should be apparent to everyone.

And a similar pattern is happening with soybeans. Here are more numbers from the Upper Midwest…

Minnesota: 47% of soybeans had bloomed by July 21, compared with the five-year average of 70%; 60% was in good or excellent condition, the rest fair to very poor.

North Dakota: 49% of soybeans had bloomed by July 21, compared with the five-year average of 70%; 66% was in good or excellent shape, the rest fair to very poor.

South Dakota: 45% of beans had bloomed by July 21, compared with the five-year average of 65%; 47% was rated good or excellent, the rest fair to very poor.

Nationally, 40 percent of soybeans had bloomed as of July 21, but on July 21 last year that number was sitting at 76 percent.

That is just over half.

And just because crops are on schedule does not mean that they are in good condition.

According to one report, over 20 million corn and soybean acres are “in poor to very poor condition”…

More than 20 million U.S. corn and soybean acres remain in poor to very poor condition. Illinois leads with 4.2 million acres in poor or unfavorable condition. The news isn’t much better in Iowa where 2 million acres are also listed under similar conditions.

Let that sink in for a moment.

20 million acres.

And all of this is happening at a time when crops are failing all over the world due to nightmarish weather conditions. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “Look At This Map – It Shows Devastating Crop Losses Are Literally Happening All Over The Globe”.

For U.S. farmers, weather conditions at the end of the growing season are going to be critical. Many are hoping that warm weather will last as long as possible in order to allow their crops time to catch up and come to maturity.

But if an early hard frost comes along, that is going to be absolutely devastating.

In any event, it has become crystal clear that production is going to be way, way down this year. Of course we are all going to want the same amount of food to eat next year, and so that is going to put an enormous amount of stress on the system.

Any college course in economics will teach you that when demand remains the same and supply goes down, prices go up. In the short-term we should expect to see food prices steadily rise, and that trend should accelerate as this crisis intensifies. I would very much encourage you to get prepared while you still can.

Globally, we are in an even more precarious situation. More than 7.5 billion people currently live on our planet, and we really struggle to feed them all even during the best years.

So now that crops are failing all over the planet, what are we going to do?

I suspect that those at the bottom of the economic food chain will be hit the hardest. As food supplies get tighter, the wealthier countries will have the resources to secure what they need, and that will leave a whole lot of others to fend for themselves.

According to the World Bank, close to half the population of the planet currently lives on less than $5.50 a day. We are talking about billions of people, and they are simply not prepared to handle a radical shock to global food prices.

My brother said that the seed corn companies are HURTING for acres as their eastern plantings got destroyed or never planted.

They were going as far as paying farmers to destroy their planted and growing crops to plant their seeds for seed production... doubling or their acres of seed production in Nebraska.

This means that much less feed grain in the market here come fall.

Also there is going to be a BIG lack of corn to turn into blended gasoline and ethanol. So much for biofuel.

Due To The Weather, Midwest Farmers Fear Widespread Crop Failures And A “Record-Low” Harvest In 2019

October 15, 2019 by Michael Snyder


Snow usually blankets the Upper Midwest around the first week of November, and so that means that many farmers in the Midwest only have about two weeks to salvage what they can before everything is lost. The unprecedented October blizzard that we just witnessed dumped massive amounts of snow on millions upon millions of acres of crops from Colorado to Minnesota. Even if the weather is absolutely perfect between now and November 1st, farmers are still “expecting massive crop losses”. In fact, one South Dakota lawmaker told the press that the crop losses will be “as devastating as we’ve ever seen”. And as you will see below, even parts of the Midwest that didn’t get hammered by the recent blizzard are potentially facing “record-low” harvests this year. We have never seen a year this bad for Midwest farmers in modern American history, but if the weather does not cooperate things could rapidly get much, much worse over the next two weeks.

Because of all the rain and flooding earlier in the year, many Midwest farmers faced serious delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were counting on good weather at the end of the season so that their crops could fully mature. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and the recent Midwest blizzard was definitely a nightmare scenario…

Wall Street Journal writers Jacob Bunge and Kirk Maltais reported on Monday that, “Farmers who delayed planting in waterlogged fields this spring face a new threat as they race to harvest their crops: snow.

“Heavy snowfall and high winds over the past several days buffeted northern Farm Belt states where many farmers faced historic planting delays last spring. The early blizzard bookended a trying year for U.S. farmers. Crop prices generally remain under pressure because of high supplies and slackened demand as a result of the U.S.-China trade war. And many crops now threatened by a freeze are immature because they were planted so late.”

When the snow began blanketing the Dakotas, most of the corn was not even mature yet. The following numbers originally come from the Wall Street Journal…

The Journal writers explained that, “The cold weather is a big threat to vulnerable crops. Only 22% of corn in North Dakota was mature as of Oct. 7, and 36% in South Dakota. In the 18 biggest corn-producing states, 58% of this year’s crop was mature, versus an average of 85% by that date over the previous five years, according to the USDA.

Right now, there are millions upon millions of acres of crops that farmers cannot even get to because of all the snow.

If we do not get some warm weather over the next two weeks, they may not be able to salvage much at all, because winter weather season is rapidly approaching…

In normal years, winter weather hits much of the Upper Midwest portion of the Great Plains around the beginning of November, Isane said. After that, it is too late to bring in most crops.

That means, farmers have about two weeks to carry out their harvest — or lose it.

Essentially, we are potentially facing a crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before.

The next two weeks will determine whether many Midwest farmers make a paycheck for the year or not, and so at this point “the stress level is off the charts for these guys”…

“Nobody really knows what will happen because we don’t know what the weather will be,” said Luther Markwart, the executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association. Most of the sugarbeets in the country are grown in the Great Plains area that was hit by last week’s blizzard.

“So, the stress level is off the charts for these guys,” Markwart said. “Just think if your entire year’s paycheck was made in the next two weeks — or not.”

The Wall Street Journal and a few other mainstream news outlets are reporting on this, but most mainstream news sources are so obsessed with reporting on President Trump 24 hours a day that they are completely missing this story so far.

And even without the recent blizzard we were still facing very serious crop failures across the Midwest. Most parts of Michigan didn’t really get hammered by the recent blizzard, but it is being reported that farmers in Michigan “could see record-lows in their crops in 2019″…

Michigan farmers could see record-lows in their crops in 2019, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture October Crop Production Report.

According to the USDA’s National Ag Statistics Service (NASS), Michigan farmers will be bracing for a rough harvest due to extremely variable crop conditions, wide-ranging stages of crop maturity and muddy fields.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand that if farmers don’t grow our food, we don’t get to eat.

So is anyone out there willing to dramatically reduce the amount of food that they will eat in 2020 so that everyone else will have enough?

Because what we are facing is not pretty. According to the report that I just quoted, soybean production in Michigan this year will be down 31 percent…

The soybean production in Michigan was projected at 75.7 million bushels, a 31% decrease from last year and the lowest since 2008.

And actually the numbers in the Dakotas will be far, far worse than that if farmers are not able to get out into their fields over the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, the African Swine Fever crisis over in China continues to escalate. The following very alarming information comes to us from Zero Hedge…

In a report on Monday, we detailed how pork spot prices have soared across China as the African Swine Fever has killed 50% of the country’s hog population. The price increase (as ‘pig ebola’ spreads) has already pushed up consumer inflation to a six-year high. Now analysts are telling Reuters on Tuesday that pork prices are expected to move significantly higher through year-end.

New data published Monday from the Ministry of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China showed the pig-apocalypse continues to get worse.

Retail pork prices in the country have jumped 84% from last year to $2.78 a pound.

Needless to say, this crisis is pushing up pork prices all over the globe, and what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

We are entering a season of time that will be unlike anything we have ever seen before. Here in the United States, it has always been safe to assume that our supermarkets will always be teeming with plenty of inexpensive food, but now a major shift is happening.

Everyone acknowledges that food prices are going to go up. The real debate is about how high they will ultimately go.

The next two weeks are absolutely critical. It is “make or break time” for many Midwest farmers, and they are itching to get out into their fields.

So let us hope that the weather cooperates, because we essentially need a miracle at this point.

A terrible pandemic is killing pigs, and it may be coming here. I wish we had a Strategic Bacon Reserve.



Onward and upward,
airforce

Time for those who can, to start raising their own. Feed em local corn and stay away from imported feed.

Bacon is easy to can....lots of youtube vids on how to do it...

Sausage is good too.

Canning fatty foods is pretty easy, but I just have a personal thing against it. My mom, my grandmother, and my great grandmother would never can meat at all, because they felt it was somehow dangerous, and I guess that just sort of rubbed off on me. I've dehydrated lots of meat, but it's not something you can do with fatty meats.

Years ago, i did a thread on making pemmican, but I can't find it now. When I get time, I'll do another topic on it.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I’ve seen directions on how to PRESSURE can deer... looks like a good way to save some meat that won’t all go bad as soon as the power goes out. Some people will put onions , garlic, carrots and the like in with it so you have a ready to make stew/soup, casserole of what ever sorts you want to make. It would make meal prep a breeze for every day cooking, and would be amazing efficient post-SHTF. Would also be s good way to preserve part of the vegetable harvest as well.

Now I just need one of those critters to be within range of me with the Lee Enfield in deer season!

Good Hunting!

You thought I ws joking about the Strategic bacon Reserve, didn't you?



Onward and upward,
airforce

Record Low Temps Up To 50 Degrees Below Normal Threaten To Absolutely Wreck The Rest Of The Harvest Season

Despite all of our advanced technology, farmers are still deeply dependent on good weather, and if farmers do not grow our food we do not eat

By Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream Thursday, October 31, 2019

It isn’t supposed to be this cold in October.

The official start of winter is still almost two months away, and yet the weather in much of the western half of the country right now resembles what we might expect in mid-January. All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week. Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested. Due to unprecedented rainfall and extreme flooding early in the year, many farmers faced extraordinary delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were hoping that good weather at the end of the season would provide time for the crops to fully mature and be harvested. Unfortunately, a nightmare scenario has materialized instead. A couple of monster snow storms have already roared through the Midwest, and now record low temperatures threaten to absolutely wreck the rest of the harvest season.

When temperatures get significantly below zero for more than a few hours, scientists tell us that it will kill standing corn…

A significant freeze (28°F or colder for a few hours) will kill the whole plant, and any frost will act to defoliate plants, resulting in diminished grain filling for the seeds, especially on the upper half of the plants.

And right now we are facing a crisis because less than half of all U.S. corn has been harvested.

In fact, according to the latest USDA Crop Progress Report just 41 percent of all U.S. corn has been harvested so far…

In its weekly Crop Progress Report, the USDA pegged the U.S. corn harvest at 41% complete, below the trade’s expectation of 48% and below a five-year average 61%.

Minnesota is behind the most regarding picking corn: 22% vs. a 56% five-year average.

So when I used the term “nightmare scenario” earlier, I was not exaggerating.

The low temperatures that we have seen this week are hard to believe. According to USA Today, the temperature in one community in Utah actually hit 45 degrees below zero on Wednesday…

Subzero cold was recorded as far south as the Grand Canyon on Wednesday morning, the Weather Channel said. Big Piney, Wyoming, plunged to minus 24 degrees before sunrise Wednesday.

Notorious cold spot Peter Sinks, Utah, dipped to an incredible minus 45 degrees early Wednesday. This appeared to be the coldest October temperature on record anywhere in the Lower 48 states, according to Utah-based meteorologist Timothy Wright.

That is seriously cold.

And we have also seen many other all-time October lows in cities all across the western half of the country…

-Bozeman, Montana: minus 14 degrees (Oct. 29 and 30)

-Casper, Wyoming: minus 8 degrees (Oct. 29 and 30)

-Grand Junction, Colorado: 12 degrees (Oct. 30)

-Livingston, Montana: minus 12 degrees (Oct. 29)

-Rawlins, Wyoming: minus 20 degrees (Oct. 30)

-Rock Springs, Wyoming: minus 6 degrees (Oct. 30)

-Salt Lake City: 14 degrees (Oct. 30)

We have never seen anything like this during the month of October ever before.

In Denver, they have actually set record lows for three days in a row…

The temperature in Denver officially dropped to 3 degrees above zero early Wednesday morning. It was cold enough to shatter the previous record low for October 30 by 4 degrees. It was our third record temperature in 3 days and one more record is expected Thursday morning.

It is strange that so much of the nation is experiencing such bitterly cold weather while much of California is being burned to a crisp by horrific wildfires.

But this continues a theme that we have been tracking all year. Everywhere we look there have been bizarre weather extremes, and many expect that to continue into the winter season.

This week, even “warm weather cities” are experiencing extremely cold temperatures. For example, the forecast called for a record low of just 19 degrees in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Thursday morning…

Thursday morning in Albuquerque is expected to have a record low temperature of 19 degrees. It will feel like 11 degrees with the wind chill. The current record low for Oct. 31 in the city is 21.

According to the National Weather Service, locations from Albuquerque southward, including east central and southeast New Mexico, “have not seen temperatures this cold since February.”

But the real damage will be done as this extraordinarily cold air moves into the Midwest. According to USA Today, we could see temperatures “30 to 50 degrees below normal” in the central plains…

High temperatures Wednesday were forecast to be 30 to 50 degrees below normal across Colorado, Texas and the central Plains, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue of BAM Weather.

Right now, much of the Midwest is currently covered by snow. This has prevented a lot of farmers from being able to harvest their crops, and now devastatingly cold air is moving in.

It is likely that the crop losses in many areas will be severe. And considering what is going on elsewhere in the world right now, this is something that we cannot afford.

Despite all of our advanced technology, farmers are still deeply dependent on good weather, and if farmers do not grow our food we do not eat.

This was already going to be an absolutely abysmal year for U.S. agriculture, and now this snap of record cold weather is going to be the nail in the coffin for many U.S. farmers.

Without a doubt, this is an incredibly important story, and I will continue to keep you updated as I learn more.

1/4 of all pigs could die of swine fever.



Onward and upward,
airforce

Global Crop Failures Continue: In Australia This Is Going To Be The WORST HARVEST Ever Recorded

February 19, 2020 by Michael Snyder


Global food production is being hit from seemingly every side. Thanks to absolutely crazy weather patterns, giant locust armies in Africa and the Middle East, and an unprecedented outbreak of African Swine Fever in China, a lot less food is being produced around the world than originally anticipated. Even during the best of years we really struggle to feed everyone on the planet, and so a lot of people are wondering what is going to happen as global food supplies become tighter and tighter. The mainstream media in the United States is so obsessed with politics right now that they haven’t been paying much attention to this emerging crisis, but the truth is that this growing nightmare is only going to intensify in the months ahead.

In Australia, conditions have been extremely hot and extremely dry, and that helped to fuel the horrific wildfires that we recently witnessed.

And everyone knew that agricultural production in Australia was going to be disappointing this year, but it turns out that it is actually going to be the worst ever recorded…

Australia’s hottest and driest year on record has slashed crop production, with summer output expected to fall to the lowest levels on record, according to official projections released Tuesday.

The country’s agriculture department said it expects production of crops like sorghum, cotton and rice to fall 66 percent — the lowest levels since records began in 1980-81.

The continent of Australia is considered to be one of the breadbaskets of the world. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2018/19 Australia exported over 9 million tons of wheat to the rest of the world.

But thanks to relentless crop failures, Australia has started to import wheat, and that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

So instead of helping to feed the rest of the world, Australia is now relying on the rest of us to help feed them.

And what is happening this year didn’t just barely break the old records. In fact, one senior economist says that this will be the worst summer crop production the country has ever seen “by a large margin”…

“It is the lowest summer crop production in this period by a large margin,” Peter Collins, a senior economist with the department’s statistical body ABARES told AFP.

Of course if the rest of the world was doing great we could certainly survive a downturn in Australia.

Unfortunately, that is definitely not the case.

Right now, billions upon billions of locusts are voraciously devouring farms in eastern Africa and the Middle East. As I detailed the other day, giant armies of locusts the size of large cities are traveling up to 100 miles per day as they search for food. When they descend on a farm, all the crops can be consumed literally within 30 seconds. It is a nightmare of epic proportions, and UN officials are telling us that this crisis is only going to get worse over the next couple of months.

In Uganda, the army has been called out to help fight this locust plague, but it is making very little difference…

Under a warm morning sun scores of weary soldiers stare as millions of yellow locusts rise into the northern Ugandan sky, despite hours spent spraying vegetation with chemicals in an attempt to kill them.

From the tops of shea trees, fields of pea plants and tall grass savanna, the insects rise in a hypnotic murmuration, disappearing quickly to wreak devastation elsewhere.

The most effective way of fighting these locust swarms is to spray insecticide on them from the air, but even that only produces very limited results.

However, at least it is better than doing nothing.

The UN is trying to raise a lot more money to get more planes into the air, because if nothing is done the number of locusts “could grow up to 500 times by June”…

The U.N. has said $76 million is needed immediately. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a visit to Ethiopia said the U.S. would donate another $8 million to the effort. That follows an earlier $800,000.

The number of overall locusts could grow up to 500 times by June, when drier weather begins, experts have said. Until then, the fear is that more rains in the coming weeks will bring fresh vegetation to feed a new generation of the voracious insects.

Overall, these locusts are affecting nations “with a combined population of nearly 2 billion”, and the amount of food that these locusts are destroying is unprecedented.

Meanwhile, China has been dealing with the worst outbreak of African Swine Fever in history.

African Swine Fever does not affect humans, but it sweeps through herds of pigs like wildfire. There is no vaccine, there is no cure, and once African Swine Fever starts infecting pigs in a certain area the only thing that can be done is to kill the rest of the pigs to keep it from spreading anywhere else.

Unfortunately, China has not been able to get this outbreak under control, and the losses have been staggering.

According to the New York Times, the number of pigs that have been wiped out in China already is equivalent to “nearly one-quarter of all the world’s pigs”…

The disease was first reported in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, in early August 2018. By the end of August 2019, the entire pig population of China had dropped by about 40 percent. China accounted for more than half of the global pig population in 2018, and the epidemic there alone has killed nearly one-quarter of all the world’s pigs.

But of course China is not the only one dealing with African Swine Fever.

In fact, cases of African Swine Fever have now been identified “in 50 countries”, and U.S. pig farmers are deathly afraid of what would happen if this disease starts spreading here.

As a result of this crisis, pork prices in China have gone through the roof, and many families are no longer able to eat pork at all.

Never before in the modern era have we seen so many major threats to global food production emerge simultaneously.

There are more than 7 billion people living on our planet today, and we need to be able to grow enough food to feed everyone.

If we aren’t able to do that, food prices will start to get really high, and people in the poorest areas simply will not have enough food to feed their families.

From Michael Snyder there’s another tertiary effect of the Chinese Virus on the world- our food supply. Pointing out the fragility of our just-in-time supply system, Snyder correctly predicts that the global prices on food will increase amid the economic recession caused by a global economic shutdown. What is going to happen when the canneries and packing plants are closed?

This reality coupled with the fact that much of the US’ farms are heavily financed and live on floating debt doesn’t help matters. The economic woes will be felt for some time:

Meanwhile, our farmers are facing severe problems of their own. The following comes from CNBC…

The U.S.-China trade war sent scores of farmers out of business. Record flooding inundated farmland and destroyed harvests. And a blistering heat wave stunted crop growth in the Midwest.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic has dealt another blow to a vulnerable farm economy, sending crop and livestock prices tumbling and raising concerns about sudden labor shortages.

The chaos in the financial markets is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, and it is going to remain difficult for farm laborers to move around as long as “shelter-in-place” orders remain in effect on the state level.

Iowa farmer Robb Ewoldt told reporter Emma Newburger that “we’ve stopped saying it can’t get worse”, and he says that this coronavirus pandemic looks like it could be “the straw that broke the camel’s back”…

I can personally attest to the fact that nearly all in the commercial farming industry have been financing farm implements the same way the automotive industry does- with payment and interest rates being roughly the same. And while we can say that the economy will come ‘roaring back’ as some conservative pundits put it, the reality is that an already overstrained economic underpinning of commercial agriculture could very well cause long term shortages of staple crops.

Governments of other nations are paying attention to this metric as well- leading the UN to make statements warning of the potential. This is all the more reason to seek self sufficiency in all areas and top among them, the ability to grow your own food.

"We Can't Give Our Product Away" - Farmers Toss Thousands Of Acres Of Fruits, Veggies As Sales Plummet

by Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/09/2020

As some misguided liberals complain about fruits "left rotting on the trees" because Trump's immigration crackdown has left no undocumented migrants to pick the vegetables (a demonstrably false assumption), the Associated Press has offered an explanation for this phenomenon that also illustrates how disruptions in the businesses like the hospitality and food-service industry work their way through the supply chain, ultimately sticking farmers in the American Farm Belt with fields of vegetables that they can't sell, or even donate as local food pantries are now full-up with donations from restaurants.

The AP started its story in Palmetto, Fla. a city in Manatee County on the Gulf Coast, where a farmer had dumped piles of zucchini and other fresh vegetables to rot.

As the AP reported, thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables grown in Florida are being plowed over or left to rot because farmers who had grown the crops to sell to restaurants or other hospitality-industry buyers like theme parks and schools have been left on the hook for the crops.

As the economy shuts down across the country, injecting what the Fed described as massive levels of uncertainty, farmers in the state are now begging Ag Secretary Sonny Purdue to get some of that farm bailout money. Without some kind of industry-specific bailout, these farmers might go out of business.

The problem - in a nutshell - is that these farmers have longstanding sales relationships, but suddenly, those customers have disappeared. And many other companies in the US that are still buying produce already have contracts with foreign suppliers.

It would be great if Trump could come in with agricultural tariffs that would effectively cut off foreign competition, but such a move would likely be widely panned by the establishment, who would sooner watch every small farmer commit hari-kari than see continued pullback in globalization and more limits on free trade.

“We gave 400,000 pounds of tomatoes to our local food banks,” DiMare said. “A million more pounds will have to be donated if we can get the food banks to take it."

Farmers are scrambling to sell to grocery stores, but it’s not easy. Large chains already have contracts with farmers who grow for retail — many from outside the U.S.

“We can’t even give our product away, and we’re allowing imports to come in here,” DiMare said.

He said 80 percent of the tomatoes grown in Florida are meant for now-shuttered restaurants and theme parks.

And the problem isn't unique to farmers in Florida. Other states are having similar issues. Agricultural officials said leafy greens grown in California have no buyers, and dairy farmers in states like Vermont have been hit especially hard. Dairy farmers in VT and Wisconsin told the AP they've had to dump surplus loads of milk.

An association for farmers in Florida asked the administration if their veggies could be donated to food-stamp or other federal welfare programs, but reportedly, they never heard back.

Among states that harvest in the winter, California has a lot of leafy green veggies that are about to come out of the ground.

"The tail end of the winter vegetable season in Yuma, Arizona, was devastating for farmers who rely on food service buyers," said Cory Lunde, spokesman for Western Growers, a group representing family farmers in California, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. “And now, as the production shifts back to Salinas, California, there are many farmers who have crops in the ground that will be left unharvested,” particularly leafy greens.

He said a spike in demand for produce at the beginning of the outbreak has now subsided.

"People are staying home and not visiting the grocery stores as often," Lunde said. "So the dominoes are continuing to fall."

Some farmers have experimented with selling crops directly to customers, with one Florida farmer in Palmetto selling boxes of roma tomatoes for just $5 a box, an amazing bargain in a time of tremendous need. But the sales are well short of what he needs and likely won't do more than put a dent in his losses. But at least it's something.

"This is a catastrophe," said tomato grower Tony DiMare, who owns farms in south Florida and the Tampa Bay area. "We haven’t even started to calculate it. It’s going to be in the millions of dollars. Losses mount every day."

Florida leads the US in harvesting tomatoes, green beans and cabbage. Can you imagine what life would be like if tomatoes and tomato sauce prices soared because all of these medium-sized and small farmers around the country have gone out of business? Or if you walked into the grocery store a year from now and there simply weren't any tomatoes.

It could happen much more easily than you might believe - that is, if not enough is done.

GOP Rep. Massie Warns USA Weeks Away From Food Shortages
'You have people running the government that have no clue about how the economy works and how their food gets to the table'


By Kelen McBreen | INFOWARS.COM Monday, April 13, 2020

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is warning Americans that a very serious food shortage could hit the country within weeks, not months.

Massie released a tweet on Monday linking to an interview he did with the Tom Roten Morning Show.

“We are weeks, not months, away from farmers euthanizing animals that would have been sold for meat/food,” he wrote. “Also, fruits and vegetables are going to rot in the fields. A drastic change in policy this week could ameliorate this inevitability.”

Listen to the interview by clicking the link below:

We are weeks, not months, away from farmers euthanizing animals that would have been sold for meat/food. Also, fruits and vegetables are going to rot in the fields. A drastic change in policy this week could ameliorate this inevitability.

Listen here:https://t.co/bCzTX763r1

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 13, 2020

“You have people running the government that have no clue about how the economy works and how their food gets to the table,” Massie said to kick the interview off.

“The shocking thing is that farmers are watching the value of their hogs and steers, cows, go down. In fact, they’re going to some of the lowest levels ever,” he continued. “So the question is: Why is the price of meat going up in the supermarkets and the price of cattle going down at the auction ring? It’s because our supply line is brittle.”

Explaining why the supply line is so fragile, Massie said, “You have to take cattle, steer, beef, whatever, hogs, to a processing plant. And these processing plants, like much of industrial America right now, are shutting down because of absentees, which has been exacerbated by the unemployment program the federal government has instituted — plus the $1,200 checks that are about to hit, plus some of the regulations that the states have put in place.”

At least six giant meat processing plants around the country have shut down and many others could do the same in the near future.

Predicting what the next step might be for farmers, Massie warned, “I’m afraid you’re going to see … cattle and hogs being euthanized or incinerated and buried while we have shortages at the supermarket. And you talk about civil unrest when you start seeing that. And it’s all because of the brittle food supply chain.”

The Kentucky Republican has introduced a bill called the PRIME Act to try and help meat packers sell individual cuts of meat instead of only being allowed to sell a quarter or half a cow.

The GOP Rep. made an appearance on Glenn Beck on Friday to discuss food shortages, the latest relief bill working its way through Congress and much more.

https://youtu.be/qk1X0c02MJg

Meat processing plants are shutting down. Meat production is down about 25%, but hamburger is selling well.



With any luck, they'll have a sale on short loin. But I'm not counting on it.

Onward and upward,
airforce

One of America's largest meat producers has ominous warning about the grocery store supply

'...severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions'

Chris Enloe

Smithfield Foods, one of the nation's largest meat producers, has an ominous warning about America's food supply.

The company announced on Sunday that it was closing its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, plant after nearly 300 employees there tested positive for coronavirus, the Associated Press reported. The plant is one of the largest pork processing centers in America, and is responsible for producing 18 million servings of food per day.

In a statement, Smithfield President and CEO Kenneth Sullivan said the COVID-19 outbreak is having disastrous impacts on the U.S. food supply chain.

"The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply," Sullivan warned.

"It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation's livestock farmers," he explained.

More from the AP:

Other meat processing plants have also closed temporarily because of outbreaks of the coronavirus, including a Tyson Foods facility in Columbus Junction, Iowa, where more than two dozen employees tested positive.
...
Smithfield said there will be some activity at the plant on Tuesday to process product that's already in inventory. It will resume operations in Sioux Falls after receiving further directions from local, state and federal officials. The company said it will continue to pay its workers for the next two weeks.

The closure of Smithfield's plant and other food processing centers is strictly to protect the health of workers.

The Department of Agriculture has said there is no evidence that COVID-19 has been transmitted through food or its packing, the AP reported.

Smithfield Foods is owned by the Chinese-based WH Group. The company, which is known as Shineway Group outside of Asia, bought Smithfield Foods in 2013. WH Group is the largest pork producer in the world.

People won't buy steaks when they are out of work. That's OK the food processors can grind the over priced steaks they can't sell into hamburger. A lot of people are eating rice and beans now instead of meat.

Monday morning one of the bulls is headed for the slaughter house. He's going to look good sitting in my freezer.

When I was a kid, one of our staple dinners was red beans and ham hocks. I don't think my grand kids would know what a ham hock is unless they looked it up on the internet.

Onward and upward,
airforce

The coronavirus could fundamentally change America's food supply.




Onward and upward,
airforce

You are watching a movie. May the patriots win.

Here's another reason for the food shortage - and it's probably one you didn't expect. You know all that food that's labeled for restaurant use, that restaurants can't use because they can't open? Well, they can't sell it to consumers like you and me either - because the federal regulations on labeling food are different for restaurants. Yes, it's the same food you buy in grocery stores. But the labels are different. Seriously.

You can't make this stuff up.

Onward and upward,
airforce

The UN Is Now Admitting That This Coronavirus Pandemic Could Spark Famines Of “Biblical Proportions”

April 21, 2020 by Michael Snyder


What the head of the UN’s World Food Program just said should be making front page headlines all over the globe. Because if what he is claiming is true, we are about to see global food shortages on a scale that is absolutely unprecedented in modern history. Even before COVID-19 arrived, armies of locusts the size of major cities were voraciously eating crops all across Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia, and UN officials were loudly warning about what that would mean for global food production. And now the coronavirus shutdowns that have been implemented all over the planet have brought global trade to a standstill, they are making it more difficult to maintain normal food production operations, and they have forced countless workers to stay home and not earn a living. All of this adds up to a recipe for a complete and utter nightmare in the months ahead.

David Beasley is the head of the UN’s World Food Program, and on Tuesday he warned that we could actually see famines of “biblical proportions” by the end of this calendar year. The following comes from ABC News…

The coronavirus pandemic could soon double hunger, causing famines of “biblical proportions” around the world by the end of the year, the head of the World Food Programme, David Beasley, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.

Beasley warned that analysis from the World Food Programme, the U.N.’s food-assistance branch, shows that because of the coronavirus, “an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people.”

He described what we are facing as “a hunger pandemic”, and he insisted that urgent action must be taken in order to avoid a nightmare scenario.

But in some parts of the globe a nightmare scenario is already unfolding. For example, close to half the population of South Sudan is currently facing starvation, and for many of them the only food that is available is what gets dropped from the sky…

The villagers hear the distant roar of jet engines before a cargo plane makes a deafening pass over Mogok, dropping sacks of grain from its hold to the marooned dust bowl below.

There is no other way to get food to this starving hamlet in South Sudan. There are no roads, and the snaking Nile is miles away.

Over in South Africa, the “chronic food shortages” have already become so severe that they are starting to spark rioting, looting and civil unrest…

UNREST broke out in parts of South Africa amid chronic food shortages sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.

Looters raided shops, attacked each other, the army and police after breaching one of the strictest lockdowns in the world.

Police fired rubber bullets and teargas to disperse the mobs but local community leaders fear more outbreaks of violence are imminent.

Here in the western world we don’t have to worry about such things yet, but without a doubt the number of needy people is rapidly rising.

This past Saturday, vehicles literally began lining up at 2 AM in the morning for a food distribution event at the San Antonio Food Bank…

The San Antonio Food Bank teamed up with Atascosa County to feed meals and hope to hundreds of people Saturday morning. Vehicles began to line up around 2 AM Saturday outside the county courthouse, winding through neighborhoods at least two miles away.

I have never heard of people lining up so early before.

I have heard of vehicles lining up at the crack of dawn around the country in recent days, but 2 AM is absolutely nuts.

But these people realize that when the food is gone there will be no more handouts that day, and there are many that are absolutely desperate to get something to feed their families.

As this coronavirus pandemic has created an enormous amount of fear all over the country, empty shelves have been reported in frozen food sections all over the nation, and the fact that an increasing number of meat processing plants are being temporarily closed down is certainly not helping things. According to CBS News, at least 17 meat processing plants in the United States have been shut down so far…

Coronavirus infections in at least 17 meat processing plants across nine states are contributing to a spike in confirmed cases in the Midwest. Although 13 plants are already closed temporarily or operating at reduced capacity, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds says shutting down plants would hurt farmers and the national food supply.

In a desperate attempt to keep as many facilities in her state open as possible, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has enlisted the help of the National Guard…

Hundreds of National Guard personnel are being activated in Iowa as coronavirus sweeps through meat-processing plants in a state that accounts for about a third of U.S. pork supply.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said 250 National Guard members have been moved to full-time federal duty status and could help with testing and contact tracing for workers at plants operated by Tyson Foods Inc. and National Beef Packing Co.

The good news is that authorities are telling us that any product shortages should just be temporary and that all of these processing plants will eventually be brought back on line.

But for the planet as a whole, life is not going to be getting back to “normal” any time soon.

In fact, Takeshi Kasai of the World Health Organization is warning that we need to accept “a new way of living” until a vaccine finally arrives…

“At least until a vaccine, or a very effective treatment, is found, this process will need to become our new normal,” he said.

“Individuals and society need to be ready for a new way of living.”

But now that scientists have discovered approximately 30 different strains of this virus, that is going to greatly complicate matters.

Coming up with a successful vaccine for any coronavirus would be a historic feat, and now scientists also have to hope that they will pick the particular strain of COVID-19 that will become dominant in the future.

And of course many people around the globe will not want to take any vaccine that is developed under any circumstances.

So those that are thinking that there will be an easy way out of this crisis are likely to be deeply disappointed.

Meanwhile, the global economic downturn is getting deeper with each passing day, and global food supplies are getting tighter and tighter.

A global famine is coming, and the UN is sounding the alarm.

Unfortunately, most people in the western world are still not listening.

It seems to me this would be a good time to pass the PRIME Act, H.R. 2859. Let local cattle farmers meet local demand,

Here is the text of the bill.

Onward and upward,
airforce

“The Food Supply Chain Is Breaking” And We Are Being Warned That “Meat Shortages” Are Imminent
Even the mainstream media is beginning to use the phrase “meat shortages”, and we are being told to brace for supply chain disruptions all over America

By Michael Sndyer | Economic Collapse Monday, April 27, 2020 +

When meat processing facilities started shutting down because of the coronavirus pandemic, we were initially told not to worry because the facilities that were still operating normally would be able to make up the difference.

But now all of that has changed.

As you will see below, even the mainstream media is beginning to use the phrase “meat shortages”, and we are being told to brace for supply chain disruptions all over America.

Hopefully any “shortages” will only last for a few months, and hopefully supply chain disruptions will disappear later this year as the pandemic fades.

But this is yet another example that shows how exceedingly vulnerable our system has become, and it makes one wonder what will happen once a crisis even worse than this pandemic comes along.

During the April 18th 2020 coronavirus press conference Donald Trump mentioned how much money was being spent and that he would have some statements on that in the future. Is he looking to investigate waste and fraud that has been going on for many years in this organization.

In today’s extremely litigious environment, big corporations are going to exercise an abundance of caution when it comes to COVID-19, and we have already seen that just a handful of confirmed cases can shut down an entire food processing facility for weeks.

As a result of all the shutdowns that have already taken place, Bloomberg is warning that we are “dangerously close to meat shortages”…

Plant shutdowns are leaving the U.S. dangerously close to meat shortages as coronavirus outbreaks now spread to suppliers across the Americas.

Almost a third of U.S. pork capacity is down, the first big poultry plants closed on Friday and experts are warning that domestic shortages are just weeks away. Brazil, the world’s No. 1 shipper of chicken and beef, saw its first major closure with the halt of a poultry plant owned by JBS SA, the world’s biggest meat company. Key operations are also down in Canada, the latest being a British Columbia poultry plant.

Who ever imagined that we would be talking about “meat shortages” during the first half of 2020?

It is crazy how rapidly things have changed.

On Friday, Smithfield Foods announced the closure of a fifth meat processing facility…

Smithfield Foods has closed another meat processing plant amid the coronavirus pandemic, the company’s fifth facility to discontinue operations this month as a result of the illness.

According to Smithfield, a significant supplier of the global meat market, the company has stalled production on a rolling basis since April 19 “out of an abundance of caution” for employees of its St. Charles, Illinois, facility.

And on that same day, Hormel announced the closure of two major turkey plants…

A Hormel Foods subsidiary has shut down a pair of Jennie-O turkey plants after reporting some employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

The company said 14 employees out of about 1,200 workers at the two Willmar plants have tested positive for the virus.

Even more chilling, on Sunday Tyson Foods actually ran a full page ad in the New York Times in which they admitted that “the food supply chain is breaking”…

Tyson Foods, one of the U.S.’s biggest meat processors, didn’t mince words in a full page New York Times spread that ran Sunday, in which they warned, “the food supply chain is breaking.”

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” John Tyson, Chairman of the Board of Tyson Foods, wrote in a letter published as an advertisement. “As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.”

Look, the truth is that the head of Tyson Foods would not be talking like that if things were not very serious.

I believe that things will be better by the end of the year, but for now we should expect significant meat shortages in the grocery stores for several months.

And for some portions of the supply chain, the shortages are already here. In fact, one expert is warning that restaurants “could be out of fresh ground beef” in a week…

While hundreds of plants in the Americas are still running, the staggering acceleration of supply disruptions is now raising questions over global shortfalls. Taken together, the U.S., Brazil and Canada account for about 65% of world meat trade.

“It’s absolutely unprecedented,” said Brett Stuart, president of Denver-based consulting firm Global AgriTrends. “It’s a lose-lose situation where we have producers at the risk of losing everything and consumers at the risk of paying higher prices. Restaurants in a week could be out of fresh ground beef.”

The good news is that once this pandemic fades things should get significantly better for the industry.

The bad news is that we are probably going to be facing elevated prices for a long time to come. In fact, the price of U.S. wholesale beef just set a brand new record, and the price of wholesale pork surged 29 percent last week.

And as I noted the other day, all of this is happening at a time when African Swine Fever has already killed about one-fourth of all the pigs in the world.

When it comes to pork, the answer is really easy. Just don’t eat it. Pork is a highway to cancer, heart disease and a whole bunch of other very serious illnesses, and I don’t understand why anyone would ever want to eat it.

But the fact that we are also facing shortages of beef, chicken and turkey now is very concerning, and I hope everyone out there has stocked up.

Sadly, the truth is that there are plenty of chickens and turkeys out there at this moment, but because of the plant shutdowns many growers don’t have anyone to sell to right now. As a result, millions of animals are being culled…

The Baltimore Sun is reporting that 2 million chickens are set to be culled across farms in Maryland and Delaware amid coronavirus-related staffing shortages at meatpacking plants.

We’ve heard the same story with pork, turkey, and beef processing plants across the country. Reducing operations or shutting down due to virus-related illnesses among staff.

“With reduced staffing, many plants are not able to harvest chickens at the pace they planned for when placing those chicks in chicken houses several weeks ago,” before strict social distancing rules went into effect, trade group for the Delmarva poultry industry said in a statement.

I believe that it is a huge mistake to completely close all of these meat processing facilities, and hopefully many of them will be reopened as soon as possible.

But meanwhile things will become increasingly difficult, and American families will suffer.

Now that tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs, people are starting to get desperate, and the National Guard is being deployed to food banks all over the nation.

Of course this coronavirus pandemic is not the worst thing we are going to face. In fact, it isn’t even close to the worst thing we are going to face.

So if fear of COVID-19 is causing this much of a disruption to our supply chains, what is going to happen when a crisis that is far, far more severe comes along?

We are not going to see a full return to “normal”, but later this year there should be a window of opportunity to prepare for the events of 2021 and beyond, and I very much encourage all of my readers to take full advantage of that opportunity.

Fox News is reporting that Trump will order meat processing plants to stay open, using the Defense Production Act.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Millions Of Of Pigs, Chickens And Cattle Are Being Euthanized While The Media Warns “Shortages” Are Coming

April 28, 2020 by Michael Snyder


More than 26 million Americans have lost their jobs during these coronavirus lockdowns so far, and this has created unprecedented demand at food banks all over the nation. In many cities, vehicles start lining up at the food banks at the crack of dawn, and in some instances the lines have literally stretched for miles. But at the same time, farmers all over America have been dumping millions of gallons of milk, disposing of millions of pounds of fresh vegetables, and putting farm animals to death at a rate that we have never seen before. In fact, Reuters is reporting that “millions of pigs, chickens and cattle will be euthanized” because they can’t be sold. Unlike other parts of the globe, we actually have plenty of food right now, but we can’t get much of that food to the people because so many food processing facilities have been shut down due to fear of COVID-19.

What we are witnessing is nothing short of a tragedy. Even though there are so many needy families all across America at this time, so many farmers are being forced to waste what they have produced because food distribution pipelines have been brought to a standstill. The following is how Forbes is describing the current state of affairs.

Dairy farmers are trying to decide between dumping their milk and selling their dairy cows for beef. Contract chicken growers on the Eastern Shore have been asked to “depopulate” nearly 2 million chickens. Hog farmers in Iowa and Minnesota are starting to euthanize their pigs. For contract and cooperative farmers—producers in the food system who are obligated to a larger entity—the options are limited.

I have a feeling that we are going to end up deeply regretting letting so many resources go to waste during this time.

In Iowa piglets are being aborted by the thousands, in Minnesota tens of thousands of chickens are being gassed to death, and in Wisconsin farmers have been pouring countless gallons of good milk on to the ground.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is breathlessly warning us that “shortages” are coming.

With food processing plants closing all over the nation, our choices are going to become a lot more limited, and Tyson Foods is openly admitting that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain”…

Tyson Foods is facing a new set of challenges. In small communities around the country where we employ over 100,000 hard-working men and women, we’re being forced to shutter our doors. This means one thing – the food supply chain is vulnerable. As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain. As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.

And Smithfield Foods has also released a very ominous statement…

“During this pandemic, our entire industry is faced with an impossible choice: continue to operate to sustain our nation’s food supply or shutter in an attempt to entirely insulate our employees from risk,” Smithfield Foods, the largest global pork producer owned by the Chinese WH Group, said in a statement on Friday. “It’s an awful choice; it’s not one we wish on anyone.”

“It is impossible to keep protein on tables across America if our nation’s meat plants are not running. Across the animal protein industry, closures can have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions up and down the supply chain,” the statement said. “Beyond the implications to our food supply, our entire agricultural community is in jeopardy. Farmers have nowhere to send their animals and could be forced to euthanize livestock, effectively burying food in the ground. We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19.”

Ultimately, these big corporations are scared to death of being sued into oblivion by their workers if they stay open during this pandemic, and so that is why it is going to be necessary for the federal government to step in.

President Trump has the authority to order meat processing facilities to stay open, and apparently that is exactly what he plans to do…

President Donald Trump plans to order meat-processing plants to remain open as the nation confronts growing food-supply disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak, a person familiar with the matter said.

Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to order the companies to stay open as critical infrastructure, and the government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to the person.

This should greatly help matters, and I wish that it had been done sooner.

But for the economy as a whole, the outlook continues to be very bleak. Fear of the coronavirus is going to keep many Americans from resuming normal activities for a long time to come, and that is going to absolutely paralyze economic activity. If you doubt this, check out the results of this new poll…

Fewer than half of Americans plan to go to sports events, concerts, movies and amusement parks when they reopen to the public until there is a proven coronavirus vaccine, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

That includes those who have attended such events in the past, an ominous sign for the sports and entertainment industries hoping to return to the spotlight after being shut down by the pandemic.

I was deeply alarmed when I read that.

There has never been a successful vaccine for any coronavirus in all of human history, and so those that are waiting for one may be waiting for a very, very long time.

Meanwhile, economic suffering is going to continue to escalate all over the nation. In Arkansas, people were lining up at 5:30 AM on Tuesday at a food bank in the Little Rock area, and all of the food “was gone within an hour and a half”…

The Arkansas Foodbank planned to hand out food for four hours on Tuesday, but the demand was so high that all the food was gone within an hour and a half, the charity said.

Cars lined up at the Outlets of Little Rock mall, which hosted the event, as early as 5:30 a.m., when the food bank’s workers arrived to unload the trucks, Arkansas Foodbank CEO Rhonda Sanders said.

Everything that I have been warning about for so long is starting to happen, and this country is heading for incredibly challenging times.

Hopefully Trump’s executive order will be implemented smoothly and all of the meat processing plants will be forced to reopen.

But this is yet another example that shows how vulnerable our supply chains really are, and one has to wonder how we will fare when an even greater crisis comes along.

Works for me and pass the Pork Chops!

Manufactured Food Shortages: The Next Wave in Coronavirus Hysteria

April 25, 2020 Off Grid Survival

As more and more Americans are starting to wake up to the fact that this so-called pandemic is not the global killer the media told them it was, the mainstream media is now trying to push the next wave of fear, the crash of the global food supply.

The scary thing here, is this is something we have been warning was coming for quite some time – not because there is an actual problem with the food supply, or because Coronavirus is an actual global killer, but in our opinion because of a coordinated attack to destroy Western culture and Freedom!
U.S. Meat Shortages: We Have more than enough food, so what’s really going on?

As farmers throughout the country are actually destroying enormous amounts of food, because they supposedly no longer have a way to get it to the market place after many of their distribution methods were shut down due to Coronavirus hysteria, the media is now trying to push the food shortage narrative.

But this is not a food shortage crisis, it’s a manufactured crisis that would be solved instantly if we stopped pretending this virus was a global killer.

U.S. Largest Pork Supplier, Owned by Chinese Company, Leads Coronavirus Meat Plant Closures

Meat processing plants in the United States are shutting down at an alarming pace, claiming employees have contracted Coronavirus and it’s no longer safe to operate the plants. What started with Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor and hog producer has now spread throughout the United States to other meat processing plants.

“During this pandemic, our entire industry is faced with an impossible choice: continue to operate to sustain our nation’s food supply or shutter in an attempt to entirely insulate our employees from risk,” Smithfield said in a statement Friday. “It’s an awful choice; it’s not one we wish on anyone.”

Is this meant to Crash the U.S. Economy and spread Fear and Hysteria?

After seeing how China manipulated the entire world into shutting down for a virus that has still failed to reach seasonal flu numbers in most areas of the world, you have to ask yourself if this is the latest shot fired in what seems to be a psychological war against freedom-loving people.

The first company to push for the plant closures and start these shutdowns in the United States was Smithfield Foods. Back in 2013, in what was the largest-ever Chinese acquisition of an American company, Smithfield Foods was bought out by Wan Long, a Chinese billionaire businessman and chairman and CEO of WH Group.

They paid 30% over market value; it wasn’t just an acquisition of a company, it was the takeover of our food supply!

At the time, a number of lawmakers questioned the implications of letting a Chinese company takeover 25 percent of the pork industry in the United States. As usual, they were shouted down by democrats and their minion in the liberal media as racists for even asking the question.

But today, we have to ask. Why would we let a Chinese owned company control so much of our food supply? These companies have deep ties to the Chinese communist government; why would we put ourselves in a position that leaves us vulnerable to a government that hates liberty and freedom?

As of today, a third of U.S. pork capacity is down and the first big poultry plants started shutting down on Friday. If these plants aren’t immediately reopened, we can expect to see domestic shortages in a couple of weeks.

“It’s absolutely unprecedented,” said Brett Stuart, president of Denver-based consulting firm Global AgriTrends. “It’s a lose-lose situation where we have producers at the risk of losing everything and consumers at the risk of paying higher prices. Restaurants in a week could be out of fresh ground beef.”

The most sickening thing about this “crisis” is WE ARE NOT running out of food; we are being scared into destroying it.

With slaughterhouses closing, farmers no longer have a place to sell their livestock. That’s forcing many of them to dispose of animals that should be heading to the slaughterhouse. Food is being thrown out and destroyed at the same time that grocery store shelves are running empty.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said Tuesday he’s heard estimates that the country has about 100,000 pigs that should be slaughtered each day but aren’t. “Apply that over 10 days, and with a million pigs, you’ve got a big problem,” the Iowa Republican said in a call with reporters.

Grassley and others have called for an investigation into the nation’s four largest beef packing companies — Tyson, National Beef, JBS and Cargill — alleging they’ve manipulated the market during the pandemic to tamp down beef prices even as demand surged.

The situation for U.S. farms is “so severe” that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is setting up a center to help identify potential alternative markets and assist on “depopulation and disposal methods.” You can’t make this shit up, we are destroying our food and then pretending there is a food shortage!

We are destroying livestock, dumping milk and leaving vegetables to rot in the fields!

Craig Hill, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, said no farmer wants to consider destroying animals. “That’s not what we do,” said Hill, an independent pork producer who farms with his son near Ackworth. “But it may be the harsh reality that we face.”

“The thought of it causes a huge amount of anxiety,” said Hill, who has some pigs that will be ready for processing in a couple of weeks. “Farmers feel rather helpless.”

Mike Naig, Iowa’s agriculture secretary, said producers are asking questions about how to dispose of pigs if they’re forced to euthanize them. They’re considering rendering, composting and burial.

Craig Hill, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, said no farmer wants to consider destroying animals, but added: “It may be the harsh reality that we face.” https://t.co/XcutBEk3BC
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 22, 2020

Preparing for Manufactured Food Shortages and the Coming Economic Disaster

The key to preparedness is knowing what the real threat are, and then taking actions to protect yourself from those threats. While the crisis is manufactured, it is still a major threat. The coming food shortages and economic collapse caused by the media and people attempting to destroy the American Dream are a threat!

From the start, we’ve warned that none of this was about a virus… read our article on Media Hysteria, Global Panic, and a Rational Look at the Infection Numbers.

Never forget: This is the first pandemic in the history of the world where doctors and nurses are being laid off due to a lack of work. And now we are facing the first food shortage in history caused by an overabundance of food and purposely destroying our livestock, dumping milk, destroying eggs, and letting food rot in the fields!

We know that hysteria has made it hard to find a lot of supplies, and now that they are pushing the food shortage panic it’s never been more important to make sure you have enough supplies on hand to sustain yourself for a long-term crisis. Just look at what they were able to do with toilet paper and hand sanitizer, now imagine what’s coming!

People need to wake up to the real agenda here. Trump can't be beaten as long as everyone is fat with a few dollars in their pocket. This whole mess is media, at the behest of the Democratic party, driven to get Trump out of office and allow the Washington DC bottom feeders to go back to business as usual.

Our local hospital looks like a ghost town and many nurses and other staff have been furloughed due to lack of business. Even the Emergency Department has few visitors as the people who normally use it as a doctors office are staying away for fear of catching the virus.

A good friend just bought a huge machine to process his wheat into animal feed rather than let his crop die in the field, because no one will buy it. It seems the local place he sells to can't get anyone to come to work because they make more from unemployment.

My wife has been furloughed from her job as an administrative secretary. Not because the company isn't making money, but because they project to lose money in the third quarter if the restrictions stay in place.

I suspect a rat in this whole thing, made more apparent by such things as 90% of one Iowa county's Covid19 infections are from Tyson Foods employees. Did someone maybe introduce the virus in those plants to affect food production?

It's time to end this mess.

Also folks need to study exactly 'who' owns the seeds in the world that our food is grown from. Right now there are 6-8 major seed companies. ALL they sell are what are known as 'Terminator Seeds'. They are called that in that a second years growth cannot be grown from them. The seeds you want to grow from year after year are referred to as Heirloom seeds. Only down side to them is that they are not as disease resistant as the new Terminator ones.

Right now one of the major players in the ownership of the seeds is Bill Gates. Frankly he is NOT our friend! Gates is also a major player in the medical virus world. He has said in the past there needs to be a major elimination of most people to take the earth back to a natural and green world.

Between Gates and Soros, 'I' think the world would be better off without BOTH of them.

Watch this.

Warning: Food chain is broken!! Prepare now.

This infomercial is patriot supply's sales pitch for their over priced food.
It's too little food in too much packaging with for the money.
Sealed #10 cans of freeze dried food is better.
I will just continue to stock up on canned goods which are a lot cheaper than patriot supply's food.
For long term storage bulk foods the best buy is packing it yourself in 5 gallon buckets with sealed lids dried beans and rice in mylar bags with diatomaceous earth (to kill insects) and oxygen absorbers.

When Trump orders the epidemic shut down to end and orders the packing plants to re-open then the food shortage to be ending.
Farmers have been mass killing livestock and dumping good milk out just to drive the price up for many years.

You must have not watched the video I posted. Nothing in it was a infomercial for Patriot supply or anyone else.

As for the farmers...Why should they do all the work, spend every dime they make, go in debt to stay afloat and then be forced by the regulators to sell their product below cost.

People who think food should be given away for nothing deserve to starve.

It's a good video but if you go follow the link on a personal computer (instead of a phone or tablet) below the video it has this link
http://www.preparewithncog.com
When you click it then it goes directly to https://mypatriotsupply.com/pages/r...k-2wk?rfsn=1750310.2a7b74&subid=ncog
Where they are selling over priced packages of survival food. With a picture of the same man who was talking in the video.

I know the food processors and packing plants are always trying to cheat the farmers on price. I grew up hearing about Posse Comitatus meetings, Gordon Kahl, and how the sorry bankers told the farmers how much their land was worth begging them to take out loans. Then when the price of land went down the banks foreclosed on many of the loans stealing the farms. Then the farmers said screw the bankers we never said the land was worth as much as they said it was and I agree with the farmers. Then when I got older I learned that most of the sorry damn bankers put a clause in the fine print that says the loan is payable upon demand whenever the bankers demand it.

All so called 'survival food' is over priced. You want food you can depend on to know the quality and how it was prepared is to do it your self.

Learn how to home can food. Buy a dehydrator and dry some food. Learn how to slaughter and dress animals. Farmers have been doing this for centuries and have always survived.

Then learn how to reload ammo. Learn how radio works. (This is MY weakness!). Got a bicycle? This is how the Viet Cong moved TONS of supplies!

It's amazing how many people I meet who think "prepping" is buying that overpriced freeze dried crap. I tell them they're great if you're climbing Mt. Everest. Otherwise, I'll take that can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and a bag of wheat and sourdough starter.

I once fed my neighbor a sparrow sandwich, and she liked it (until I told her what the filling was). Sparrows and starlings are everywhere, and it doesn't take a genius to learn how to trap them. Not a lot of meat on them, but when you have a dozen of them, it'll work. Best of all, there are no restrictions on how many of them you can catch. ( But check your local laws, just in case.)

Onward and upward,
airforce

I grow a garden, do home canning, stock 6 months of canned food and store staples like beans, rice, flour, sugar and salt in 5 gallon buckets. But I still buy some things from Augusson farms in #10 cans. The Mormon cannery is also pretty good too.

Now you know the reason for the English saying of "Four and 20 Blackbirds baked in a Pie". Meat pies are very big in England even today. They are mostly Pork or Steak and Kidney now though. In living there threer yearsI could never find a Black Bird one, but they damm sure had enough of them flying everywhere there.

Why The Meat Shortages Are Going To Be Much Worse Than Most Americans Are Anticipating

Many Americans have been absolutely shocked by the meat shortages that have started to happen around the nation, but what most of them don’t realize is that the worst is yet to come


By Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream Friday, May 01, 2020

Many Americans have been absolutely shocked by the meat shortages that have started to happen around the nation, but what most of them don’t realize is that the worst is yet to come.

More workers keep getting sick, more processing plants keep getting shut down, and Time Magazine is now warning that the meat shortages “could last for months”.

And even if meat is available at your local grocery store, you may be limited to one or two of a particular item on each trip.

For those not familiar with the concept, this is what is known as “rationing”.

And even though President Trump just issued an executive order that “encourages” meat processing facilities to stay open, it actually won’t do very much at all to alter our current trajectory, and I will explain why below.

But first, let’s talk about where things currently stand. According to USA Today, the number of cattle, hogs and sheep being slaughtered is way, way down compared to last year…

American slaughterhouses processed nearly a million fewer cattle, hogs and sheep in the past week than they did during the same time a year ago, marking a new low that experts say will likely increase “spot” shortages of meat at some grocery stores.

And as the number of meat processing facilities closing down due to the COVID-19 pandemic has surged, the decline in meat production has accelerated…

Last week, meat production was down about 25 percent compared to the same time last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. On Wednesday, production was a full 42 percent lower than the same day last year.

If production continues to stay at such a low level, we are going to run into major supply chain headaches very rapidly.

After all, do you plan to eat 42 percent less meat this year?

I certainly do not.

In recent days, there was hope that President Trump’s new executive order would bring a quick end to the meat shortages. When I first heard about this executive order, I assumed that it would force all of the meat processing facilities to reopen and would shield the owners from any lawsuits. But it turns out that this executive order doesn’t actually do either of those things…

Meanwhile, legal experts said President Donald Trump’s executive order Tuesday declaring meatpacking plants “critical” to keep open will do little on its own to stop the slide in meat production brought on by the spread of the coronavirus among meatpackers.

“It doesn’t compel meat or poultry producers to remain in production,” said Deborah Pearlstein, a law professor at Yeshiva University, and it doesn’t give employers immunity from lawsuits.

Sadly, it appears that this executive order isn’t really going to do much good at all.

Big meat processing corporations are going to be quite afraid to reopen facilities as long as the threat of lawsuits looms large. I can promise you that there are already lawyers circling like vultures, and they are going to try to squeeze millions of dollars out of these large companies.

So when will the threat of lawsuits finally go away?

Well, it won’t just be “weeks”, and “a few months” might be overly optimistic.

In our overly litigious society, reopening facilities and exposing your employees to the virus while a pandemic is still raging is basically the equivalent of begging for a class action lawsuit.

Unless President Trump or Congress steps up and takes bold action, nothing is going to change.

And if nothing changes, Tyson Foods is warning that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the food chain”…

Tyson Foods, one of the U.S.’s biggest meat processors, didn’t mince words in a full page New York Times spread that ran Sunday, in which they warned, “the food supply chain is breaking.”

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” John Tyson, Chairman of the Board of Tyson Foods, wrote in a letter published as an advertisement. “As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.”

And with supplies getting really tight, we are already starting to see prices go into the stratosphere.

In fact, Zero Hedge is reporting that the price of wholesale beef has already risen a whopping 62 percent since February…

Wholesale American beef prices jumped 6% to a record high of $330.82 per 100 pounds, a 62% increase from the lows in February, according to Bloomberg, citing new USDA data.

Eventually, it is likely that we will get to a point where many Americans are forced to cut back on their consumption of meat because they simply can’t afford as much of it anymore.

I hope that you did what you could to get prepared in advance, because it appears that these shortages may be quite painful. If you can believe it, McDonald’s has already implemented a system of “controlled allocation” for their restaurants…

McDonald’s is temporarily changing how restaurants get their supply of beef and pork, as the US faces potential meat shortages due to slaughterhouse closures.

McDonald’s has put items including burger patties, bacon, and sausage on controlled allocation. That means the company’s supply chain will send restaurants meat shipments based on calculated demand across the American system, as opposed to the usual practice of management ordering the amount believed will be needed.

Did you ever imagine that we would see a day when McDonald’s would be worried about potentially running out of meat?

Well, it is actually happening, and supplies are only going to get tighter in the months ahead.

Sadly, farmers are having to euthanize millions of chickens, pigs and cattlebecause meat processing facilities won’t take them while they are shut down.

So the truth is that there should be plenty of meat to go around, but fear of COVID-19 has caused a total breakdown of the supply chain.

What is happening is truly a tragedy, and hopefully our politicians will step forward and take dramatic action before things get even worse.

Yes, it takes a bunch of starlings to make a pie. A pigeon pot pies is much easier to make - or at least it takes fewer of them. But there may be laws or regulations on taking them, and if there are, some busybody is sure to report it. The good thing about using sparrows and starlings is that they're both invasive species that crowd out other, more desirable birds. Even the most hardened bird lover (like myself) have no problems getting rid of a bunch of them.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Kroger is limiting meat and pork purchases at some stores.



Read the whole thing at the link.

Onward and upward,
airforce

It's time to get more self-sufficient. You can plant a garden and grow vegetables. You don't have to have a rototiller to break up the soil. A strong man can till soil with a pick axe, a shovel. and a rake. The exercise will be good for you.

You can buy baby chicks at the feed store to raise for chicken meat and eggs. There are videos on you tube about how use bug zappers and bug traps to save money on chicken feed.

Here you can download for free a 1,767 page book The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 40th Anniversary Edition by Carla Emery
https://b-ok.cc/book/2704170/c20b85

"The essential resource for modern homesteading, growing and preserving foods, and raising chickens, The Encyclopedia of Country Living includes how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, can peaches, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, catch a pig, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more. This comprehensive resource is the most authoritative guide available to a sustainable lifestyle and living off of the land.
Year: 2012, Publisher: Sasquatch Books, File: PDF, 25.61 MB"

I have a print copy of that book. Lots of good info.

Communities Rally Behind Farmers & Ranchers Amid Food Shortage Scare

Cars line up for miles to support local agriculture

By Kelen McBreen | INFOWARS.COM Tuesday, May 05, 2020

Local communities are flocking to local farms and butchers to help ease problems with the supply chain, and because supermarkets are limiting how much meat customers can purchase.

As grocery stores like Kroger, Costco and Giant Eagle or fast-food restaurants like Wendy’s begin rationing meat and meat processing plants across the country shut down due to coronavirus, citizens are rapidly seeing rumors of a meat shortage become reality.

Infowars reported on Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) warning of serious food shortages back on April 13.

We are weeks, not months, away from farmers euthanizing animals that would have been sold for meat/food. Also, fruits and vegetables are going to rot in the fields. A drastic change in policy this week could ameliorate this inevitability.

Listen here:https://t.co/bCzTX763r1

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 13, 2020

Then, last week, a rancher went viral online after releasing a video warning the US beef supply will plummet if ranches start culling harvest-ready cattle due to shut-down processing plants not taking livestock.

“They are preparing us to depopulate the fat cattle ready to harvest because of a bottleneck created by the effects of Covid,” the rancher from Archer Co., Texas, warned. “…We are in trouble. Our food supply is in trouble.”

An April 29th press release from the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International Union said, “At least 13 processing plants have closed over the past two months, resulting in a 25% reduction in pork slaughter capacity and 10 percent reduction in beef slaughter capacity.”

With some of the nation’s largest meat processing plants closing due to coronavirus outbreaks, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act last week, compelling plants to stay open.

In response to this impending crisis, Americans are already helping farmers and ranchers by skipping the big chains and going directly to the source.

For example, the Whoa Nellie Dairy Farm in Fayette County, Pennsylvania decided to bottle their own milk instead of dumping it out and sold out of 30 gallons within hours.

“My husband and I just came up with that mission to try to bottle it all. Even though we knew we had a tiny pasteurizing system, we just thought we’d make it a mission to get it all bottled without dumping any,” said owner Mary Beth Brown.

This is America ! 🇺🇸Whoa Nellie Dairy Farm, PA decided to bottle their own milk instead of dumping it out . Community responded 👇👇They sold out in matter of hours . PS: They’ve also been supplying milk to ppl in need ! Way to go ! @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/7YXtjIQXIa

— VeBee🇺🇸✝️ (@VeBo1991) April 30, 2020

A similar line of cars was seen in Moses Lake, Washington where potato farmers were donating produce originally grown for restaurants.

Today in Moses lake, farmers gave away potatoes grown for restaurants. Hundreds of cars line up. Making the best of a horrible situation. Thank you Washington potato growers! 🥔❤️ pic.twitter.com/FIzfF4AD56

— Judy (@judycat1951) May 1, 2020

Another long line of cars was spotted in Ritzville, Washington where potato farmers donated excess spuds.

HAPPENING NOW: A massive line has formed in Ritzville where potato farmers are giving away 20 tons of potatoes. Due to the pandemic, farmers’ freezers are overstocked with potatoes normally sold to the food industry. 📹: @Kaitlin_Knapp1 pic.twitter.com/e0r3NxK1Bm

— KAPP-KVEW (@KAPPKVEW) April 29, 2020

An Ohio butcher shop reports an increase in new customers as grocery store supplies become more limited because butchers don’t use the same suppliers.

Congressman Thomas Massie, the same one who warned of shortages a month before they hit, has introduced the PRIME Act in an attempt to prevent America from wasting its meat supply.

“Thousands of animals will be killed & wasted today instead of feeding families. Meanwhile, Congress takes an extended vacation,” he writes. “Farmers are going broke and shelves are going empty. Instead of just granting immunity from (American!) employee lawsuits to foreign-owned companies, why not put America first?”

Massie’s act allows states to allow intrastate distribution of meat without USDA approval.

Because it’s difficult to receive USDA approval amid the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing meat supply chain issues, the act would increase the meat supply and a considerable amount, thus reducing costs for consumers.

Massie, a rancher who owns 50 head of cattle on his off-the-grid farm in northeast Kentucky, touched on the meat shortage crisis on the Todd Starnes Show on Tuesday:

Why is there a shortage of meat? Federal regulations.



Onward and upward,
airforce

The Bible Says That There Will Be Famines In The Last Days
May 5, 2020 by Michael Snyder


Could it be possible that the stage is being set for horrific famines that the Bible has been warning us about for nearly 2,000 years? A few years ago, any talk of “coming famines” would have seemed absolutely ludicrous to most people in the western world, but the events of the last several months have changed everything. Now, the UN is openly warning that famines of “biblical proportions” could be on the way, and the head of the UN World Food Program is telling us that we could soon see 300,000 people literally starve to death every single day. Nightmarish droughts, African Swine Fever, COVID-19 and armies of locusts in Africa the size of major cities have combined to create a “perfect storm”, and global food supplies are becoming tighter with each passing month.

As conditions continue to deteriorate, many are starting to wonder if certain prophetic passages in the Bible are starting to come to fruition. For example, in Matthew 24:7 Jesus specifically warned us that there would be “famines” in the days immediately preceding His return…

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

We can also find very similar warnings from Jesus in Mark chapter 13 and Luke chapter 21.

So if we actually are living during the time just before the return of Jesus, we should expect to see horrifying global famines start to emerge, and that is precisely what we are witnessing at this moment.

In Revelation 6:8, we are told that “hunger” will eventually be a major factor in the deaths of a large portion of the global population…

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Of course we aren’t at that point yet.

But are we starting to move in that direction?

David Beasley is the executive director of the UN World Food Program, and he recently stated that we are heading directly into “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two”. Hunger is rapidly rising all over the globe, and he believes that if dramatic intervention does not happen quickly we could see an astounding death toll.

According to Beasley, we could soon see 300,000 people around the world starve to death every single day, and that figure doesn’t even factor in the effect of this coronavirus pandemic…

“If we can’t reach these people with the life-saving assistance they need, our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period”, he upheld. “This does not include the increase of starvation due to COVID-19”.

As fear of COVID-19 pushes us into an unprecedented global economic downturn, how much worse will that make our rapidly growing global food crisis?

Of course in the western world we are much better off than most of the rest of the planet for now. Famine is definitely not an immediate concern for us, but thanks to COVID-19 we are now wrestling with significant food shortages. Because meat supplies are so tight, approximately one-fifth of all Wendy’s restaurants have taken burgers off their menus. When I first read that, I was absolutely stunned.

Of course Wendy’s is not the only one dealing with strained supply chains. Costco has started limiting the amount of meat that each customer can purchase, and Tyson Foods has announced that their capacity to slaughter hogs has fallen “by about 50 percent”. Time Magazine is warning us that the meat shortages “could last for months”, and they could stretch even longer than that if this coronavirus pandemic doesn’t start to subside.

Meanwhile, farmers all over America are seeing their hard work go to waste because broken supply chains have made it impossible to sell what they have produced. One industry expert is actually claiming that “billions” of dollars worth of crops have gone to waste as a result of this crisis…

Crops planted months before based on pre-pandemic demand spoiled without buyers. Billions of dollars’ worth of produce went to waste, much of it tilled back into the soil, said Cathy Burns, CEO of the Produce Marketing Assn., which represents produce companies.

I have a feeling that eventually we will greatly regret allowing so much good food to go to waste.

Sadly, most of the rest of the world is actually in much worse shape than we are right now.

Long before COVID-19 came along, crazy weather patterns were playing havoc with harvests all over the world. For instance, Australia is traditionally a major exporter of wheat to the rest of the world, but unprecedented droughts have forced Australia to actually start importing wheat…

Australia, which made a rare purchase of Canadian wheat in the current marketing year, is expected to continue buying more wheat in the 2019-20 marketing year (October-September), as weather conditions remain difficult in key states, market analysts say.

Australia’s wheat output dropped 45.6% to 17.3 million mt in the 2018-19 marketing year from a record high of 31.8 million mt in 2016-17, owing to prolonged drought conditions, data from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics shows. This forced the country to import wheat for the first time in 12 years.

In addition, another plague of “biblical proportions” has been killing off pigs in unprecedented numbers.

When I tell people that African Swine Fever has already killed off half the pigs in China and one-fourth of all the pigs in the entire world, a lot of people don’t believe me.

So let me give you a quote that comes directly from New Scientist…

A quarter of the world’s domestic pigs have died this year as a virus rampages across Eurasia, and that may be just the start. Half the pigs in China – which last year numbered 440 million, some 50 percent of the world’s pigs – have either died of African swine fever (ASF) or been killed to stamp out the virus.

ASF comes from East Africa. In 2007, it reached Georgia in the Caucasus in contaminated meat, and in infected wild boar. Now, it is all over Russia and eastern Europe and infected wild boar have turned up as far west as Belgium. It is also spreading in east Asia, killing many pigs in Vietnam and elsewhere.

And if you don’t believe them, just do a Google search and you will find countless mainstream news sources telling you the exact same facts.

This is actually happening, and the death toll is rising with each passing day.

Meanwhile, a new generation of locust armies that is being described as “20 times bigger” than the last generation is destroying countless farms all across Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The following comes from one of my previous articles…

Even before COVID-19 became the biggest public health crisis to hit the globe in decades, enormous swarms of locusts the size of major cities were devouring crops throughout eastern Africa, across the Middle East and even in some parts of Asia. Now a new generation that officials are describing as “20 times bigger” has emerged, and the devastation that this new generation of locusts is causing is extremely alarming. These colossal locust swarms can travel up to 90 miles a day, and as you will see below, when they descend upon a field they can literally eat everything there in as little as 30 seconds. This new generation of locusts has been spotted as far south as Congo, as far north as Iran and as far east as India. In other words, the food supplies of billions of people are at risk.

Never before have we seen so many catastrophic threats to the global food supply emerge at the same time.

It appears that “the perfect storm” is now upon us, and I anticipate that global events will continue to accelerate in the months ahead.

Of course we still have quite a way to go before we get to the type of famines described in the Scriptures, but it certainly looks like the stage is being set for severe hunger on a global scale.

But Jesus didn’t warn us about these things so that we would live in fear. God knew about all of this in advance, He is in control, and He has a plan.

Unfortunately, most of the world doesn’t want anything to do with the God of the Bible or His plan, and so they will be facing what is to come all by themselves.

let small farmers sell meat to local grocers. Empty store shelves, while farmers and ranchers are destroying their livestock? How does that make any sense?



Onward and upward,
airforce

You May Not Understand This Now, But You Need To Get Prepared For The Food Shortages That Are Coming

Global food supplies are going to continue to get tighter and tighter, and much worse shortages will eventually happen here in the United States.

Michael Snyder | End of The American Dream - May 15, 2020


I was going to write about something completely different today, but I felt that I needed to issue this warning instead.

Even before COVID-19 came along, crazy global weather patterns were playing havoc with harvests all over the globe, the African Swine Fever plague had already killed about one-fourth of all the pigs in the world, and giant armies of locusts the size of major cities were devouring crops at a staggering rate on the other side of the planet.

And now this coronavirus pandemic has caused an unprecedented worldwide economic shutdown, and this has put an enormous amount of stress on global food supplies.

On the official UN website, the United Nations is openly using the term “biblical proportion” to describe the famines that are coming. Even if COVID-19 miraculously disappeared tomorrow, a lot of people on the other side of the world would still starve to death, but of course COVID-19 is not going anywhere any time soon.

Here in the United States, our stores still have plenty of food. But empty shelves have started to appear, and food prices are starting to go up aggressively.

In fact, we just witnessed the largest one month increase in food prices that we have seen since 1974.

For a long time I have been warning my readers that eventually a loaf of bread in the U.S. will cost five dollars, and one of my readers in Hawaii just told me that “my wife came home with ½ loaf of bread for $2.99”.

So it appears that the day I have been warning about has already arrived for some people.

Of course the price of meat is going up even faster than the price of bread. The following is an excerpt from an email that one of Robert Wenzel’s readers in Alaska just sent him…

Our local Costco as of now, beef hamburger is $9 a pound, and steaks are $18 a pound. Hamburger was at $3.50 a pound before all this.

Our local butcher shops, that butcher and package the little local beef that is raised here, are all out of meat.

Luckily, I have a couple moose in our freezers, and plenty of canned smoked salmon, and salmon season is coming soon again.

Hopefully the price of hamburger has not nearly tripled in your area yet, but without a doubt meat prices are going to just keep heading higher.

Ultimately, it is all about supply and demand. Meat processing facilities have been shut down all over America due to COVID-19, and this is starting to create some really annoying shortages…

If you go to Wendy’s this week, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to get a hamburger. Go to the supermarket and you’ll probably see some empty shelves in the meat section. You may also be restricted to buying one or two packs of whatever’s available. Try not to look at the prices. They’re almost definitely higher than what you’re used to.

This is the new reality: an America where beef, chicken, and pork are not quite as abundant or affordable as they were even a month ago.

But as I keep reminding my readers, the only reason these meat shortages are so severe is because many farmers are unable to make their normal sales to the processing plants that have closed down.

As a result, a lot of these farmers have been forced to gas or shoot thousands of their animals…

For farmers in Iowa, Minnesota, and other Midwestern states, they have had little choice but to euthanize the backlog of animals, which means gassing or shooting thousands of pigs in a day, according to The New York Times.

The financial and emotional repercussions on the farmers are profound. Some farmers lose as much as $390,000 in a day, said the report. So far 90,000 pigs have been killed in Minnesota alone.

In the end, a lot of farmers may have to go out of business after being financially ruined during this crisis, and we will seriously miss that lost capacity in the days ahead.

Because the truth is that global food supplies are only going to get tighter and tighter. As I have discussed previously, UN World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley has warned that we are facing “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two”, and he insists that we could soon see 300,000 people literally starve to death every single day…

“If we can’t reach these people with the life-saving assistance they need, our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period”, he upheld. “This does not include the increase of starvation due to COVID-19”.

And did you catch that last part?

He specifically excluded the effects of COVID-19 from his very ominous projection.

So the truth is that the number of people starving to death each day could ultimately end up being far, far higher.

In wealthy western countries, starvation is not an imminent threat. But what we are seeing is an explosion of hunger that is absolutely unprecedented. All over America, people have been lining up “for hours” at America’s food banks so that they can be sure to get something before the supplies run out…

In the past month, America’s food banks have been completely overwhelmed by demand. In cities like Pittsburgh, San Antonio, and Phoenix, residents have lined up for hours as food banks attempt to address a massive influx of need. Some organizations have been forced to turn people away while others are struggling to maintain the supplies necessary to keep up.

Images of the lines at food pickup points underscore how devastating the economic fallout from the pandemic has been.

This week, vehicles started lining up at 2 AM in the morning at a food bank in the Dallas area, and one woman said that the reason why she lined up so early was because she didn’t get anything at all on her first two attempts…

Carmel Zeno was the third car in line. This was her first time successfully getting food for her family at the mobile pantry site at Fair Park.

“This is my third attempt at this location. I didn’t make it in time before,” she said. “Of course, I’m unemployed. Right now, I have two out of five kids home. One has a diagnosis because of COVID. I’m thankful for whatever I can get, so it’s one of those situations.”

Even if you have been in line for hours, when the food is gone it is gone. So if you want to be absolutely certain to get something, you need to get in line very, very early.

And you know what?

We were warned in advance that this was coming.

Back in 2015, Heidi Baker had a vision in which she saw very long lines of people in beautiful vehicles waiting to receive food. If you are not familiar with that vision, here is specifically what she was shown…

“I had a vision in your church and it wasn’t what I expected to see. I saw bread lines, soup kitchens, and I saw people wearing beautiful clothing. Their clothing was not worn out. Now in my nation when people are hungry you can tell. I mean they are in shredded rags. They don’t have shoes or they have flip flops. Most of them have no shoes. They are hungry and they know they are hungry. They come for food, not because they are beggars, but because they are hungry.

I have held starving children in my arms. I know what starvation is. I know what pain is. I know what suffering is. But in this vision that I had that was in your nation, which the Lord is helping me to say, I will identify with America as well as Mozambique.

I saw this bread line, long bread lines, and I said, “Lord, I don’t think that is popular to say in a church, especially one that is all about revival and victory and power.”

I didn’t want to see what I saw, but I saw what I saw so, I was so undone that I just said what I saw. And I saw all these people and they had beautiful cars, 4 by 4’s and Lexus, Mercedez, BMW’s, Toyotas. There they were with fancy shiny cars, but they were standing in line.

What I said about worrying, the worriers turned into worshipping warriors.

I asked, “Why are they so well dressed and standing in this line?”

He said, “Because it is a suddenly. They are suddenly in need of food.”

I asked, “What are we to do?”

He said, “Tell them that what you see in Mozambique they will see in America with the signs and wonders and miracles. They will see it on their soil. They will see what I do.”

What is it that He does? For one thing He puts peace on you in the midst of the storm.”

Needless to say, her vision has now been fulfilled.

And most Americans don’t realize this yet, but things are going to get a whole lot worse.

In the short-term, let us hope that food processing plants will start to reopen and some of the temporary shortages that we are now witnessing will be alleviated.

But over time global food supplies are going to continue to get tighter and tighter, and much worse shortages will eventually happen here in the United States.

So use the window of opportunity that you have now to get prepared, because food prices are never again going to be as low as they are right now.

Meat Industry in Turmoil as prices soar

05.14.2020
By Ron Sterk

WASHINGTON — The situation with red meat and poultry is rapidly evolving, not unlike most other food and non-food sectors grappling with the unknown amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While a bit late to the food “panic” race, fears of meat shortages are no less real than those of flour, sugar, pasta and other staples seen earlier in the shelter-at-home period, most of which appear to be stabilizing.

The meat situation developed under different circumstances than did those of other items, where the shortages mostly were at retail as consumers stocked pantry shelves beyond normal levels and manufacturing and distribution needed time to catch up or redirect shipments from lost foodservice business. There never was a real shortage of food, but the meat situation is different with a bottleneck at the processing level.

“There was a ‘double whammy’ of demand and supply with meat,” Lee Schulz, PhD, associate professor, department of economics at Iowa State University, told Food Business News. “First, consumers were buying meat ahead for sheltering at home, and now there is the processing impact.”

Several beef, pork, chicken and some seafood processing plants temporarily closed or slowed output because numerous employees tested positive for COVID-19, including some deaths, with the spread of the virus at least in part thought to be linked to the shoulder-to-shoulder processing lines at the plants. So there is a real shortage of meat at retail with reduced amounts coming through the pipeline, even as livestock and poultry supplies were growing at the farm level. It is more than just a matter of logistics, as with most of the other temporary shortages.

As with other items, including eggs and toilet paper, some grocery and big box chains last week began limiting the amount of meat customers could buy, including Costco Wholesale Corp. temporarily limiting customers to a total of three packages of fresh beef, pork and poultry and the Kroger Co. limiting purchases of ground beef and fresh pork at some of its stores. Retailers who didn’t set limits often noted certain meat and poultry items were selling out. Some fast-food chains were reporting beef shortages as well, including The Wendy’s Co., with 20% of its restaurants said to be out of beef.

“Meat supplies for retail grocery stores could shrink by nearly 30% this Memorial Day, leading to retail pork and beef price inflation as high as 20% relative to prices last year,” CoBank said in a May 4 report.

Beef cutout value chartMemorial Day typically is considered the beginning of the summer grilling season, which is a strong demand period for meat and poultry.

“As communities reopen, shortages and stock-outs in the (retail) meat case couldn’t come at a worse time,” CoBank said.

More than 20 plants have temporarily closed, with the number changing regularly as some reopen and others shut down, making estimating lost slaughter and processing capacity a moving target. The closings included some plants of the largest meat processors: Smithfield Foods Inc., Cargill, JBS USA, Tyson Foods Inc. and others.

Michael Nepveux, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, said on an April 30 podcast it was hard to estimate the loss of capacity at plants that had slowed lines but remained open. He said cattle slaughter had dropped 32% from its March high and 27% from a year earlier while hog slaughter was down 30% from its March high and 15% from a year ago.

“Before the spread of COVID-19, we were expecting a record year for beef and pork production, so that’s a pretty drastic drop,” Mr. Nepveux said.

The US Department of Agriculture, in its latest Livestock Slaughter report, said US March beef production was up 14% from a year earlier, pork was up 12% and total red meat was up 13%, all record high for the month. Cattle slaughter at 2,921,700 head was up 10% from March 2019 and hog slaughter at 11,942,000 head was up 11%.

Also of note was that the US March 1 hog inventory was record high for the date at 77,629,000 head, up 4% from a year earlier, according to the USDA’s quarterly Hogs and Pigs report.

Prices have responded. Meat prices surged while livestock prices, as reflected by CME Group live cattle and lean hog futures, plunged in April, although futures prices already have begun to correct in part in anticipation of plant reopenings. USDA cutout values, which reflect wholesale prices, soared. The beef cutout was a record high $428.99 a cwt on May 5, up 17% from the end of April and up 106% since the first of the year. The pork cutout on May 5 was $113.58 a cwt, up 13% from April 30, up 55% from Jan. 1 and the highest since October 2014. Because of how meat is traded, much of the meat now on store shelves may have been priced lower several weeks ago, so sharply higher wholesale prices likely have not reached retail but may be evident in May and June.

Questions about how severe the meat situation may become and how long it will last, like so many other COVID-19 issues, may not be easily answered. But there are some clues. And, today’s shortage could turn into tomorrow’s surplus, so to speak.

“This has shaken the livestock market tremendously,” Mr. Schulz said on a recent farmdoc webinar with Todd Hubbs, PhD, agricultural economist at the University of Illinois.

“We have sufficient livestock,” Mr. Schulz said. “The challenge is converting that livestock to consumable product.”

Pork cutout value chart

Mr. Schulz said during the week ended May 2 US hog slaughter was down 40% (744,000 head less) from the same week a year earlier and cattle slaughter was down 38% (184,000 head less). He thinks that may have been the peak of reduced capacity.

With national hog slaughter capacity at about 500,000 head per day, a 40% reduction equates to 200,000 hogs not going to market each day, or 1 million in a week’s time, Mr. Schulz said, with that number building as plant closings continue. For cattle, a loss of 40% in slaughter capacity equates to about 50,000 head per day, or 250,000 head per week. Hog growth can be slowed, and buildings can be crowded more, but only for the very short term, he said. The situation for cattle is more flexible in part because few are raised in confinement as are most hogs, and the number of hogs is increasing much more rapidly.

Mr. Schulz said that for each 1% reduction in hog slaughter capacity, there is a corresponding 1.82% reduction in hog prices, thus a 40% cut in capacity equates to a 73% drop in hog prices, although the lost capacity mostly has been below 40%. Complicating the price paid to farmers is that only a small percentage of hogs are sold on a negotiated basis, with most sold on a formula basis or some other way, which may not be affected as much by the slaughter capacity reduction. About 20% of cattle are sold on a negotiated basis.

Feeder pig (weaned pigs sold to be fed to market weight) prices in some cases have approached zero, Mr. Schulz said. There have been reports of farmers aborting pigs to reduce numbers knowing they will have no market for them. It takes about six months for a hog to reach a slaughter weight of 280 lbs, so hogs born in April would come to market in the fall.

“While we expect pork processing to pick up in the coming weeks, US hog producers may still be forced to euthanize as many as 7 million pigs in the second quarter alone,” CoBank said. “While livestock prices have been collapsing, industry associations predict 2020 losses at $13.6 billion for US cattle producers and near $5 billion for US hog producers.”

There also is seasonality to the hog market, with slaughter typically lightest, and thus prices the highest, in the summer months. Mr. Schulz said that may offer some relief to hog producers, but with hogs backing up because of reduced slaughter capacity, much of the benefit from seasonality will be lost this year.

Mr. Schulz estimated the return on hogs will average a negative $16.17 and on cattle a negative $127.54 per head in 2020, compared with a negative $6.26 for hogs and a negative $19.42 for cattle in 2019.

CME Group lean hog futures in late April were down 37% since the first of the year and were down 54% at one point in early April, Mr. Hubbs said. Live cattle futures were down about 29%.

Cattle futures have stabilized, and hog futures have since rebounded in early May, which Mr. Schulz said indicates the market is pricing in strong demand going forward.

Meat continues to be available at retail, but possibly not in the forms consumers are accustomed to finding, Mr. Schulz said. With the loss of much of the foodservice business, some meat has been redirected to retail.

Mr. Schulz stressed the importance of maintaining export markets for meat during the pandemic, even if there are shortages domestically at retail. He said in February about 50% of the value of hogs was the result of the export market.

“We want to make sure we maintain that,” he said.

President Donald Trump on April 28 issued an executive order under the Defense Production Act to compel meat plants to remain open or to resume operations to protect the nation’s food supply. (See Washington Update on Page 22.) Some already had come back online, while several remain closed even after the order. Tyson said it would have mobile units on site as plants reopened to provide COVID-19 testing and other services.

Beef and pork production still are forecast to be record high in 2020, Mr. Schulz said, but the supply is being pushed forward a few weeks or months. He believes the peak reduction in slaughter has occurred and numbers will improve as plants come back online, although capacity may remain at lower levels going forward.

While the situation in the meat industry is different from that of other food staples, although all resulted in some form of shortage and high prices at retail for a time, it adds an exclamation point to some of the deficiencies in the US food system and likely will lead to lasting changes in meat production and processing, which may impact prices at all levels.

We Are Being Told To Prepare “To See High Prices At Grocery Stores” And “It’s Likely That Shortages May Only Get Worse”

If fear of COVID-19 can cause this much chaos for our food distribution systems, what will happen once a much more severe crisis hits us?

By Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse Wednesday, May 27, 2020

If you have been to a grocery store lately, then you already know that prices are higher than usual and that there are shortages of certain items.

Many Americans have been assuming that as COVID-19 restrictions are slowly rolled back that these shortages will eventually disappear, but now even the Washington Post is admitting that “shortages may get worse” in the weeks and months ahead.

Of course there will still be plenty of food available in the grocery stores, but you may have to do without some of your favorite products for a while.

And you should also brace yourself for significantly higher prices for many of the products that do remain available. As WBTV has noted, this will especially be true for basic meat staples such as ground beef and chicken…

Americans looking to get outside this holiday weekend, maybe fire up the grill, should be prepared to see high prices at grocery stores, especially cookout staples like ground beef and chicken.

The meat at the store is a little bit more expensive because of plants that are shutting down and causing a logjam in the food supply chain.

All over the country, COVID-19 is playing havoc with food distribution systems, and nobody has been hit harder than meat processing facilities. The virus has spread like wildfire in such facilities, and this has resulted in many of them being forced to shut down for an extended period of time.

With less supply and roughly the same level of demand, meat prices have escalated quite a bit in recent weeks. In fact, in April we witnessed the largest spike in food prices in 46 years…

Prices Americans paid for eggs, meat, cereal and milk shot higher in April as people flocked to grocery stores to stock up on food amid government lockdowns designed to slow the spread of Covid-19.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that prices U.S. consumers paid for groceries jumped 2.6% in April, the largest one-month pop since February 1974. The spike in supermarket prices was broad based and impacted items from broccoli and ham to oatmeal and tuna.

Of course there have also been whispers that some funny business has been taking place among the meatpacking giants, and federal officials are now investigating allegations of price fixing…

Federal prosecutors are looking into allegations that the meatpacking industry is coordinating or manipulating prices, a person familiar with the investigation told FOX News.

The Department of Justice investigation has been going on for “months,” the source said.

Prosecutors are specifically scrutinizing the four largest meatpackers in the U.S., which control more than 80 percent of the market: JBS, National Beef, Tyson Foods and Cargill.

But no matter how that investigation unfolds, we should expect higher prices to continue, because the industry simply cannot produce as much meat as usual with so many facilities shut down right now.

And with each passing day, we learn of more workers that have become infected. In fact, 570 workers at a single Tyson Foods plant in North Carolina just tested positive for the virus…

Meat processing plants across the country are struggling with outbreaks of the coronavirus. That includes the Tyson Foods chicken processing facility in Wilkes County, N.C.

More than 2,200 workers were tested at the Wilkesboro plant, and 570 were positive for the coronavirus.

With so many meat processing facilities all over the nation currently idle, many farmers simply do not have anyone to sell to right now, and this has pushed many of them to the brink of financial ruin.

For example, it is exceedingly expensive to raise chickens on a massive scale, but with so many plants closed down North Carolina farmers are now being forced “to euthanize 1.5 million chickens”…

Coronavirus outbreaks at meat processing plants are forcing North Carolina farmers to euthanize 1.5 million chickens, according to a state official.

Assistant Agriculture Commissioner Joe Reardon told The News & Observer that this is the first time during the pandemic that North Carolina farmers have had to euthanize their animals. Roughly a third of the 1.5 million chickens already had been killed, Reardon said.

Similar scenarios are playing out all over the U.S., and this is truly a tremendous tragedy.

Unlike some other areas around the globe right now, we would actually have plenty of meat if the farmers could get their animals through the supply chain.

Unfortunately, fear of COVID-19 has thrown the supply chain into a state of chaos, and that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. In fact, the mainstream media is now warning us “that shortages may only get worse”…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated at least 5,000 workers were infected by the end of April, though advocates have suggested there could be more than 17,000. And with plants already slow to respond to outbreaks and some still partially closed, it’s likely that shortages may only get worse.

The good news is that eventually this pandemic will subside, and when that happens it is likely that the supply chain will start to revert back to normal once again.

But if fear of COVID-19 can cause this much chaos for our food distribution systems, what will happen once a much more severe crisis hits us?

When things really start going crazy in this country, basic supplies will disappear from the stores very rapidly, and the government is not going to be bringing baskets of food to your door.

In the end, you will be on your own.

And in the short-term, you should expect food prices to continue to rise. The federal government has been borrowing and spending trillions of dollars that we do not have during this pandemic, and the Federal Reserve has cranked up the money creation machine to absolutely absurd levels. What this means is that the value of our currency is rapidly being devalued, and eventually we will see very painful inflation.

I know that food prices seem really high right now, but they are only going to go up from here.

So stock up on what you can while you have this window of opportunity to do so, because this window of opportunity will not last indefinitely.

There Are Nationwide Shortages Of Aluminum Cans, Soda, Flour, Canned Soup, Pasta And Rice

July 14, 2020 by Michael Snyder

I had no idea that things had gotten so bad. Earlier today, my wife spoke with the manager of a local grocery store because she wanted to place a large order for some canned goods. What she was told surprised her, and it certainly surprised me. The manager of this local grocery store told her that there are numerous nationwide shortages going on at this moment, and he indicated that there are lots of products that he simply cannot get right now. When my wife told me what he had said, I decided that I had to look into this, because I hadn’t heard that canned goods were in short supply. Well, it turns out that the manager that my wife spoke with was right on target, and that should deeply alarm all of us.

One thing that my wife was specifically told was that there is a nationwide shortage of aluminum cans, and this is having a tremendous impact on the soda industry.

In fact, things have gotten so bad that Coca-Cola has been forced to publicly address the situation…

Coke Life, Mello Yellow, Sprite Zero, Fresca and more. These are among some of the products you may have had trouble locating on store shelves in recent weeks.

And you’re not alone.

When asked about the situation, Coca-Cola told one Twitter follower: “We are seeing greater demand for products consumed at home & taking measures to adapt, working to mitigate the challenge during this unprecedented time. We appreciate your loyalty to our beverages; please know that we’re working hard to keep the products you love on the shelves.”

Apparently the big reason why there is a shortage is because people are consuming far more beverages at home than usual, and this has created a huge demand for canned drinks.

Right now, Coca-Cola and Pepsi are primarily focusing on using their limited supplies of aluminum cans to produce their core products, and this has made less popular flavors very difficult to find…

Both Coca Cola and Pepsi have reportedly been forced to focus on their most popular flavors in order to keep them in stock, making the less popular flavors harder to find for the time being.

Unfortunately, we aren’t just facing a shortage of aluminum cans.

According to the Wall Street Journal, some of the biggest food manufacturers in America are admitting that there are nationwide shortages of “flour, canned soup, pasta and rice”…

Grocers are having trouble staying stocked with goods from flour to soups as climbing coronavirus case numbers and continued lockdowns pressure production and bolster customer demand.

Manufacturers including General Mills Inc., Campbell Soup Co. and Conagra Brands Inc. say they are pumping out food as fast as they can, but can’t replenish inventories. Popular items such as flour, canned soup, pasta and rice remain in short supply.

Of course those are precisely some of the key items that preppers tend to stock up on.

I think that millions of Americans can sense what is coming, and they are gathering supplies while they still can.

Meanwhile, the nationwide coin shortage continues to get even worse.

This week, I was stunned to learn that Kroger has announced that it will “no longer return coin change to customers”…

If you pay with cash at one of Kroger’s cashier checkouts, you won’t be getting coin change for a while, and it’s indirectly due to the coronavirus.

Kroger spokesperson Erin Rofles confirmed Friday the grocer will no longer return coin change to customers. Instead, the remainders from cash transactions will be applied to customers’ loyalty cards and automatically used on their next purchase.

That is serious.

This coin shortage is being caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is likely to last for as long as this pandemic persists.

If we have already gotten to the point where the federal government is unable to produce enough coins for all of our businesses, how long will it be before we start witnessing a shortage of dollar bills?

At this point, even Walmart is acknowledging the stress that the nationwide coin shortage is putting on their operations…

Walmart has also been impacted been the shortage. In a statement to WMAZ, Walmart spokesperson Avani Dudhia, “Like most retailers, we’re experiencing the affects of the nation-wide coin shortage. We’re asking customers to pay with card or use correct change when possible if they need to pay with cash.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has also deeply affected the meat processing industry. Numerous meat processing facilities all over the nation have been shut down in recent weeks, and this has limited supplies and pushed up prices.

In fact, we saw some pretty dramatic price increases during the month of June…

Once again, meat prices went up.

Overall, beef and veal prices rose 4.8%. Pork prices grew 3.3% and bacon got 8.1% more expensive. Hot dog prices grew 4.9%.

I have repeatedly warned my readers that meat prices were going to go up substantially, and so hopefully a lot of you out there stocked up before the price increases hit.

What we have been witnessing over the first half of 2020 should be a major league wake up call for all of us, because it has become clear that our system is far more vulnerable to shocks than most people ever imagined.

If COVID-19 can cause this much chaos, what is going to happen when a crisis that is far more severe comes along?

Even though I write about this stuff on a constant basis, I was stunned when my wife told me that we couldn’t get the canned goods that we wanted because a nationwide shortage was happening.

It has become very difficult to keep up with how fast things are changing, and I expect events to accelerate even more as we head toward the end of 2020 and beyond.

If you still need to get stocked up for all the chaos that is coming, I would do so quickly, because supplies are only going to get tighter the worse things get.

There are even shortages of coins. At Walmart last week, all the self-checkout machines (which means all but one aisle) were credit or debit card only. I asked a lady why, and she said it's because of the "national coin shortage."

That sounded prety unlikely to me, so when I got home I googled it. And yes, there is a national coin shortage, but they were "working through the logjams," and expected it to be back to normal soon.

I'm not sure why that is, but there are a lot of copper mines up in Alaska and Canada, and they got off to a late start this season because of the coronavirus, so that would be my guess.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Coin shortage=one step closer to cashless society.

So The Ammo Is Gone, What’s Next?

by NC Scout | Jul 17, 2020 |

Unless you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, you’ve probably noticed that guns and ammo are being sold at record levels- surpassing 2008 & the post-Newtown hysteria by a long shot. And while I’ve heard some say the gun control debate “has been settled”, there’s Dementia Joe’s ghost writers reminding us that its not a debate, its a power differential. That aside, like the animals fleeing Mount Saint Helens weeks before it blew its top, people are hoarding the first thing that comes to mind- that which provides security.

You were warned, for decades now.

And many heeded the warning, thankfully. But arms and ammo are just one piece of the equation. Its a bellwether for what’s coming down the pipe in the big picture. Take a look at the second and third order effects- what comes next? We’ve already seen the food shortages that were threatened by the social impacts of Covid 19- whether the virus itself is worth the concern or not, there’s no debating the social impact- which are a preview of things to come should widespread violence break out in the US. I think that it will.

Something I’ve talked about numerous times in classes is understanding the importance of growing seasons. In generations past, people ate certain foods at certain times of the year because that’s either when they were harvested or they provided a certain survival requirement. For example, in the South we eat watermelon in the summer as a way to rehydrate and replenish electrolytes lost when working the fields. its an easy crop to grow and requires nearly no maintenance other than making sure the soil is not over-moist underneath the melons. The just-in-time supply system has all but broke that cultural knowledge. People are in for a major shock when the real shortages start.

One thing I’ve always admired about the Mormon Church was their approach to preparedness, advocating a year’s worth of food in storage. This wasn’t because they were preparing for doomsday, it came about because crop failure is a real thing, and starvation was a real threat. Still is. And in those same generations past everyone pressure canned the surplus bounty from the fields- nothing, and I mean nothing went to waste on our Grandparents’ table. Again, there’s a learning curve to it, and a pretty steep one at that, so if you’re behind the curve expect some whoops! moments.

The best bet is to have some insurance for yourself and your people in the meantime. While you can, plus up on your bulk food storage and check out what freeze-dried options are out there. I have bulk raw staples on hand, rice and beans, along with bulk canned meats for protein and vegetables for critical vitamins. Freeze Dried foods are a good supplement to those meals and breaks up the monotony of the same meals over and over, having a long shelf life as a safeguard for the very lean times.

The next thing that’s going to get scarce in the coming months is magazines. How many do you have? Whatever your answer is, its not enough. It doesn’t matter whether you’re buying into the myth of the ‘battlefield pickup’ combat resupply (its mostly a myth, been there, done that, got the pictures). You have to be prepared to be your own resupply. Get yourself extra magazines, because as everyone who’s done a combat weapons course with me knows, your life is not worth pausing to worry about magazine retention, but you also risk blowing through mags for other issues, like physical damage or long-term wear. A magazine is an expendable item, you ain’t.

On the topic of being your own resupply, are you prepared to store extra fuel? Even in a relatively tight space, there’s a number of fuel storage options on the market ranging from a couple of extra gas cans to larger capacity tanks. There were rumors of a potential gas shortage when the Covid hysteria started and thankfully that didn’t materialize, but if widespread violence follows the shutdowns from ‘protests’ we’ve seen on the highways, you’ll come to appreciate those extra few gallons you’ve put back. Don’t forget the fuel stabilizer.

Take heed. We’re not living in ‘normal’ times. We’re in the first stages of a genuine, well-orchestrated insurgency that began overtly with the release and calculated response to a virus coupled with made-for-tv newsframes designed to cause outrage and get people in the streets. Its a 5th Generation War right now- get ready for when it shifts back to the 3rd.

100,000 Pasta Boxes And Enough Peanut Butter To Make Nearly 3 Million Sandwiches

Stockpile food while you still can, because very difficult times are approaching

By Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse Friday, August 14, 2020

If everything is going to be just fine, why are officials spending millions of dollars to stockpile giant mountains of food?

What has just been revealed about the “new food warehouse” in Washington state should be a major red flag for all of us.

Most Americans seem to believe that the COVID-19 pandemic, the enormous economic problems that have erupted and the nightmarish civil unrest that has been raging in our major cities are all just temporary phenomenons and that life will eventually get back to normal.

Meanwhile, authorities in Washington state are acting as if what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

According to the Seattle Times, stockpiles of food are being stacked all the way to the roof in “Washington state’s new food warehouse”…

In Washington state’s new food warehouse, there’s enough Jif peanut butter to make nearly 3 million sandwiches.

Barilla pasta boxes stretch to the ceiling, 100,000 in all. Large stacks of TreeTop applesauce, pancake mix and canned green beans sit on pallets, like soldiers waiting to be sent into duty.

That seems like quite an odd thing to do if happy days are right around the corner.

So what prompted authorities in Washington state to do this?

Well, we are being told that the purpose is to “ward off a shortage in the months ahead”…

After seeing food banks struggle to meet demand once the pandemic hit and the economy tanked, the Washington state Department of Agriculture (WSDA) began preparing to buy and stockpile tons of food to ward off a shortage in the months ahead.

A “shortage” of food in the months ahead?

That is quite a statement to make.

In a previous article, I detailed that we are already witnessing periodic shortages of aluminum cans, soda, flour, canned soup, pasta and rice. But what is happening in Washington makes it sound like they believe that what is ahead will be far, far more severe.

Up to this point, Washington state has spent a total of 6.1 million dollars on 4,000 pallets of food, but only about one-fourth of the orders that they have placed have already arrived.

So why hasn’t the rest of the food arrived yet?

Could it be possible that the other 49 states and the federal government are doing the exact same thing?

Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to that question today. If anyone out there has any leads or intel that will help me to answer that question, please let me know.

Meanwhile, we continue to see unprecedented lines at food banks all over the nation. On Tuesday, vehicles lined up “for a mile” to receive free food at a distribution event in Dallas…

Thousands of people have lined up at a Texas food bank, with cars stretching for a mile as the state struggles with being the third worst affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

Fair Park in Dallas County held its fourth food drive since the pandemic was declared in March but the event on Tuesday was the first mega distribution that offered an option for several hundred walk-up clients without transportation.

As I discuss in my new book, we were specifically warned in advance that this was coming, and it certainly appears that poverty is only going to continue to grow in the months ahead.

One man that was interviewed by the local CBS affiliate said that his family would “probably go hungry” if it wasn’t for food distribution events such as this…

“If it wasn’t for this, we’d probably go hungry,” shared Richard Archer.

Archer says his daughter heard about the food giveaway on the news and sent him to get food.

“With unemployment benefits cut, her husband’s been laid off for three months. So, it’s just been a struggle. If it wasn’t for church, and food giveaways, the kids would be going hungry.”

So many families are deeply struggling out there right now, and they need our prayer.

Food supplies are tight nationwide, and they are only going to get tighter. And this week food production was hit by another substantial blow when an extremely powerful derecho roared through several important farming states in the middle of the country…

The rare storm known as a derecho hit Monday, devastating parts of the power grid, flattening valuable corn fields and killing at least two people. It produced winds of up to 112 mph near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and toppled trees, snapped poles, downed power lines and tore off roofs from eastern Nebraska to Indiana.

“It feels like we got kicked in the teeth pretty good,” said Dale Todd, a member of Cedar Rapids’ city council. “Recovery will be methodical, and slow. But right now, everybody is working to ensure the critical services are restored.”

As I discussed yesterday, millions upon millions of acres of crops were ruined. In fact, 10 million acres were affected in the state of Iowa alone…

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said Tuesday that about 10 million acres of Iowa’s nearly 31 million acres of agricultural land sustained damage. About 24 million acres of that is typically planted primarily with corn and soybeans.

In addition, tens of millions of bushels of grain that were stored at co-ops and on farms were damaged or destroyed when bins blew away.

Throughout 2020, we have been hit by one disaster after another.

We keep being told that everything will “return to normal” soon, but meanwhile authorities in Washington state are stockpiling food on a scale that we have never seen before.

And if we discover that officials in other states are doing the same thing, that would suggest some sort of nationwide pattern.

I have never used Washington state as a positive example before, and I may never do it again, but in this instance I would recommend doing exactly what they are doing.

Stockpile food while you still can, because very difficult times are approaching. Yes, things are already quite chaotic out there, but I would use the month of August to finish your preparations because things are only going to get even crazier in the months ahead.

To be fair, the Washington state government has made more than its share of poor decisions recently. I'm not inclined to make much out of Washington state finally getting into the prepping game. But then, stocking up is always a good choice for individuals.

Onward and upward,
airforce

More than half of all Americans “plan to stockpile food and other essentials” for the chaotic months ahead

October 12, 2020 by Michael Snyder


There was a time when preppers were relentlessly mocked, but nobody is laughing now. Today, most Americans are thinking about stockpiling food, and this massive shift in our national mindset has been sparked by concern about what is going to happen in the months ahead. Many Americans believe that another wave of the coronavirus pandemic is coming, others believe that our ongoing economic depression will get even deeper, and yet others are convinced that the upcoming election could produce widespread violence. Of course there have always been people that have been deeply alarmed about future events, but we have never seen anything quite like this. In fact, a brand new survey has found that over half of all Americans are currently planning “to stockpile food and other essentials”…

Slightly more than half of Americans in a recent poll from Sports and Leisure Research Group say they already have or plan to stockpile food and other essentials. The chief reason: fears of a resurgent pandemic, which could lead to disruptions such as new restrictions on businesses. On Oct. 2, the number of COVID-19 cases in the USA was its highest in almost two months.

People still remember the shortages that we witnessed earlier this year when the coronavirus pandemic first erupted in this country, and those that ended up being stuck at home without enough toilet paper would rather not repeat that experience.

So as the mainstream media continues to hype a new wave of the pandemic, we should expect to see Americans hitting the grocery stores really hard. And according to data company Envestnet Yodlee, there is evidence that this is already happening…

Already, there’s some evidence that grocery sales are rising, according to data from industry sources. The typical bill for a trip to the grocery store rose to $72 for the week ended October 6, or 11% higher from the week before, according to data company Envestnet Yodlee.

“That’s the highest we’ve seen since the first week of June and the second-highest since we started tracking this in January,” said Bill Parsons, group president of data and analytics at Evestnet.

Fortunately, many grocery store chains anticipated a spike in demand in advance and started stocking up ahead of time. The following comes from CNN…

Grocery stores across the United States are stocking up on products to avoid shortages during a second wave of coronavirus.

Household products — including paper towels and Clorox wipes — have been difficult to find at times during the pandemic, and if grocery stores aren’t stocked up and prepared for second wave this winter, runs on products and shortages could happen again.

During a time when other retailers all over the nation are failing at a pace that we have never seen before, many grocery store chains are actually experiencing booming sales.

And of course I have been warning that this would eventually happen for a very long time. During a time of crisis, demand for food and other essentials tends to go up and demand for non-essential items tends to go down.

Needless to say, this is something that is not just happening in the United States. All over the world we have seen demand for food on the rise, and this comes at a time when global food production has become increasingly stressed.

As a result, food prices all over the world are starting to escalate quite aggressively…

Food prices continue rising during the coronavirus pandemic, jeopardizing food security for tens of millions worldwide.

On Thursday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations said world food prices rose for the fourth consecutive month in September, led by surging prices for cereals and vegetable oils, reported Reuters.

FAO’s food price index, which tracks the international prices of the top traded food commodities (cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat, and sugar), averaged 97.9 in September versus a downwardly revised 95.9 in August.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

Global food supplies will continue to get even tighter, and global demand for food will just continue to shoot higher.

So I would stock up while you still can, because prices will never be lower than they are right now.

Meanwhile, our society continues to unravel right in front of our eyes. You would think that the Lakers winning the NBA title would be a time to celebrate for the city of Los Angeles, but instead large crowds of young people used it as an opportunity to riot and attack police officers…

A crowd of more than 1,000 revelers descended into the area around Staples Center after the game. Unruly individuals mixed within the crowd began throwing glass bottles, rocks, and other projectiles at officers. That is when an unlawful assembly was declared, and only a limited number of people complied and began to disperse. A larger portion of the group broke off and began vandalizing businesses while continuing to engage in violent behavior, some aimed at responding officers.

In Portland, protesters just toppled statues of Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln during a “day of rage”, but the mainstream media didn’t seem to think that this was any sort of a problem.

And in the middle of the country, the violence never seems to stop in the city of Chicago…

Five people were killed and 48 others were injured by gunfire this weekend in Chicago. Five of those wounded were teenagers.

Last weekend saw 37 people shot throughout the city, five of them fatally.

Of course things could soon get a whole lot worse.

According to one recent survey, 56 percent of all Americans expect “an increase in violence as a result of the election”.

Isn’t that incredibly sad?

Many are still hoping that such a scenario can be avoided if one of the candidates is able to build an extremely large lead on election night. A large enough lead could potentially cause the candidate that is behind to concede fairly quickly, and that may ease tensions.

But I wouldn’t count on that.

At this point we are about 500 hours away from the election, and both sides are indicating that they are prepared to fight until the bitter end.

And the side that ultimately ends up losing is likely to throw a massive temper tantrum, and that won’t be good for our country at all.

So it makes sense that so many Americans are making extra preparations for the months that are ahead, because it definitely appears that they could be quite rocky.

It is only "old school" common sense to stock up in times of plenty for the future times that are lean .

If you didn't do it before it is just going to be far harder to do it now.

Stupid is as stupid does .....

Famine Is “Knocking On The Door”

By Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream Tuesday, December 08, 2020

Unless there is some sort of unforeseen miracle, millions of people could literally starve to death in 2021. We are facing a global food crisis that is unlike anything we have ever seen before in modern times, and 2021 is going to be the year when it starts to become extremely painful all over the globe. But don’t take my word for it. David Beasley is the head of the UN World Food Program, and so he is in a better position to assess the global hunger crisis than any of us. According to Beasley, 2021 “is literally going to be catastrophic” and his organization is facing “the worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations”…

“2021 is literally going to be catastrophic based on what we’re seeing at this stage of the game,” said Beasley, adding that for a dozen countries, famine is “knocking on the door.”

He said 2021 was likely to be “the worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations” 75 years ago and “we’re not going to be able to fund everything … so we have to prioritize, as I say, the icebergs in front of the Titanic.”

Beasley is feverishly trying to raise more money to meet the rising tide of hunger that he is witnessing all across the planet, but he feels like he is fighting a losing battle.

Freakish weather patterns, crippling droughts and colossal armies of locusts have devastated crops throughout 2021, and the COVID pandemic is putting an extreme amount of stress on global food distribution systems.

As a result, food prices are surging and hundreds of millions of people living in impoverished countries now find themselves unable to afford enough food to eat on a regular basis.

Here in the United States, approximately 50 million people have experienced food insecurity at some point in 2021. According to PBS, this hunger crisis is even worse than what we went through during the last recession…

Those fighting hunger say they’ve never seen anything like this in America, even during the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

After the initial wave of fear caused by the COVID pandemic started to subside, a lot of Americans thought that we were out of the woods, but now a new wave of lockdowns is being instituted and CNN is reporting that the hunger crisis in America is actually “getting worse” as we approach the end of the year…

Hunger skyrocketed at the pandemic’s onset because of record high job losses, school closures and strained food pantries. But at that point, Americans were better positioned to make ends meet with support from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamp, benefits. Yet, as we near year’s end, the problem is getting worse, not better. With the expiration of CARES Act benefits and without any hint as to when the next round of federal aid will hit people’s pockets, families around the country are suffering and will likely continue to do so throughout the holiday season.

Could it be possible that 2021 will end up being even painful for hungry Americans than 2020 was?

That is difficult to imagine, because the numbers from this year have been truly horrific. The AP analyzed Feeding America data from 181 different food banks, and they found that those food banks had given out 57 percent more food in 2020 than they did in 2019.

If the demand continues to skyrocket, eventually there simply will not be enough food for everyone.

We are all familiar with the photographs from the Great Depression that show men waiting in very long lines for free food.

Well, the same thing is happening now, but with a twist. Needy people are lining up as early as 2 AM and are waiting in their vehicles for up to 12 hours just to get a few bags of provisions from their local food banks…

The history books are filled with iconic images of America’s struggles against hunger. Among the most memorable are the Depression-era photos of men standing in breadlines, huddled in long coats and fedoras, their eyes large with fear. An overhead sign reads: “Free Soup. Coffee and a Doughnut for the Unemployed.”

This year’s portrait of hunger has a distinctively bird’s eye view: Enormous traffic jams captured from drone-carrying cameras. Cars inching along, each driver waiting hours for a box or bag of food. From Anaheim, California to San Antonio, Texas to Toledo, Ohio and Orlando, Florida and points in-between, thousands of vehicles carrying hungry people queued up for miles across the horizon. In New York, and other large cities, people stand, waiting for blocks on end.

Of course my readers were warned in advance that all of this was coming.

For years I have been warning my readers that economic collapse, civil unrest and global famine were approaching, and I strongly urged everyone to stockpile food and supplies.

Now we are constantly being bombarded by headlines that declare that the days that I have been warning about are here, and 2021 threatens to be even worse than 2020 was.

Today, I came across a news story that I think is an appropriate metaphor for what we are potentially facing in 2021. Hundreds of black vultures have invaded the town of Marietta, Pennsylvania and they are causing tremendous problems. They are tearing up rooftops and garbage cans, they are defecating all over the place, and they “spew vomit that smells ‘like rotting corpses’ on sidewalks and homes”.

Residents have been desperately trying to scare them away, but they can’t shoot the vultures because they are protected by law…

More permanent solutions are in short supply, as the black vulture is federally protected and can’t be exterminated without permission.

It’s illegal in the US to trap, kill or own black vultures without a permit and violators can face a fine of up to $15,000 and up to six months in prison.

So those vultures will get to stay in Marietta for as long as they wish.

Sadly, vultures are now circling over America too. I have written countless articles about the rotting, decaying carcass that our society has become, and those that hate traditional American values have increasingly gained more and more power.

Now we are just a few weeks away from the start of 2021, and there is every indication that it is going to be an exceedingly painful year.

Farmers Warn That The Megadrought In The Western U.S. Threatens To Cause Devastating Crop Failures In 2021

April 19, 2021 by Michael Snyder



Throughout U.S. history, there have always been droughts in the western half of the country from time to time, but what we are dealing with now is truly alarming. Scientists tell us that a multi-year “megadrought” has developed in the southwestern portion of the country, and this is the worst year of that “megadrought” so far by a wide margin. If conditions do not radically improve soon, we are going to have a major agricultural disaster on our hands. Some farmers have already decided not to plant crops at all this year, but many others have decided to plant anyway knowing that if enough rain doesn’t come their crops will certainly fail.

As I have discussed previously, the epicenter of this “megadrought” is the Four Corners region in the Southwest, but this drought is so immense it is even causing immense nightmares for farmers as far away as North Dakota.

In fact, the first few months of this year were the driest that North Dakota has seen in 126 years…

The period of January to March 2021 was the driest in 126 years for North Dakota. Farmers are starting to make difficult decisions on planting and culling herds as the governor of the state declared a statewide drought disaster on April 8. Soil moistures across the state, particularly in western portions of North Dakota, are lacking sufficient moisture to sustain normal crop development growth. The first eight days of April 2021 offered little help as hot, summer-like temperatures, gusty winds, and low humidity across the state accelerated drying conditions.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, well over half the state is now experiencing “severe drought”.

Perhaps you don’t care about what is happening in North Dakota, but you should, because much of the wheat that we use for pasta and flour comes from that region…

Things are dry and dusty in the Upper Midwest, the Northern Plains states and the Prairie provinces of Canada.

This region, spanning states such as North Dakota and provinces such as Manitoba, is the most important one for spring wheat, the higher-gluten variety that’s used for pasta or mixed with other wheat for all-purpose flour. And that crop is at significant risk, because conditions in the region are pretty dire this year.

In a previous article I discussed the dramatic rise in food prices that we have been witnessing lately, and now drought fears are pushing futures prices for spring wheat quite a bit higher…

The US Drought Monitor shows around 70 percent of North Dakota in “extreme drought” conditions, with most of the rest in the slightly less scary “severe drought” rating. As a result, the futures prices of both spring wheat and canola are at their highest in years, with traders expecting a lower harvest this year.

Despite all of our advanced technology, farmers can’t grow crops if it doesn’t rain, and a farmer in Texas named Blake Fennell says that his farm has not had any significant rain in almost two years…

The West Texas farmer says his area hasn’t seen significant rain fall in nearly two years.

“We’ve still got to give that crop every chance we think we can get, but at the same time, we also can’t waste a lot of money on a crop that we don’t think we’re going to have going into it,” he says.

What a nightmare.

Right now, nearly the entire state of Texas is in some level of drought, and we haven’t even gotten to the summer months yet.

To call this a “plague” would be a major understatement. On the border of Oregon and California, farmers just learned that water levels are so low that they will only get “a tiny fraction of the water they need” in 2021…

Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of several tribes.

Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is working with congressional delegates, the White House and federal agencies to find relief for those affected.

Do you think that you could run a successful farm under such conditions?

Elsewhere in California, water allocation reductions of up to 95 percent are forcing many farmers to make some exceedingly heartbreaking decisions…

Drought conditions are already forcing Valley farmers to make difficult decisions when it comes to their crops as many are facing severe water restrictions.

“There’s districts throughout California that have experienced up to 95% reductions in water,” says Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen.

U.S. food production will be down in 2021, but if sufficient rain starts falling in the western U.S. we could still see a miracle.

But if enough rain does not fall, we are going to see epic crop failures.

Meanwhile, it is being projected that the drought will cause the water level in Lake Mead to soon fall to the lowest level ever recorded…

Wracked by drought, climate change and overuse, a key reservoir on the Colorado River could sink to historically low levels later this year, new US government projections show, potentially triggering significant water cutbacks in some states as early as next year.

The projections released by the US Bureau of Reclamation show that Lake Mead — the largest reservoir in the country and a vital water supply to millions across the Southwest — could fall later this year to its lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s.

If you live anywhere in the western half of the country, you should brace yourself for severe water restrictions.

And all of us need to brace ourselves for much higher prices at the grocery store.

For decades, the western half of the country was blessed with unusually high levels of rainfall, but that wasn’t going to last forever.

Now Dust Bowl conditions have returned, and farmers, ranchers and local authorities are starting to panic.

As this megadrought continues to intensify, life is going to dramatically change in the western half of the nation, and that is going to deeply affect all of us.

The Apocalyptic Drought In The Western U.S. Is Causing Widespread Crop Failures On A Massive Scale

July 21, 2021 by Michael Snyder


At a time when food prices are already rising aggressively, agricultural production in the United States is being absolutely devastated by a drought that many are calling “the worst” in American history. Once again this week, the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map has extremely bad news for us. In all the years that I have been writing, we have never experienced anything like we are experiencing right now. As I write this article, 100% of the state of California is in a state of drought, and you should care very much about that because California produces about a third of our vegetables and about two-thirds of our fruits and nuts. Of course it is not just California that is facing an unprecedented nightmare right now. At this point, drought is covering more territory in our western states than we have ever seen before…

Record-high temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and other parts of the West Coast along with prolonged drought in those areas and the Upper Midwest are stressing crops and livestock and raising concerns about irrigation supplies as conditions persist.

The US Drought Monitor as of July 13 showed 100% of all states west of the Rocky Mountains and most of the Upper Midwest region in some level of drought. California, Oregon, Arizona, Idaho, Utah and North Dakota were nearly 100% severe drought or worse (with extreme and exceptional the most severe). Washington, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, New Mexico, most of Wyoming and western Colorado all were in moderate or worse drought.

2020 was a bad year, but at this time last year only about 20 percent of the West was experiencing “severe drought”.

Today, that number is up to 80 percent…

Nearly 80% of the West, including North and South Dakota, is in severe drought. That percentage is even more staggering when compared to the 20% of the region that fell into the severe drought range this time last year.

Let that number sink in for a moment.

This is a historic disaster of epic proportions, and it is starting to have a dramatic impact on agricultural production.

For example, the amount of spring wheat is projected to be 41 percent below the level that we witnessed in 2020…

The USDA’s initial spring wheat other than durum production forecast for 2021 was 344,575,000 bus, down 41% from 2020 and the lowest since 205,460,000 bus in 1988. Average yield was forecast at 30.7 bus an acre, down 37% from 2020 and the lowest since 2002. Although 2021 spring wheat planted area was down 5.5% from 2020, harvested area was down 7%, suggesting a larger number of abandoned acres.

Other crops are being hit even harder.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. oat crop will be the smallest that we have seen since records began in 1866.

That isn’t a typo, and I didn’t mean to say “1966”.

For thousands upon thousands of U.S. farmers, 2021 is going to be an absolutely disastrous year with very little production at all. At one farm in Minnesota, the owner is estimating that he “will not be able to harvest hardly anything” from the 2,500 acres of corn that he planted…

At Schiefelbein Farms, the hayfield should be knee-high by this time of year. Instead, it’s sparse and barely ankle-high.

Schiefelbein estimates they have about 75% less hay this year. Out of their 2,500 acres of corn, they will not be able to harvest hardly anything.

So what are we going to do if there is not enough food to go around?

You might want to start thinking about that.

Up in Canada, farmers are saying that the unprecedented “heat dome” that we just witnessed literally “cooked” a lot of the fruit while it was still on the branches…

Fruit growers in the province of British Columbia (BC) said the heatwave reportedly “cooked” fruits while still on the branch. BC Fruit Growers Association (BCFGA) President and orchardist Pinder Dhaliwal told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: “It seems like somebody took a blowtorch to [the fruit] and just singed it.” He described the cherries affected by the heatwave: They became brown in color, with burnt leaves and dry stems.

According to Dhaliwal, 50 to 70 percent of cherry crops were damaged in the heatwave. He added that apples, apricots and other stone fruits also reported damage – albeit to a lesser degree. “The overall financial impact is going to be great on the farmers,” Dhaliwal said.

But the corporate media is telling us that everything is going to be just wonderful, and so we should probably just stick our heads in the sand and ignore this sort of thing.

Personally, I don’t understand why the federal government is not taking action. As global weather patterns go completely nuts, other national governments are starting to step up to the plate. For example, just check out what has been happening in Dubai…

As mother nature hasn’t helped till now, Dubai has come up with its very own way to create rain as it grapples with a 50C heatwave.

The city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has come up with drone technology that “shocks” clouds into producing rain.

It is part of multi-million efforts to tackle the blistering weather and bring up the meagre average of just four inches of rainfall a year in the Middle Eastern country.

We have similar technology.

So why aren’t we using it?

Somebody needs to ask the Biden administration that question.

As it stands, we are heading into a real nightmare. Food prices have already been getting very painful, and a billionaire that is in the food business just told Fox Business that he is expecting “10% to 14% food inflation by October”…

Businessman John Catsimatidis expects 10% to 14% food inflation by October.

Catsimatidis — the owner and CEO of Manhattan-based grocery chain Gristedes Foods — told Fox Business that Americans can expect higher prices for basic expenses in the coming months.

“We’re both in the food business, and we’re in the oil business. Food prices are getting higher, and we expect even more increases by October,” he said. “We’re seeing anywhere from 10% to 14% by October 1. It’s a real number.”

I think that he is right on the money, but this is just the beginning. There will be much more pain in 2022 and beyond.

Food prices are never going to be lower than they are right now, and so if you can afford to stock up I would strongly recommend doing so.

Scientists are assuring us that we are in a multi-year “megadrought”, and they are telling us that there is no end in sight at this point.

This is an absolutely huge story, and unfortunately we are still only in the very early chapters.