Washington (CNN) -- Feeding the hungry is the mission at Manna Food Center, a food bank in the suburbs of the nation's capital. This year, officials here are seeing more and more people who need their help.
America's slow recovery from the worst economic crisis in decades has left families across the country struggling to put food on their tables, whether or not they have a job.
With an unemployment rate stuck above 9 percent and millions of people working part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time positions, a record 45.8 million people -- one of every seven -- received food stamps from the government in May. Demand for this kind of federal help has risen in all 50 states...[Full Article]
In case you haven't noticed, the world is on the verge of a horrific global food crisis. At some point, this crisis will affect you and your family. It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but it is going to happen. Crazy weather and horrifying natural disasters have played havoc with agricultural production in many areas of the globe over the past couple of years. Meanwhile, the price of oil has begun to skyrocket. The entire global economy is predicated on the ability to use massive amounts of inexpensive oil to cheaply produce food and other goods and transport them over vast distances. Without cheap oil the whole game changes. Topsoil is being depleted at a staggering rate and key aquifers all over the world are being drained at an alarming pace. Global food prices are already at an all-time high and they continue to move up aggressively. So what is going to happen to our world when hundreds of millions more people cannot afford to feed themselves? (Read More....)
Will 2011 be the year that we point to as the beginning of the great global food crisis? Food prices are soaring, supplies are very tight and already we have seen some very intense food protests flare up around the globe this year. When people don't have enough to eat, they tend to become very desperate, and unfortunately it looks like the global food situation is not going to improve much any time soon. Right now the world is really struggling to feed itself, and with each passing day there are even more mouths to feed. It is being projected that the population of the world will reach 9 billion people by the year 2050. There are already way too many people starving to death around the globe, and unfortunately starvation is only going to become more rampant as food supplies get even tighter. Some of the key food producing provinces in China are facing their worst drought in 200 years. Flooding has absolutely devastated agricultural production in Australia and Brazil this winter. Russia is still trying to recover from the horrific drought of last summer. Global weather patterns have gone haywire over the past 12 months, and this is putting immense pressure on a global food system that was already on the verge of a major breakdown.
Food stockpiles all over the world are disturbingly low at this point. If a major global famine broke out not even the United States would be able to last for long. The U.S. government is supposed to be keeping a lot of food stockpiled in the event of an emergency, but that is just not happening.
Right now a desperate scramble for food is beginning. Quite a few nations that used to be huge food exporters are now importing a lot of their food. Prices for staples such as wheat, corn and soybeans are absolutely soaring, and the UN is projecting that they will continue to rise rapidly throughout 2011.
Unless something dramatically changes, the global food situation is only going to get tighter and tighter and tighter as this decade rolls along.
So who is going to decide who gets fed and who doesn't?
As food prices continue to rise, will we start to see more food riots erupt all over the world as starving populations demand answers from their governments?...
Food prices are skyrocketing across the world, and last month, they peaked to the highest levels since the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization began indexing them in 1990. In the Middle East, wheat prices are playing a role in the ongoing unrest, particularly in Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer. Laurie Garrett, CFR's senior fellow for global health, says the rising prices of staple grains in the region are adding to a "real sense of anger and injustice." She notes that though governments are attempting to hold prices down artificially, "very few governments can really get away with it because they just can't afford it." The food price crisis, she says, is "a destabilizing moment in terms of global governance" and to meet food demand going forward, the food production in the developing world must become more efficient and "every aspect of farming, harvesting, delivery, and distribution has to improve dramatically."...
World food prices reached their highest level ever recorded in January and are set to keep rising for months, the UN food agency said on Thursday, warning that the hardest-hit countries could face turmoil.
Rising food prices have been cited among the driving forces behind recent popular revolts in north Africa, including the uprising in Egypt and the toppling of Tunisia's long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
And in its latest survey, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said its index which monitors monthly price changes for a variety of staples averaged 231 points in January -- the highest level since records began in 1990.
"The new figures clearly show that the upward pressure on world food prices is not abating. These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come," FAO economist and grains expert Abdolreza Abbassian said in a statement...
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Food prices have been rising worldwide, as the cost of raw materials and agricultural products surge, contributing to political unrest around the globe.
In December, international food prices broke an all-time high when they rose 25% for the year, led by rising costs for staples like rice, wheat, and maize, the United Nations reported...
Big rises in food prices are likely over the next year, livestock farmers in Suffolk have told the BBC Politics Show in the East.
The farmers said the rises were likely because of the increased cost of breeding chickens and pigs, due to an increase in the price of feed.
This is partly due to the rise in demand for livestock feed from China.
Farmers told the BBC that the increased cost of feed had not yet been passed on to the consumer.
Pig farmer Peter Mortimer, who has 250 sows at Metfield in Suffolk, said: "It's unsustainable (not to pass on the costs), quite honestly, if we don't get an increase in prices before long, the industry faces a disastrous situation.
"Give it six months on and we will be in despair. I think that whole industry would if we don't get the extra money from the market place. Unfortunately I think it's the end of cheap food."...
...Sparked by Wal-Mart’s continuing expansion into grocery – 40 more stores are coming this year – this kind of retail competition, along with a higher Canadian dollar, has so far spared Canadian consumers the kind of food price inflation that threatens to erupt in violence in other parts of the world.
But Canadians can expect to see more food price increases in supermarkets soon, the country’s third-largest food retailer predicted this week.
“We do expect some cost increases to be processed through the system starting in February,” Eric La Flèche, president and chief executive officer of Metro Inc., told analysts on a conference call on Wednesday...
What in the world is happening to America? The things that you are about to see in the videos posted in this article are so disturbing and so violent that it is hard to believe that it is actually Americans that are doing this to one another. Once upon a time, Americans generally conducted themselves with humility, grace, civility, honor and with a tremendous amount of respect for others. Sadly, those days are now long gone. Now, large numbers of people in this country are just going wild. Unfortunately, the videos you are about to watch are not isolated incidents. Stuff like this is going on all over the country. So what is going to happen when the economy collapses and shortages begin? What kind of violence and rioting should we expect to see at that point? Just recall what we witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sadly, if the videos below are any indication, the thin facade of civilization that we all take for granted every day could completely disintegrate in the event of a major economic catastrophe...
A government report unexpectedly showed U.S. grain supplies tightening Wednesday, causing a surge in commodity prices and raising expectations for inflation at the grocery store.
Futures prices for corn and soybeans jumped about 4 percent after the U.S. Department of Agriculture said production of those key crops fell in 2010. Analysts said prices also will be pushed higher in meat markets, where live cattle already is trading at record levels per pound.
“For many shoppers, this almost comes at the worst time,” said Robert Goldin, executive vice president at the food consulting firm Technomic Inc. He said prices also will be pushed higher by food producers’ rising energy costs...
A recent report by the U.S Department of Agriculture shows future prices for some key grains will be skyrocketing in the future, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. That could mean inflation at the grocery store.
It is expected that prices for corn and soybeans will go up about 4 percent after production of those crops fell last year. Experts say producers' rising energy costs also is a contributing factor...
Overheating emerging markets, in China in particular, pose the biggest threat to the market and political situation in 2011 according to Philippe Gijsels, head of research at BNP Paribas Fortis Global Markets.
“These economies are clearly overheating and governments are putting measures in place to slow them down to fight inflationary pressure. More than anything else, food inflation is a problem," Gijsels told CNBC.com.
"In countries were 70 percent to 80 percent and sometimes more of a family's budget goes to food, explosive price rises risk to destabilize these societies. Remember the old saying: 'hunger starves civilizations,’” he added...
(CBS) NEW YORK -- Don't look now, but inflation is expected to hit food hard this year.
"Corn is a big one" in the higher prices department, Bloomberg Businessweek Assistant Managing Editor Sheelah Kolhatkar told "Early Show on Saturday Morning" co-anchor Betty Nguyen. "The Agriculture Department released a report a couple of days ago about crop forecasts for the year and predicted corn production is going to go down very significantly, which led to a spike in prices."
Why corn's rise?
"There are a lot of reasons," Kolhatkar replied. "Weather is cited as a big one. There's been sort of freak weather in different parts of the world. Russia experienced a drought. There are floods in Australia. There's been sort of freezing weather in Florida. Our own Midwest experienced flooding earlier this year.
"And because the market for a lot of these food commodities is global, when something strange happens somewhere, that can affect a crop.
Making matters worse, she says, "Corn has sort of a ripple effect, because it goes into a lot of different foods, and it is a big component of feed for animals. So, meat, as a result, is expected to go up quite a bit -- beef and pork were cited. Other grains, wheat, and (many) fruits and vegetables."...
The stunningly violent food riots in Tunisia and Algeria show just how quickly things can change. Just a few months ago, these two northern Africa nations were considered to be very stable, very peaceful and without any major problems. But now protesters are openly squaring off with police in the streets. Many of the protesters are throwing "fire bombs" or are shooting fireworks at the authorities, and the police are responding with a tremendous amount of violence themselves. In Algeria, several protesters have been killed by police and several others have actually set themselves on fire to protest the economic conditions. In Tunisia, more than 100 people have been killed and the president of that country actually had to flee for his life. But on a global scale, food shortages have not even gotten that bad yet. Yes, food prices are starting to go up and food supplies are a little bit tighter right now, but much worse times than these are coming. So what in the world are the cities of the world going to look like when we have a very serious food shortage?
Just as we saw during the food riots of 2008, when people get to the point where they can't even feed themselves anymore, they tend to lose it. In the video posted below, you can really feel the desperation of these young Algerians as they riot in the streets....
This next video is of the food riots in Tunisia. You will not want to let any young children watch this video. In fact, if watching police beat and smash protesters laying on the ground upsets you, then you might not want to watch this video either. The massive food riots that have erupted in Tunisia have left many city streets looking like war zones and at this point it is being reported that the violence has left over 100 people dead. The president of Tunisia has left the country because of the rioting, and an interim president has been sworn in. It is hoped that this will help restore order. This video is absolutely stunning....
You see, the truth is that it is not just in the United States that people are becoming angry at government. All over the world, frustration is boiling over. But unlike the United States, where food is still very plentiful, in many areas of the world it is the deteriorating economic conditions that are sparking many of these riots.
According to the FAO, the global price of food hit a new record high in December. For most Americans and Europeans, a rise in the price of food is just an inconvenience. But in many areas of the world, even a relatively small rise in the price of food can mean that the survival of millions is suddenly threatened.
Global authorities are concerned that these food riots might start spreading - especially if the extremely harsh weather all over the globe continues to damage crops.
In fact, there are some signs that economic unrest is already beginning to spread....
*In the nation of Jordan, peaceful demonstrations were held in several locations around the country on Friday to protest rising food prices.
*In Libya, protests about the late completion of government subsidized housing entered their third day on Sunday. Reportedly, hundreds of uncompleted units have been taken over by protesters and so far the police are not taking action to evict them. There is also growing concern that the food riots in neighboring Tunisia will soon pour over into Libya.
*Economic protests also been reported recently in Mozambique, Morocco and Chile.
Sadly, the desperate economic conditions that are sparking these food riots did not develop overnight. Rather, they have been building for decades. The truth is that the new "global economy" is designed to funnel more and more of the wealth of the world into the hands of the wealthiest 0.001% of the global population. Everyone else is left to fight with one another to divide up a pie that is increasingly shrinking.
Just consider the following five facts....
#1 Approximately 1 billion people throughout the world go to bed hungry every single night.
#2 Approximately 28 percent of all children in developing countries are considered to be underweight or have had their growth stunted as a result of malnutrition.
#3 Every 3.6 seconds someone starves to death and three-quarters of them are children under the age of 5.
#4 "Least developed countries" spent 9 billion dollars on food imports in 2002. By 2008, that number had risen to 23 billion dollars.
#5 A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research discovered that the bottom half of the world population owns approximately 1 percent of all global wealth.
So if things are this bad already, what kind of food riots are we going to see if all of this weird weather continues and global harvests are much lower than anticipated in 2011?
Most Americans have a really hard time even imagining such a thing, but the truth is that we are just one really bad harvest away from mass starvation in many areas of the world.
We are not going to see mass starvation in the United States in 2011, but we could see food prices start to go up significantly. Keep in mind that more than 43 million Americans are already on food stamps. The incredible abundance of food that we have been enjoying for so many decades is not guaranteed to last indefinitely.
Dennis Conley, an agricultural economist at the University of Nebraska, recently told MSNBC that food reserves in the United States are already disturbingly low....
"I haven't seen numbers this low that I can remember in the last 20 or 30 years."
So yes, there are legitimate reasons to be concerned.
The world really is on the verge of a major food crisis, and if global harvests are not significantly better than most analysts are currently projecting, then we are likely to see a lot more food riots around the globe before 2011 is over.
[Webmaster - Start stocking up on non-perishable foods, water filters, and canning supplies NOW... Enough to get you through a 6 month to 1 year period of time.]
Food inflation is here and it's here to stay. We can see it getting worse every time we buy groceries. Basic food commodities like wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice have been skyrocketing since July, 2010 to record highs. These sustained price increases are only expected to continue as food production shortfalls really begin to take their toll this year and beyond.
This summer Russia banned exports of wheat to ensure their nation's supply, which sparked complaints of protectionism. The U.S. agriculture community is already talking about rationing corn over ethanol mandates versus supply concerns. We've seen nothing yet in terms of food protectionism.
Global food shortages have forced emergency meetings at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization where they claim "urgent action" is needed. They point to extreme weather as the main contributing factor to the growing food shortages. However, commodity speculation has also been targeted as one of the culprits.
It seems that the crisis would also present the perfect opportunity and the justification for the large GMO food companies to force their products into skeptical markets like in Europe and Japan, as recently leaked cables suggest. One thing is for sure; food shortages will likely continue to get worse and eventually become a full-scale global food crisis.
Here are seven reasons why food shortages are here to stay on a worldwide scale:...
Overnight, the threat of further Chinese tightening multiplied as a result of food price inflation. A basket of 18 key vegetables saw their prices increase by 62.4%, year-over-year, in the first 10 days of November.
But just how likely is Chinese tightening?
Waverly Advisors feel that it is now a near certainty, based on the political realities within China.
The fact that Premier Wen Jiabo chose a supermarket as the location for a press appearance to comment on anti-inflationary measures today indicated how seriously Beijing is taking the potential disruptive impact of rising cost at the cash register.
But this isn't just a Chinese problem. 40% of the world's population, found in China, India, and Brazil, is seeing their food prices skyrocket as a result of price inflation. Note India's has actually decreased, but remains close to double digit territory...
Source: Reuters * Emergency food pantry use up sharply in recent years
* Food stamps used by 15 million families a month in 2009
By Jerry Norton
WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The number of U.S. households that reported getting emergency food from a food pantry almost doubled between 2007 and 2009, at the height of the recession, a government report said on Monday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said the number of households jumped to 5.6 from 3.9 million.
"Households also accessed additional assistance through USDA's 15 food and nutrition assistance programs," the article in the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) "Amber Waves" said.
The USDA oversees the government's food stamp program, also known as SNAP or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, for low-income families and other domestic feeding programs like school lunches.
In the 2009 fiscal year, "15.2 million households participated in SNAP in an average month, up from 12.7 million in FY 2008," the article said...
The National Inflation Association is warning of a food crisis in America as soon as next year and possible “societal collapse” as a result of the Federal Reserve’s new quantitative easing program that threatens to eviscerate the buying power of the greenback.
“For every economic problem the U.S. government tries to solve, it always creates two or three much larger catastrophes in the process,” said NIA’s President Gerard Adams. “Just like we predicted this past December, the U.S. dollar index bounced in early 2010 and has been in free-fall ever since. Bernanke’s QE2 will likely accelerate this free-fall into a complete U.S. dollar rout,” warns Adams.
The NIA styles itself around “preparing Americans for hyperinflation,” and warns that holiday sales figures are set to be “the worst recorded in American history” as a result of Americans refusing to pay inflated amounts for overpriced goods. This in turn will negatively impact the rest of the economy and render completely impotent any supposed positive effects of the Fed’s money printing exercise.
Hyperinflation can only lead to “complete societal collapse,” warns the organization, as price indicators already underscore how drastic the situation has become even before Bernanke’s announcement earlier this week.
Soaring wheat and other commodity costs are pushing up food prices far beyond the rate of normal inflation, leading to noticeably higher prices in the grocery stores.
So far in 2010, the following farm commodities have already skyrocketed at an unprecedented pace.
- Wheat is up 84 per cent. - Corn is up 63 per cent. - Sugar is up 55 per cent. - Soybeans are up 24 per cent.
As the End of the American Dream blog notes, “Anyone who believes that these commodity price increases are not going to be passed on to U.S. consumers is delusional. Literally thousands of food products are about to go up in price.”
The pain is doubled when you factor in spiraling gas prices, which will only continue to climb higher thanks to oil’s inverse relationship with the weakening US dollar. Oil has skyrocketed by more than 6 per cent just this week, with many financial observers predicting that $100 dollars a barrel is right around the corner.
But if you think wholesale commodity prices are already out of control, just look at what the NIA is predicting you will eventually be forced to pay for these staple items in your local grocery store.
- A standard 24 oz loaf of bread will cost over $23 dollars. - A 32oz package of granulated sugar will cost over $62 dollars. - A 11.30 oz container of roast coffee will set you back over $77 dollars - A 64 fl oz container of Minute Maid Orange Juice will cost more than $45 dollars. - A Hershey’s Milk Chocolate 1.55 oz candy bar will cost over 15 dollars. - A plain white men’s cotton t-shirt will cost $55.57.
And the Treasury along with the Fed have the temerity to claim their dollar printing madness is justified by fears of deflation. No wonder Tim Geithner has been taking advice from a TV comedian!
Seriously, how long before we see US citizens carting Weimar Republic wheelbarrows down to Wal-Mart? These prices are what you can expect to be paying as a result of the Fed’s actions within the next ten years, and don’t expect your pay packet to keep track with this inflationary holocaust either.
The American middle class is finished if we don’t support Ron and Rand Paul’s effort to audit and eventually end the Fed, stripping this larcenous private institution of the power to rape and pillage the US consumer while destroying the dollar, all in the interests of the scum bag global elitists and foreign bank owners from whom Bernanke and Geithner take their orders.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
