Rationing Comes to Costco
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.21.08
Nobody gives up much in North America for our troops in Afganistan or Iraq, or for our changing climate. Whether it's big cars, low taxes or water, we defer death and taxes for our grandchildren to worry about (Or at least the next administration). However the reality of the Peak Food situation is beginning to hit us in the face; In parts of the US they are rationing rice.
It appears that Asian rice, flour and cooking oil is disappearing from the shelves in America, as Asian demand outstrips supply. the New York Sun quotes a shopper: “Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”
Costco is limiting purchases to one bag per customer. In New York, bakers are hoarding flour. In the west, an "anonymous high-tech professional" bought 10 50-pound bags of rice, saying “I am concerned that when the news of rice shortage spreads, there will be panic buying and the shelves will be empty in no time. I do not intend to cause a panic, and I am not speculating on rice to make profit. I am just hoarding some for my own consumption,” Yeah, right. That is what causes the panic in the first place. 500 pounds? ::New York Sun
The worst thing is that a lot of this stockpiled food might spoil before it can be used.
We need someone smarter than the greedy ass speculators and bankers setting ag prices, otherwise we will have boom and bust agriculture cycles which will eventually lead to mass starvation. Gubbermint policies are totally unconcerned with world hunger, they only love money.
Hi just wanted to point out that there is a typo in the first line of the post theres no troops in Iran but rather in Iraq.
LA: BIG TYPO! thanks, I have fixed it
George Soros, who personally profited from financial markets enormously (1 billion) and kicked British pound out of currency trading for a while, is constantly repeating: 'we need to stop financial imaginary derivatives to control life, because it is all going to lead to the total and devastating collapse, once.
Buzz Saw, I too wish there was someone much smarter than speculators (bankers speculate, too) to sort out the price of commodities, but they are dealing with the same facts as the rest of us: supply is down, costs are up, and this will likely be the case for some time to come. And these speculators are not actually setting prices, though they are certainly having some effect on the prices.
If government isn't the answer and markets aren't the answer, what's left? I'd have to argue that the markets have generally done a remarkable job of getting food to places that buy it, governments do a halfway decent job of getting it to some of the rest of the places, and the really really poor get really really poor service from the current setup, as well as under most realistic proposed systems as well. I would love to see some price controls and production quotas to offset the damage a food crisis would do to the poor, but to ask for markets and governments to get out of the way will probably lead to the implementation of some bizarre tyranny and short-sighted overreactions to fix things those awful speculators are already working to offset.
I'm not saying I'm happy with speculators and their moral compass that generally focuses on immediate profit over longer-term values, but I do know that they're a bit spooked even while they're raking in a bit more money than usual. Is there hope in that? Who knows?
Just to be a noodge... we don't have to live with low taxes... anyone who thinks the tax rate is too low can send extra $$ to the IRS... they won't send it back.
Yes, we should grow food wherever possible. It boggles my mind how we are able to get almost any food any where. Get familiar with what can keep for extended peiods of time.
Oh and if you've been putting off doing more bike riding to do average chores or get to work... start limbering up and condition yourself. $117 oil? $4.oo gas?
Good Luck,
vsk
I'm sorry, but one year does not make a trend, and considering how poorly we're using agricultural land, I doubt we've hit peak food. Peak food for our current practices, yes. Stop paying farmers not to farm, do whatever it takes to both keep food affordable and farmers from being dirt poor (heh), adapt to climate change as much as possible, and get on with feeding the world.
Peak population, maybe, but not peak food. I hope to God we've hit peak population, because the tighter the population is in Asia, and the more global travel there is, the greater the risk is that we'll all die in a "The Stand"-type event (well, minus Satan taking over Vegas) than of starvation.
(I feel like a broken record)
Yet ANOTHER reason to buy from local farms (when you can't grow your own food, that is...)
$4.00 a gallon gas?
That's nothing. Americans will just whine more without driving any less. Canadians are already paying well past that (it's $1.24 a litre here, which amounts to $4.69 CDN per US gallon not including today's exchange rate of $0.9943 US dollars to Canadian dollars.) and transit ridership is up by only about 5% year over year for the past couple of years. That could be just as much from population increase as people fleeing their cars, because road usage is up almost as much.
Live simply so others may simply live?