Food prices rising

[queenbee]

That's because it wasn't fixed correctly.

It's raining cats & dogs here too, cuz I just stepped in a poodle. hahaha

DON'T CHANGE THE SUBJECT.

meat is excellent for me.

[summerose]

I ate it at a friend's house and i sure never ate anymore!

[sometimeman]

Ya'll shore don't know nothing about Money.
Food and money is just like a see/saw. When the cost of food goes up, the value of the money goes down.
High prices just means the value of the money just went down thats all. Money an't no good.

They can talk them big words all they want to but, it's just that simple!

[taylor]

At the Other forum gathering for Christmas 2006, I took some deer stew. Some of the ones that attended had either never tried deer or didn't like what they had tried. Mine, they liked! I remember one even going back for seconds!

I do like my vegetables, but I did NOT get to the top of the food chain to eat grass! Gimmee MEAT!

[queenbee]

Yes, Tulip just like's to pick on me.

Poor poor me.

Going down to Red Lobster for my birthday and stimulate the seafood economy.

Tomorrow it's MEAT MEAT MEAT

[shortcircuit]

World Food Prices Reach All Time High

Published on Wednesday, January 02, 2008.





Source: CS Monitor

Food prices worldwide hit record highs in 2006, and all the signs are that they will go on rising this year, and for the foreseeable future. The era of cheap food, the experts say, is over and we are going to have to get used to it. This is easier said than done for millions around the world, as evidenced by protests in Mexico over the cost of corn tortillas, and in Italy last September about the price of (wheat) pasta. Staff writer Peter Ford looks at why.
What is behind the increases in food prices?

Certainly not bad harvests. Although a drought hit the traditionally bountiful Australian wheat harvest this past year, world cereal harvests hit 2.1 billion metric tons, a record production level, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Two major trends have been pushing prices up faster than they have risen for more than 30 years. One is that increasingly prosperous consumers in India and China are not only eating more food but eating more meat. Animals have to be fed (grains, usually) before they are butchered. The other is that more and more crops – from corn to palm nuts – are being used to make biofuels instead of feeding people.

At the same time, the world is drawing down its stockpiles of cereal and dairy products, which makes markets nervous and prices volatile.

The result, says Joachim von Braun, who heads the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, is that "the world food system is in trouble. The situation has not been this much of a concern for 15 years."



How big a factor is the biofuels boom?

It is significant enough for the FAO to be warning about the dangers of turning too much food into fuel, and for the Chinese government, for example, to ban the construction of new refineries that use corn or other basic foods. In fact, earlier this month Beijing announced tax breaks and subsidies to encourage the use of cellulose, sweet sorghum, and cassava (nonfood crops in China) for biofuels.

Some analysts estimate that as much as 30 percent of the US grain crop will go toward producing ethanol this year, a doubling from 2006. IFPRI forecasts that if the world sticks to current biofuel expansion plans, the price of corn will go up 26 percent by 2020, and the price of oilseeds (such as soybean, sunflower, rapeseed) by 18 percent. If governments double efforts to produce this alternative fuel source, corn prices are expected to go up 72 percent and oilseeds by 44 percent in 12 years' time.


Who gets hit hardest? Does anyone benefit?

As usual, it is the poorest people in the world who suffer most, because food takes up a bigger share of their daily shopping bill than it does for richer people. A family in Bangladesh, for example, living on $5 a day, typically spends $3 of that on food. The 50 percent rise in food prices the world has seen in recent years takes a $1.50 chunk – nearly 30 percent – out of the family budget.

Even farmers are not immune. On the whole, small-scale farmers in developing countries buy more food than they sell, so they, too, are net losers. Relatively few peasants have holdings large enough to benefit from price increases.

Big farmers in the rich countries, however, are doing well: US corn farmers have seen the price their crop fetches jump by 50 percent since 2000. Other net food exporters, such as India, Australia, and South Africa, will also do well out of rising prices. Major dairy producers, such as New Zealand, have done well as consumption of milk, yogurt, and cheese rises in Asia. As a result, while property values in New Zealand are generally expected to soften, flat rural land, where cows can graze, is expected to continue to rise in price, according to a survey by Massey University in New Zealand.

Will market forces correct the situation, as farmers switch to the high-earning crops?

Not as quickly as you might expect, though the European Union, the largest food exporter in the world, has suspended a "set-aside" program that had paid its farmers to leave 10 percent of their land fallow (so as to prevent oversupply).

Cereal prices are considered "inelastic," meaning that a 10-percent price increase tends to boost supplies by only one or two percentage points. While prices are high, they are also very volatile at the moment, which scares a lot of farmers off making the investments they would need to switch crops.

At the same time, the food market overlaps with the fuel market. Farmers can now sell their corn, their palm nuts, or their sugar to biodiesel refineries. So the price of palm oil, for example, traditionally the cheapest in Africa, is now set not by the cooking oil market, but by the fuel market.

It will not help that climate change and the accompanying floods and droughts will reduce cereal output in more than 40 developing countries, mainly in Africa, according to recent studies.



Where will food shortages be most acute?

Wherever the underlying trends of rising prices and scarcer supplies are compounded by special problems. Sometimes they are natural disasters, such as the cyclone and flooding that hit Bangladesh last November, wiping out many people's stocks of food. Sometimes they are man-made, as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where continuing civil conflict and mismanagement disrupt the market, or in Zimbabwe, where inflation of more than 7,000 percent and a crumbling economy are threatening people already short of food.

"The hot spots of food risks will be where high prices combine with shocks from the weather or political crises,", says Dr. von Braun. "These are recipes for disaster."


What effect will high prices have on hunger-prevention programs?

A big one says the World Food Program (WFP), the UN agency in charge of emergency food aid, which reported last year that food aid flows had reached their lowest levels since 1973.

Food prices "are an incredible concern for us at the moment" says WFP spokesman Robin Lodge. "The same dollars don't buy the same amount of food as they used to," and donations to the agency are flat.

The WFP has been making a big effort to buy food from countries as near as possible to crisis zones, to cut transport costs, and in 2007 it had 15 million fewer people to feed than in 2006 because there were fewer major emergencies.

"But we are now about as tight as we can get, so unless donations go up there is no doubt about it, we will have to reconsider who we are feeding and the rations" says Mr. Lodge. "There is no other way around it."

Many food aid organizations are trying to buy more food locally. The FAO is reportedly working on a program to offer poor farmers vouchers for seeds and fertilizer to help them adapt to changing climate conditions.

[coosa]

I just paid $4 for a container of cottage cheese! That is terrible!

[sometimeman]

Hi Coosa!

Remember what sometimeman said? It's like a play ground see-saw?
It's not that food prices are rising Miss Coosa. Oh-No, It's that the dollar is going down. It's the dollar, the dollar, the d-a-m dollar.

Like my President said about my constitution, "It's just a goddamed piece of paper" Thats what that dollar is, it's just a dammed piece of paper!

The penny in my pocket, why "they" want even let it have its own value! No, Oh, no It has to be worth what "they" say it is.
You see at one time a hundred pennies was worth more than a dollar because of the scrap price of copper!
My!, Oh my what to do? Why if you can't control the price of one cent, what to do? You build the dam thing out of zinc thats what!

Miss Coosa I wish Oh! how I wish, your purse had gold coins instead of paper. The s-o-b's couldn't inflate your money then.
You see Miss Coosa, Inflation steals your money and the greedy bast*ards want it all.

Miss Coosa, Ron Paul understands this. He and only he can help us out of the hole we're in.

Pray Miss Coosa! Pray hard.

[sometimeman]

This is not food prices but I pray it helps you to understand

HUNDREDTH MONKEY!

In a nutshell the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon was the result of scientific investigation of a Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, which had been observed in the wild for over 30 years.

In 1952 the scientists were giving the monkeys sweet potatoes that they dropped in the sand along a river. At one point an 18-month-old female named Imo, tired of eating sweet potatoes covered with sand, decided to wash hers off in the nearby stream. She then taught this technique to her mother and her playmates. From 1952 to 1958 scientists noted that all the young monkeys learned this trick but the older monkeys who didn’t imitate the younger ones continued eating the sand-covered spuds.

Then, in the fall of 1958, something truly amazing happened. The monkeys on Koshima Island where this was all occurring reached a threshold in numbers one day and (using the figure of 99 monkeys) suddenly the 100th monkey also learned the new trick and by that same evening almost all the monkeys in the tribe were washing their sweet potatoes off.

As Ken Keyes, Jr. wrote, “The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!” But, as he goes on to further explain, that wasn’t all. Spontaneously the habit of washing sweet potatoes “jumped over the sea” and “colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys on Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes!”

Based on these events Keyes, Jr. concluded, “Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind. Although the exact number may vary, the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the consciousness property of these people. But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness reaches almost everyone!”

Oh! God, let me live to see the hundredth monkey

[coosa]

I got my $4 back for the cottage cheese!!

[shortcircuit]

Smaller packages and higher prices. The manufacturers and suppliers ARE NOT going to give up any of their profits to "help us out", they simply pass their cost increases along to consumers. I've got a decent sized garden growing this year and some deer meat in the freezer, like everyone else should.

[summerose]

"Smaller packages and higher prices" (quote)

That is just not fair!

[bb]

I have noticed the smaller packages... they have been doing that for some time! Remember the size of nickel Hershey bars years ago? What used to be a pound of coffee is now 12-13 ounces... What used to be 10 in a pack is now 8 in a pack, but costs the same or even higher! I have to say, eggs have actually come down some over the last few months, but I doubt they will stay that way! I don't have anywhere to put in a big garden, but do have 3 different kinds of tomatoes, a bunch of beans, cucumbers and sweet peppers growing in pots! I guess you could call me a "pot" farmer! LOL
I do plan on trying to get stuff at the farmers' market if there is any to be had so I can put that up for later.

[taylor]

I read an article online this morning about food banks and churches asking local gardeners/farmers to "grow a row" for charity. Food banks are beginning to close because they simply don't have enough food to hand out to the people that are seeking help.

The prices are going up everywhere. Not sure how the prices are up there, but here, at Sav-A-Lot, a loaf of bread was .99, now $1.09, my son likes the microwave sandwiches for his lunch at work - were .99, now $1.19, 5 lb sugar was $1.79, now $1.99. I could go on and on.....

[taylor]

Babe,
Don't know if my store and yours carry the same brand, but luckily, it's still a 5lb bag here.