Well, looks like the worldwide grain shortages have started in earnest. I’m sure anyone reeding this is up to speed on the details – I don’t cater to the daytime tv and fox news crowd y’know. I don’t even want to take the time to support the statement with facts, the world can no longer produce enough grain to meet the needs of world’s population – deal with it.
The poor as usual are the first to take the hit. First world cattle, hogs, and chickens trump some poor bastard in Bangladesh. Indo-China is next, and we just take the African Horror Show as a given. I’ve been waiting for months for the price of oatmeal to at least double since the oat crop was so pathetically low last year, but there must be a shitload of it in the pipeline so the price increases haven’t worked their way to the retail level. My personal food doom will be when oatmeal doubles.
Grain crops are funny things. I can turn a goat loose in the woods, bring it in at night and milk a thousand calories out of her 9 or 10 months out of the year. Twenty minutes cuttin’ eyes and dropping potatoes into the ground yields about ten pounds per total hours spent on the job. Hell, even peas and beans are pretty much a low intensity conflict. Blackberry season may be sweaty and sticky but the food value per hour is astronomical. Compare all that to growing grain crops. A one man band with a shovel and hoe just doesn’t have a chance at feeding the family on a wheat crop. You need machinery and shit. I planted a few garden beds in winter wheat just to see what they would do, and I’d say they are not doing much. Nice and green and pretty, but every clump is going to put out a seedhead that will probably take more calories to cut, dry, thresh and grind than it will yield.
Corn may be a bit easier, but forget about trying to feed all the chickens I have running around here on the fruits of my own labor in a corn patch. I have the luxury of buying chops for 6 bucks a bushel to feed these damn roosters ’till they are 8 or 9 months old and have to be pressure cooked all afternoon to be edible. Eggs at 2 bucks a dozen pays for the feed and all the eggs we can eat so no problem. Doom will mean that those hens won’t be running loose – chicken tractors for them and intensive feedings from the worm bins for the cockerels destined for the pot. Using the food chain principle of 10 calories of corn to make one calorie of chicken makes me figure my birds won’t be like the big fat 50 cent a pound leg quarters you get at Vole-Mart. More like scrawny assed birds used to flavor cowpeas and turnip stew.
It’s kinda interesting to think about being that close to food. A garden for fresh vegetables is one thing, but growing food to live on is another. Winter squash may not be as exciting as pizza rolls, but they grow almost maintainence free and keep for months in a cellar. Taste buds in revolt because even hand selected apples ripened to perfection and turned into canned applesauce for winter treats don’t have that familiar yummy factor that comes out of a five pound bag. (four pounds now, but they didn’t raise the price..) Mean beans again and again simply because they plant everywhere, patiently wait to be picked whenever you get a break and have the time, and store without hassle. Same thing with onions. Eating beets just because they have a different flavor and it’s not a cabbage.
At least shrink wrap will be a thing of the past.
comrade simba 
April 24, 2008 at 8:50 pm |
I’ve had my eye on this food thing for a while. A while back a stocked up on a few items. No, not enough to last a very long time, but for a bit. This will all before people started getting killed during protests over food and before there were riots and such. I sort of feel guilty now. I’ll plant what I can plant, buy what I must/can and deal with the rest. Hopefully the harvests will all be plentiful and we can go back to too much food (except at a higher price now). I just read that India won’t need to import wheat this years since they had a good crop. Folks in India, China, Bangladesh and Haiti have been starving in some way for years. No news here. But, Costco and Sam’s keeping an eye on how much rice we buy… that’s new. And, the fact that it took me a month to get Soft, White Wheat… quite odd. No, I’m not ready to pile the sandbags in the bunker (yet). I think it is mostly a psyche job (just like oil prices) played on us by the few at the top who roll dice with the destiny of humans. Anyone who profits from commodity speculation needs to be taken to the woodshed. Just my opinion. Wish I had time to buy those Nigerian Dwarf Goats this year. So much to do.