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Tag: food shortage

Food News: Rats for Dinner in Cambodia (by Choice)

Published by NiteMayr on August 27, 2008

Cambodians are beatnig rising food prices the old fashioned way, choosing alternative food sources.

As inflation pushes the price of beef beyond the reach of the poor, increased demand for rat meat has pushed up rodent prices. A kilogram of rat meat now costs 5,000 riel (69p) compared with 1,200 riel last year. Spicy field rat dishes with garlic are increasingly on the menu as beef costs 20,000 riel a kilo.

I think that some of our more bizarre foodstuffs must have come from such famines of choice, can you imagine how humans ended up eating crab over cat (at least Europeans)?  Lobster seems like an odd choice over, say, rabbit.  The spice mentioned in the article must cover up any gamey residue in the meat.  If you raise them on the right foods, I bet it could be somewhat tasty, especially after a few generations of selective breeding to breed out the aggression and breed in plumpness.

Rat Soup, yum.

Warnings from America

Published by NiteMayr on June 10, 2008

According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory
report there are only 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so
after this sale there will be only 2.7 million bushels of wheat left
the entire CCC inventory,” warned Matlack. “Our concern is not that we
are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for
humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian
food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our
emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk
powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The only thing
left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat
which is about enough wheat to make 1⁄2 of a loaf of bread for each of
the 300 million people in America.”

source:  http://www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/wid2a.pdf

source of quote: http://www.standeyo.com/NEWS/08_Food_Water/080606.no.grain.reserves.html

Things look dire in this article, but they may not be as bad as all that.  The source article certainly makes it sound more dire than I hope it is.  I don’t trust the source implicitly.

Is there a food crisis?

Published by NiteMayr on May 14, 2008

The Real News: Making a killing from the food crisis

Devlin Kuyek: “Right now Cargill is making approximately $471 000 an hour in profits”

I’m not sure, but given what we’ve been seeing over the past few weeks, I’m not convinced that I won’t be stocking up on some dry goods like rice. I have ample storage here so it may be a good idea, if only to save some cash.

What do you think, is there something coming down the pipe at us all?

Rising Food Prices in the News

Published by NiteMayr on April 24, 2008

R.O.I. – WSJ.com

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

What may be simple news hype is looking more and more like a pattern. I don’t see to much of a pattern of self-referential stories (the same sources over and over) and things are looking like the first warning signs of impending trouble. Folks, if you don’t have a well stocked pantry, today is the day you should start thinking about it; or at least getting all your dry durables in order before price problems.

Being unemployed; I can’t plan that far out; I can only blog about it.

How long are you “food secure” what I mean is, should there be a crisis, how long can you last on the food you have in your house?