I hope you had a wonderful and bountiful Thanksgiving holiday this year… although I’m sure you noticed how expensive food has gotten, and how scarce some food products were this year.
No, dear reader, inflation isn’t exactly at the 2 percent the Fed thinks is proper. Even their fake, doctored Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers are spiking so much that the Social Security “cost of living adjustment” (COLA) has soared by 5.9 percent year-over-year, after having soared by 5.8 percent in August and by 6.0 percent in July. The COLA for 2022 will be the average of those three: 5.9 percent, the highest since 1982.
No wonder the Fed is eager to raise interest rates! Of course, that could be a one-year anomaly and the months ahead next year won’t be as bad, but it’s a red flag that the fires of hyperinflation are getting stoked.
In case you need more proof, your money is losing 1 percent of its value every month now due to inflation. “Overall, prices rose 6.2 percent from one year ago, representing the largest year-on-year increase in more than 30 years as inflation persists across sectors, according to the Bureau,” reports Entrepreneur.com.
Worse, the cost of food by itself also increased by 5.3 percent.
And what could be even worse than that, looming on the horizon? China sparked panic buying of food recently, when, according to Bloomberg, “the Ministry of Commerce told households to stock up on food in case of emergencies after a resurgence of the coronavirus, heavy rains that sparked vegetable prices to jump, and the onset of colder weather. The commerce ministry directive is similar to the one released ahead of the holidays, which told local governments to secure food supplies.”
Empty shelves… here?
First, there was “shrinkflation.” That’s when you pay the same price for the same product, but you get less for your money. Cereal companies are masters of deception in this area. They confuse consumers with several sizes of the same cereal and raise prices without anyone being the wiser.
Shrinkflation has been called “inflation’s ugly cousin.” It has been around for decades, but it usually surfaces during soft economic times when manufacturers are squeezed between higher costs and consumers who refuse to pay higher prices… like now, for instance.
The last notable wave of shrinkflation came in the 70s, just ahead of a surge in traditional price inflation. Today shrinkflation is disguised with code words. They make “mini,” “fun-size” or just smaller “more convenient” versions of the same products and charge much more per serving. Sometimes, they’ll repackage a product with less stuff in it and market it as “new and improved” or “greener” or “fewer calories.” The smaller size is supposed to come across as saving the world or saving your health. What a farce!
You don’t have to look much further than your grocery bill to see the real truth about food inflation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices for food were 41.44 percent higher in 2021 versus 2006.
Food inflation not only hurts us in the pocketbook, but it sounds an alarm of a growing food shortage crisis.
Our grocery shelves in America are seemingly chock full of food, so the idea of a food shortage barely registers in our minds. But think of what happened recently in North Carolina when there was a hurricane headed for that coast. Stores emptied out in a matter of minutes for something that was only going to affect people for a few days at the most.
And do you remember Norway’s butter shortage back in 2011? A bit of bad weather hurt the dairy industry and it couldn’t produce enough for everyone to have during the high-demand Christmas holiday season. Prices went through the roof and people were being arrested for smuggling pounds of butter over the border like it was an illegal narcotic. Over a few weeks’ worth of a shortage. What would happen during a few months’ worth?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture may be the biggest culprit when it comes to subsidies, price-fixing and rationing; and its activities just drive up the cost of food while providing cushy and permanent incomes to farmers. One of these activities is that corn, a staple used in many foods and also animal feed, is being diverted by government subsidies into biofuels. In 2000, about 6 percent of U.S. corn production was processed into ethanol. Today 40 percent of our corn becomes fuel instead of food.
Production of almonds, blueberries, apples, pumpkins, watermelons, pears, peaches, and plums is also threatened by a variety of challenges.
How much food do we really have?
We know the supply chain is already disrupted here in the U.S., the “breadbasket” of the world. It’s hard to get food onto shipping containers because they are all being used to ship the junk we have bought during the COVID casedemic. Suppliers who want to ship food are being turned away.
Finincialpost.com reports, “Global competition for the ribbed steel containers means that Thailand can’t ship its rice, Canada is stuck with peas and India can’t offload its mountain of sugar. Shipping empty boxes back to China has become so profitable that even some American soybean shippers are having to fight for containers to supply hungry Asian buyers.”
Crop production is under siege from a problem nobody talks about — declining bee populations. So, what does it matter if we have fewer pesky bees? The raw fact is that many crops depend solely on bees to pollinate them and grow new plants. No bees, no crops. Plants that require pollination to reproduce account for more than one-third of global crop production worth as much as $577 billion a year. Birds, butterflies, and other insects help in pollination, but the heavy lifting is done by bees.
Over the last 60 years, the number of managed Western honey bee colonies has dropped by half, decimated by parasites and pesticides. More than half the countries of Europe don’t have enough bees to pollinate their crops, and the UK has only one-quarter of the bees it needs.
There is the distinct possibility that this next decade we will see desperate struggles for food and water. Rising food prices will cause extreme hunger and famine. This will lead to social unrest, revolution, and wars.
Food and water for life
As food storage expert Peggy Layton reminds us, there are three remedies we can employ to offset rising food prices, and a possible shortage of food available to buy:
- Grow your own food: You can do this in a very small space. Peggy recalls seeing people growing enough food to feed their families on their balcony in an apartment. You need to get non-GMO seeds (those that are not genetically modified) so you can grow your own food and save the seeds each year. Learn how to bottle, dehydrate and preserve the food that you grow.
- Buy locally grown food: We all need to know where we can get locally grown food. If you support local farmers, then they will not be forced to export their food to other countries in order to survive. Having good relationships with food suppliers is an asset in hard times. You can add to your own garden food by purchasing extra items from the farmers.
- Stock up on food: You absolutely must start to stockpile reserves of food for your family. Fall is a great time to stock up on extra food because there are case lot sales going on in the supermarkets. Fresh apples, potatoes, onions, carrots and winter squash are available and can be purchased to stock up for the winter. Store these fresh foods in a cool place so they keep well.
Additionally, in these Alerts we always advocate for filling up on nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables that you grow because it is certainly good for your body, your mind, and your soul. It’s wise to consume whole, nutrient-rich foods, mostly from raw, living sources and skip the processed foods that we will soon be short on, and that keep rising in price.
When you eat more than 50 percent raw foods, you can stop inflammation triggered by processed, refined or even cooked or baked foods.
But our brains and muscles need proteins as well. Our diet should be 80 percent vegetables (organic) with 20 percent meats (preferably free-range and not exposed to GMOs or antibiotics).
A very small percentage of Americans could live more than a few weeks on their stored food and supplies. Even you, my Bob Livingston Alert reader, probably do not have enough. It is why I always recommend you start with a three-day supply and then work up to a month from there.
If you are feeding a family of four for three days, you will need to plan on three breakfast meals, three lunches and three dinners. You need a store of food so you’re prepared to weather any kind of emergency.
The main idea is to prepare. That way, if the U.S. food supply should take a turn for the worse, be that expense or shortage, you won’t find yourself on a diet of meager meals, scraping to get by.
Bob Livingston
