Food Prices Expected to Rise Sharply

Food inflation has been a reality for a while and the government along with a compliant media has been delaying telling you the real facts. It’s been a bad year for crops and the law of supply and demand is kicking in:

Corn is up 45 percent the last three months. We haven’t seen cotton prices this high since after the Civil War. Soybeans are up. Oil is up. Metals are up. So are coffee and cocoa.

In this era of massive liquidity, everything is up, except for food prices—specifically processed food (made from many of the same commodities and other ingredients whose prices have risen).

According to the USDA, that is going to change. In its most recent CPI report for food, the USDA reported that prices are expected to rise in 2011.

For all food, prices are expected to rise two to three percent, which is double the levels of 2010. Meat prices are expected to rise up to 3.5 percent, and dairy 5.5 percent.

“The forecast for 2011, that remains unchanged, but it’s moving to the higher part of that range,” said Ephraim Leibtag, who serves as a senior economist for the USDA and out together the report. He added, “The potential to go above that is more likely if current commodity price increases remain where they are or rise even more.”

CNBC does it’s best to put lipstick on this pig by reminding us that we’re “coming off historic lows” in commodities but all that really means is we were living in a time of plenty and now we’re not. It’s time to start putting away a supply of long lasting foods that can be stored without refrigeration. Think canned vegetables, pasta (properly stored) and canned sauces.

Emergency food supplies are also available at decent prices. A 2.25 lb can of powdered eggs can be purchased for about $25 on Amazon and that’s the equivalent of 90 eggs and will last for several years unopened and up to a year once opened. Gardeners may want to order bulk supplies of extra seeds now to start planting next spring because seed prices are going to skyrocket once the Americans feel the sticker shock of food inflation. Mylar food storage bags and a stash of food grade five gallon buckets are cheap and effective way to start storing staples that are cheap now (like pastas and rice) but are going to get more expensive as our economic collapse accelerates.

The warnings are all there. Don’t get caught with no food in the house when we start to see food prices increase beyond the reach of the average American.

Even Wal-Mart Can’t Avoid Food Inflation Anymore

From Bloomberg:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s prices rose in September to the highest level in at least 21 months, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co., as the world’s largest retailer scaled back discounts from earlier this year.

The cost of a 31-item basket of goods at a Wal-Mart in Virginia was $95.75, a 2.7 percent increase from August and a 5 percent gain from the start of 2010, analyst Charles Grom said today in a report. The price is the most since the New York- based analyst began the survey in January 2009.

Prices for produce climbed as Wal-Mart offered almost no discounts on food last month, Grom said. Price cuts on items such as cereal and ketchup failed to attract as many consumers as Wal-Mart anticipated, dragging down sales in the latest quarter, U.S. stores chief William Simon said last month.

Produce accounted for 7 of the 31 items in the basket, with prices 10 percent higher in September than the previous month. Prices for dairy products rose 2 percent, and meat was unchanged.

The article goes on to point out that Wal-Mart is still cheaper than most other grocers. Canned goods are especially good deals there and long lasting foods that you will end up paying more for later so stock up while they’re still reasonable.

Crop Crisis in Brazil!

Time to stock up on sugar (and this is a great deal on it) and coffee. From Bloomberg:

Drought in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer of coffee, sugar and oranges, is harming crops and drying the Amazon River to its lowest in 47 years.

[…]

Sugar rose to the highest price in seven months in New York today and has jumped 29 percent this month because of concern the South American drought threatens global supplies. Orange juice gained 15 percent this month and coffee soared 33 percent this year. The dry weather will persist at least until mid- October, said Willians Bini, a meteorologist at Sao Paulo-based weather forecaster Somar Meteorologia.

“Farmers will have to be really patient because rains are delayed for at least a month,” Bini said in a Sept. 20 telephone interview.

La Nina, as the cyclical cooling of equatorial Pacific Ocean waters is known, triggers changes in weather across the globe, including dryness in parts of Brazil and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.

Coffee crops in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais may be hurt by the driest weather in four years as Spring starts in the Southern Hemisphere and trees begin flowering for next year’s harvest, Joaquim Goulart de Andrade, a manager at the Cooxupe cooperative, said in a telephone interview last week. The group produces 13 percent of all Brazilian arabica coffee. Minas Gerais accounts for about half of the country’s output.

[…]

“Yields have already been seriously damaged,” said Costa, chief executive officer of the sugar maker controlled by Tereos, Europe’s third-largest sugar producer. “The losses are already there.”

Sugar-cane output may fall for the first time in 11 years in 2011, said Gustavo Correa, an analyst at research firm FG/Agro in Ribeirao Preto, a sugar and ethanol industry hub in northern Sao Paulo state.

“The weather is also harming seedlings, reducing output potential for coming crops,” Correa said in a Sept. 17 telephone interview.

Food inflation isn’t a fear, it’s going to be the world’s new reality.

Catching and Cooking a Rat with Cody Lundin

This video was posted on the A.N.T.S Facebook page and features Cody Lundin of Dual Survival fame demonstrating some basic survival skills to a student at his Aboriginal Living Skill course. In theory. Cody himself admits that this clip was actually edited with Cody killing the rat before hand (mano-o-rato so to speak) then placing it under the dead fall to simulate the trapping. In real life a trap may sit for days without producing, or may produce minutes after you set it.You never know which is why in a survival situation it’s wise to run a line of traps.

Dale Martin’s The Trapper’s Bible (now available on Kindle) is the first book survivalists should read for their emergency trapping education.

But that doesn’t lessen the value of what is here. Rats are fast breeding, crop destroying, larder contaminating vermin that happen to be edible so when things go bad and you’re looking to find extra protein to ease the burden on your larder trapping and eating them is a good idea. If you’re out in the wild pack rats like the one in the video are harder to catch than their urban rat cousins, but just as plentiful. In this video Cody is building dead fall traps and using dried fruit as bait, but he’s going primitive on this.

You can buy rat traps at any grocery (or right here) to pack in your survival pack. I would drill a hole in the traps if they don’t have one for a way to secure the trap into the ground or in a tree, etc. I’ve heard of people catching squirrel by putting peanut butter in the back of a coffee can and a rat trap put inside, but my rat traps are too big to work in my Cafe Du Monde cans so this might be a tall tale.

Notice after skinning and cleaning the little pack rat had a surprising amount of meat on it. They are still small and Lundin leaves the heart, lungs and liver in. Assuredly for extra nutrition. This is the whole process from killing to eating which those of you who have never caught, butchered and eaten a creature should watch until you can stop flinching. Enjoy: