Is Food the new Oil?

[Bluestream]

Question: Is Food the new oil?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-economy/2011/01/spike_in_global_food_prices_tr.html

 

[SLCraig]

Man, that is scary to think about.
Stuff has been getting expensive lately. I hate it.
I just want to go live in the mountains and grow my own food without being involved in any of this garbage! haha

 

[chubbs1]

Run for the hills...with all of your ammo of course

 

[oilboy123]

Originally Posted By: SLCraig
Man, that is scary to think about.
Stuff has been getting expensive lately. I hate it.
I just want to go live in the mountains and grow my own food without being involved in any of this garbage! haha


That thinking enters my mind more often than I would like.......

 

[Cause4Alarm]

i think clean water is going to be a bigger problem than food

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: SLCraig
Man, that is scary to think about.
Stuff has been getting expensive lately. I hate it.
I just want to go live in the mountains and grow my own food without being involved in any of this garbage! haha

You'd be surprised how much you can grow in a small garden, even 10'x20'.

Really I think the problem is globalization of food commodities, and then speculation without having to actually take possession of the grains... So the parasite traders can play with the market to create artificial price spikes.

 

[Shannow]

Given that global grain reserves used to be thought of in terms of years, and are now weeks, we are only a poor harvest off disaster...then price is pretty meaningless

 

[Gary Allan]

more "Who's your daddy" leverage from the gray 850lb gorilla

we've been driving agrarian nations toward industrialization for a very long time. Now the darker side of all things is coming to bear.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Cause4Alarm
i think clean water is going to be a bigger problem than food


+1. Scariest to me is how "they" may try to make it illegal to grow your own food for consumption.

 

[eljefino]

1) We grow lots of food in the US and export it. If prices go up we can trade less food for more foreign oil.
2) We could riot and stop making them put corn ETOH in the gas.
3) We could skip meat a couple days a week and eat more vegetarian, saving steps in the food chain.
4) Sure you can grow a backyard garden, but can you defend it 24/7?

They wouldn't ban backyard gardens but they'd make sure we only got neutered seeds, maybe with a draconian tax or patent license fee.

 

[r_w]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
4) Sure you can grow a backyard garden, but can you defend it 24/7?

I never honestly thought i'd see the day when my backyard vegetable garden would have to be monitored, along with my house, by Mossberg Security Systems.

Sad indeed - but I think the time is coming.

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: Cause4Alarm
i think clean water is going to be a bigger problem than food


+1. Scariest to me is how "they" may try to make it illegal to grow your own food for consumption.

Really? Do you have any links to share? If something like that ever got shoved through Washington by the agri-corp lobbyists... I guess it would be time for civil disobedience...

 

[doitmyself]

HAH! Mother Earth News magazine (the original one, not today's yuppie version) was predicting this in the early '70's. I will have to dig my old copies out and start studying them.

Back then, they said to invest in garden tools, not gold.

And, they had how-to plans for a 75mpg car with an electric motor and generator that was powered by a lawn mower engine. 40 years before the Volt: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportation/1979-07-01/Electric-Car-Conversion.aspx See my new post in General Automotive.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: Cause4Alarm
i think clean water is going to be a bigger problem than food


+1. Scariest to me is how "they" may try to make it illegal to grow your own food for consumption.

Really? Do you have any links to share? If something like that ever got shoved through Washington by the agri-corp lobbyists... I guess it would be time for civil disobedience...

Regulations may kill small farms:
http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/11/19/new...dc03301fc=gnews

FDA Regs to destroy small organic farms:
http://www.naturalnews.com/030051_FDA_organic_farms.html

Genetically altered food:
http://www.cqs.com/gmohazard.htm

heirlooms vs hybrids:
http://www.vegetablegardeningguru.com/heirlooms-vs-hybrids.html

Terminator Seeds:
http://www.banterminator.org/The-Issues/Introduction

 

[[email protected]]

Time to get out the tin foil hats again, Im afraid ((rolls syes))

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/organic.asp

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-510

The bill that 'outlawed gardens in your backyard' never became law.

And plus, it didnt state you couldnt have an outdoor garden; it stated you very well could, you just could not SELL your produce because it may be contaminated with god knows what you grew it with.

Get your facts straight.

 

[Ursae_Majoris]

Good, maybe, we'll stop wasting taxpayers' money. Instead of us paying farmers NOT to grow, they can now use all of their land, grow and sell the food on the open market.

 

[Bluestream]

Originally Posted By: doitmyself
HAH! Back then, they said to invest in garden tools, not gold.

I always pick the wrong investment...

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Given that global grain reserves used to be thought of in terms of years, and are now weeks, we are only a poor harvest off disaster...then price is pretty meaningless


Just in time farming... you are told what to plant by computer algorithms.

Originally Posted By: Ursae_Majoris
Good, maybe, we'll stop wasting taxpayers' money. Instead of us paying farmers NOT to grow, they can now use all of their land, grow and sell the food on the open market.


The problem is really more about volatility in food supply and price, rather than overall supply. You cannot have any quick solution to volatility other than huge stockpile (cost $), so business don't want to over grow and that ends up hurting consumers and especially 3rd world citizens than us.

I think most countries have export ban or price control to prevent price hike related famine.

 

[LS2JSTS]

Worldwide, food is and probably always will be a problem in some areas. Here in America our tillable acres to population ratio almost make a food problem impossible. The people in charge would have to work pretty hard to create a food shortage here. We feed ourselves and a good chunk of the planet and still keep up to 50 million tillable acres in paid set asides.

If we planted all the available acreage we have, the price would drop on a lot of things...but it would also put a lot of smaller farmers right out of business.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: [email protected]
Time to get out the tin foil hats again, Im afraid ((rolls syes))

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/organic.asp

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-510

The bill that 'outlawed gardens in your backyard' never became law.

And plus, it didnt state you couldnt have an outdoor garden; it stated you very well could, you just could not SELL your produce because it may be contaminated with god knows what you grew it with.

Get your facts straight.


How about some reading comprehension??? Notice I said "may try". I didnt say this was law. Doesnt mean that such things will not be attempted again. Doesnt mean that other attempts at overregulating different benign things will not be attempted.

Alas, all the non-tinfoilers wouldnt be able to grow their own food or find clean water if their life depended upon it anyway... All is jut going to be well forever no matter what, right? Nothing could possibly happen, from nature or the powers that be, right?