NightBlogger

Whether you know it or not, the global financial system as we know it will collapse and before local economic restructuring begins, massive civil unrest will spread across the U.S. Martial Law will be declared and food supplies will be disrupted. Well-known survivalists advise having enough food and supplies on hand for at least three to six months. Banks and ATM’s may be closed for several weeks and as a result, no one will accept checks. Many people recommend buying gold and silver coins but in the beginning, supermarket store clerks will have no idea what these coins are worth. Food, water, guns, ammunition, medical supplies, and whiskey will be worth their weight in gold.

Consider this content in a Hyperinflation Special Report written by John Williams:

The United States in a hyperinflation would experience the quick disappearance of cash as we know it. Shy of the rapid introduction of a new currency and/or the highly problematic adaptation of the current electronic commerce system to new pricing realities, a barter system is the most likely circumstance to evolve for regular commerce. Such would make much of the current electronic commerce system useless and add to what would become an ongoing economic implosion.

Gold and silver both are likely to retain real value and would be exchangeable for goods and services. Silver would help provide smaller change for less costly transactions.

Other items that would be highly barterable would include bottles of a good scotch or wine, or canned goods, for example. Similar items that have a long shelf life can be stocked in advance of the problem, and otherwise would be consumable if the terrible inflation never came. Separately, individuals, such as doctors and carpenters, who provide broadly useable services, would have a service to barter.

To many all this will come as a complete shock. We cannot count on our government or mainstream news pundits for truth and Americans are in total denial. As MSNBC reports, some American homeowners still think their property values are rising. “Despite dismal housing headlines and reports showing falling prices nationwide, owners in some once-hot areas still believe their home is gaining value or at least holding its own.”

An underground economic bartering system has already taken firm roots in anticipation of what’s to come. Some economists claim bartering always goes up in a recession. This is different. Even those in the mainstream are beginning to worry about a US default and foreign leaders are calling to replace the USdollar as world reserve currency. Former Deputy Secretary of State, John Whitehead claims the US is on a road to disaster worse than Great Depression.

Don’t take false refuge in the what government officials and the media tell you. State, county and city governments across the nation are collapsing. Philadelphia, Atlanta and Phoenix have asked the U.S. Treasury Department for part of the $700 billion financial rescue package. When the collapse takes place, unless police volunteer their services (and some will), they will be protecting their own families.

Los Angeles Times
Boom times for barter
In this tough economy, Valerie Whitlock uses two forms of currency: money and barter. The 37-year-old actress and writer from Studio City holds down sporadic film and television gigs to cover her rent, utilities, car payments and insurance. For everything else — head shots and haircuts, clothing and cut reels — she trades her handcrafted jewelry. She started swapping for goods while at work on the set. But now the classifieds website Craigslist and her MySpace page for Fancy Pants Jewelry have become great places to find even more trading partners. Her best scores include microdermabrasion treatments, a used Apple G4 iBook computer and Marc Jacobs jeans. “Jewelry-making has become a creative outlet for me as well as an extra income and barter tool,” Whitlock said. “It has made a huge difference in my life.” As the financial crisis makes cash and credit increasingly scarce, the ancient custom of bartering is booming. More

The amount Britons spent in food stores jumped 6pc in the past three months, official figures showed today, showing the severe squeeze consumers now face. While the amount of cash spent climbed, the volume of food purchased fell 0.2pc in the quarter to June, according to the Office for National Statistics. “If prices rise in clothing, you don’t buy as many clothes, but if food prices rise people just shop around more,” said David Page, an economist at Investec. “You would probably see people cut back in other areas in order to be able to spend on food.” More

(Xinhua) — World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick has called on leaders of the G8 as well as the major oil producers to act now to deal with surging food and energy prices, warning that the world is now “entering a danger zone.” Zoellick’s call is contained in a July 1 letter to the head of the upcoming G8 summit in Japan, in which the Bank, World Food Program (WFP) and International Monetary Fund estimate that about 10 billion dollars is needed to meet short term needs of people hit hardest by the crisis.

“What we are witnessing is not a natural disaster — a silent tsunami or a perfect storm: It is a man-made catastrophe, and as such must be fixed by people,” Zoellick said in the letter made available to Xinhua on Wednesday. “I urge the Group of Eight countries, in concert with major oil producers, to act now to address this crisis. This is a test of the global system to help the most vulnerable, and it cannot afford to fail,” said the World Bank chief.

“Record oil prices and high and rising food costs threaten a growing number of countries with rising poverty and social instability. Already we have seen food riots in over 30 countries, and unrest over high fuel prices is spreading. The urban poor are especially affected by the double hit of food and fuel,” he warned. More

(Reuters) - Americans buying food for their Fourth of July cookout will be paying more, the nation’s largest farm group said on Wednesday, with prices up 8.5 percent from this time last year. An informal survey conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation in May showed much of the increase occurred during the second quarter, when the cost of 16 grocery items — including apples, pork chops and oat cereal — was $46.67, up about 3.5 percent, or $1.64, from the first quarter. “Prices of many food items continue to creep upward,” Jim Sartwelle, a Farm Bureau economist, said. “Those increases, however, pale in comparison to the huge increases in energy costs — for fuel, natural gas, and electricity — that American families have become accustomed to over the past two or three years,” he added. More

In a study of 162 countries, the Washington, D.C.-based IMF said surging global oil and food prices are causing the most pain in poor countries that rely on imports. With food taking up more than half of household spending in emerging and developing economies, the IMF warned that the share of undernourished could rise rapidly to above 40% of the total of their populations. “Some countries really are at a tipping point,” said IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a statement. “If food prices rise further and oil prices stay the same, some governments will no longer be able to feed their people and at the same time maintain stability in their economies,” he said. More

Timesonline
Using corn for ethanol production led to a spike in prices long before the floods took their toll. According to some reports, the meat industry is already selling off breeding animals in order to offset losses from the high price of corn and soybeans it needs to feed its livestock.

The move will temporarily increase the meat supply, but it also means that supplies of some meats will begin to shrink later this year and prices will rise. Tyson Foods, the giant Arkansas-based meat producer, has predicted that retail chicken prices will have to jump by double-digit percentages in 2009 for poultry processors to recoup their feeding costs. The cost of food is increasing at its fastest pace in 18 years.

The price of corn has more than tripled in the past two years to record high levels. Analysts estimate that flooded Iowa and Illinois and the other corn states might produce 15% less grain than last year. Some believe the shortfall will be even larger. The commodity traders in Chicago certainly think so and are bidding up the price of corn in the expectation of shortages. More

Photo urban_data
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Famine helped to precipitate the Ming dynasty to power in China. French revolutionaries asked Marie Antoinette for bread before they called for her head. One reason why the British gave up their Indian Raj was an awareness that they could not cope with famine. Food failure can bring down whole civilisations.

Today’s failure to deliver food for the people is worldwide. In the West, it means higher grocery bills. In much of the rest of the world, it means hunger. In at least 30 countries, it means famine. The price of staple grains has risen by an average of 80 per cent over the past two years. Some prices have trebled. More

Mark Bittman weighs in on what’s wrong with the way we eat now…and why it’s putting the entire planet at risk.

Photo Ahron de Leeuw

CNN
The world’s poorest countries could pay 40 percent more for food this year than they did last year because of rising prices, according to a United Nations report released Thursday.

“Food is no longer the cheap commodity that it once was,” FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem said. “Rising food prices are bound to worsen the already unacceptable level of food deprivation suffered by 854 million people. “We are facing the risk that the number of hungry will increase by many more millions of people.”

The FAO lists 82 countries as “Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries” that cannot produce or import enough food to meet their all their population’s needs. More than half of the countries are in Africa. Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt this year over surging food prices brought the issue to a boiling point. Read more

Photo nukeit

“I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No this is not a drill.” –Brett Arends

CounterPunch
There is a time for food, and a time for ethical appraisals. This was the case even before Bertolt Brecht gave life to that expression in Die Driegroschen Oper. The time for a reasoned, coherent understanding for the growing food crisis is not just overdue, but seemingly past. Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, an organization often dedicated to flouting, rather than achieving its claimed goal of poverty reduction, stated the problem in Davos in January this year. ‘Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.’

Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3 billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that food prices had suffered a 18 percent inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10 percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in maize prices. Read more

Thousands of Tons of Aid for Burma blocked by Junta
The Independent
The news from the disaster experts about Burma’s devastated delta region confirms the grim reality. An internal report by an international relief organisation says: “The situation at the temporary relief camps is horrific. There is no food. People have been relying on porridge. There is not enough shelter.

“People have just one set of clothes; some are even wearing jute bags. There is not enough drinking water. There are no sanitation facilities whatsoever. Many people have wounds that are not being attended. The estimated number of people in these 26 camps is 100,000.” Sheri Villarosa, the senior US diplomat in Burma, said she feared the death toll could reach 100,000.

But despite the obvious suffering, massive devastation and pressing need for urgent action, the Burmese authorities were continuing to insist yesterday that everything was under control. On the front page of the New Light of Myanmar – a state-run government publication – was a picture of the Prime Minister, Thein Sein, handing over 20 television sets and 10 DVD players as part of the “relief” operation. This, in a region where there has been no electricity since the 130mph storm struck. Read more
BBC Photos
See: “Another Storm Heading for Burma”

Photo Kables
George W. Bush on Thursday stepped up pressure on the European Union and other governments to lift restrictions on genetically modified crops to help ease the crisis in global food supplies. “These crops are safe….We’re sending a clear message to the world: that America will lead the fight against hunger for years to come,” said Bush.
More

Photo courtesy of StormyDog

As farmers confront mounting costs and riots erupt from Haiti to Egypt over food, farmers pay the price for Wall Street’s speculation in grain markets. “It’s the best of times for somebody speculating on grain prices, but it’s not the best of times for farmers. The demand for futures exceeds the demand for cash grains.” Commodity investors control more U.S. crops than ever before, competing with governments and consumers for dwindling food supplies. Demand is rising with population and income gains in Asia, while record energy costs boost biofuels consumption, sending grain inventories to the lowest levels in two decades.
Read more

Photo courtesy of Bob

Rising costs are hitting the middle class hard with staples such as rice, wheat, corn and milk on the rise. At food banks across the country, donations are slowing down, because, among other things, people who once donated are now in need of food themselves. So, donations are decreasing as the need for their services increases. One food bank official calls it “the perfect storm”.
Read more

Photo by arditpg

Just like Wall Street isn’t it? How to profit from the end of the world.

“Load up the pantry,” says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street’s top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. “I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn’t going to happen here. But I don’t know how the food companies can absorb higher costs.” Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate.
Read more

Photo by Jeff Keen
The cost of a basket of 24 basic items such as tea bags, milk, cornflakes and pasta sauce at the three biggest stores has risen by 15 per cent over the past year. The increases suggest that supermarket food inflation is more than seven times the official rate of inflation. Any large family that spent £100 a week on its grocery shopping now has to spend an extra £780 a year to buy the same products.
Read more

Photo courtesy of dirty bodega
Patricia Hill

The upswing in prices has been exaggerated by the massive influx of investors and speculators seeking to profit from rising prices for corn, wheat, oil, gold and other commodities. Big Wall Street firms and hedge funds have taken huge positions in futures markets that once were dominated by relatively small operators such as farmers and grain-elevator owners. Small investors, who see fast-rising commodities as good hedges against inflation and a falling dollar, also are getting a piece of the action by investing in index funds that are tied to commodity prices.
Read more

Pic courtesy of Will Palmer
Lawmakers Say Contaminated Blood Thinner Illuminates Problems With Drug Supply

Under the cloud of contaminated heparin deaths, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach received a rude welcome from Congress Tuesday, accused by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., of “carrying the water” for the Bush administration, “toe-dancing around the hard facts,” and making promises that turn out to be nothing more than “hooey.”
Read more

Photo courtesy of Mr. Kris

The New York Sun reports that “major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice and cooking oil. In some cases, a 25-pound bag is selling for more than $30″. But the paper’s headline reads: “Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World”, so you can’t help but wonder how much of their report is sensationalized.

Then I read in theage.com a similar story with the headline: “Japan’s hunger becomes a dire warning for other nations”.
The article reads:

“Japan’s acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis. A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand. While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term — perhaps permanent — reduction in the quality and quantity of its food.”

To add to all this are the frightening headlines about food riots all over the world in places like Mexico, Indonesia, Yemen, the Philippines, Cambodia, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania, Egypt, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Peru, Bolivia and Haiti.
Related articles:
The new face of hunger
The silent tsunami

Do you know what this photo is?
Photo by Tim Parkinson

Foods that may provide a health benefit beyond basic nutrition, identified as functional foods, are becoming a key part of everyday life, according to a new article appearing in Food Technology, a publication of the scientific Institute of Food Technologists.

“Today’s consumers are extremely sophisticated, and they are attracted to functional foods’ ability to help manage health and wellness,” said IFT spokesperson Roger Clemens, PhD. Liz Sloan, Contributing Editor and President of Sloan Trends and Solutions, a trending and market predictions firm focusing on the food industry, has identified the top 10 trends in functional foods. Read the Top 10 Food Trends

Photo azrainman
The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits. “The world food situation is very serious: we have seen riots in Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti and Burkina Faso,” said Mr Diouf. “There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50pc to 60pc of income goes to food.”

Read more

Photo double.reed
They work on a rota system and raise their own chickens and pigs and grow potatoes, garlic, onions, chillis and green vegetables on eight acres of rented land. The “community allotment” sells 45 types of vegetables and 100 chickens a week, and is run by a committee which includes a radiologist, a computer programmer and a former probation officer. Read more