April 22, 2008 11:51AM
Why There’s a Food Shortage; Or, All Mafia Must Die!
By Cody Willard
As rationing has become the best case scenario in the food markets (rioting being the worst case scenario), we have to wonder if there really is starting to be a shortage of food in the world. And if so, why?
I think we’re seeing food shortages for these reasons:
1. The food markets are totally manipulated and controlled by the developed world’s governments and their cronies. The UN and all these hurtful food-aid programs that have continually undermined any chance for a self-sustaining, virtuous farming and food industry in places like the entire continent of Africa and all of Lebanon, Palestine, etc. Meanwhile, farmers in developed worlds are paid billions to grow certain crops, billions to not grow anything at all sometimes, billions to subsidize their lifestyles…
But again, the farmers in Africa? Oh, my bad, I didn’t mean to float an oxymoron — there’s practically no such thing as an African farmer, as we don’t let farmers in Africa develop any markets because the governments in the developed world also use your money to buy up billions of the crops that do get grown in the developed world to send as “aid” to the developing world, and the vicious cycle continues. The only reason these hurtful, unproductive and outright evil policies exist is because technology and excess capital had enabled the developed world to overproduce for itself, making food costs in consequential to the “average” developed world citizen. That game has officially ended, in large part because of the next point below…
2. The Fed’s quickly accelerated the pace at which it’s destroyed the value of the dollar in the last year or so. I explained it this way to the students in the macro econ class I taught at UNM a couple weeks ago: Let’s say there’s one bottle of water and one dollar bill in the entire economy. I give you the dollar bill and you give me the water. Now I print another dollar bill (because, say, I’ve got a “credit crisis” or some BS like that). Can I give you the dollar bill for another bottle of water? No! Because you can create new dollars out of thin air but you can’t create new bottles of water without actual productivity. So how much is a dollar worth after I’ve printed two? A dollar’s suddenly worth half a bottle of water instead of a whole bottle of water.
Let’s put this into the real world now. Let’s say you’re a grandma at home and you’ve lived cautiously your whole life and you own your home outright and you’ve got a fixed income that you’re living on. Suddenly, your dollar’s worth half a bag of rice instead of being worth a whole bag of rice because the Fed’s printing money for everybody who’s speculated on a mortgage, levered up on their credit cards, or works for a bank, especially an investment bank.
It’s largely this line of thinking that has me constantly calling the Democrats, Republicans and Fedheads in charge a bunch of thieves for all the ways their printing new dollars out of thin air. And it’s very much their recent actions that are causing the skyrocketing prices, and therefore a perceived “shortage” of food out there. There’s more of a glut of dollars than a shortage of food in some ways, see?
3. There’s an ever-growing number of citizens on this planet gaining access to excess capital and the wonders that happen when private property laws are at least somewhat recognized. There were 1.5 billion people on the Internet a couple years ago. Now there’s 1.7 billion. That’s 200 million more people feeling safe enough and nourished enough to log onto MySpace, Bidu and Google. Thomas Malthus, the classic economist argued that there’s a natural limit to the number of people our Earth can support. Technology and constant improvements to productivity has made his theories laughable for centuries. I expect that to continue though certainly there will be counter cycles along the next few centuries just as their has been in the past. More to the point, let’s hope Malthus continues looking like the historical idiot he always has because that means we will, over time, actually start feeding and communicating with the 4.3 billion citizens of the world that still don’t feel safe enough and nourished enough to log onto the Net too.
4. Ethanol. Farmers get billions of your taxdollars to grow food for an energy program that actually requires much more energy to create the energy in the program than any scientist can seemingly explain that the energy program might someday produce. It’s called cronyism and it’s a SCAM! Ethanol is a scam.
5. You’re grandma again, and you’re seeing the value of what you can spend disappear before your eyes every week, every month, every gas tank fill, every utility bill, etc. Might you not start hoarding as much as you can, since, as noted in point #2 above, rice holds its value in an era of created money?
The good news, IMHO, is that it’s likely most of this stuff will simply play itself out over the next few months and quarters as the forces of Revolutionomics carry through here once again. Revolutionomics is my theory that all power dissipates from the center to the edge over time. All these central controls and scams by the Democrats, Republicans and their cronies in power will be undermined by the black markets for food until the very framework of any attempts to control our world’s food supply will fail.
Oil’s got the evil OPEC mafia. Food’s got the evil FooPec mafia of its own too, huh?
All mafia must die!
PS. We’re gonna go off on this the food shortage topic in tonight’s Happy Hour, btw, so stay tuned. Let’s get to the bottom of this.
Comment by Tom Pinder
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Way to go Cody,that is the most simple way to put it.
Comment by Rich D'Ippolito
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Cody, how far do you think you will get trying to speak common sense like Williams and Sowell?
Comment by Cody Willard
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Thanks, guys, for the support and kind words. All this inflation is such a ripoff of the vast majority and poorer citizens in this country.
Comment by Joyce
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Last year I told someone from Europe that should the American economy stumble the repercussions would be felt worldwide. I pointed out to him that if the largest consumer base in the world stops buying, the people who support it will also suffer. He laughed and told me I was a conceited American.
There’s little satisfaction in being right this time.
For the first time in my adult life, I now have food staples in my home that will feed my family for a year. I have taken one-quarter of my one acre lot and transformed it into a vegetable garden. I no longer take my fruit trees or berry bushes for granted. I bought a pressure canner and I use it.
We recycle in our homes the way our grandparents did in the 1930s. Not because we’re trying to be green, but because we simply have no choice. We can’t afford to buy new so we reuse everything. Thankfully our grandparents taught us a great deal about being frugal.
We no longer have disposable income. Everything we have goes to pay our mortgage, our transportation costs to work, our health costs, and our food supply. We are an average American family with an average American income and we are in trouble.
Is anyone listening?
Comment by Byronic Hero
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Question for you, Cody: is it wise to stock up right now, while (in my area, at least) food costs are under relative control?
Comment by Candace
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I’ve been taking ECO 101 at my local community college, and I have to tell you that I was surprised to learn how much manipulation there is of world and national markets. Everything you said is absolutely true, the problem is, as Rudi Guilianni so succintly put it, politicians have spent years playing politics and they don’t understand anything about economics. If economics was a required course in high school, MAYBE our young people coming up would have more of a grasp of how important understanging economics really is. But as long was we have No Child Left Behind, that won’t happen, because we are teaching to test.
Keep speaking the truth, eventually the masses will listen.
Comment by Stephen
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
If you think food prices are outrageous now just pray that the UG99 Virus does not make it to the US. It is destroying wheat crops in many places in the world as this is being written. Everything in life is not caused by conspiracy. There are natural forces that play a part.
Comment by James
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Get a real job Cody. I’m a family farmer and if it wasn’t for us you wouldn’t be able to go to your classy parties and have a juicy steak, pork chop, or even a chicken breast. You think oil prices are bad wait until you people run agriculture out of the U.S. and start eating food from other countries that you don’t know how it was raised or cared for. Everyone needs to realize where their heritage comes from I would almost bet about everyone one of you had a ag backgound in your family somewhere. As far as the Farm Bill you need to look at where the dollars are going in the bill, majority of it is going to food stamps, welfare, and the lazy people’s parents to feed their kids in school because they won’t get off their butt and get a job to feed their own kids like real working americans. You also need to look at who is getting the incentives for Ethanol, it’s not the farmer, the oil companies that are blending the fuel with the ethanol are the ones that get the blending incentive. Yes we are getting good prices for are corn, soybeans, and wheat right now, but when you look at what it cost to put out a crop we are still just getting by like most working americans. To fill one tractor for a days work takes 265 gallon of diesel fuel at around $4.00 a gallon you do the math that is just to work the ground once, then to plant the corn you are looking at $250-$300 a bag that will plant around 3 acres, the fertilizer runs $150-$225 a acre. Now this is all to put food on YOUR table you should be thanking a farmer not just complaning about food prices at least being grown in the U.S. you know where the food comes from and how it was taken care of.
A Family Farmer in Missouri
Comment by Cheapybob
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Congrats on being willing to say what others don’t dare say.
I agree, its all a function of how much confetti money and credit are being created, because nobody produced anything more to buy with it.
They can’t take it from us rich folks, either, because even if they taxed us 100% of income, they’d still be running a huge deficit. Therefore it must come out of the hides of the poor and soon to be poor middle class as well as a hidden “inflation tax” that everyone in positions of power pretend not to see.
Comment by Cody Willard
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Wow, this is really interesting discussion and feedback in here.
Joyce, we hear ya! We have to fight against this inflation tax on the working fam. To be clear, we can ignore any Democrat or Republican who says their for their working family if they’ve endorsed the Fed cuts, the Bear bail outs, the liquidity injections and all the other gimicks that redistribute your money to the rich in the resulting “inflation tax”. Regarding listening to our grandparents — that’s the point I make all the time about thinking these people who borrow hundreds of thousands dollars in their early 20s “because everybody does” being nuts. Nothing wrong with patience and frugality and at 35, I am glad I’ve made the choices I’ve made.
Byronic Hero (great user name), I just don’t have a good guess for you. The next six months is anybody’s guess when it comes to: inflation, stock markets, NBA Finals, etc, IMHO.
Candace, loved your thought process and therefore can appreciate the intent you were looking for in quoting some beholden-to-a-party-not-his-constituents politician talking about other exact same politicians.
Stephen, let’s hope — and while I worry about a lot, I have to say I don’t factor that into my worries too much…(gulp)
James — my family are cowboys and ranchers. My father still raises cattle. Subsidies are what subsidies are, however you want to paint them, rationalize them or pretend that being somewhere up above you in the demand chain of your product doesn’t directly subsidize you, as you do in reference to the oil companies getting a bunch of the money that’s being stolen from taxpayers and put into the farming system. And I don’t think it’s okay for people to just get welfare for nothing, so trying to say “hey, poor people get free stuff so I want MY SOMETHING FOR NOTHING TOO!” doesn’t work, IMHO. (and let’s face it, struggling to get by on Chinese takeout, veggies and Doritos as many of the people you’re talking about do with their food stamps isn’t exactly the equivalent on a $/recipient ratio). It’s scary, I agree, but I think it’d be much healthier and stable for all of us economically and socially to take back the control of our food and farm products from the political parties in power and the these powerful corporations who perpetuate them. In the end, I hope you do know how much I admire and thank you for what you do as a farmer in this world and day and age. It is an incredibly hard job, I can only imagine.
Cheapybob, it’s truly disgusting, sickening and perhaps just evil that these folks in power continue to pretend to not see the redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich their enacting through these policies.
Comment by Charles Hupp
Apr 22nd, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Malthus used sound reasoning. If you read the “Limits of Growth”, then the 30 year update you will conclude that the earth’s population is larger than the sustainable level. We are bequeathing a serious problem to our children and grandchildren. The problem is apparent now in many countries.
Charley Hupp
Comment by Jared
Apr 23rd, 2008 at 9:09 am
I can make a good guess about the NBA Finals: it won’t include the Mavericks. Which really makes me sad.
Cody, do you think the prospects for gold are still good for the next few months?
Charles, I agree. That is one area where the U.S. and Europe truly lead. Were it not for immigration in those countries, their population growth would be almost flat. Birth control (including abstinence - for the sake of being politically sensitive) is an absolute necessity. But that seemingly only makes sense to well-educated populations.
Comment by James
Apr 23rd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Farmers are the only business in the world that can’t sell products at market prices. The ADM’s, Cargill’s, Tyson, and Bunge’s all have a say on what we are going to get for our products in reguards to what they want. If I was to sell wheat today for July del. they are taking around $2.00 protection from what the board of trade says it should be. The same thing go’s for our fat cattle, a buyer comes by to look at them and says this is what we will give if you don’t take the price it will probly be less next week because now they are to fat. If any body is to blame for high food prices you need to go look at the middle man and their profits I know what a T-bone or prime rib should sell for and it is far from that. On Happy Hour you cut Tom short but you really need to look at the Farm Bill and look at how it is broke out in cat. the farmer gets very little of that money as i mentioned before that you failed to mention was the food programs, WIC, food stamps, and the school food programs is all in the so called Farm Bill. South America can’t wait for animal agriculture to get run out of the U.S. so they can import their animals, along with their Ethanol and Bio-diesel to feed us and here we are again counting on someone else to fuel, feed and cloth us, so what if food is a little high right now at least we have enough to go around and it will be the safest and at last check it is still the cheapest in the world, the last time I was out it wouldn’t hurt a few people to go hungary a few days.
A Family Farmer in Missouri
Comment by ann
Apr 24th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
what is all this heading too!hunger!stealing!insecurity!blackmarketting!poor getting poorer!
This is very dipressing- prices are going high- salaries are not getting higher- standard of living is getting expensive.
what should we do so we can help and build our economy and give our kids a better future
Comment by michelle
Apr 28th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Don’t you think it’s insane that we are giving money and AIDS medicine to overpopulated Africa, so they can continue to overbreed and be short of food? Seems like if we cut the apron strings, the hunger problem would solve itself in about 10 years by a greatly reduced population.
Comment by sean
Apr 29th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Hi everyone, I’m happy to see there are people out there who are discussing important matters to humanity, thanks Cody for the web forum. This is a critical first step.To stop talking about the baseball game or who’s going to win American idol etc. etc. and start talking about how badly we are getting screwed and by who. I have been researching this topic now for years. I have had the good fortune to be semi retired at an early age and put vast amounts of time into what is actually happening to humanity and our planet. In a world of plentyful resorces, technology, and transportation that there is so much poverty and hunger and misinformation.
I have come to the absolute conclusion that there is a highly organized criminal element so all encompassing and destructive to humanity, whose sole purpose is to dominate and control the worlds population for their own selfish pleasure with absolutely NO regard what so ever for any one else but themselves.
There are different levels of compassion in human beings. The vast majority of us care mostly for our selves and our families but are compassionate in varying decrees for others. There is a very small minority of humans that are completely filled with compassion for others and would risk their own life and their own prosperity to better the lives of others(this group would make the ideal leaders in our world). Then we have the extreme opposite, also a very small minority with absolutely no compassion for others and use others lives and distroy others property for their own selfish gain. Unfortunately this last group has control of our planet. We are all to blame in some decree for allowing this to happen, we have turned a blind eye while our governments have been corrupted by these criminals.
If there is anyone out there who is interested in finding out more about the people who own the world, what their intentions are for us, how we can change their plans for us and become what we we’re ment to be…Free and Independent I will name some good books and some dvds.
Web of Debt by Ellen Hodgson Brown(book). War is a racket by General Smedely Butler(book). The Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin(book). Zeitgeistmovie (dvd). America Freedom to Fascism by Aaron Russo (dvd). Loosechange(dvd). The Money Masters(dvd). Money as Debt(dvd). Send me an email if you woul like more info
Comment by Cody Willard
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 am
Thanks all for this great back and forth. Fascinating and learning a lot. Keep it coming. Let’s make this blog a community for positivity and progressive discussion.