U.S. Has No Remaining Grain Reserves
Is the U.S. Running out of emergency grain reserves?
“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC [USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation] inventory report there are only 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be only 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned [Larry Matlack, President of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM)].Link“Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The only thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat, which is about enough wheat to make 1⁄2 of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.
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This is a conspiracy theory web site, so I'm not sure I'd lend a lot of credence to their information.
It also seems like the main thing they're complaining about here is not the dire consequences of failing to have a food reserve, but rather bemoaning the loss of a farm subsidy that was actually removed in 1996 and has been being phased out since then, so the fact that the reserve is almost gone is actually a good thing - it means it's taken 12 years to get rid of the damn thing.
"The CCC is a federal government-owned and operated entity that was created to stabilize, support, and protect farm income and prices. "
Critical thinking for the win, people. Look at the source of the information before jumping the gun and getting all excited here.
Rats ate 47%.
(Sorry, I've been playing Hammurabi and Santa Paravia again)
no cheese!? we're out of cheese!? aaahhhhhh!!!
Well, I guess we could eat the rats that ate the grain.
It is very difficult indeed to believe these kinds of stories. Sceptics Unite - if you're not too way of large groups...
The best humanitarian aid we could offer would be to remove all farm subsidies and let prices float. Food costs would go up, but not as much as taxes would go down, because of the administration overhead. Plus, poor farmers and people in developing countries would get a better price instead of a meager handout for not growing.
Yikes. Republicans have ravaged this country like a hoard of biblical locus.
From the source:
"The Star People aboard their Starships now orbiting Earth Shan, who have come to our Earth at this time from more than two hundred other Star Nations. They are called the ?Hosts of Heaven? and have come in peace and love to help our planet and her people in our Ascension into fifth dimension by 2012. They have come by orders from Creator God without violence or evil and bring much love, education and new technology to assist us in better health and in cleaning up the pollution on our planet."
Wtf?
If true, this is not a particularly good thing, though not the tragedy it is presented as. The CCC has tried to keep grain prices stable for 70 yrs and is not the "reserve" it is presented as in the article. However - these type of FDR-era programs are also the source of much of the emergency humanitarian aid that the USDA supplies. If we're really getting low, it may (possibly) put a crimp on our emergency response time for places with natural disasters as we have to buy and transport massive amounts instead of just pulling them out of storage.
@Ashabot - "a hoard of biblical locus?" Is that code for Armageddon? :-)
When those Star People get here and find out that we haven't been hoarding our food they are gonna be PISSED.
#2 I loved that game.
Awesome throwback reference. Played it on cassette tape on my TRS-80.
I guess we should build more granaries so the serfs don't get the plague.
Who gives a rat's ass (heh) about grain - what about coffee?
Are you telling us everything? Are we also out of coffee?
Ascension - the changing from third dimension (3D) to fifth dimension (5D), to rise in frequencies. Our bodies are presently changing from a carbon-based cell to a crystalline-based cell to accommodate these higher frequencies. Our planet and those who choose to do so will soon be moving into the fifth dimension.
Uh. Yeah this website is Totally credible. Another lovely bullet on their about us page:
Phoenix - the name of the command ship of the Pleiadian Starfleet now circling our planet. Historically, the Phoenix bird rose from the ashes of the old to birth a new civilization. In the Phoenix Journals "Phoenix" refers to Truth. Truth is again rising from the ashes of lies to bring enlightenment to mankind.
Good to know the Pleiadian Starfleet is still circling. I was afraid they left.
#8 ASHABOT.
The Democrats are just as guilty for farm subsidies and keeping them going. Wake up and smell the corruption on both sides of the Congressional aisles.
",,,Five pound blocks of cheese, bags of groceries,,,Social Security has run out on you and me. We do what ever we can, gota duck when the shit hits the fan,,,"
Historically, though, how much grain do we keep on reserve? There is no mention of past inventory. It is a scary thought though that we are pretty much living day to day with our food.
As long as the locusts leave enough for the wasps
@2 That made my day. (And made me spit coffee on my monitor)
"It is a scary thought though that we are pretty much living day to day with our food."
Yes, if only we could figure out a way to put food into some sort of "can" if you will in order to store it.
It's ok, Atkins will save us. I'm sure there's emergency bacon around here somewhere...
Assuming the info is true (and I'm not sure I trust either the site or the agency at this point), what does it mean?
@NotThisGod
Please refrain from linkspamming the comments.
@js7a (#7)
Your comment postulates that this would be a universally good thing.
[If I understand your comment correctly, you're referring to taxes in the sense of income tax which is spent by the government to maintain this food reserve. If you actually meant sales tax on food items, then I misunderstood and you can ignore the remainder of my comment.]
For an alternative (if simplistic) interpretation, consider this:
Higher food cost and lower taxes are beneficial only in proportion to your income. If you're rich, lower taxes leave more money in your pocket and you don't really care that apples cost an extra $1 each.
If you're poor, lower taxes aren't much help (since you presumably don't make much in the first place), but paying an extra $1 per apple could mean you simply can't afford them any more.
Your proposal might help the farmers, and it might help the economy-at-large, but I always find it curious when people assume that "the market" benefits all parts of society equally.
It doesn't.
@Radioguy:
I was talking about the taxes paid to subsidize food being more than the amount food prices would rise if the subsidies were removed and the taxes to pay for them were no longer collected.
The poor in the U.S. are far more obese than the middle and upper classes. The only people being helped by farm subsidies are the congresspeople running for re-election in rural districts.
The people being hurt by them are the farm more numerous farmers in the third world. Which would you rather help?
I would submit that this is due to a lack of affordable healthy food; Junk food with little nutritional value is much cheaper than fruits, vegetables and natural grains.
Which brings us back to the food-cost issue....
Do you think that humans who ascend to become crystaline celled star beings need to drive? That would really cut back on fuel consumption. 2012 can't come soon enough!
Js7a, I don't think you've really thought through the real world consequences of your position.
The US has pursued a cheap food strategy for a long time. In essence subsidizing farmers to over produce so that everyone can afford to eat and we don't have large numbers of hungry pissed off people. I wonder if that has changed without them telling anyone?
"There is no cheese...."
What?! Not even Wensleydale?"
It is ludicrously false to say "we" are running out of grain surplus just because some obsolete government agency is.
We have a gazillion bushels of grain stockpiled away in silos and warehouses all across the continent. It's not in government hands, but that doesn't make it disappear. The US has probably the most advanced food distribution system in the world; whatever you think of the quality of Cargill, ADM, Monsanto's output, there ain't no shortage of the stuff.
I'll bet there's more grain (mostly corn) just heaped up on the bare ground in Nebraska alone than the CCC would know what to do with.
so the food is all gone.......we still have each other...
Do you think that humans who ascend to become crystaline celled star beings need to drive? That would really cut back on fuel consumption. 2012 can't come soon enough!
I don't know about the 5th dimension, but in the 8th dimension you can travel through mountains! You might trigger an interplanetary war and you have to be a sixgun slinging, particle physicist/bujutsu master/racecar driver/neurosurgeon/rock star to accomplish the feat.
Farm subsidies of the type being phased out under the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act don't make food cheaper, they make food more expensive. Because they're price supports.
The way they were (are) set up is that, if the price of the food falls below a minimum level, the government buys lots to bid the price back up. Then the government did two things with it -- stockpile it, or give it away (free or cheap) to other countries. (Agricultural tariffs keep the stuff from being re-imported into the U.S. to undercut the price support effect.)
Now, under the Freedom to Farm Act, we've been phasing out those purchases. Further, with food prices up as sharply as they have been, there's been a natural decline in purchasing to support prices. The natural, expected result of the two is that the stockpiles have been going down.
Full free agricultural trade would be the cheapest - the tropics can take off three crops a year - the North needs price supports and protectionist policies or else there's no way one-crop-per-year could compete with the South and there'd be no Northern farming...nor any great incentive to get super-yields from that one crop per year...and the South wouldn't be so poor they'd be able to compete (probably triumph)with their natural advantage in the production of crops, and our food would be a lot cheaper.
hey! What would the price of sugar be without the embargo on Cuba? What would the price of oil be without the war in Iraq? What would the price of marijuana be without the war on drugs? What would the price of bio-fuel be if hemp were the source instead of corn?
hey! Why is the Gov doing all it can to raise prices while understating inflation so as to give Bankers their lo lo prime rates? Which they then use to lend to you at triple prime? Wouldn't lo prices be better than low interest rates?
Data source:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1079
cursory inspection of 2008 and 2003 data shows increase in stored wheat (709,640,000 v.
491,416,000 bushels). Someone else can spend time looking deeper for looming catastrophe.
Ever hear of a boy who cried wolf?
Someone forward that to snopes...it's consumed enough of my time....
Slow news day at Boing Boing? We get some generic plastic Office Max cable thingie, a Dr Boing Boing what this post and now this link to a lame conspiracy sit whose #1 mission is "To reveal the Darkside's secret Plan 2000 for total world control by our present evil world leaders."
Ammended point:
stats are on and off-farm storage, not CCC reserves.
from:
http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/webapp?area=home&subject=coop&topic=pas-sa
it appears there was some policy change in 2001 to sell down the reserves; so this is likely a simple function of the commodities bubble.
Or: forewarning that if the Global Food Crisis WERE to become a Katrina, the hungry in the U.S. could expect as much federal help as New Orleans got. But that isn't news.
I am glad for two things. One, that others have already made the points I was going to. Secondly, that no one made my joke yet!
The reserves have been depleted so that it won't attract the vegetarian zombies!
GRAAAAAINS!!
",,,Soylent Green, now with more people!"
well it's a good think we all went on the zone diet
In spite of the weird source, there does appear to be an disturbing story here. Here is a graph of the 'US All Wheat Stocks' for the last 10 years:
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/awstks.asp
You can see the actual numbers at the 'USDA Grain Stocks Historical Track Records - April 2008':
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/htrgs/htrgs-04-30-2008.pdf
(Note, the Wheat data starts at about page 8.)
The data shows that US stores of wheat have been in steady decline since 1960. The current levels of storage look marginal.
There are data points for September, December, March, and June. September is always high. June is always low.
In September 1960, the total wheat storage was 2.3 billion bushels. In June 1960, the total wheat storage was 1.4 billion bushels. The 6 month drop was 900 million bushels. There appears to be a couple years of storage in a event of very poor harvests.
In September 2006, the total wheat storage was 1.7 billion bushels. In June 2006, the total wheat storage was 456 million bushels. The 6 month drop was 1.244 billion bushels. There does not appear to be a years worth of storage in the event of a very poor harvest.
I could not find hard data for 2007 or 2008. But the graph seems to indicate that things have gotten worse since 2006.
I don't want to panic anybody, but this situation is NOT as robust it was years ago. Minor effects (hoarding, speculation, poor harvest) can quickly destroy what little storage is being maintained. The US should probably place a high priority on maintaining higher levels of stored wheat.
NotThisGod,
You've been repeatedly warned to stop linkspamming in your comments. This is your final warning. If it happens again, your comments will be disemvowelled.
@ #41 posted by dweller_below
The graph of the 'US All Wheat Stocks' is not for reserves.
The starting post was about CCC federal reserves.
The data are clearly pertinent to the questions of global and U.S. food security, but we already know poor people around the world are starving because of commodities speculation, and that Laise-faire ideology has and continues to reduce the capacity of governments to "interfere" with whatever financial markets want. Reducing CCC reserves is just another part of that agenda.
You can die waiting for the U.S. to adopt enlightened policies, even without the global food crisis. That's not what the U.S. political system is about; instances are few and far between.
The model presented by Tsunami Relief probably stands a better chance of accomplishing anything at all, and once self-serving political actors see that some large number of people have put real money where their mouths are, they might conclude that getting on the right side of the issue might yield them future campaign contributions.
I have disappointing news for those of you who are depending on this website for accurate information. The Pleiadian fleet is no longer patrolling our world. It is being replaced by the Vogon fleet.
Towels! Git cher luvveerly towels! Towels!
What about all that government cheese we socked away underground during the Reagan years? Huh? Huh?
Gee...what a great way to control the CO2 level...wars caused by worldwide famine due to our belief that turning food into fuel would somehow make things better. Makes about as much sense as limiting our own CO2 but allowing the developing world to continue to spew unlimited amounts of soot and heavy metal laden smoke beyond what we'd had...but that's why the nexus of science & politics is so fascinating.
that's worrying, at a time when people are protesting about food shortages around the world, the richest nation is also running low?
That's what happens when you start to turn your frigging FOOD INTO FUEL!!!
Someone can have my 1/2 loaf. I have Celiac Disease, so won't be needing it.
@#17 Demidan,
Awesome Repo Man reference! love it
People of Earth, your attention, please...
The thread is old, but I will chime in anyway. There seems to be a different just-so story for every commodity, but the big picture is that all commodities have been running up together for the last several years. The explanation of this runup in the face of a weak economy is that it's a monetary phenomenon.
There is a commodity boom going on that is being driven by certain large financial interests that have been labeled index speculators. Over many years, and especially the last decade, the amount of money in our global financial system has grown dramatically. Most of this money usually stays within the financial sector, but because of the structural problems we are currently experiencing in the financial sector (Bear Stearns is just one example), a growing portion of this money has embarked on a "flight to safety" into the commodities sector. These funds represent a volume of money that totally overwhelms the commodities market, which is designed to handle the needs of agriculture and industry.
Since Index Specs are not involved in industry, they do not wish to take delivery on their futures contracts, so they roll them over into new contracts. As new participants come into the market, everyone is competing for the same contracts, so the prices of futures rise. As this goes on, some participants start hoarding the underlying commodities so they can deliver them later at the future higher prices. At some point, holders get antsy and try to be first to the market with the deliverables. Everyone rushes to market, there is a glut, and prices drop. This has already happened in the industrial metals market.
The hoarding of commodities is not distinguished from industrial demand due to how demand is measured. Studies on industrial metals have demonstrated that hoarding was going on, and there is rumor of a tanker shortage, even though oil demand has dropped off. Hoarding of ag commodities by speculators is also easy to accomplish. The across-the-board commodities boom is a speculative bubble caused by money moving into a sector just like techs, and housing were. It is a paper phenomenon, it will end as soon as all commodities have been monetized to the point that their prices peak and then crash. After all their toys are busted up and not useable anymore, the index specs will go find another sandbox to play in and commodities will be dead money for another 20 years.
Yeah...that website isn't credible at all.
Forgive me for dropping some links, but I feel I must. Or at least, ONE link.
"Famine Mentality in a Time of Bumper Crops": http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9403
Essentially, there really aren't shortages as severe as we've been led to believe. Sure, subsidies have led to smaller crops, corn ethanol demand has diverted farmers to feed corn (not FOOD corn, FEED corn) rather than grain, and drought and rust in other parts of the world have had their effects. However, we can also thank house flippers and irresponsible bankers for the high prices, as well as the Federal Reserve for flooding the market with dollars, and finally affluent people trying to "hedge" against inflation by flooding their money into commodities. And of course stupid policies over the last decade or so pertaining to "free markets" have led to a total lack of food security...
Hey, home vegetable gardens and greenhouses are easier than you think.
let them eat cake.
@ #53 b1ff:
On the whole you're right about the mechanisms, but you underestimate the effect of trading deregulations permitting U.S. traders to trade in overseas unregulated markets without reporting in the "suddenness" which the global food crisis has escalated, and how long it stayed under the radar of those not on the fringe of hunger.
You might also ponder the increasing tempo of these successive crises as money flees one sector to inflate the next--something of a race condition or a positive feedback loop hitting a catastrophic resonance.
Also, it's easy to minimize it as just another speculative bubble if no one you know is going hungry or your country isn't being destabilized. If some country had a concentration of businesses which were profiting by doing something along those lines with those effects on the U.S., pundits wouldn't be calling it a market imbalance or looking at it as a bubble which will surely take care of itself in time, they'd be calling it war by economic means and ginning up a war by military means.
Concerning market equilibria being reached in the long term, J.M. Keynes remarked, "...but in the long term, were all dead." Now, with global electronic trading streamline optimizing perverse market dynamics, we may not have to wait quite so long.
@ #51 subterrene:
it's actually a Circle Jerks lyric.
= = =
There. Post-modern economics, Keynesian economics and punk rock. We live in interesting times. Oh...and Chinese aphorisms too....
@ #56 zebulon:
ACTUALLY it's a Circle Jerks lyric... as played by the Circle Jerks... in their roles as a nightclub band in Repo Man. And on the soundtrack.
"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07