China May Be Facing a Food Crisis

China’s agricultural industry has collapsed

... a leaked government document made public on Thursday shows that government officials have also been planning for a shortfall in food supplies ... “The State Party Committee and the state governments and counties and cities must do everything possible to transfer and store all kinds of living materials such as grain, beef, mutton, oil and salt through various channels,” ... The document also calls for the “mobilization of the masses to consciously store grain and ensure that each household reserves between 3 and 6 months of grain for emergencies.” ... As the rumors gained traction on social media, the government denied that the country is facing any crisis. ...

China’s stocks of wheat, corn and rice in 2019 totaled more than 280 million tons, while yearly consumption on average is more than 200 million tons.

But the three-month-long coronavirus lockdown saw China’s economy grind to a halt, and has had a huge impact on the country’s food production capabilities. ... 60% of village officials in 1,636 counties were “pessimistic” or “very pessimistic” about the planting season.

Farmers are struggling to find feed for their livestock and fertilizer is now in short supply. Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, is also the country’s main producer of fertilizer, and factories have struggled to reopen. One estimate puts the shortfall in fertilizer production at 40%.

Another major part of the problem for Chinese farmers is that they rely heavily on domestic migrant workers. ... farmers have struggled to find enough laborers to cultivate their crops.

I'm not usually able to quote so much from an article, since most articles are a couple of sentences of data with a lot of filler, but this one had quite a bit of information.

Don't get too excited about the big numbers for the grain inventory. At the end of the harvest you have "carry over stock" which is what you'll be using for the next year. You still need to plant and harvest to have grain available for the following year.

I think the key takeaways here are shortages of fertilizer and labor. China's farm labor is domestic, but still must be free to travel. In other countries that rely on foreign labor and have closed their borders, problems are compounded. The calendar isn't going to wait on nations to get their act together, or on the virus to subside.

Seed, fertilizer, parts for equipment and irrigation, fuel, pesticides, herbicides. Farm labor, labor in food processing facilities. Transportation. All of it on a schedule dictated by the seasons with very little slack.

China, if the publicly available information is reliable, has done a good job of handling this crisis. A much better job than the US has done, yet food production is at risk.

I'm concerned.

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longtalldrink's picture

Have done really great jobs in tamping down their out-break (My daughter is in S. Korea) yet, they are still running into problems like this article exposes. So here is MY concern:

These countries have done a Herculean task of controlling their virus, and still have problems...the U.S. has done next to nothing pro-actively to combat this crisis...what do you think is going to happen here when the sht really starts hitting the fan? We see the tip of the iceberg already with the millions of unemployment claims.

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Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin

WoodsDweller's picture

@longtalldrink
they will put up with almost anything. Quit feeding them and things spiral out of control quickly.
The basic shock absorber in the system is meat production -- if grain production falls short then the price of feed goes up, farmers can't afford to feed their herds and send additional animals to slaughter. Meat supplies go up, prices come down, people shift their diet to eat more meat for a while. Every introductory economics text covers this and it generally works.
Maybe I'm too concerned about just how broken everything is right now. Will this mechanism work in our current environment?
We've introduced another shock absorber in the form of corn ethanol for fuel. That seems to be more for winter blends, so cutting the ethanol requirement now might not help much, but if things look grim in the fall we could waive the ethanol requirements for a year, particularly in light of an oil glut.
What I'm worried about more than anything else is that nobody (and I mean NOBODY) is talking about food supplies. They are fussing about the stock market and rents and mortgages and how soon we can get back to normal. The time to shore up agriculture is right now while we still can. Maybe to the point of making soldiers available to plant strawberries.

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26 users have voted.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

@WoodsDweller
probably frantically. I don't guarantee you that they are having any success -- I really don't guarantee that they know what they're doing, after so many years of neocon and neolib ideology pushing down into their bureaucracy -- but I guarantee that the organization is populated by people who understand the agency's core mission, which is not, contrary to how it often seems to us corporate-hating anti-fascism folks, to ensure an ever greater concentration of the nation's food production in the hands of an ever smaller number of agribusiness behemoths.

The core mission of the Dept of Ag has been, ever since the Dust Bowl, to ensure that no American ever goes hungry for lack of sufficient calories produced. It was Stalin, of all people, who called the US out on the fact that our people had starved to death during the 30s, and our government could not -- or perhaps simply would not -- even produce a count of the mortality, nevermind avert the famine.

So, yeah, I'm sure they're making plans. Let's just hope those plans bear literal fruit. One thing that does not fill me with confidence is that there is not already in the media, a public information push for the equivalent of Victory Gardens, exhorting people to plant, plant, plant, even as the spring is upon us.

(Note that it's a secondary, but very much less successful, mission to ensure that no American ever goes hungry, full stop -- which is why SNAP is under the auspices of the Dept of Ag, and not Health and Human Services.)

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11 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@WoodsDweller Not *quite* nobody paying attention to this...

Michael Snyder, whose work often is carried on Zero Hedge has been covering farm/food issues a lot since last year - the disastrous weather-related losses in the Midwest last year, the effects on farmers of the trade war, & etc.

From his latest: Supplies Are Starting To Get Really Tight Nationwide As Food Distribution Systems Break Down

Most Americans are blaming “hoarders” for the current mess, but it is actually much more complicated than that. Normally, Americans get a lot of their food from restaurants. In fact, during normal times 36 percent of all Americans eat at a fast food restaurant on any given day. But now that approximately 75 percent of the U.S. is under some sort of a “shelter-in-place” order and most of our restaurants have shut down, things have completely changed. Suddenly our grocery stores are being flooded with unexpected traffic, and many people are buying far more than usual in anticipation of a long pandemic. Unfortunately, our food distribution systems were not designed to handle this sort of a surge, and things are really starting to get crazy out there.

Past time that people started paying attention to where stuff comes from.

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boriscleto's picture

@Blue Republic Is sent to China to be processed then shipped back.

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6 users have voted.

" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

@WoodsDweller
shutting down.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-dairy-farmers-dump-milk-100952217.html

Vermont has ordered all garden supply business to shut down as non-essential.

My daughter reports that Lowes has closed their garden sections.
Yet, trump is worried about the oil companies, not starving people.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-push-huge-deal-cut-201008149.html
I have a 50% chance of surviving COVID-19. I have zero chance of living without food!

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8 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
close to an insane response as anything i can imagine.

up
8 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Pricknick's picture

and the place to do so, start a garden.
There will be shortages of all vegetables and fruits that are imported. Domestic production will also be hampered by lockdowns of labor that many count on.
If you haven't noticed, inflation of all food products has begun.
It's the perfect storm.

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19 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

CB's picture

nor anything from Vice Propaganda. Did you follow them on Ukraine, Syria, Crimea? Complete fucking bullshit proved wrong by history.

Vice based this report on one from Radio Free Asia.

“The State Party Committee and the state governments and counties and cities must do everything possible to transfer and store all kinds of living materials such as grain, beef, mutton, oil and salt through various channels,” the document said, according to a report from Radio Free Asia.

The document also calls for the “mobilization of the masses to consciously store grain and ensure that each household reserves between 3 and 6 months of grain for emergencies.”

There is also evidence that citizens in certain parts of the country are panic buying in response to rumors around a food shortage.

So who is Radio Free Asia?

Government Propaganda Outlet Funds Electronic Frontier Foundation

Much heralded in the media, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is depicted as championing digital civil liberties and fighting the US government’s mass surveillance. EFF also receives money from the same government that it claims to fight.

The Saga of Radio Free Asia

In the early 1950s, Radio Free Asia was originally a covert CIA project to help overthrow Communist regimes in Asia. In order to conceal the true source of its funding, Radio Free Asia set up a fundraising campaign in the US, called the Crusade for Freedom. The goal of the fundraising campaign was to supply funds to “…expand the facilities of Radio Free Asia to carry the battle to China’s Red masters behind the bamboo curtain…”. In a blatant lie, the director of Radio Free Asia, John W. Elwood, even told the press, “Because we have no government ties, we can say anything we damn please.”
...
Even though Radio Free Asia was created by the US Congress and is essentially controlled by the US government, Radio Free Asia insists on the fiction that it is a nonprofit organization and is exempt from the federal public records law. Due to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 (NDAA 2017)(§ 310(d)), the CEO of a federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, now has the authority to directly hire and fire some Radio Free Asia employees. Despite several requests, Radio Free Asia refuses to release any records. In effect, this means that the internal records of Radio Free Asia’s bidding and contracting process for its internet freedom program are completely secret.
...

If you want to follow Radio Free Asia on YouTube and see the type of reports they produce:
https://www.youtube.com/user/RFAVideo/videos

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18 users have voted.

@CB always vet a source.

Still, not hard to believe food production would degrade in China and really, everywhere. So that's a real concern.

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10 users have voted.

Orwell: Where's the omelette?

CB's picture

@jim p
China is a huge country and the coronavirus was effectively contained within 3 provinces. There were no shortages of basic foods anywhere in the country. During the worst of the pandemic in Jan/Feb the farmers suffered from a lack of migrant farm hands because many had left to go home for the Chinese New Year. The government chartered buses, entire trains and even planes to get them back to work for the April planting season.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_0ndit4GYk]

The country is mostly back at work now.

Getting China back to work

As China’s leadership works to kickstart the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, the country’s provinces are hustling to get folks back to work. Trivium is tracking the official resumption rates throughout the country – to help folks understand what is happening on the ground. New updates every weekday.
...
Key takeaways as of April 2

  • The vast majority of businesses in China have at least turned the lights back on – with 94% of large companies having resumed operations.
  • 25 provinces are reporting full resumption rates (of between 99-100%) for large businesses. These provinces account for 89.2% of GDP. An additional three provinces have large business resumption rates above 90%. That said, capacity utilization at many of these companies is still closer to 80% of normal levels, with many far below that.
  • Overall, then, industrial enterprises appear to be operating at 80.6% of normal activity levels. This is an impressive pace of normalization given that our estimate stood at just 65.3% exactly one month ago.

...

It is estimated that China will take a 2% hit on 2020 GDP - down to 4.5%. One important factor is that over 60% of their GDP is generated within the country. Xi Jinping has said that he would create huge infrastructure projects to keep unemployment to a minimum if global sales tank.

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boriscleto's picture

@CB But believe Chinese government propaganda.

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6 users have voted.

" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

Granma's picture

@boriscleto Think about it. China is a huge country. It is just now planting season. Most of the country was not shut down. And for farm work, social distancing should be simple. They all wear masks to be outside. So why couldn't needed farm work be done in the vast area where there was not virus. They aren't growing their food in the middle of the cities. That is done in countryside.

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CB's picture

@boriscleto
since Jan 7 and have found many Chinese sources to be remarkably consistent and accurate as time went by.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXhcWXfOyg&list=PLt-M8o1W_GdQtl8BFXhbjb...

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CB's picture

Watch this fucking shit they promulgate:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPBCsjMzf_w]

If you want the truth of the matter:

Chinese medical teams realized that exercise (instead of lying in bed) improves lung function and morale so medical teams got the patients up and moving in the non critical coronavirus wards.

(the video at this link appears to be the video the fucking RFA used for propaganda purposes)

Xinjiang medical team keeps patients in Wuhan busy with dancing

A medical team from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has turned a corner in the lobby of a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak, into a dancing hall.

A video of the medical professionals dancing with patients has gone viral on Chinese social media, inspiring others to follow suit.

Ipare Ehmet, a nurse on the team, regretted that she didn't join the dance routine that day because she was on the night shift. The 36-year-old acted in easy moves to ensure more patients could follow her steps.

"The thrill ran through me once they followed me," she said. "I really wish I could dance with everyone."
...

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@CB and what comes out of the official Chinese media is any more trustworthy?

I don't buy that the situation in China is anywhere as near normal and under control as they are now trying to convey. Not all Chinese people believe their situation and system is so wonderful - although the ones who are courageous enough to say so tend to get disappeared with an efficiency the Clintons could only dream of.

A Chinese student who called for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping to step down in a message posted to social media on Monday has gone missing. On Tuesday, reports suggested he was in police custody for his remarks.

Zhang says he was once a young supporter of the ruling CCP, referring to himself as a former “little pink,” a term to describe youths indoctrinated by the regime. However, after bypassing the government’s internet censorship, he discovered the truth about the CCP and its “sinister” history. In his statement, Zhang referred to his enlightenment as scaling the “Great Firewall” of CCP internet censorship:

Since I scaled the Great Firewall, I gradually came to the realization that the Chinese Communist Party has extended its dragon claws into every corner of the world, including the collective farming [1950s], the Cultural Revolution [1966-1976], the Great Famine [1958-1961], the One-Child Policy, the Tiananmen massacre [1989], as well as the persecution of the Falun Gong [spiritual movement], and the peoples of Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

“And yet everyone continues to turn a blind eye, singing the party’s praises. I just can’t bear it,” said Zhang. He added that the pro-democracy Hong Kong protests and the Taiwan presidential elections, which defeated a Beijing-backed candidate, had helped change his mind.

Is this propaganda, too?

Has the ring of truth to me, maybe I'm being duped (after all, the Russians had me supporting Tulsi Gabbard and I didn't even get to be plied with five star hotel suites and high grade Russian hookers).

(attributed to dissident Chinese now-disappeared billionaire, Ren Zhiquiang)

The reality shown by this epidemic is that the Party defends its own interests, the government officials defend their own interests, and the monarch only defends the status and interests of the core. Precisely this type of system is capable of a situation where only the ruler’s order is obeyed with no regard for the people. When the epidemic had already broken out, they wouldn’t dare admit it to the public without the king’s command. They wouldn’t dare announce the facts of the matter, and instead used the method of catching and criticizing “rumors” to restrict the spread of truth, resulting in the disease’s uncontainable spread.

[…] China’s ruling party concealed the cause of the outbreak, then using the power of the entire country, followed up by sealing a city, deceiving the trust of the WHO, and winning international praise. But, it was harder to again deceive the Chinese people caught in the epidemic. Those who live in a democratic country with freedom of speech perhaps don’t know the pain of the lack of a free press and free expression. But Chinese people know that this epidemic and all the unnecessary suffering it brought came directly from a system that strictly prohibits the freedom of press and speech.

"We have to stand up for the next generation"

This woman did - literally risking her life to do so.

(if anyone can get that video to play on youtube you're ahead of me - my browser goes crazy every time I try - could only manage to view it on Duck Duck Go and Breitbart. Just coincidence, of course)

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CB's picture

@Blue Republic
than Breitbart articles on isolated cases, especially from Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Try this link to see how Breitbart reports on China:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=breitbart+china&ia=web

The following weird video has been circulating for months. It came from Taiwan News. Did you expect something different? Do you really think the CCP has "bungled handling of Wuhan coronavirus outbreak"?

Video shows Chinese woman call for Taiwan independence, denounce CCP
Exasperated by Beijing's bungled handling of Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Chinese woman calls for end to CCP rule

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Video surfaced on Sunday (Feb. 15) of a Chinese woman exasperated by Beijing's bungling of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, who came out in support of independence for Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and also called for ordinary Chinese to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In the opening of the video, the woman addresses her "fellow citizens," saying that ordinary people are being sacrificed by the "schemes and plans of the government." She complains the government does not care about the average person and that no amount of money can buy the necessary medicine and hospital beds needed to treat the deadly virus.

Try searching for: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+back+to+work&t=ffsb&df=w&ia=news

China’s coronavirus recovery is ‘a promising sign’ the US could bounce back just as quickly, says market analyst
Published Tue, Mar 31 2020
...
China, where the virus emerged about three months ago, also saw a significant drop in traffic congestion when the country went on lockdown in the wake of the virus, Colas said.

“The interesting thing is that as they’ve started to bring the economy back up to life, the weekday traffic is getting back to normal. The weekend traffic, which is consumer traffic, discretionary traffic, is still at quite low levels,” he said. “So, they’re doing a good job of bringing the economy back up, but consumer confidence just isn’t there yet.”

That should still bode well for U.S. businesses, however, given China’s rapid rate of recovery, Colas said.

“Particularly in important cities like Shenzhen and Beijing and Shanghai, they were able to come back up to quasi-normal levels of weekday activity within a month,” he said. “So, that is a promising sign if we’re thinking about what the [end] of this is for the U.S. They were able to do it. We should be able to accomplish something similar.”
...

China Roars Back To Work, Even As Rest Of World Is Shut By COVID-19 Pandemic

The Coronavirus pandemic has brought the world to a halt as almost all the countries struggle to maintain their daily operations. Amid the global shutdown, one country has revived back from the health crisis and has started living its life as it was. Co-incidentally, this is the same country from where it all started – China.

Factories that were shutdown have started reopening in the state of China. Correspondingly, workers are returning to work and assembly lines are once again rolling to manufacture products in masses. In short, the entire Industrial complex in the country is reviving.

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6 users have voted.

@CB

I'm not, in general, any fan of Breitbart - especially their rabid support of Israel. That said - I don't see anything out of line with
the articles on China that show up on the Duck Duck Go link you provided - they are mostly about the US vulnerability to supply chain disruptions due to over dependence on China - concerns which are now shown to be valid.

The "weird" video from the Taiwan Times is the same as the one in one of the Breitbart articles that I referred *you* to, except that one is captioned in English and the Taiwan Times one is not. Tell you what - try watching it and point out just what the weird parts are, just for those of us who are a little slow.

I think I recognize courage when I see it and those brave individuals who are willing to risk everything by standing up and confronting corrupt power have my profound respect.

Too bad the Cultural Revolution is gone, maybe you could have landed a gig as a Red Guard...

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CB's picture

@Blue Republic
from DuckDuck link:

  • Expert: China Has 'Global Chokehold' on ... - Breitbart
  • Coronavirus Exposes China's Monopoly on U.S ... - Breitbart
  • Breitbart - China has enormous leverage over America.
  • Breitbart - China must come clean.
  • Exclusive - Marco Rubio: China's Shameless Coronavirus ...
  • Rep. Jim Banks: 'Demand Reparations' from China for ...
  • Breitbart: China's Clampdown on 'Hundreds of ...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/breitbart/
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE

A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for the purpose of profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact checked on a per article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source. See all Questionable sources.

Overall, we rate Breitbart Questionable based on extreme right wing bias, publication of conspiracy theories and propaganda as well as numerous false claims.

One screaming woman from 2 months ago is not proof of anything. Even title tells us what this story is about:

Video shows Chinese woman call for Taiwan independence

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4 users have voted.

Look at the labels. So. Will they continue to send food here? Or Keep it for themselves?
Will the people realize the folly of depending on a country (any country) on the other side of the world for all of their high tech manufactures and a huge amount of their food? Just because some megacorps profit?

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15 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Lily O Lady's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

I told my s-I-l that I thought that was unwise. He gave me the argument that it was the best use of resources. I love him, but he’s wrong.

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14 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@Lily O Lady
Here's a tip. Garlic is easy to grow and you don't have to buy it from a Nursery. Go to Whole Foods or another store with organic produce. Buy as many cloves as you need. Separate them into "toes" and plant. Same thing with seed potatoes. Buy some organic potatoes (I like Yukon Gold) and keep them in a dark bag in the kitchen (but dry). When they sprout, plant them.
You must use organic because non-organic are treated with chemicals to suppress sprouting.
Potatoes are cut into pieces and treated with sulfur to form "seed potatoes". Just plant them whole, you don't need to maximize production.
Rabbits won't eat garlic. I've seen them pass it by to eat dandelions. rabbits, wild and domestic, LOVE dandelions. When we had a pet rabbit I would buy her dandelion leaves in an Italian produce store. But she preferred the wild dandelions. I suspect the cultivated ones were too mild. Something, I think it was ground squirrels, was eating garlic, though.

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14 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@Lily O Lady
garlic included. After the poisoned baby food catastrophe (same poison as was in the Chinese pet food catastrophe that we got in the US), I was like, Fuck That, Nevermore. Whenever my Chinese colleagues return from visiting their families, they bring various "treats from home". I do not indulge.

Mind you, it seems like it's getting more and more difficult to determine the country of origin of some foods, but other than occasional latin american produce (ain't no US grown bananas!), even-more-occasional european cheese, Basmati rice from India, coconut milk from southeast asia, coffee, chocolate/cocoa, olive oil (i hope!) from Italy or Spain, and various spices from parts unknown, I will do my best to avoid any food that isn't produced in the US or Canada.

Oh, and whisky. Whisky from Scotland. That's food, right? Am I right?

And yeah, your S-I-L may be drinking Ricardo's Comparative Advantage Koolaid, but I say, "Merci, non!"

up
14 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Lily O Lady's picture

@UntimelyRippd

most of the other stuff grew. I tried beets that fall, but as soon as they came up they disappeared. Turned out it was a beet loving tortoise.

As for my S-I-L, that apple has fallen quit far from the tree, thank goodness. He just has a bit further to go.

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7 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@Lily O Lady
Last time I planted beets, I saw a baby bunny moving down the row, inhaling the sprouts. He was so cute I didn't try to drive him away.

up
6 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@UntimelyRippd

Not that paint remover that comes out of Scotland.

Ireland? That stuff is good.

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2 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
Whisky is something that is made in Scotland.

I will grant Ireland a grandfather exception, in that it appears that the very first stuff that might have been considered uisqubae (sp?) may have been produced in Ireland. I doubt you or I would have wanted to drink it.

But no, that odd corn liquor jerry-rigged by the desperate expats of Caledonia who landed, centuries ago, in Kentucky and Tennessee ... that stuff is not whisky.

up
2 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Rhubarb is almost ready to pick. Uncovered roses. Apple & peach trees have lots of buds. Strawberry plants look great. Forgot to cover them in fall, but Winter was mild. Mostly single digits and only a few sub-zero days. (Are you shaking your head, Lookout?) Egyptian onions are up. Time to take the blueberry out of the garage. It is budding out.
The problem is, in a shortage, people will raid my yard.

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20 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness

"The problem is, in a shortage, people will raid my yard."

Should've stocked up on ammo...

Wouldn't worry too much though, most people these days wouldn't recognize food as food if it's not in a package with microwave instructions.

As a Texan I used to know used to put it, "People like that couldn't look at a goat and get hungry."

I've got pigeons, crows, civet cats and pheasants that do recognize things like sprouting beans, peanuts and squash
so am having to take precautions to fend them off.

Crows excepted I figure they are all potentially on the menu
anyway if times get hard(er)...

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3 users have voted.

@Blue Republic
I'm told crow tastes really bad, hence the expression "eating crow". Posted above about agribusiness deliberately dumping supply and Vermont, no less, shutting down gardening centers.
No tomatoes this year. I wonder if I can sprout seeds from organic tomatoes.

up
2 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness

up
2 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

boriscleto's picture

Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.

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7 users have voted.

" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

snoopydawg's picture

People who grew up during the Great Depression continued growing vegetables and fruits and I'm betting that many people will do that. But millions of people who live in apartments can't do it on a large scale but many can if they have balconies?

I read an article a few days ago about how food supplies are not getting restocked in some areas. And since Trump started his trade war thousands of small farmers have gone bankrupt and sold out to big AG companies. The bailouts that farmers got mainly went to big farms because they had connections with congress criminals critters. Last spring the Midwest was flooded for months. What happens if this happens again right in the middle of this mess?

What should be keeping congress awake at night is how many people are going to lose their homes. Again. If this happens what response should we explain?

Here Comes The Next Crisis: Up To 30% Of All Mortgages Will Default In "Biggest Wave Of Delinquencies In History"

And unfortunately this time the crisis will be far worse, because as Bloomberg reports mortgage lenders are preparing for the biggest wave of delinquencies in history. And unless the plan to buy time works - and as we reported earlier there is a distinct possibility the Treasury's plan to provide much needed liquidity to America's small businesses may be on the verge of collapse - an even worse crisis may be coming: mass foreclosures and mortgage market mayhem.

Borrowers who lost income from the coronavirus, which is already a skyrocketing number as the 10 million new jobless claims in the past two weeks attests, can ask to skip payments for as many as 180 days at a time on federally backed mortgages, and avoid penalties and a hit to their credit scores. But as Bloomberg notes, it’s not a payment holiday and eventually homeowners they’ll have to make it all up.

Add in the people who rent who aren't making their payments and then the people who own the rentals can't make theirs either. Did congress shoot their load too soon and on the wrong problem? Yep and you betcha they did it knowingly. Someone told me that they just voted to give themselves an $8,000 pay raise too. I can't verify it though.

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13 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

All I have to say is that eggs cost > $5/dozen here now (if you can get them at all). I got a dozen for $2.49 2 weeks back, and that itself was much higher than normal.

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6 users have voted.
OzoneTom's picture

@sny
It was my first trip into town an about a month. I planned to pick up a box of five-dozen medium eggs for pickling. I got a box last time for $4.89, yesterday they were over $11. Since I still have a few quarts in the cooler I took a pass.

Of the three markets I shopped, one had a limit of two dozens, one had a limit of one dozen, and the other was nearly cleared out. I ended up scoring three dozen jumbos for regular eating but they were also up from less than $2 to a little under $3.

Egg sizes other than the standard large ones tend to be priced lower and that continues to be the case.

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4 users have voted.
Lookout's picture

The Chinese have 40 centuries of experience...(including some severe famines)
https://www.permaculturenews.org/files/farmers_of_forty_centuries.pdf

Victory gardens supplied over 40% of US food during WWII. We can do that again, and perhaps alter our current food system....most of which is used for CAFO meat production.

This could be an opportunity to change corporate food dependence. More on food production in the Sunday Weekly Watch this week.

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9 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

WoodsDweller's picture

but at least more recognition of the issues.

How coronavirus threatens the seasonal farmworkers

... the [US] food system depends on several million seasonal agricultural workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants from Mexico and other countries ...
It is difficult to accurately count the number of hired agricultural laborers in the United States, but official sources place the number at 1 million to 2.7 million people, depending on the time of year. ... One-half to three-quarters of them were born outside of the United States ...
social isolation is almost impossible for farmworkers, who often live and work in close proximity to one another.
Those in the H-2A program typically live in on-site, dormitory-style housing, with up to 10 people sharing sleeping quarters and restroom facilities.
The mostly undocumented workers not covered by H-2A visas frequently work for labor contractors, who arrange for their transportation to work sites in shared vans or trucks.
And once on the job, workers interact closely to harvest crops at a rapid pace ...
farm laborers face working conditions that may elevate the risk for severe disease ...
widespread infections among farmworkers could make it difficult for farmers to harvest crops. Even before the pandemic, farmers in many agricultural areas were already struggling with labor shortages.

Social distancing difficult, seeking health care difficult and risky, likely unpaid while out sick and thus discouraged from seeking care.

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4 users have voted.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone