naturalnews | Simply
put, when nature deviates from its normal cycles, it throws food
production into chaos. A one-night drop below freezing, for example, can
wipe out the entire citrus crop in Florida. A Midwest drought recently
collapsed corn production there, and almost two years ago, a severe
drought in Texas caused a collapse in grazing grasses, resulting in a
mass slaughter of starving cows that could no longer be fed. The upshot
of that was plummeting beef prices, followed by a spike the next year as
herds had been thinned out far beyond normal.
Here's what you need to remember and weather and food prices:
Stable weather = cheap food
Radical weather = expensive food (or no food at all)
The
"latency" between the radical weather and resulting food prices is
anywhere from one month (for fresh produce) to a full year (for
processed, manufactured foods). This means that crazy weather patterns
today might not spike food prices until next year, depending on the
crops in question.
Because the weather is becoming more radical,
food prices are trending sharply higher. The USDA, which downplays food
inflation for political reasons, admits that food prices rose 3.7% in 2011, 2.6% in 2012 and are currently rising at 3% in 2013.
These
numbers are artificially low, of course, as is readily evident at the
grocery store right now. But even when kept low, they still portray an
alarming scenario when you consider these food price increases are compounded annually.
That means they pile on top of previous year's increases, causing the
resulting price spikes to rise faster than might be expected by
intuition alone.
For example, if food prices increase at just 3.5% per year, they will double every 20 years.
But the actual food inflation we seem to be experiencing when you consider the real products that people buy is closer to 6%. And at 6%, food prices double every 12 years!
Food production is extremely resource intensive
For
food prices to drop, food production inputs must fall in price at the
same time weather patterns become more predictable. This is extremely
unlikely to occur any time in the foreseeable future, especially with
fresh water, topsoil and fuel all becoming increasingly scarce and therefore more expensive.
For those who don't know, farming is extremely resource intensive,
using enormous quantities of water and fossil fuels to produce food.
For example, it takes 1,000 liters of water to make 1 liter of milk.
Similarly, it takes 15,400 liters of water to produce just 1kg of beef.
A very informative website that explains all this is:
Also check out:
This report shows that the "water footprint" of a typical U.S. citizen is a remarkable 2,842 cubic meters per year.
That's three quarters of a million gallons of water PER PERSON, per year.
Once
you understand this relationship, you'll understand why rainfall and
weather patterns are so crucial to the food supply. Just one inch of
rainfall on just one acre of land delivers 6.2 million cubic inches of water to the land (and whatever is growing there). That's 27,000 gallons of water per acre with just a one-inch rain.
In a drought, large pieces of land are subjected to huge water deficits
running in the billions of gallons. Under such conditions, edible
plants simply cannot grow, and even grazing animals like cows are unable
to even maintain current weight.
