Tuesday, June 02, 2015
macroscale musical chairs on the deck of the titanic...,
By CNu at June 02, 2015 0 comments
Labels: Farmer Brown , food supply , Irreplaceable Natural Material Resources , Livestock Management
Thursday, May 29, 2014
peak oil, climate change, food costs, debt - thai militarization a symptom of political system failure...,
"The recent sharp rise in food prices has triggered riots in Egypt and other less-developed countries. Higher energy prices have also added on to the inflationary pressure. The poor are the most vulnerable sector to fluctuations in food and energy prices. Governments thus have to come up with subsidy measures for food and energy."
"The Thai inflation rate is very sensitive to higher oil prices, which will drive up local transport and production costs. As a heavy importer of energy, the rising oil price could derail the Thai economy and drain our reserves if we're not careful."
By CNu at May 29, 2014 0 comments
Labels: Collapse Casualties , food supply , What IT DO Shawty...
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
military say "climate change" (not bankster food commodity speculation) a growing security threat
By CNu at May 14, 2014 21 comments
Labels: food supply , information anarchy , Livestock Management , unspeakable
Monday, March 03, 2014
asimov: the future of humanity - crunch time
By CNu at March 03, 2014 28 comments
Labels: cull-tech , cultural darwinism , food supply , What Now?
Monday, February 24, 2014
correlation, causation, contagion...,
By CNu at February 24, 2014 0 comments
Labels: food supply , food-powered , killer-ape , monkey see - monkey do , What IT DO Shawty...
Sunday, December 22, 2013
runaway population growth fuels youth-driven uprisings...,
By CNu at December 22, 2013 0 comments
Labels: food supply , resource war , weather report
india's dangerous food bubble
By CNu at December 22, 2013 0 comments
Labels: food supply , Livestock Management , What Now?
Monday, December 02, 2013
from dust-to-dust...,
By CNu at December 02, 2013 0 comments
Labels: ecosystems , Farmer Brown , food supply , microcosmos
Sunday, November 03, 2013
initial food stamp cuts went into effect last week...,
By CNu at November 03, 2013 0 comments
Labels: contraction , food supply , Livestock Management
Friday, September 27, 2013
no more meat for prisoners...,
County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is no stranger to controversy. Over the years, he has made seemingly countless numbers of national headlines. As recently as August, the five-time elected sheriff was in the news after announcing that his deputies would be required to carry firearms at all times, even while off duty.
Of course, reporter Troy Hayden was less convinced, telling Arpaio that the soy looked like "wood chips" and pointing out that some of the carrots used were brown.
"Oh, that's probably just dirt, don't worry about that," Arpaio responded.
By CNu at September 27, 2013 0 comments
Labels: clampdown , Farmer Brown , food supply
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
never forget that civilization is only six meals thick...,
By CNu at September 10, 2013 3 comments
Labels: clampdown , Collapse Casualties , Farmer Brown , food supply , food-powered , killer-ape
Friday, August 16, 2013
because they can...,
By CNu at August 16, 2013 0 comments
Labels: conspicuous consumption , food supply
Saturday, May 11, 2013
food price inflation as redistribution
By CNu at May 11, 2013 0 comments
Labels: Farmer Brown , food supply
Sunday, May 05, 2013
radical weather patterns cause food production to plummet..,
Food production is extremely resource intensive
By CNu at May 05, 2013 11 comments
Labels: food supply , weather report
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say
In a 2011 paper, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute unveiled a model that accurately explained why the waves of unrest that swept the world in 2008 and 2011 crashed when they did. The number one determinant was soaring food prices. Their model identified a precise threshold for global food prices that, if breached, would lead to worldwide unrest.
The MIT Technology Review explains how CSI’s model works: “The evidence comes from two sources. The first is data gathered by the United Nations that plots the price of food against time, the so-called food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. The second is the date of riots around the world, whatever their cause.”
Pretty simple. Black dots are the food prices, red lines are the riots. In other words, whenever the UN’s food price index, which measures the monthly change in the price of a basket of food commodities, climbs above 210, the conditions ripen for social unrest around the world. CSI doesn’t claim that any breach of 210 immediately leads to riots, obviously; just that the probability that riots will erupt grows much greater. For billions of people around the world, food comprises up to 80% of routine expenses (for rich-world people like you and I, it’s like 15%). When prices jump, people can’t afford anything else; or even food itself. And if you can’t eat—or worse, your family can’t eat—you fight.
But how accurate is the model? An anecdote the researchers outline in the report offers us an idea. They write that “on December 13, 2010, we submitted a government report analyzing the repercussions of the global financial crises, and directly identifying the risk of social unrest and political instability due to food prices.” Four days later, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire as an act of protest in Tunisia. And we all know what happened after that.
Today, the food price index is hovering around 213, where it has stayed for months—just beyond the tip of the identified threshold. Low corn yield in the U.S., the world’s most important producer, has helped keep prices high.
“Recent droughts in the mid-western United States threaten to cause global catastrophe,” Yaneer Bar-Yam, one of the authors of the report, recently told Al Jazeera. “When people are unable to feed themselves and their families, widespread social disruption occurs. We are on the verge of another crisis, the third in five years, and likely to be the worst yet, capable of causing new food riots and turmoil on a par with the Arab Spring.”
By CNu at September 18, 2012 1 comments
Labels: food supply , quorum sensing?
Monday, August 13, 2012
drought forces reductions in U.S. crop forecasts
The smaller harvests will drive up prices for food and animal feed, analysts said. The prospects are also increasing pressure on the Obama administration to divert less corn to the production of the biofuel ethanol.
Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack, visiting drought-stricken farmers in Nebraska on Friday, said that despite the reduced crop production, farmers are in better shape today than during the last major drought, in 1988.
“Last time only 25 percent of farmers had crop insurance, but this time over 85 percent are covered,” Mr. Vilsack said, noting that the government was still forecasting the eighth-biggest corn harvest ever.
But analysts warned of falling yields and spiking wholesale prices down the road. “It’s scary when you see the numbers out today,” said Terry Roggensack, an analyst at the Hightower Report in Chicago. “Unless there is normal weather and rain from here on out, I can easily see prices for corn and soybeans” rising 20 percent to 25 percent.
In the past month, as the country recorded the hottest month on record, the government lowered its production forecast for eggs, milk and pork. Beef production is expected to rise as ranchers cull more of their herds because of higher feed prices. But experts predict that the price of beef will not rise until next year as supplies tighten but feed costs continue to increase.
Last month, the Agriculture Department estimated that food prices would climb 3 percent to 4 percent in 2013. The overall economic effect in the United States, however, will be muted, given that American households generally spend only about 13 percent of their budgets on food and often elect to buy cheaper foods rather than pay higher prices.
On Friday, Capital Economics estimated that the rising food prices might knock 0.1 percent off the annual pace of economic growth.
Farmers in the hardest hit areas of the Midwest said that Friday’s report only confirmed what they already knew.
“We’ve lost 60 percent of our average production, if not 70,” said Nick Guetterman, president of the Johnson County Farm Bureau in eastern Kansas, who farms about 10,000 acres with his family. Mr. Guetterman said he expected crop insurance to cover his costs this year, but not much more. “You take what you get, that’s all you can do,” he said. “You go to church and pray.”
By CNu at August 13, 2012 0 comments
Labels: food supply , weather report
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
the hunger wars in our future
In sum, it’s swelteringly, unnerving bad right now in a way that most of us can’t remember. And that’s the present moment. The question of what lies ahead is the territory occupied by TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author most recently of The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources. From the time he published his book Resource Wars back in 2001, he’s been ahead of the curve on such questions and he suggests that we’re going to have an uncomfortably hot time in all sorts of unexpected ways on this increasingly hot planet of ours.
By CNu at August 08, 2012 0 comments
Labels: food supply , resource war
Thursday, July 26, 2012
closer to a food crisis than most people realise...,
The United States is the leading producer and exporter of corn, the world's feedgrain. At home, corn accounts for four-fifths of the US grain harvest. Internationally, the US corn crop exceeds China's rice and wheat harvests combined. Among the big three grains – corn, wheat, and rice – corn is now the leader, with production well above that of wheat and nearly double that of rice.
The corn plant is as sensitive as it is productive. Thirsty and fast-growing, it is vulnerable to both extreme heat and drought. At elevated temperatures, the corn plant, which is normally so productive, goes into thermal shock.
As spring turned into summer, the thermometer began to rise across the corn belt. In St Louis, Missouri, in the southern corn belt, the temperature in late June and early July climbed to 100F or higher 10 days in a row. For the past several weeks, the corn belt has been blanketed with dehydrating heat.
Weekly drought maps published by the University of Nebraska show the drought-stricken area spreading across more and more of the country until, by mid-July, it engulfed virtually the entire corn belt. Soil moisture readings in the corn belt are now among the lowest ever recorded.
While temperature, rainfall, and drought serve as indirect indicators of crop growing conditions, each week the US Department of Agriculture releases a report on the actual state of the corn crop. This year the early reports were promising. On 21 May, 77% of the US corn crop was rated as good to excellent. The following week the share of the crop in this category dropped to 72%. Over the next eight weeks, it dropped to 26%, one of the lowest ratings on record. The other 74% is rated very poor to fair. And the crop is still deteriorating.
Over a span of weeks, we have seen how the more extreme weather events that come with climate change can affect food security. Since the beginning of June, corn prices have increased by nearly one half, reaching an all-time high on 19 July.
Although the world was hoping for a good US harvest to replenish dangerously low grain stocks, this is no longer on the cards. World carryover stocks of grain will fall further at the end of this crop year, making the food situation even more precarious. Food prices, already elevated, will follow the price of corn upward, quite possibly to record highs.
Not only is the current food situation deteriorating, but so is the global food system itself.
By CNu at July 26, 2012 2 comments
Labels: food supply , Livestock Management
UCLA And The LAPD Allow Violent Counter Protestors To Attack A Pro-Palestinian Encampment
LATimes | University administrators canceled classes at UCLA on Wednesday, hours after violence broke out at a pro-Palestinian encampment...
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theatlantic | The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers...
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Video - John Marco Allegro in an interview with Van Kooten & De Bie. TSMATC | Describing the growth of the mushroom ( boletos), P...
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Farmer Scrub | We've just completed one full year of weighing and recording everything we harvest from the yard. I've uploaded a s...