Guest Post: A Punch to the Mouth - Food Price Volatility Hits the World
Submitted by ChrisMartenson.com contributing editor Gregor Macdonald
A Punch to the Mouth: Food Price Volatility Hits the World
Perfect Storms
2011 was an abysmal year for the global insurance industry, which had to cover yet another enormous increase in damages from natural disasters. Unknown to most casual observers is the fact that during the past few decades the frequency of weather-related disasters (floods, fires, storms) has been growing at a much faster pace than geological disasters (such as earthquakes). This spread between the two types of insurable losses has moved so strongly that it prompted Munich Re to note in a late 2010 letter that weather-related disasters due to wind have doubled and flooding events have tripled in frequency since 1980. The world now has to contend with a much higher degree of risk from weather and climate volatility, and this has broad-reaching implications.
And critically, it has a particular impact on food.
Many factors seen over the past decade have produced higher food prices: population growth, urbanization, the decline of arable land per person, and the upgrading of diets for example. But more damaging than food inflation has been the pushing of global food prices out of their long, quiet envelope of stability. From the recently released UN Report on the World Food Situation:
The FAO Index (Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N) shows that, while prices are once again down from a peak, a troublesome volatility started to affect food prices this decade. These are the very prices that caused social instability in countries like Mexico in 2007-2008 (pressure on corn prices, owing in part to US corn ethanol mandates) and more recently in northern Africa (Arab Spring).
Commodity observers will note the rough correspondence with oil prices, and of course that’s no mistake. Inputs to food production are heavily composed of fossil fuels. In the same way that both high (and highly volatile) oil prices play havoc with economies, food prices and marginal speculation in food have done the same.
2011 also saw the highest average oil prices since 2008, at $94.81 per barrel. That is not far below the average high of 2008, at $99.67. In between was a crash in oil prices -- and most commodities -- which unfolded at a rate almost as rapid as the original run-ups from 2006-2008. What happens next?
The USDA has just released its Food CPI readings for 2011, along with their forecast for 2012.
With 11 months of data recorded, the outlook for the 2011 Consumer Price Index (CPI) and food price inflation has become clear. The CPI for all food is projected to increase 3.25 to 3.75 percent. Food-at-home (grocery store) prices are forecast to rise 4.25 to 4.75 percent, while food-away-from-home (restaurant) prices are forecast to increase 2 to 2.5 percent. Although food price inflation was relatively weak for most of 2009 and 2010, cost pressures on wholesale and retail food prices due to higher food commodity and energy prices, along with strengthening global food demand, have pushed inflation projections upward for 2011.
For 2012, food price inflation is expected to abate from 2011 levels but is projected to be slightly above the historical average for the past two decades. The all-food CPI is projected to increase 2.5 to 3.5 percent over 2011 levels, with food-at-home prices increasing 3 to 4 percent...
With non-existent wage growth and a dearth of investment opportunities, these price advances in food costs have much more impact than it appears. What asset classes are keeping pace with the year-over-year increases in food? Certainly not stocks, as the S&P 500 has gone nowhere in a decade. Moreover, a 3.5% increase in Food CPI this year, with more to come next year, falls on top of a deeply under-utilized US economy in which tens of millions derive income from government transfer payments, most of which are not sufficiently ratcheting higher from “inflation-adjustments." Food Stamp recipients, for example, are not seeing food inflation adjustments in their benefit checks that would compensate for the price increases. Not even close.
As you may have heard, milk was the top commodity performer in 2011, up 40% on the year in the futures market. A question: do you think milk is a central staple in American family diets? There's more. On a year-over-year basis through November, according to USDA, beef prices are up 9.8%, egg prices are up 10.25%, and potato prices are up 12%. (This partly explains why junk-type grocery foods make up an ever-larger portion of food-stamp purchasers' shopping carts. Sadly, people are buying caloric content, not nutrition).
Now, compare these price increases to the average individual Food Stamp benefit, which is basically flat year-over-year, moving from $133.79 in 2010 to $133.84 in 2011. And to the extent that households use Food Stamp benefits to plug overall cash flow problems, the very central and related pressure from higher gasoline prices also deflates the impact of the Food Stamp benefit.
Food Stamp Nation
The march higher in Food Stamp participation following the 2008 crisis has been relentless. The trend has paid no attention whatsoever to assertions of economic recovery or jobs growth in the US.
Yes, in the aggregate there has been moderate growth in private sector payrolls since the lows. There has also been a very big turnaround in exports, as this part of the economy has seen a veritable resurrection, growing to 15% of GDP. However, the upsurge in national Food Stamp participation (SNAP) has been stronger than them all. In December of 2007, just after the declared start of the “recession,” national participation in SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) stood at 27.385 million. As of the latest data, this has ballooned to 46.268 million.
Because the national figures are so enormous and harder to comprehend, for several years I have kept track of Food Stamp (SNAP) users in Los Angeles County -- alongside oil prices. Southern California illustrates well the dilemma for most of the nation: Through the force of US demand, we have lost the control we once enjoyed over oil prices, while at the same time we remain locked in to automobile-based transport. Previous recessions in the US would have knocked gasoline prices down for longer. Not so anymore. Earlier this year, it became clear to me that before year end, the number of L.A. County participants on Food Stamps would eventually cross the one million mark. That grim marker has now been achieved:
The above chart of L.A. County SNAP users echoes the FAO chart from the United Nations. Upward-moving volatility in energy is concurrent with wild swings in food prices and waves of people in need of public assistance. Wages in the US have remained flat while millions of workers remain either unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile, urbanization in the developing world has continued apace, forcing food prices and energy prices up at the margin. The results are not complicated. When demand begins to hit a resource whose supply cannot be easily increased, then price moves to ration demand and price becomes more volatile.
That process, so obvious to many, can unfortunately digress into a series of time-wasting arguments about speculators and whether the world is running out of...(insert your preferred natural resource here). On the contrary, natural resources rarely, if ever, run out in the marketplace. The US is not running out of oil, or corn, and the world is not running out of coal, or copper. What we have seen however in the past decade is that a number of structural changes to human development, primarily industrialization in the Non-OECD, have combined to put an unexpectedly large burden of demand on world resources -- at a rapid rate. Meanwhile, many natural resources, such as copper and oil in particular, had already reached a more difficult place in the arc of their own extraction history when this started to unfold.
The Decline of Arable Land
The result is that energy resources, and thus the ease of using energy resources in food production, began to converge with a long decline in the availability of arable land.
It is not for nothing that farming acreage in the US Midwest is up over several hundred percent since the lows twenty years ago. (As a personal aside, I remember those lows very well; I lived on a struggling soybean farm in Iowa during graduate school in the late 1980s). The world is in the midst of a New Great Game. But this time, the hunt is not on only for energy resources, but for agricultural resources -- mostly cropland.
On my own blog, I recently did a short post on a study of urbanization in China’s Pearl River Delta and its aggregate effect on climate and precipitation. In short? Paving over the earth decreases rainfall. I also found these two photos from NASA, comparing satellite views of the Pearl River Delta over a 14-year period from 1979 to 2003.
The loss of arable farmland per capita in China has placed enormous pressure on the global food system and all of its inputs, especially fertilizer. The miracle of the food revolution, much trumpeted over the past 30 years as the latest achievement of technology and innovation, is not to be dismissed. But there are limits. We can only convert so much farmland to urbanscape while making up the difference with N, P, and K (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium) before we lose resiliency -- and redundancy -- in the global food system. It did not used to be the case that a bad wheat crop in Australia or the Ukraine would hit global wheat prices so hard. Moreover, because food is a renewable resource, a level of overconfidence about our ability to respond to demand crept into policy-making and forecasting.
In Part II: Preparing for Higher Food Prices, using the most recent data, I show what’s happened to arable land around the world and talk about how we have created ever more tightly-coupled fragility in our systems of food production. I also chart the relative performance or return on various investments, compared to food, and show that despite the avoidance of the matter, stagflation has now entered the US economy. (How does one cope with flat wages and rising food prices?) Finally, I have just finished reading Julian Cribb’s The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, 2010, and found his discussion of virtual water very much on point, and relevant to our next set of challenges:
In theory, countries that lack water can import virtual water as food commodities with those with plenty. So too, countries that lack the energy to grow all their food can import surplus food from countries with highly productive oil based farming systems--provided they are rich enough to afford it. The fact, however, that a billion people starve while another billion wallow in surpluses of food so huge that they throw away half undermines this idea.
-- from The Coming Famine by Julian Cribb, page 122.
As I discuss in Part II, the United States is also becoming swept up in the globalization of food production, as it remains a titan of commodities exports, on an absolute basis. But the hunger for US food exports has implications for our own population, which struggles with falling (real) wages and depressed purchasing power. Will Americans be able to afford to pay what the world can afford to pay, for food?
Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access).
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You can't eat iPads?
Eat your peas bitchez!
I must report you counterrevolutionary miscreants to our Fearless Leader after his gourmet 10 course meal. It would behoove all of you to learn Swahili, the language of his Native Village.
Yeah, Dear Leader definitely doesn't skip any meals ... or deserts ...
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/what-do-you-mean-you-s...
http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/dec2011/7/9/kim-jong-un-pays-his-respe...
Regards,
Cooter
Swahili ,Jambo bwhana habari akko, means , hello mister how are you
The Swahili speak Bantu.
Opps. They do speak Swahili, but they call it Kiswahili which is a Bantu dialect. I confused It with speaking Zulu, which doesnt exist, but is Bantu. My appologies.
The droid speaks Bocce.
Odd, the Italians play Bocce, with wooden balls... :>D
That's all they could afford after the banksters stole all the money for themselves.
Is the lack of snow going to create drought conditions in the midwest, plains ?
Is Vail a big fail this year ?
Winter isn't really here yet. The fucked-up jetstream will dump it sooner or later, and it'll stay late again.
BTW, ice ages always start with increased rain and snowfall, and plants don't grow well in cold, wet conditions.
The problem is sand in your vagina. There's only a few plants that will process and use silica and make the soil workable for plants that can't handle sand in the vagina. I don't know if you've been keeping up with current events but between all the volcano's popping and fukishima the soil is fucked.
Grow yer own, bitchezzz........!
And don't forget the lead needed to keep it! It's the "new required nutrient" and by the ay, fuck NPK fertilizer. Cow shit works better than any of that industrial garbage. And may I sugggest if you live in the north, like I do, it's time to stock up on canning jars and relearn how to store all that beautiful bounty. Or just bring me your silver until I run out of extra.
"I think everyone should eat what they grow."
M Just kidding
Wow, check out this horribly failed attack by John Huntsman on Ron Paul. Another epic!
http://silverliberationarmy.blogspot.com/2012/01/attack-piece-on-ron-paul-is-blowing-up.html
U.N.Holy cow! ...if that isn't the Bat Signal in the ''we are outta beans'' bag Batman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj4otoNF6xk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kBHNrfT9aE&feature=related
Shh..don't tell the Fed.
Austerity induced anorexia chic......coming to a town near you.
These fuckers won't be satisfied until they have mutated every decent characteristic out of every single staple food on the planet. We are now one serious blight away from food disaster.
Thanks Monsanto!
<sarc>
Africans who live on less than one $ a day cannot afford skyrocketing food prices. Bernanke's inflationary policies are pushing hundreds of millions towards poverty worldwide.
America, however could use some food shortages. What a bunch of fatasses.
http://www.singledudetravel.com/2011/07/fat-people-the-aids-of-america/
did you miss Tylers post on the 3rd World Population Explosion? and how killing off all those extra bodies in the BRIC's would save the World a BUNCH! of oil.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/presenting-nssm-200-implications-worldwide-population-growth-us-security-and-overseas-interests
enjoy!
Got flour?
No good.
We'll just eat each other. - Donner
That's why Americans are famine proof, they carry our stratigic calorie reserves arund every day in their SUV's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USObesityRate1960-2004.svg
see.. here's the plan..
the powers that be...
are taking away the money of the working class / middle..
for their own good..
to help them be skinny'er!
More Thankless God's Work! that is being done by Wall Street!
When will Wall Street get some credit for trying to save all of the the Middle Class from Obesity?
Thank God! Wall Street is doing God's Work!
The Job Creators!! do Love us!!!
Thanks Monsanto!
If a corporation is a criminal, when does one become a "habitual criminal" and be permanently locked up?
How is it that a collection of people, all with moderately functioning consciences, behave as a psychopath?
But I thought inflation was under control? Better add a few more zeros to those accounts benny boy.
I sold Texas beef cows in the last 2 months. My auction sale prices were up 20% to 40% from last year. I am a rancher/farmer that gets the lowest price in the food chain.
Expect continued higher prices for beef.
This shouldn't have any effect on McDonalds burgers.
yes, thankfully the rat population is doing quite well, especially with the decline in municipal rodent control budgets. supply clearly outweighs demand for the mcd burger.......................
Those are harvested during McRib season...for a limited time only.
Don't forget Soylent Green.
No, it will go like this, I have cattle, got gold bitcheez?
By sheer coincidence, today is Tuesday, which is Soylent Green day.
Soylent green shoots bitchez!
McRib...Rats?...think smaller and more legs.
"McRib is people!" McRib is people!"
Tasty tasty people.
mmmm, rat chow mein
I made the observation here a few days ago that an ounce of gold could buy about 14 man-years of corn calories. A 50 pound sack (for my chickens) costs me about $14 retail (up from $10 less than a year ago, down from $15 a few months ago, but that's another story).
Food is operating in a different space to things like gold, housing, oil, and insurance. Anything related to the banksters, in short. My monthly rent check also buys that 14 (or more) man-years of corn. It's bullshit. A months rent for 15 years of food? Something is broken, and it's pretty clear what it is. It's the fucking system. What might be a reasonable balance between food and a roof over your head? Perhaps a month's food for a month's rent? In corn, that's about 35 pounds.....$10. So, monthly rent comes down to $10, or price of corn goes up to $2,000 a sack. Maybe it should be 6 months food for a month's accomodation. So corn goes to $300.
Rough numbers, but they paint a pretty clear, and a pretty desolate, picture. When reality hits, we are fucked. The reality might come courtesy of an oil shock (essentially free oil keeps corn essentially free), a financial collapse, or from a massive crop failure, something like what Monsanto monoculture virtually guarantees. Whatever, it's going to come.
Is corn subsidized?
Yes, but you can distill the subsidy right out of it.
OT> www.msn.com
bottom right side polling for iowa voting.
GO RP GO!
Mittens is in the lead atm with 100k Votes. ya haha right.
Did anybody see the news about the death birds and fish again all over the planet?
Now they're linking it to the plasma stroms of the sun last week.
You mean it has nothing to do with fireworks being set off for New Years like the earlier MSM reports said?
That. *Waves dismissively.
A box of big fireworks was lighted deliberately in the woods where the migrating birds roost each year. These birds cannot fly at night. So whoever lit the fireworks killed 2000 birds, stuffed the NOAA weather radar and took advantage of a inversion that increased the percieved sound.
Those woods will vanish in the months to come to be turned into a Walmart that will choke that tiny town where birds drop from the sky.
That will teach those little FN rats with wings to shit on my car again.
Won't matter until political leaders north of the equater start getting tumors.
I saw a report trying to link the dead birds to the HAARP project in Alaska.
Is there an extra zero on the SNAP chart for LA County or does that say 1,025,000? Really? Over 1,000,000 people on SNAP in LA alone?
Probably not where you want to be when hyperinflation kicks in.
If they start to feed on their own, it would take about 30 weeks to get. Their numbers down to only 1700
That is if 10 people,where able to feed on 1 person for 1 week that is...
No silicone included...
¿Por Que? Silicone is quite chewy and lasts a long time (or so I'm told) :>D
That number really got my attention too. Wow a million folks in one county (albeit the most populous county or close to it).
Probably bullish. </sarc>
Unt za vorld goez boom
I believe my oil company and they say poppycock.
Print more food?
And now you can, with the amazing 3D Printer with food printing capabilities! http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/24/technology/3D_food_printer/index.htm
Guess I'll stick with "Tasty Wheat" :>D
WE NEED MORE PARKING LOTS!!!.! MORE I SAY!!!
A decline in arable land means that more and more production per acre must be achieved.
This is accomplished with mechanization, pesticides, fertilizers; all dependent upon oil.
Food price volatility, and high food prices, were the kindling for the revolts and revolutions of 2011.
I think we should all go to Namibia and chill out.
Could food be the next bubble? Farm land is being bid up strong by speculators. Perhaps more than oil, speculators will fuel the next land bubble and take food prices with it. Who was it that bought a bunch of almond orchards?
Mr. Peanut bought the almond orchards. With his tophat and monocle, he's trying to be the John D. of the 21st Century.
That's fucking funny. Thanks, dude, needed a laugh.
Go down towards Virginia's tidewater, you will find the Peanut. Georgia as well.
There are a number of other things too.
To be honest I hate what they are doing to our Corn. Distilling the crap for ethanol. We can cook and eat it or we can still it and fuel our car.
Which?
Also Ethanol likes to keep hold of water which means Gas Stations selling % Ethanol fuel and holding too much water in storage will ruin the vehicles that fuel up. Particularly those with Rubber timing belt and valves that stick down into the cylinder tube.
We have lots of chicken and turkey, tornadoes kill a percentage but still... they get turned into Mcnuggets while we learn to bake the actual chicken and eat well.
We have been growing Tomatoes every year and avoiding the ever rising cost.
Apple orchids were replaced across Washington State a decade ago, They should be in prime now however because of water issues in irrigation we pay 1.40 a pound at the store.
When the fuel rises even more, expect that to double.
The Feedlots out west are full of it. Literally. The meat triangle probably has too much livestock to slaughter into beef. Hopefully the price of oil stays a little lower for a few more months until new pastures grow again.
Otherwise prepare for higher beef and milk.
I well remember the time when milk was so cheap it was not worth a penny producing it. I think we might want to get a cow or two ourselves and a bit of grass to feed it with.
Hydroponics is getting a boost due to increase in input.
heard about "terra preta", obviously you have not ? Farmers beginning to come to grips with carbon capture soils
Simple composting, worm farming etc...I think there will be a real market for small solutions in the future as suburbanites plow under their water sucking lawns for productive gardens.
Big Pharm will never go this route.
There is NO inflation........especially no food inflation. So says the US Government......backed up by Homeland Security. If you claim otherwise, you will be declared a terrorist and hauled away.
The good news is that they might........MIGHT, mind you..........feed you two or three squares a day while you rot away in Guantanamo. Then you really won't experience food inflation.
Come on Cog I would expect you to understand that prices can go up due to increase in money supply chasing products, (not happening) or prices can go up due to the product decreasing against a flat or even declining money supply (happening).
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2011/02/drought-and-desertification-grow...
"30 million acres a year lost to drought and desertification"
Buy Farms Bitchez!
:>)
Actually my comment was directed towards those traitorous bastards who do not believe their government always acts in their best interest. They deserve to be dragged off by their "rights" and "left" to rot in the heat of Guantanamo.
/sarc off
Hey, they didn't pass the right for government to declare any American citizen they choose a terrorist supporter and haul them away for indefinite detention without legal representation for life at any one of a number of secret CIA torture prisons set up around the world in friendly nations.
All that is needed is the presidents signature declaring you a terror supporter, no evidence needed, and the military can kidnap you in broad daylight, torture a confession out of you and keep you in detention at the torture prisons for life, you have zero rights to any appeal, leagl recourse or even the right for your whereabouts to be made public to your family.
Now some would argue that "only the gulity have anything to fear". Because naturally the all knowing and loving government employees in charge of torture, inprisonment and kidnapping would never ever hold an innocent man. We ALL know that only terrorist supporters would ever be held for life in secret torture prisons. The president would never ever sign off on anyone who wasn't a terrorist would he?
We can sleep sound knowing the all powerful government is doing this for our own good, to help us be safe and free and secure in our rights as Americans.
Potato field. The new Battlefield.
Them bastard farmers are ruining our freedom! Off to the Casino-Gulag!
You don't know how close you are to the truth.
A recent FOIA request reveals that the FBI wants food activists now labeled as terrorists if their efforts/investigations produce economic harm.
http://www.cagle.com/2011/12/open-up-and-say-ahh/
Un-fucking believable.
Again...why cant further money printing, bailouts, QE fix all this? Its worked SO well to this point.
Actually rat tastes a little like chicken; squirrels are good in a pinch too; just ask any hillbilly type; knew a few in my Kentucky/W. Va coal investment days.
Tree rats are a pain in the ass. Rabbit is where it is at for small game eating. Easy to clean, and the meat of 10 squirrels.
Agree bunnys are primo but tree rat parboiled and then pan seared are tender and good enough. Bumper crop of sky carp (geese) this year- all going to jerky. Smoked duck on rice with red cajun sauce can't be beat. Homebrew makes it all good.
Not much fat in rabbit meat
+1 on that. early north american settlers suffered from "rabbit starvation",
aka "mal du caribou". still it's nice easy source of protein and is so dishless
(that would be irish for delicious). I'd say it would be part of a _varied_ diet.
Raising rabbits is far easier (and more reliable) than shooting them in the wild.
Better ROI than chickens, cattle, pigs etc...in terms of protein (high) /fat (low).
God loves chickens. That is why He/She/It made so many animals taste like them.
maybe in part 5 you'll mention HAARP, or maybe, those pesky chem-trail thingies up there yonder? maybe mention seizure of hobby farms, little front yard garden seizures! $10,000 fines if hay stacks emit any dust! wait! i have another one! fracking! fracking on farmland! food grown on it is sure to give ya gas! then, then, we'll all get $10,000 fines! and, if we can't pay up, maybe a visit to one of those free wi-fi fema family fun centers!
note to self: press "enter" once.
Note to self: add more MREs and freeze-dried food on next ammo run. Push the coolies harder in the silver mine.
I don't see how the 1 million mark is that big of a deal according to the numbers based on population.
That is around 11% of the population of LA county, which holds over 20% of californias population. I'm actually suprised the number isn't higher considering. It will only get worse. The chicken processors are going to push hard this year for price increases. Chicken demand has been pretty good this past year due to the increase in beef prices world wide. As beef continues to rise you will see even more people eating chicken.
try and visualise the frustration of exiting a parking lot at the same time as 1000 people at christmas time. now picture in your mind, 1 million tired hungry people with no prospect of a future.
chicken is not what they are interested in.
Those Chick-Fil-A commercials are finally making a difference.