Dairy Farmers Warn Milk Prices Could Skyrocket To $6 A Gallon

How much would you pay for a gallon for milk? Dairy farmers warn that there could be a jump in price at the grocery store by year’s end.

Ken Nobis is with the Michigan Milk Producers Association and notes that Congress has its plate full of very pressing issues and fears the Farm Bill may be on the back burner:

“Probably, talking in the neighborhood of $5-6 a gallon for milk,” said Nobis. “The consequences are consumers aren’t going to buy the product at that cost.”

The U.S. House voted down a farm bill back in June — after the Senate approved a different version. There have been disagreements over food stamp funding tied to the measure. Read more >>

One-third of seafood mislabeled, study finds

If you order tuna at a D.C. restaurant, chances are half the time you’ll be getting another, less expensive fish in its place. But those odds are better than if you had wanted snapper. Testers nationwide found that 87 percent of the time, restaurants and grocery stores were selling something else under that label.

As much as one-third of seafood sold in restaurants and groceries is fraudulently labeled, according to a report the advocacy group Oceana released Thursday. The group sampled 674 retail outlets in the District and 20 states between 2010 and 2012, often finding cheaper, farmed fish being sold in place of wild-caught ones.

Ninety-five percent of the sushi restaurants, 52 percent of other restaurants and 27 percent of grocery stores surveyed sold mis­labeled seafood. While academics, consumer groups and media outlets in the United States and elsewhere have scrutinized fish labeling before and found major errors, Oceana’s effort is one of the largest seafood investigations to date. Read more >>

5 Simple Ways To Prepare For The Coming Food Crisis

Image via WikipediaActivist Post
Personal ways to protect yourself from food shortages may seem obvious to some, but many feel the task can be insurmountable. To the contrary, here are 5 simple ways to protect yourself from the coming food crisis:

1. Create a Food Bank: Everyone should have a back-up to the everyday food pantry. In this environment, you should consider your personal food bank far more valuable than a dollar savings account. Start by picking up extra canned goods, dried foods, and other essentials for storage each time you go to the store. Also, hunt for coupons and shop for deals when they come up. Devise a plan for FIFO (first in, first out) rotation for your food bank. It is advisable to acquire food-grade bins to store your bulk dried foods, and be sure to label and date everything. Besides the obvious store-able foods like rice and beans, or canned goods, some other important items to hoard are salt, peanut butter, cooking oils, sugar, coffee, and powdered milk. If you don't believe the food crisis will be too severe, then buy items that you would eat on a normal daily basis. But if you believe the crisis will be sustained for some time, purchasing a grain mill to refine bulk wheat or corn may prove to be the most economical way to stretch your food bank. Some emergency MREs are also something to consider because they have a long shelf life.


2. Produce Your Own Food: Having some capacity to produce your own food will simply become a necessity as the food system crumbles. If you don't know much about gardening, then start small with a few garden boxes for tomatoes, herbs, or sprouting and keep expanding to the limits of your garden. And for goodness sakes, get some chickens. They are a supremely easy animal to maintain and come with endless benefits from providing eggs and meat, to eating bugs and producing rich manure. Five laying hens will ensure good cheap protein for the whole family. If you have limited growing space, there are brilliant aquaculture systems that can produce an abundance of fish and vegetables in a small area. Aquaponics is a contained organic hydroponic system where the fertilized waste water from the fish tank is pumped through the vegetable growing trays which absorb the nutrients before returning clean water to the fish tank. Set high goals for independent food production, but start with what's manageable.

3. Learn Food Preservation: Food preservation comes in many forms such as canning, pickling, and dehydrating. In every case some tools and materials are required along with a good deal of knowledge. If you can afford a dehydrator, they all usually come with a preparation guide for most foods. You can also purchase a vacuum sealer if you have the means. A good vacuum sealer should come with thorough instructions and storage tips, and will add months if not years to many food items. If you're a beginner at canning, start with tomatoes first. It's easy and very valuable when all your tomatoes ripen at the same time and you want fresh pasta sauce in the winter. A bigger ticket item that is nice to have for food preservation is a DC solar powered chest freezer. It is the ultimate treasure chest.

4. Store Seeds: The government and the elite have seed banks and so should you. Seeds have been a viable currency in many civilizations past and present. They represent food when scarcity hits. Before the rise of commercial seed giants like Monsanto, local gardeners were adept at selecting seeds from the healthiest plants, saving them, and introducing them to the harvest for the following year, thus strengthening the species. Through local adaptation to pests, genetic diversity was further ensured; it was long-term thinking at its finest. That is why it is important to find heirloom seed banks and learn to save seeds from each harvest.

5. Join or Start a Local Co-Op: Joining local cooperatives is very important, especially when food shortages occur. You may not be able to provide for yourself completely, especially in terms of variety, so having a community mechanism to spread the burden and share the spoils will be critical. If you don't know if you have a local food cooperative in your area you can search the directory at LocalHarvest.org. You may also be able to get information from your local farmers market. If your area doesn't have a co-op, then start one. These co-ops don't have to be big or elaborate. In fact, it may be more optimal to organize it with friends, neighbors, or co-workers. Whether you join or start a cooperative, work to expand the participants and products.

Surging grocery prices by mid-summer

Image via WikipediaSurging wheat and corn prices could hit the items in your grocery basket by mid-summer if planting conditions across the country don't improve.

It's a case of two extremes: dry weather conditions in parts of the southern United States and in Europe have sparked fears of a supply crunch of wheat, while supplies of corn are being threatened by flooding and heavy rain in the Midwest.

Wheat futures rose for a fourth consecutive session on Thursday, and prices are up more than 10% from a week ago. Corn futures were mixed Thursday after rising for five days, and are up nearly 12% over the past week.

While it typically takes time for increases in the futures markets to translate into price hikes at grocery stores, consumers could be in serious trouble if supplies continue to dwindle and prices keep going up. More...

Deflationists Can Kiss My $$$

Hours cut, wages cut, unemployment up, foreclosures up, credit card interests rates are up, oil up, energy prices up, and now for the 3rd year in a row food prices are up while the dollar goes down. There's no deflation for the working man.

Steep food price increases on way
Reuters reports U.S. food prices will rise by at least 7 percent in 2009 because of higher feed costs for chickens, hogs and cattle, said a group of food-industry economists on Thursday.

It would be the third year in a row that food prices rose faster than the overall U.S. inflation rate. Food inflation is the highest since 1990.

"The sizable increase in the cost of producing food has not been fully passed on to the consumer," said private consultant Bill Lapp. He foresaw food inflation of 7 percent-9 percent in 2009.

During a teleconference, economists from the National Chicken Council and the consultancy Farm Econ said food inflation could be 7 percent-8 percent. The teleconference was arranged by a group of major foodmakers.

Wholesale prices for items used by foodmakers have climbed more rapidly than grocery and restaurant prices, so higher consumer prices are in store, said Lapp.

Although grain prices have declined since summer, this year's corn, wheat and soybean crops are forecast to fetch prices at the farm gate that are double their 2005 levels. Corn and soybeans are major ingredients in feed rations.

"We've been losing money for more than a year," said Bill Roenigk, economist for the Chicken Council, who said producers intend to cut production by as much as 12 percent. "We need to recover these feed costs."

Thomas Elam, head of Farm Econ, said poultry, hog and cattle producers would cut production in coming months because of feed costs, meaning less meat on the retail market but at higher prices.

Menu prices are restaurants up 4.3 percent so far this year, the largest increase since 1990, said Hudson Riehle of the National Restaurant Association. He said one-third of each sales dollar goes to food purchases.

Agriculture Department forecasts also say pricey meats will drive food inflation in 2008.

Americans spend more than $1 trillion a year on groceries, snacks, carry-out foods and restaurant meals. Farmers get 20 cents of the food dollar. The rest goes to processing, labor, transportation and distribution.