USDA Reports Food Shortages: Wall Street 'Caught Off Guard' by Severity

By Eric Blair - BLN Contributing Writer

Several recent headlines indicate that food prices will continue their swift climb upward. These troubling new reports show that agriculture production and stored grains are critically low and experts are now predicting food shortages.

Look at a few of today's mainstream headlines: Drought threatens global rice supply in the India Times; VA farmers say heat taking toll on crops, Associated Press; Severe food shortage follows lack of rainfall in Syria; and, finally, Corn prices bolt as USDA downsizes crop estimates, which states that, "Commodity professionals were caught off guard Wednesday by a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showing 1 million fewer acres of corn planted this year than earlier projected, and almost 300 million fewer bushels of corn in storage." And these articles don't begin to address crops being damaged by the toxic rain from the Gulf oil disaster.

We are back to recession economics and rapidly heading toward a deeper, longer “Third Depression.” With all recent economic indicators setting new record lows and deficits at record highs, this ship is only going one way folks, down, down to Chinatown. This WTC-Building 7-style-controlled-demolition of the U.S. economy has long been engineered by the borderless banksters and will likely continue to collapse at the rate of free-fall gravity. With all of the manufactured confusion it may be difficult to know where best to invest your limited assets, but it seems to be clear that Food is on the march.

Depressions are caused when capital is removed from the economy and that large sucking sound you hear is your money being vacuumed out of your pockets into the banksters' coffers. The shakedown went like this: they bet big, got fat, then lost thousands of times more than everything real on earth combined, then representatives of the serfs gave them all of the serfs’ money they need (including bonuses) to re-stimulate the economy.

Well, our money is NOT flowing back into the economy as promised, and it will not be flowing back into the economy anytime soon. With nothing but crumbs left for the peasants, deflation is happening to durable goods and paper assets (of which real estate has become), while the cost of human necessity is rapidly inflating.

There were several trend forecasters and financial firms predicting upwards of $200/barrel of oil before the Gulf oil gusher. The “analysts” said this would occur because of the perception of scarcity and a weakening dollar. The oil disaster and the subsequent outrage at Big Oil will surely take care of selling the perception of scarcity, while the Federal Reserve and Congress will surely take care of weakening the dollar.

We’ve seen this Beta test before when oil prices reached their peak of $147 in 2008 sending the price of food to the stratosphere. Food staples like rice nearly tripled in six months and at times increased 50% in just two weeks primarily because of record oil prices and a weak dollar in 2008. During this run up on prices, big box stores like Sam's Club and Costco were rationing the number of bags of rice customers could buy. You can bet that Food Crisis Beta 2.010 will be far more severe.

This third factor of actual Food Scarcity, coupled with high oil prices and a feeble dollar, will multiply the severity of increasing food prices. Whether this scarcity is being engineered to further cull the population or is a genuine imbalance in supply and demand is not important. The fact is that this reality that is playing out in the matrix and this triple-threat to food costs creates an opportunity for the serfs to soften the recessionary blow, and perhaps offer some economic freedom.

You don’t have to be an “End Times survivalist” to believe storing food is a pragmatic practice. Everyone with expendable cash can and should design a good food storage and rotation system and buy bulk food as an investment. Many rationalists are touting guns, ammo, and gold as good small-scale investments given the despicable agenda unfolding in our matrix. Certainly those are critical investments in an economy dwindled to the rationing of necessity, but not everyone is into guns or can afford bundles of gold. And gold, at the end of the day, can only be traded for necessity.

These recent food alerts seem to indicate that food may be the best short-term investment for the “Average Joe.” It's simple, if the retail price of rice doubles as it did in 2008, then you (the investor) make 100% return in something that's immediately tangible. It’s time to pay the tax penalty to cash out your mediocre "I-bought-in-to-the-American-Dream" 401K and invest in Food!