The Next 6 Months: What To Expect
The price of corn is up thirty-two percent in the first quarter of this year. Beef is up seventeen percent. The price of chicken is up twenty-five percent in just the last two months. You have probably noticed the price of gasoline up forty-one percent as well. Still, you may not have yet seen that the cost of a metric ton of olive oil is up one-hundred-eighty-two percent since the start of this year. That hasn’t yet trickled down to your grocery store shelves, but it will.
So, what’s going on? Gasoline is actually in a surplus. There are mostly enough cows and chickens. There hasn’t been a collapse in olive orchards. Shortages aren’t always tied to singular events, but distinct events can lead to shortages for consumers. When we think of shortages we tend to only think of them as the unavailability of a product because it isn’t available anywhere. It used to be that when the potato got blight, or the drought wiped out crops, that was it. None of that crop was available to anyone. But shortages have become very complex over the years as a global supply chain has sprung up. Sometimes there’s a shortage of a crop, but on a dock, somewhere, tons of it are rotting away.
This blog will examine some of the shortages looming on the horizon and what you can do about them. From crops to pharmaceuticals to fuel, this year is shaping up to be the year of shortages. Let’s take a look…
FOOD SHORTAGES
Recent research sponsored by the global credit ratings agency Moody’s concluded: “that by the end of the century, parts of the US and Europe are now bound to experience severe reductions in rainfall equivalent to the American ‘dust bowl’ of the 1930s, which devastated Midwest farming for a decade.”…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
