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It’s no secret that America has a serious inflation problem. Though the Federal Reserve insists that our inflation rate is only at around .5%, we’ve all seen the price of food, rent, healthcare, and energy skyrocket over the past 10-20 years. However, this has been a gradual shift. Canada on the other hand, has just seen the price of every day goods rise precipitously over a very short period of time.

The crash in oil prices has crippled their economic growth, and led to the decline of the Canadian dollar, as well as a predictable increase in the cost of imports like food. For those of us living in the US, this provides a really good example of what life may be like should the dollar take a plunge in the near future. Here’s what our northern neighbors have been dealing with:

It is often said that a free-floating currency acts as a shock absorber.

But when Canadians go shopping for groceries these days, they’re getting nothing but the shock—sticker shock, that is.

On Tuesday, the Canadian dollar, commonly known as the loonie, broke below 70 U.S. cents for the first time since May 1, 2003.

For America’s northern neighbor, which imports about 80 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables its citizens consume, this entails a sharp rise in prices for these goods. With lower-income households tending to spend a larger portion of income on food, this side effect of a soft currency brings them the most acute stress.

James Price, director of Capital Markets Products at Richardson GMP, recently joked during an interview on BloombergTV Canada that “we’re going to be paying a buck a banana pretty soon.”

Canadians took to twitter this week to share their collective horror over the rising cost of food. Cucumbers are $3 each. A head of cauliflower is $8.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Food and Medicine Will Soon Be Unobtainable

January 14, 2016

Food and Medicine Will Soon Be Unobtainable

If product is not moving, then how will you get your food, medicine and other essential supplies? Famed economists, John Williams, from Shadow Stats and Joseph Meyer, Straight Money Analysis, will tell you that the Baltic Dry Index is the best indicator of the economic health of the economy.

The BDI Is At a Record Low

Unfortunately, the BDI, has just dropped another 3.1% to a new record low of 402. To anyone who knows anything about economics, it is clear that the end of this financial era is quickly coming to an end.

The MSM Conspires to Keep the Truth From the People

The Main Stream Media is totally ignoring the precipitous and unprecedented drop in the BDI. However, the impending financial crisis is not going unnoticed by those who manage the shipping industry. They recognize this as the total disaster that it is. For example, total orders at the shipyards in China, have dropped off by a nearly 60% in the first 11 months of last year according to Bloomberg.

Why Is the Record Drop In the BDI a Problem?

In President Obama’s “last” State of the Union Address last night, did he fail to mention that he will not be leaving office anytime soon? Sorry Hillary. The coming catastrophe will soon allow Obama to stay on as President in order to manage the present crisis and to, of course, “save the American people”.

America is the land of the 3000 mile salad. Virtually everything we consume, wear and use is shipped thousands of miles. The BDI measures the volume of shipments on a global scale. If the volume of shipment was any lower, nothing would be shipped. Could you write the ending to this? Can you even imagine mass starvation and civil unrest of unprecedented proportions?

This Perfect Storm Could Cause You to Starve to Death

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canadians Panic As Food Prices Soar On Collapsing Currency

January 13, 2016

Canadians Panic As Food Prices Soar On Collapsing Currency

It was just yesterday when we documented the continuing slide in the loonie, which is suffering mightily in the face of oil’s inexorable decline.

As regular readers are no doubt acutely aware, Canada is struggling through a dramatic economic adjustment, especially in Alberta, the heart of the country’s oil patch. Amid the ongoing crude carnage the province has seen soaring property crime, rising food bank usage and, sadly, elevated suicide rates, as Albertans struggle to comprehend how things up north could have gone south (so to speak) so quickly.

The plunging loonie “can only serve to worsen the death of the ‘Canadian Dream'” we said on Tuesday.

As it turns out, we were exactly right.

The currency’s decline is having a pronounced effect on Canadians’ grocery bills. As Bloomberg reminds us, Canada imports around 80% of its fresh fruits and vegetables. When the loonie slides, prices for those good soar. “With lower-income households tending to spend a larger portion of income on food, this side effect of a soft currency brings them the most acute stress,” Bloomberg continues.

Of course with the layoffs piling up, you can expect more households to fall into the “lower-income” category where they will have to struggle to afford things like $3 cucumbers, $8 cauliflower, and $15 Frosted Flakes. Have a look at the following tweets which underscore just how bad it is in Canada’s grocery aisles.

View image on Twitter

Follow

Steve Ladurantaye @sladurantaye

Three bucks. For a cucumber.

2:24 PM – 12 Jan 2016

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weather extremes slash cereal yields

January 10, 2016

Weather extremes slash cereal yields

Wheat and other cereal crops in developed countries such as Australia have been decimated. Image: CSIRO via Wikimedia Commons

Increasing intensity of heat and drought as a result of global warming may have caused worldwide cereal harvests to be cut by up to a tenth since the mid-1960s.

LONDON, 8 January, 2016 – Climate change may have already begun to take its toll of agriculture. New research suggests that drought and extreme heat in the last 50 years have reduced cereal production by up to 10%. And, for once, developed nations may have sustained greater losses than developing nations.

Researchers have been warning for years that global warming as a consequence of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – in turn, a pay-off from increased fossil fuel combustion – will result in a greater frequency or intensity in extremes of weather.

They have also warned more recently that weather-related extremes could damage food security in Europe, Africa and India.

Global cost

But a study in Nature journal by Navin Ramankutty, professor in global food security and sustainability at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and colleagues is perhaps the first to identify the global cost of weather-related disasters in the last half of the 20th century.

The researchers looked at 2,800 extreme hydro-meteorological disasters – floods, droughts and extremes of heat and cold – reported between 1964 and 2007 from 177 countries, and matched the data with production figures for 16 cereal crops.

They could detect no significant influence from floods or ice storms, but they found that drought and extreme heat reduced average national cereal production by between 9% and 10%.

Drought reduced both cereal yield and the area under harvest, while heat mainly affected yield. This is likely to be a consequence of different timescales: droughts can last for years, but heatwaves tend to be counted in no more than weeks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Legumes in the Kitchen: They Are Not Just For Nitrogen-Fixing

January 5, 2016

LEGUMES IN THE KITCHEN: THEY ARE NOT JUST FOR NITROGEN-FIXING

When it comes to legumes, I come from a fortunate background. Born and raised in the southern Louisiana, where cuisine is something entirely different than the rest of the United States, food has long been a product of love and cherish. It deserves devotion. It is given time. Louisianans know the value of doing it slow. Consequently, I grew up intrinsically aware of the worth, nutritionally and palatably, of a home-cooked meal.

What’s more is that, in Louisiana, food comes from the earth. It’s a state full of food festivals and festivities centered around locally produced food. I grew up knowing the time to buy watermelon or the season for crawfish, and I grew up sharing a table with extended family, all of us licking our fingers clean of spices and sauces. We know how to eat. We know how to cook. And, around the country, the world even (though people don’t realize that Cajun is of Louisiana), our flavors are renown.

All of this is to say that, for me, moving into permaculture, the constant inclusion of legumes as a powerful garden element is nothing short of miraculous. In Louisiana, we are a bean-and-rice eating people. Traditionally, Mondays are for one of our signature dishes: red beans and rice, often with homemade sausage. For New Year’s Day, black-eyed peas (a variety of cowpeas) and cabbage are tradition for bringing in health and wealth in the months to come. We eat beans all the time.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From Growth Economics to Home Economics: Towards a Peasant Socialism

December 21, 2015

From Growth Economics to Home Economics: Towards a Peasant Socialism

As a student in the 1980s, I was educated by probably the last generation of academics who found it possible to identify wholeheartedly with Marxism. They were good people and clever thinkers, and I suppose I became a Marxist myself for a time under their influence. I never made a good revolutionary, but I believed in science, progress, rationality and, above all, equality. I was acutely conscious of how lucky I was to be a privileged citizen of a privileged country – privileges that in many ways were built on the backs of less fortunate people. So, if I thought much at all about the kind of society I wanted to see, I suppose it would have been one in which everyone could live a life like mine – an urban wage labourer working in the knowledge economy, shopping in the supermarket, and getting away for the odd weekend to the mountains to reconnect with the wilder side of life.

Decades later, I’m a mostly self-employed farmer working a small piece of land, growing a fair slice of my own food, with few opportunities to ‘get away’, but absorbed in the daily wildness of creating sustenance from the earth. I still believe in equality, and I still believe in science, progress and rationality, although in a more conflicted way than before. And when I now think about the kind of society I’d like to see – which I do more often than I used to – I imagine one in which a lot of people live a similar kind of life to my present one. I have, in short, become an advocate for peasantisation, localisation, agrarian populism, anti-globalisation and degrowth – a cluster of ideas that I think of as an economics of the home¹.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Halifax Superstores warn of short supply due to weather, dollar

December 20, 2015

Halifax Superstores warn of short supply due to weather, dollar

Grocery bills likely will go up in 2016 due to vegetable and fruit prices, a report says

Inflation is modest at 1 per cent, but the price of fresh vegetables was up 11.5 per cent in September, Statistics Canada said.

Inflation is modest at 1 per cent, but the price of fresh vegetables was up 11.5 per cent in September, Statistics Canada said. (Jacques Boissinot/Canadian)

A sign posted in the produce section of a Halifax area Superstore apologized to customers for the inconvenience.

”Due to weather related issues in the growing regions coupled with the impact of U.S. exchange,” the sign reads, “we are unfortunately experiencing significantly higher than normal costs and gaps in supply.”

These signs have been posted in Superstores in the Halifax area. (Nancy Waugh/CBC)

No one from Loblaw, the chain which owns Atlantic Superstore, was available to comment Saturday.

Dominion grocery stores, also owned by Loblaw, posted similar signs in Newfoundland this week.

The price of groceries in Canada has risen by 4.1 per cent in the last year — faster than inflation, according to a recent food price forecast by the University of Guelph.

7 foods that will cost you more in 2016 and why

Canada imports 81 per cent of its produce, much of that from the U.S., which has had variable weather and drought in the last year. That problem has been compounded by a sudden, severe drop of the Canadian dollar last winter, largely due to oil, the report said.

Consumers saw the price of fruit jump by 9.1 per cent and vegetables even more by 10.1, the report found.

Food prices ‘steadily marching up’

Annette d’Eon picked up a few groceries at Quinpool Road’s Superstore Saturday afternoon. Food prices she’s seen have been “steadily marching up,” she said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

When You Grow Your Food–You Know Your Food

December 7, 2015

WHEN YOU GROW YOUR FOOD—YOU KNOW YOUR FOOD

When did food get so complicated? Not complicated to prepare, of course; it seems like companies delight in creating ever-more-convenient foods for us to enjoy, right out of the package or after a short trip through the microwave. But at what cost does that convenience come? The more simplified the methods of preparation and consumption are, it seems, the more complex our ingredient labels have become. And many of us are starting to question whether or not that’s a price worth paying.

That’s why more people are growing their own food.

PROCESSED FOODS & THEIR INGREDIENTS—MYSTERY AFTER MYSTERY

You’ve probably seen a few lists of the “grossest” ingredients in processed foods. Maybe you’ve heard about carmine, a red dye created from crushed beetles, or cellulose, which is essentially very, very fine sawdust. Both are quite common in various processed and prepared foods. But these two ingredients, at least, are relatively recognizable and have been used extensively for a long time.

We’re less concerned about the ick factor than we are the simple fact that it can be difficult to know what you’re eating—and that can let more than an icky ingredient or two slip by you. For example, are you familiar with butylated hydroxytoluene? Probably not. But not only is this additive used in jet fuel, rubber, and embalming fluids, it’s also used in foods—as a preservative.

So what? Well, if you do a bit of research on this one very common ingredient, you’ll find that there’s a fair bit of controversy surrounding it. It can be “reasonably anticipated” to be a cancer-causing agent in human beings, according to the National Toxicology Program. Its MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) cites its potential to cause liver damage.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Grand Finale: “World War III Will Be A Fight Over Basic Human Needs – Food and Other Commodities”

November 15, 2015

The Grand Finale: “World War III Will Be A Fight Over Basic Human Needs – Food and Other Commodities”

As political tensions heat up it is becoming clear that the world’s super powers are vying for control of resources like oil, water, metals and food. And though developed nations have thus far avoided any significant clashes with each other, the proxy wars being waged in the middle east and Europe are a slow burning fuse that will soon lead to widespread military confrontation.

Throughout human history one key factor has been behind every major war: a battle for resources. As the following documentary from Future Money Trends warns, this time will be no different:

“The Pentagon told Fortune Magazine that World War III will be a fight over basic human needs – food and other commodities.”

(Watch this video at Youtube)

Natural resource wars are brewing and becoming an increasing threat, and may be the grand finale to an already intensified currency war among the world’s top economies.

Most wars in human history are a fight over natural resources.

… Credit is ever expanding, but the resources we pull out of the ground are finite.

The culmination of economic, financial and monetary crisis will be a grand finale unlikely any seen in the history of the world. War is coming. The time to prepare is now.

Trade deals boosting climate change: the food factor

October 31, 2015

Trade deals boosting climate change: the food factor

The climate talks in Paris in December this year are viewed as a last chance for the world’s governments to commit to binding targets that might halt our march towards catastrophe. But in the countdown to Paris, many of these same governments have signed or are pushing a raft of ambitious trade and investment deals that would pre-empt measures that they could take to deal with climate change (see box 1).

What we know of these deals so far, from the few texts that have leaked out of the secretive negotiations, is that they will lead to more production, more trade and more consumption of fossil fuels – at a time of global consensus on the need for reductions.1 In particular, the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are expected to result in increased EU reliance on fossil fuel imports from North America, as well as a restriction of policy space to promote low carbon economies and renewables. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a mega-pact involving 14 countries in Asia and the Americas that was concluded earlier this month, is expected to result in more gas exports from the US to the Pacific Rim countries. The new deals will also extend investor-state dispute settlement provisions which companies are already using through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to reverse moratoriums on fracking and other popular environmental measures implemented by governments.2

Less has been said about how the provisions dealing with food and agriculture in these deals will affect our climate. But the question is vital, because food and farming figure hugely in climate change. From deforestation to fertiliser use, and from factory farms to supermarket shelves, producing, transporting, consuming and wasting food account for around half of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).3

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

To feed growing cities we need to stop urban sprawl eating up our food supply

October 27, 2015

To feed growing cities we need to stop urban sprawl eating up our food supply

New season asparagus from farmland on Melbourne’s city fringe. Matthew Carey

If you’ve eaten any of the new season’s asparagus recently, it probably came from Koo Wee Rup, a small town 60 kilometres to the south east of Melbourne. Koo Wee Rup produces over 90% of Australia’s asparagus. The region has perfect conditions for asparagus growing, and its ancient peaty soils have a reputation for producing some of the best asparagus in the world.

Koo Wee Rup is just one of many food growing areas on the urban fringe of Australia’s state capitals that make an important contribution to the nation’s fresh food supply. The foodbowls on the fringe of cities like Sydney and Melbourne are some of the most highly productive agricultural regions in Australia.

But as these cities expand to accommodate rapidly growing populations, fertile farmland on the city fringe is at risk due to urban sprawl.

Melbourne Foodbowl at 7 million infographicFoodprint Melbourne project

Melbourne’s foodprint

Early findings from a new study of food production on Melbourne’s city fringe highlight the impact that continued urban sprawl could have on the supply of fresh, local foods in Australia’s cities. The Foodprint Melbourne project is investigating the capacity of Melbourne’s city fringe foodbowl to feed the population of Greater Melbourne.

The research explores the capacity of Melbourne’s foodbowl to feed the current population of 4.4 million and the predicted future population of around 7 million in 2050. The project also investigates the city’s “foodprint” – the amount of land, water and energy required to feed the city, as well as associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Early project findings indicate that Melbourne’s foodbowl currently has the capacity to supply a significant proportion of Greater Melbourne’s food needs across a wide variety of foods, including poultry, eggs, red meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables. The city’s foodbowl can supply just over 40% of the food needed to feed Greater Melbourne, including over 80% of the fresh vegetables consumed and around 13% of fruit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Overstock Holds 3 Months Of Food, $10 Million In Gold For Employees In Preparation For The Next Collapse

October 25, 2015

Overstock Holds 3 Months Of Food, $10 Million In Gold For Employees In Preparation For The Next Collapse

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne’s crusade against naked short sellers in particular, and Wall Street and the Federal Reserve in general, has long been known and thoroughly documented (most recently with his push to use blockchain technology to revolutionize the multi-trillion repo market).

But little did we know that Overstock’s Chairman Jonathan Johnson is as vocal an opponent of the fiat system, and Wall Street’s tendency to create bubble after bubble, if not more than Byrne himself. That, and that his company actually puts its money where its gold-backed money is and in preparation for the next upcoming crash, has taken unprecedented steps to prepare for what comes next.

One week ago Johnson, who is also candidate for Utah governor, spoke at the United Precious Metals Association, or UPMA, which we first profiled a month ago, and which takes advantage of Utah’s special status allowing the it to use gold as legal tender, offering gold and silver-backed accounts. As a reminder, the UPMA takes Federal Reserve Notes (or paper dollars) which it then translates into golden dollars (or silver). The golden dollars are based off the $50 one ounce gold coins produced by the Treasury of The United States. They are legal tender under the law and are protected as such.

What did Johnson tell the UPMA? Here are some choice quotes:

We are not big fans of Wall Street and we don’t trust them. We foresaw the financial crisis, we fought against the financial crisis that happened in 2008; we don’t trust the banks still and we foresee that with QE3, and QE4 and QE n that at some point there is going to be another significant financial crisis.

So what do we do as a business so that we would be prepared when that happens. One thing that we do that is fairly unique: we have about $10 million in gold, mostly the small button-sized coins, that we keep outside of the banking system.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Food Sovereignty: This is What Anarchy Looks Like

October 19, 2015

Food Sovereignty: This is What Anarchy Looks Like

“This is what democracy looks like” goes the popular protest chant. However, it’s not democracy that captures the imagination, provides answers, and drives today’s resistance movement. Something much more interesting has been taking place during protests, forums and intentional communities. In his book The New Left the anthropologist David Graeber states that anarchy has become the logical and probably last hope of the international resistance to capitalism. Mondeggi, an agricultural squat in the Tuscan countryside celebrating its first year this summer demonstrates how that might just be the case.

Anarchy is completely misunderstood amongst the larger public. The word in modern vocabulary has come to mean chaos. This is ironically the opposite of Anarchy, which could be described as organic order of horizontal self-governance. The misunderstanding comes partly due to political theory ignorance, propaganda from the right, and due to some of the “violent” acts of some historical anarchists such as blowing up bridges and factories in the context of oppressive monarchies, world wars, and Fascist regimes. These extreme strategies are ironically much less drastic that the systematic widespread organized violence of the various state regimes through history.

Chomsky argues that Anarchism is based on the assumption that any structure of authority and domination has to justify itself. All such structures have a burden of proof to bear and if they can’t bear that burden they’re illegitimate. If they are illegitimate they should be dismantled and replaced by alternative structures which are free and participatory and are not based on authoritarian systems.

Democracy allows for the exploitation and destruction of the environment that is taking place today because of the financial interests of a few organizing the nations states according to the bottom line of international profit. Direct democracy does allow for taking some of the responsibility and control of affairs yet it still maintains the existence of the state.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Four Ticking Global Time-Bombs Few Even Hear

October 19, 2015

Four Ticking Global Time-Bombs Few Even Hear

A few charts help us grasp the magnitude of the four global time-bombs.

The geopolitical and financial risks facing the global economy are well-known.Hot wars and currency meltdowns garner headlines around the world.

But few even hear, much less discuss, four ticking global time-bombs:

1. The demographic time-bomb.

2. The public health time-bomb.

3. The food/water/soil time-bomb.

4. The oil-export time-bomb.

Each is largely self-explanatory:

1. The demographic time-bomb: as the global economy melts down, the realization that the pensions and healthcare promised to hundreds of millions of elderly cannot be funded out of tax revenues will upend the social contract in countries rich and poor.

As the chart below depicts, as the population of elderly rise, so do the non-communicable lifestyle diseases of aging. The costs of treating these lifestyle diseases (metabolic syndrome, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc.) soar as the population and incidence of these diseases both rise.

Global Aging 2010: An Irreversible Truth:

This Standard & Poor’s study warns that “no other force is likely to shape the future of national economic health, public finances, and policymaking as the irreversible rate at which the world’s population is aging… The cost of caring for [the elderly] will profoundly affect growth prospects and dominate public finance policy debates worldwide.”

2. The public health time-bomb: 100 million diabetics and 500 million pre-diabetics in China, 80 million diabetics and hundreds of millions more pre-diabetics in India, and another 100 million diabetics in the developed world will overwhelm a global healthcare system that is already struggling to provide care for an aging population.

Diabetes Is a Major Public-Health Crisis in China

No Answers in Sight for India’s Diabetes Crisis

The Global Diabetes Epidemic (New York Times)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Andrianna Natsoulas on Food Sovereignty and the Commons

October 15, 2015

Andrianna Natsoulas on Food Sovereignty and the Commons

As part of our series on the 100 Women Who Are Co-Creating the P2P Society, the P2P Foundation’s Michel Bauwens interviews Andrianna Natsoulas from FoodSources.org

Q: You are mostly known for your work around food sovereignty, can you tell us a bit of personal history and how you decided to get engaged on that issue; then, how do think your work is related to the concept of the commons?

A: From a very early age I questioned the injustices of the world and looked towards collective movements for solutions. When I started university, I believed the only logical path was to study biology – the study of life. I then melded that into the local food, environmental and peace movements, all of which I was an active member in. I continued to approach solutions through a wide lens. For example, I studied fishing cooperatives to explore whether they could not only market fish, but also organize and represent small-scale fishermen in the policy arena. As I concentrated on fisheries policy, I saw global problems that were common to both fishing and farming communities. Then, I had the opportunity to collaborate with La Via Campesina, the movement that coined the phrase “food sovereignty” in 1996. And that was it. We all depend on food. Food is life. Food sovereignty is relevant in every corner of the world, and resonates with a common fundamental right.

Food sovereignty is a holistic approach to a global need. The seven principles of food sovereignty are as follows: Food: A Basic Human Right, Agrarian Reform, Protecting Natural Resources, Reorganizing Food Trade, Ending the Globalization of Hunger, and Social Peace and Democratic Control. Farmers are at the heart of the dialogue to actualize food sovereignty, yet its essence is inclusive, bringing together many sectors of society to protect a common good.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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