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Meat Prices on the Rise

October 22, 2021

Meat Prices on the Rise

(Image from Statistics Canada: Prices for meat products rise year over year in September)

Canada’s CPI rose 4.4% YoY this September, according to Statistics Canada. Every major sector saw gains, but meat prices spiked 9.5%, marking the fastest pace of growth since April 2015. Canada’s Food Price Report for 2021, released in December 2020, predicted that meat prices would rise 4.5% to 6.5% in 2021, a drastic underestimate. Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, project lead and Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University warned people that they should develop “immunity” to rising prices. “Immunity to higher food prices requires more cooking, more discipline and more research. It’s as simple as that.” Gaslighting the people to believe they need to change their lives, rather than government change their policy, is at play once again.

Let me remind you that Bill Gates and others have been advocating for a move to 100% synthetic beef. But his logic only applies to the “rich” countries such as the US and Canada. “Weirdly, the US livestock, because they’re so productive, the emissions per pound of beef are dramatically less than emissions per pound in Africa,” Gates said in an interview in February 2021. “So no, I don’t think the poorest 80 countries will be eating synthetic meat. I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.” This ties into the climate change agenda and the idea that starvation can help us shift to zero CO2…

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

Plunging Crop Supplies Send Prices Soaring And Reignite Food Inflation Fears, WASDE Reports

August 13, 2021

Plunging Crop Supplies Send Prices Soaring And Reignite Food Inflation Fears, WASDE Reports

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report was released Thursday afternoon and pointed to declining grain supplies that sent grain futures prices higher and will keep food inflation in focus.

The closely watched supply and demand report slashed estimates for corn yields and stockpiles. World inventories for wheat were reported near a five-year low.

Grain and oilseed futures soared to a near-decade high earlier this year but have been in a holding pattern for the last month, awaiting new reports on the outlook for upcoming U.S. harvests. A megadrought and back-to-back heat waves have plagued the corn belt and the U.S. West for much of the summer. 

December corn futures were up more than 2% to $5.7150 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, soybean futures popped on the report and are now flat at the end of the U.S. cash session, wheat futures rose more than 3%, hitting a fresh eight-year high.

The Bloomberg Grains Index closed up 1% on the report.

Bloomberg outlines the key takeaways from the August WASDE report:

  • DROUGHT BITES: U.S. corn and soybean yields fell below analyst expectations and the declines were largely centered in the drought-stricken northern Plains, where severe drought has withered crops.
  • RUSSIA: So goes Russia’s harvest, so goes the wheat market. A large cut in the harvest means a lot less global wheat supplies and Russia’s wheat-export throne as the world’s top shipper is in doubt with the current forecast in line with exports out of the E.U.
  • WHEAT PEAK: Benchmark Chicago wheat prices hit the highest levels for a most-active contract since 2013. Corn and soybeans each touched multi-week highs but remain below multi-year peaks from earlier in 2021.

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

Ranchers Sell Off Cattle And Farmers Idle Hundreds Of Thousands Of Acres As America’s Drought Emergency Escalates

June 12, 2021

Ranchers Sell Off Cattle And Farmers Idle Hundreds Of Thousands Of Acres As America’s Drought Emergency Escalates

In my entire lifetime, this is the worst that drought conditions have ever been in the western half of the country.  During the past 20 years, the amount of territory in the West considered to be suffering from exceptional drought has never gone higher than 11 percent until now.  Today, that number is sitting at 27 percent.  The term “mega-drought” is being thrown around a lot these days to describe what is happening, but this isn’t just a drought.  This is a true national emergency, and it is really starting to affect our food supply.

Just look at what is happening up in North Dakota.  The vast majority of the state is either in the worst level of drought or the second worst level of drought, and ranchers are auctioning off their cattle by the thousands…

“Normally this time of the year, we’re probably looking at 400-600 head and a lot of times would be every other week,” said former auctioneer Ron Torgerson.

On Sunday and Monday, more than 4,200 head of cattle were sold at Rugby Livestock and Auction.

Needless to say, ranchers in North Dakota don’t want to get rid of their cattle, but the drought has pushed prices for hay and corn so high that many of them simply have no choice.

One of those that has already been forced to sell a large number of cattle is rancher David Bohl…

As the drought continues, the price of hay and corn has gone way up. It’s more expensive for ranchers to try and supplement feed than it is to sell the cattle.

Bohl has already sold 200 of his head in the last month.

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

ANOTHER “Bomb Cyclone” Will Bring More Flooding To Parts Of The Midwest That Were Hit By A “1,000 Year Flood” Last Month

April 10, 2019

ANOTHER “Bomb Cyclone” Will Bring More Flooding To Parts Of The Midwest That Were Hit By A “1,000 Year Flood” Last Month

Less than a month after a “bomb cyclone” caused a “1,000 year flood” in the middle portion of the country, another “bomb cyclone” of similar strength is going to bring even more flooding to the High Plains and Upper Midwest.  According to meteorologists, it is being projected that this new “bomb cyclone” will be “similar in intensity and in snowfall” to the last one, and the latest forecast is calling for “more than 30 inches in some areas”.  The floods that we witnessed last month absolutely devastated communities throughout the region, and now it is going to happen again.  The middle part of our nation has literally never seen anything like this happen ever before, and this is easily the worst natural disaster to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina.

Before I get into the details of the latest weather forecast, let’s review what we have witnessed so far.  “At least 1 million acres of U.S. farmland” were under water for at least 7 days last month, according to Agriculture Secretary Sunny Purdue “as many as a million calves” were lost in the flooding in the state of Nebraska alone, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops were destroyed.  Thousands upon thousands of farmers were financially ruined, and thousands of farmers will not be able to plant any crops at all this year.

If you can point out a worse agricultural disaster in the last 50 years in the United States, please feel free to do so.  To my knowledge, there isn’t one.

And now a second “bomb cyclone” is on the way this week.  According to CBS News, it looks like this “bomb cyclone” will produce “a blizzard of epic proportions”…

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

100s Of Millions Of Dollars In Crops Destroyed By Flooding, And Farmers Are Being Told “There’s Nothing The U.S. Government Can Do To Help”

April 9, 2019

100s Of Millions Of Dollars In Crops Destroyed By Flooding, And Farmers Are Being Told “There’s Nothing The U.S. Government Can Do To Help”

This is the worst economic disaster for U.S. farmers in modern American history.  Our ongoing trade war with China had greatly depressed prices for wheat, corn and soybeans, and so farmers were storing more crops on their farms than ever before in early 2019.  And then the floods came.  The water moved so fast that the vast majority of the farmers in the affected areas could not have moved what they had stored even if they wanted to, and the scale of the losses that these farmers have suffered is starting to become clearer.  According to UPI, “hundreds of millions of dollars in crops” that were destroyed by the flooding were not covered by insurance…

Hundreds of millions of dollars in crops destroyed in Midwestern floods this month were not insured, farmers say. And the losses could leave many without sufficient income to continue farming.

“This uninsured grain issue is really starting to affect people,” said Jeff Jorgenson, a western Iowa corn and soy grower whose farm flooded when the Missouri River spilled over its banks March 12.

Without an extraordinary amount of assistance, there are thousands of farmers that will never be able to come back from this.

One fifth-generation farmer that was interviewed by Fox News said that about 7 million dollars worth of grain was destroyed in his county alone…

Dustin Sheldon, a fifth-generation grain and soybean farmer, watched in horror as the floods that devastated the Midwest began to recede and he could assess the damage to his crops.

He said the record-breaking floods caused about $1 million in losses for his family farm.

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

“As Many As A Million Calves Lost In Nebraska” – Beef Prices In The U.S. To Escalate Dramatically In The Coming Months

March 28, 2019

“As Many As A Million Calves Lost In Nebraska” – Beef Prices In The U.S. To Escalate Dramatically In The Coming Months

According to Agriculture Secretary Sunny Purdue, there “may be as many as a million calves lost in Nebraska” due to the catastrophic flooding that has hit the state.  This is not a rumor, this is not an exaggeration, and this is not based on any sort of speculation.  This number comes to us directly from the top agriculture official in the entire country, and it means that the economic toll from the recent floods is far greater than most of us had anticipated.  You can watch Purdue make this quote on Fox Business right here, and it is important to remember that this number is just for one state.  It is hard to imagine what the final numbers will look like when the livestock losses for all of the states affected by the flooding are tallied up.  This is already the worst agricultural disaster in modern American history, and the National Weather Service is telling us that there will be more catastrophic flooding throughout the middle portion of the nation for the next two months.

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts says that this is the worst flooding that his state has ever experienced.  Ricketts originally told us that 65 out of the 93 counties in his state have declared a state of emergency, but that number has now risen to 74.  Hundreds of millions of dollars of damage has been done in his state alone, and that is just an initial estimate.

It deeply offends me that the big mainstream news channels have spent so little time covering this disaster.  This is the biggest news story of 2019 so far by a very wide margin, but because it happened in the middle of the country they are not giving it the attention that it deserves.

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

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