Another Reason to Plant a Garden This Year

Consumers may pay more for spring lettuce and summer melons in grocery stores across the country now that California farmers have started abandoning their fields in response to a crippling drought.

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This reminds me of Kunstler’s rant about the ‘3,000-mile salad.’   We rely on areas like California’s Central Valley for fruits & vegetables more than most Americans realize.  Economies of scale are great when they work in our favor, but the flip side is that when these huge farms fail to deliver the crops we expect from them, we have few other options to explore.

This is also starting to bring water resource conflicts to the front of the news as well:

With such a grim outlook, many California farmers including Giacone are investing millions to drill down hundreds of feet in search of new water sources.

Depending on how much it rains this winter, federal water supplies could be slashed down to nothing this year, forcing farmers to rely solely on brackish well water. But the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation won’t make an official decision until late February, said Ron Milligan, the agency’s Central Valley operations manager.

Since it isn’t raining, farmers that are trying to stay in business are drilling further and further down to find & drain underground reservoirs.   For those that may not know, the term ‘brackish’ indicates that there’s more salt in the water than in normal freshwater, which means that in order to survive, the farmers are increasing the salinity in their fields by irrigating from this source… extracting perhaps more yields over the next few years but drastically reducing the long-term fertility of the fields.

It’s been a cold winter here, but one of the things I’m thankful for is that I live in a state with abundant fresh water… assuming we can stop polluting it.

Back to Breakfast

Like many Americans, I have a bad habit of not eating breakfast during the week.  I’m usually busy getting both myself and the kids ready for the day, so any morning caloric intake is usually coffee and some milk at work… sometimes augmented with whatever crap I can find around the office.  Not healthy, and I have no real excuse beyond laziness and lack of planning.

With the weather getting colder in a hurry, my stomach has been growling in the morning more often, so I decided it was time to get back into the swing of things and start planning out breakfast again.  I’m one of those folks who can eat the same thing on a regular basis, so my morning diet is usually unvaried during the work week: oatmeal.

I go old-school for the oatmeal, using the plain old Quaker Oats or bulk oats from Trader Joe’s or similar places.   None of this ‘quick oats’ or packaged stuff.   I use the recipe found in Nourishing Traditions for basic porridge:

• 1 part oats
• 1 part warm water
• 1-2 tbsp plain yogurt
• 1 part cold water

I use 3/4 cup for the ‘part’ size… you can vary it depending on how hungry you are, or how many people you’re cooking for.   If you’re cooking a large batch then I’d add a bit more yogurt, but not too much more.

Mix the oats, warm water and yogurt in a bowl or plastic container, cover and let sit at room temperature overnight.   In the morning, bring cold water to a boil, add the oats mixture, and cook until ready, which should only be a few minutes.    I then add some brown sugar or honey to taste and pour the mix into a pre-heated insulated  food jar (like this one) and it stays nice & hot until I make it to work, even when it’s as cold as it is outside today (-5 F this morning) and I have to walk outside a fair distance to the building. Nourishing, simple and cheap.

I don’t have the book in front of me, but the active cultures in the yogurt neutralize some enzymes in the oats that block absorption of nutrients.  That’s why it’s important to use warm (not hot) water with the yogurt and let the mix sit overnight.    It also has the side benefit of reducing cooking time for the oatmeal significantly… it takes me maybe 3-5 minutes tops to cook it in the morning.

I’m a fan of traditional methods of cooking… the Nourishing Traditions book is put out by the folks at the Weston A. Price Foundation.  If you’re interested in eating healthy in a way that doesn’t involve fat-free, heavily-processed or  powdered crap that comes out of a box, check them out.   It’s eye-opening stuff.

Anyone else have some good ideas for basic breakfast foods?

Food: Pay More, Get Less

I wrote about this a year ago, but the local fishwrap factory has a story today discussing the sneaky ways food companies are engaging in stealth reductions in food container sizes even as prices have been rising over the last year.

Food is pretty high on our hierarchy of needs, so people tend to be extra sensitive to pricing chances (especially for staples).   Food manufacturers know this and have been doing their best to shave a few ounces here & there to save costs.   Anyone remember when soup used to come in 12 ounce cans instead of 10.5 ounces?    For the most part, we tend to ignore these small tweaks, since the packages look the same in many cases… they’re just slightly smaller.

An interesting comment in the story notes that in some cases store brand items have lagged behind in the shrinking game, so you could get more food for your buck by going with the store brands or generics.

High diesel fuel costs have been blamed for many of the retail price increases over the past year or so.  This makes sense considering how much the American logistical system relies on over-the-road trucking to move cargo around.   Anyone care to venture a guess on how fast those prices will drop with lower diesel prices?    My guess is slowly, and those drops will be influenced more by the overall economic deflation gripping the country right now.  Fast to raise prices, slow to drop…

The Dark Side

Another down day on the markets… the price of almost everything is collapsing it seems.  Stocks, bonds, commodities, gold, oil, you name it.  OPEC declares they are cutting daily production by 1.5 million barrels per day and no one notices or cares as oil continues to drop in price.    Financial firms and large corporations are hemorrhaging staff every day.   People fret over their portfolios, their house’s value, and their retirement funds.

Sounds pretty ominous to many Americans, but in reality, we’ve still got it pretty good compared to much of the world.   While the first world worries about how to keep the stock markets liquid, people in many parts of the world are trying to figure out what they are going to feed their children for dinner this evening, or if there will be any power to be had anytime soon.   There are millions of desperate people in the world, and their number is growing daily.    It is situations like this that, left unattended, can lead to chaos, famine and war.

Most of the problems are happening right now in far away countries that many people haven’t even heard of.  There are no guarantees that it will stay that way.  A major humanitarian catastrophe in, say, Mexico would have a much more immediate impact on Americans.  Perhaps it will come to that, or perhaps it will even hit home here in the US at some point.

A down side of our modern way of life is that many of us urban folk are completely dependent on an intricate delivery system that needs to function well to work.   Imagine how quickly grocery store shelves would be depleted if truckers couldn’t get diesel fuel for one reason or another… or if the grocery store chain couldn’t get the short-term loans that businesses often rely on to keep distributors happy or employees paid on time.

The financial crisis we are facing is global, and it’s good to remember that it affects more than just stocks, bonds and housing prices.   We are all linked, and if we don’t get this under control relatively soon, things could get very ugly indeed.

Some Things I Think

I haven’t had the time recently to compose a longer rant, so here are some quick thoughts I’ve got about various things.

• Hurricane Gustav went right through the target-rich are for oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.   We are very fortunate that it lost strength before traversing that area.   New Orleans residents are likewise lucky that Gustav was somewhat of a paper tiger by the time it hit the coast.  Those TV pictures of water lapping over the edge of those levees show how close things got.  A few more feet of storm surge and there would’ve been a much larger problem.  That said, I think the lessons of 2005 have hit home with folks in Louisiana and the Federal Government.  There was much less dithering this time around.
• More hurricanes are on the way… it looks like we’re just hitting the active part of the season now.  We’ll see.
• Now that both presidential tickets have been filled out, we are presented with diverse choices… a grizzled veteran of the senate partnering up with an untested, young, telegenic rookie versus an untested, young telegenic rookie that has partnered up with a grizzled veteran of the senate.   Obama appears to have made a very safe choice whereas McCain is taking a big gamble… I think that speaks volumes as to each candidates internal assessment of their respective chances come November.   While I’m not totally sold on Obama, it’s clear to me that McCain has sold his soul for a chance at the presidency.  He caved on his VP choice if you believe the stories that have him preferring Lieberman or Tom Ridge.  The choice of Palin seems to be both a sop to the hard-right GOP base as well as a desperation ploy to try and pry some female (ex-Hilary?) voters away from Obama.  We’ll see how that plays out, but my gut feeling is that it won’t significantly alter things.
• I’m also getting the feeling that the Republican leadership knows that their chances this November are pretty slim.  Many Americans (myself included) are not inclined to reward the GOP for 8 years of mismanagement by giving McCain a 4 year tour of duty.  Sensing this, I wonder if the movers & shakers of the party have put up some patsies to act as speed bumps on Obama’s path to the White House.   I’m beginning to think that McCain & Palin are the 2008 version of Bob Dole & Jack Kemp.  McCain gets his crack at the top job, and Palin, while young and apparently politically skilled, is flawed as well.  Sacrificing them will open up the 2012 race for other up & coming talent like Pawlenty, Bobby jindal of Louisiana, etc.   T
• I hope Joe LIeberman likes his new Senate office in the boiler room, tucked behind the furnace and some boxes of toilet paper.  He’s managed to keep his place in Washington due to the razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate.   If the Dems pick up a few more seats, I suspect his political career is more or less over.   Having heard his speech before the GOP convention last night, the one thing I came away with is that his rhetorical skills are so atrophied that he makes Al Gore look like Martin Luther King, Jr. by comparison.
• I have no freaking idea what’s going on with Wall Street.  Oil has corrected severely and may not be done.  The dollar is regaining strength, based mostly on the dawning recognition that Europe is just as screwed as we are, if not worse.  Housing values continue to plummet, and the mortgage lenders are now starting to pull all sorts of shenanigans like this.   After a quiet summer, it will be interesting to see how things shake out in the fall.
• One thing I know for sure is that most families are having to tighten their belts.  Food prices are rising, gas prices aren’t falling as fast as they rose, and more families are finding their houses to be less of an investment and more of a millstone around their necks.   I don’t see this changing any time soon, so the economic problem will continue to become a more important issue in the elections.   House prices in my development continue to fall.  If I had to sell my house anytime soon, I’d lose my equity, and I suspect that many of my neighbors are in the same boat.

There’s plenty more I could rant about, but that’s enough for now.  I hope life is being good to all of you, and if you live in colder regions, start saving cash for your heating bills now.

More Food Inflation Coming…

If you’re the type that likes to stock up on food, I wouldn’t delay any major purchases for too long.  A story in the Financial Times is reporting that US food manufacturers including Kraft, Sara Lee, Tyson, ConAgra and Kellog’s will be jacking up prices this fall in response to rising commodity and production costs.

“Price increases vary a lot by type of products but the increases will be as low as zero and some products we will decrease on and other increases [will be] in excess of 20 per cent.”

Prices for meat & dairy will take the lead in inflation from the looks of it.   The positive side of all this is that US meat consumption is expected to decline this year for the first time 27 years.   How wonderful for us that the food conglomerates are helping us eat healthier…

In all seriousness, most of us could probably do with eating better.  I addition to eating less meat, though, we’d also be better buying less nutrient-dead, over-processed crap in a box, but you don’t see Kraft or Kellog’s touting that idea too much.

HT: Urban Survival

Midwest Floods push corn prices higher. Be ready to pay more for meat…

For those of you outside the Midwest, we’ve been getting hammered with heavy rains over the last week or so, which have resulted in massive flooding in Southern Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and elsewhere. Matt at FGLB is dealing with some water in the basement right now, as is my boss, who lives in Rochester.

Besides the human tragedy we see playing out around here and regaining respect for the sheer power of nature, there will be at least one other follow-on effect from all this: rising food prices. Estimates are coming in that between 3 and 10 percent of Iowa’s corn crop will be lost for this season. Other states in the region will lose a percent of their crop as well. As a result of this, corn prices have been surging over the last few days, passing $7 per bushel, which is nearly double what it was last year. I heard a news report on this subject on MPR this morning, and an econ professor from the U of M stated that he expected to see prices rise on animal products, since most of the corn that was lost is feed corn. He specifically mentioned beef, pork, poultry, eggs & dairy products… they had risen around 5% in the last year, and he expected them to rise again. He also mentioned that around 38% of the corn crop is going into biofuels right now, which won’t help food prices or support for corn ethanol.

Best wishes to Matt and everyone else trying to stay dry…

Notes on Food

Several news articles popping up this morning about the growing international food crisis…

First, my local paper has the a story about UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon declaring that world food production must increase 50% by 2030 to meet increasing global demand. This is a huge undertaking that in my opinion will be very hard to accomplish. Increasing output by 50% can be done on a relatively small scale with relative ease in some cases; when you are talking about a project like global food production, though, the scope of work and amount of effort required will be truly massive, especially in an age where the population keeps growing, we keep losing cropland to development, desertification or depletion, and the cost of the fertilizers & pesticides needed to fuel the ‘green revolution’ keep increasing as oil rises.

On a related note, another UN official is accusing the rich nations of the world of ignoring the problem of the global food supply. Between cutting funds for international agricultural relief and subsidizing biofuel production, the rich nations are exacerbating the problem rather than helping combat it. I’ve already argued that diverting food crops to fuel production is a very poor choice both ethically and economically, so I see little need to expound on that. The global credit crisis that we are currently in will mandate nations spending less on overseas philanthropic efforts… they have their hands full taking care of things at home.

Finally, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is continuing to make himself popular with the US government by proposing the creation of a global infrastructure to regulate the food market. Again, he rails against the West and how they are making the food crisis worse instead of better. Interstingly enough, at this same UN conference was Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, who has single-handedly destroyed one of the most productive agricultural nations in Africa and plunged his country into a food problem of his own making.

Food will continue to be a headliner for a long while, since prices are going up, and there will be a growing pool of losers in this particular zero-sum game. Much of the food we Americans buy is over-processed, low-nutrient crap, but at least it’s available and can sustain life. Others around the world are not so lucky, and nothing fuels chaos like starving, angry people with little left to lose.

Something to consider is that food inflation is becoming a big problem in the Middle East, which will be bound to contribute to the instability that simmers under the surface of many of the major oil-exporting nations in the region.

At the Food Bank

My son spent last night at my mother’s home. Earlier on Saturday, I brought him to my mom at her church in south Minneapolis, where she volunteers at a local food bank distribution site on Saturday mornings. She’s brought my son there several times in the past when she keeps him overnight. He’s 5, so while he’s picked up on the concept that they are giving food away for free, it hasn’t dawned on him why these folks are doing so. There’ll be plenty of time for that in the future…

Anyway, I spent a few minutes conversing with my mom and some of her friends about the project. The size of the crowd waxes & wanes from week to week, but usual attendance ranges from 150-200. Over the last few months the number of attendees has been growing. This week there was at least 260 folks that took part. As has been reported on the local news recently, the tanking economy has both increased the number of people needed to use food banks while at the same time reducing the number of people who donate to those same food banks.

Sick of high prices? Get used to it…

In case you’ve been in a coma for the last few months, inflation in the US isn’t too bad except for trivial things like food, energy and gasoline. The higher prices are bad news for many of us, but they are also likely a permanent fixture of this new economic era we are entering. For some additional evidence, I present this article by MSN Money columnist Bill Fleckenstein: “Why all roads lead to inflation.” It’s a good overview of the predicament we are in for those who haven’t done a whole lot of research yet.

Prices continue to rise, and the Fed will continue to increase the money supply to accommodate this. One thing I’ve been thinking about is looking at any major purchases I might be making in the next couple of years, and accelerating my buying schedule. Inflation is like a hidden tax on people’s savings, so if that tax rate is set to rise, I’m thinking that it makes sense to buy some durable goods now.