Get Out of Dodge!

Given the highlighted paragraph, I suspect that the Gov’t is concerned about itself receiving such goods, and not necessarily the people…but maybe I’m just paranoid.

Via: Times Online

Ministers are in talks with supermarkets about emergency food reserves in case fuel protests lead to shortages at shops.

The government wants to ensure retailers and suppliers can continue to sell basics such as meat, bread and milk if hauliers bring the country to a halt.

They have asked supermarkets to make contingency plans “in case the infrastructure of the country breaks down”.

Among those who have taken part are farmers, dairies, bakeries and supermarkets.

At least four government departments are involved. The operation is being led by Bruce Mann, director of civil contingencies at the Cabinet Office.

The government has commissioned IGD, a company that collects intelligence on international food and grocery chains, to supply data about how food is moved around the country and where stocks are held. The information has been used to put together a “map” of depots and supply lines.

The move comes as hauliers warn that direct action over soaring fuel prices is a “very strong possibility”.

Until the early 1990s the government held secret food stocks, typically biscuits, flour and other dry foodstuffs, in grain sheds around the country. It now relies on retailers and suppliers to have plans in place.

Normally supermarkets operate on the basis of “just in time” deliveries, designed to cut waste by ensuring supplies just match demand. The government is keen to ensure stocks of essentials do not run out if the system is derailed because lorries cannot make their usual deliveries.

Tesco, which has played a key part in the discussions, wants the government to allow it and other suppliers to sit in on the cabinet’s emergency committee, Cobra, in the event of a crisis.

David North, the company’s community and government director, said food supplies could be hit by fuel protests, though he assured customers that the situation would have to be “fairly calamitous” for supplies to run out.

A Defra spokesman said plans were put in place during a strike by Shell tanker drivers last month, drawing on experience of the strikes in 2000.

“We are in contact with producers and retailers, to know what food supplies are where, at any given time . . . should the infrastructure of the country break down.”

An IGD spokesman said: “There are various contingency plans in place.”

From: Reuters

Spanish drivers and shoppers stockpiled fuel and food on Tuesday, fearing shortages after lorry drivers blocked deliveries across the country for a second day of an indefinite protest at the high price of fuel.

Cars queued at petrol stations — 40 percent of which had run out of fuel in the worst affected area of Catalonia — and supplies of fresh food began to run low in some markets, Spanish media reported.

Police motorbike riders escorted fuel tankers to some petrol stations to break picket lines and prevent attacks, after some strikers slashed lorry tires on Monday.

“I heard all the petrol stations were running out of fuel so I came to fill up, otherwise I worried I won’t be able to get to work tomorrow,” said a Madrid driver who gave his name as Raul.

Oil company Cepsa said 45 percent of its deliveries had failed to get through to stations due to strikers blocking their path at fuel deposits, although Spain’s biggest oil firm Repsol said deliveries were getting through with “relative normality.”

Half the normal number of tankers picked up fuel at deposits on Monday, distribution firm CLH said, though the spokesman added that many oil companies had taken on extra supplies in previous days in anticipation of the strike.

Truckers caused traffic chaos in Madrid by slowing almost all roads into the capital, while others blockaded wholesale food markets.

Authorities opened toll booths to ease traffic chaos around the capital, media reported and Barcelona’s city council said it was preparing a plan to ensure supplies of food, fuel and health supplies got through.

From counterpunch.org

“I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food. No this is not a drill.”

–Brett Arends

Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3 billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that food prices had suffered a 18 percent inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10 percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in maize prices.

Political stability is being undermined. Food shortages are proving endemic. Food riots are becoming common. Riots have been sparked in Cameroon, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Uzbekistan and Yemen. There have been riots over spiraling grain prices in Mauritania and Senegal. In Mexico City, mass protests were sparked by a price hike in tortillas. In Haiti, biscuits are being made from a mud compound. The Somali capital Mogadishu bore witness to the deaths of five people.

The Bush administration, so often in arrears on the relief front, has earmarked some 770 million dollars or so in funds dealing with the problem. There is one glaring hitch: the money would only start flowing in 2009. ‘There is definitely a lag time when it comes to assistance,’ states the senior manager of the Foreign Aid Reform Project at the Brookings Institute, Noam Unger.

Members of the American public are not so sure. A narrative of catastrophe is gradually building – stockpile or perish. The Wall Street Journal (April 25) was one of the first to issue the clarion call: ‘Start Hoarding Food Americans!’ The paper had various suggestions. Stock up on some products – dried pasta, rice, cereals, canned products. Buy them all in bulk to save. Sit the children down give them a good talking to – no, not about the birds and the bees, but about ‘how our generation and the two behind it, screwed their world into a death spiral through greed and predatory capitalism.’

In the meantime, the US and some countries in the West may have to brace themselves for a starving army guided by the morality of the stomach. The food riots are coming.

famine, hoarding

Via Bloomberg.com

As farmers confront mounting costs and riots erupt from Haiti to Egypt over food, Garry Niemeyer is paying the price for Wall Street’s speculation in grain markets.

Commodity-index funds control a record 4.51 billion bushels of corn, wheat and soybeans through Chicago Board of Trade futures, equal to half the amount held in U.S. silos on March 1. The holdings jumped 29 percent in the past year as investors bought grain contracts seeking better returns than stocks or bonds. The buying sent crop prices and volatility to records and boosted the cost for growers and processors to manage risk.

Niemeyer, who farms 2,200 acres in Auburn, Illinois, won’t use futures to protect the value of the crop he will harvest in October. With corn at $5.9075 a bushel, up from $3.88 last year, he says the contracts are too costly and risky. Investors want corn so much that last month they paid 55 cents a bushel more than grain handlers, the biggest premium since 1999.

Via the The Washington Times

Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.

Their pleas did not find a sympathetic audience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where regulators said high prices are mostly the result of soaring world demand for grains combined with high fuel prices and drought-induced shortages in many countries.

The regulatory clash came amid evidence that a rash of headlines in recent weeks about food riots around the world has prompted some in the United States to stock up on staples.

Islamabad News

The food department team here raiding three rice mills seized five thousand bags of hoarded wheat.

District Food Controller Muhammad Ayub Rind told a private TV channel that on a tip-off, the food department officials raided three rice mills on Jamal Shah Road and took into custody 5000 bags of hoarded wheat which later shifted to the government warehouses.

He said that a campaign against the wheat hoarders was underway while the trucks carrying wheat out of the district in violation of ban were also being rounded up.