Solent green is PEOPLE!!!

[dutch508]

Selatius (1000+ posts)      Tue Apr-22-08 03:37 PM
Original message http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3193234
FOOD RATIONING has finally come to America. NY, New England, West Coast affected.
 Advertisements [?]MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing.

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

...

An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled.

...

Mr. Rawles said the spot shortages seemed to be most frequent in the Northeast and all the way along the West Coast. He said he had heard reports of buying limits at Sam’s Club warehouses, which are owned by Wal-Mart Stores, but a spokesman for the company, Kory Lundberg, said he was not aware of any shortages or limits.

An anonymous high-tech professional writing on an investment Web site, Seeking Alpha, said he recently bought 10 50-pound bags of rice at Costco. “I am concerned that when the news of rice shortage spreads, there will be panic buying and the shelves will be empty in no time. I do not intend to cause a panic, and I am not speculating on rice to make profit. I am just hoarding some for my own consumption,” he wrote.

http://nysun.com/news/food-rationing-confronts-breadbas...

This in the United States of America. This in the 21st century. I can't imagine how bad it is in the developing world right now. I've been hearing of food riots. What happened to all the farmland? Did we convert too much farmland for ethanol and strip malls and office buildings?

they are using the NY Sun as a reference?

LakeSamish706  (1000+ posts)      Tue Apr-22-08 03:39 PM
Response to Original message
2. Gee hasn't that George W Bush been good for this country? I hate to think...
 how much more devastation he can manage to bring by January 20, 2009!

ok...is yhe making fun of the OP or does he not know what sarcasm means?

kestrel91316  (1000+ posts)       Tue Apr-22-08 03:43 PM
Response to Original message
4. Dupe. This same story has already been posted a couple of dozen times.
 There is NO rationing - rationing is an official government program.

There ARE some shortages of rice, probably due to the rice crop failures that are widespread in Asia.

'spoil'sport

Hannah Bell (866 posts)       Tue Apr-22-08 04:15 PM
Response to Reply #4
16. There are no widespread paddy failures in asia. n/t

 
And back to the madness...

Mimosa (111 posts)     Tue Apr-22-08 04:04 PM
Response to Original message
14. Subsidies for Ethanol have led to food shortages
 The current grain shortages have come about because people in biofuels, agriculture and even environmentalists bought into the idea that diverting farmland into growing grains for ethanol production was a really good idea. American and Canadian farmers were and are paid subsidies to grow corn for ethanol. This higher price for corn has driven up the prices of many foods. In Mexico corn tortillas are being replaced by flour tortillas which are not preferred. Higher priced corn syrup sweetener drives up the prices of many products. As it has turned out this biofuel thing is NOT a good idea at all. (Electric cars would be far better.)

Yes, in various places such as Haiti, people are STARVING. Another side effect of diverting farmland for food crops will be that South American forests will be burned down for agriculture.That's bad for the environment too.

Here's an informative article from The International Herald Tribune:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/17/news/Haiti.php

 should have gone with nu-cle-ar powered HMMWVs

Hannah Bell (866 posts)       Tue Apr-22-08 04:05 PM
Response to Original message
15. Garbage reporting from a right-wing source.
 Evidence given in the article:

1 california costco limits buyers to 1 survival-sized bag of rice.

1 nyc costco doesn't limit rice, but limits unspecified flour/oil purchases.

1 "anonymous hi-tech professional" is buying survival-sized bags of rice.

This is spun into shortages affecting the east & west coasts.


Christ on a cracker. Someone wants to move rice. Perhaps one of the large speculators who drove the price up, & now finds it difficult to unload his contracts?

Karl Rove?

vickitulsa (1000+ posts)       Tue Apr-22-08 05:07 PM
Response to Original message
29. This article may be crap, BUT--
 I live in the poorer part of Tulsa because it's the only place I can afford to live, and there is basically only ONE store in this part of town where folks can shop for foodstuffs, as well as many other products: a WalMart "Superstore." It has been here for many years -- in fact, I recall when it opened with a lot of hoopla, as I happened to live in this same area in the mid-1980's when that happened.

So ... back then, there were plenty of other grocery stores in the area, notably a couple of Warehouse Markets, which had prices comparable with the WalMart grocery section. At this time, one Warehouse Market has closed, and the remaining one is on its last legs. Another large grocery store not too far away has also closed, after years of having almost no customers. There's one other grocery store a little further into Tulsa proper that is still open, but the prices there are not affordable to most of the poor who live in these parts.

There are plenty of the big, nice stores all over town, of course, but I haven't been able to shop in those for years now.

Anyway, over the years since that huge WalMart store near me opened, it seems virtually everyone in this area has come to depend on it for their grocery needs as well as most other things. (It's always jam packed, with long lines at the checkouts, and I call it "the Zoo.") We really don't HAVE much choice, period.

During the past year and especially the last few months, prices at that WalMart have jumped repeatedly and dramatically. I go through the place these days and start to pick up things I usually buy, but often have to put them back or reduce the size or number of packages I can purchase, solely due to the increased prices.

But I said "BUT--" above in my subject line because that's just one part of the story. What has been truly shocking me as much as the price increases for the last few months is the fact that the shelves in this store, which always had them fully stocked before, now often are half bare! I'm not kidding or exaggerating, either. And I've never in my life been an alarmist -- I'm just telling you all what is going on in my part of Tulsa.

Quite a few products that I used to get are simply not there now, and I have to go back later and hope they've come in. This problem runs the full range of food products and isn't limited to rice or corn. I have NOT seen any limits posted on how many packages customers can purchase, but when the shelves don't have certain items on them, you definitely have a "limit" on what you can get!

A few weeks ago, I saw an employee in the produce section just at the time another customer and I were talking about the price hikes, so I asked the employee if she knew why the prices had gone up so much lately. Turned out she was a supervisor and had worked for WalMart for many years, and she knew more than most of their employees seem to. She gave me some definite reasons for the price increases, notably the shipping (gas) costs that have increased for them. She also mentioned several other things, but they didn't seem that significant or even logical to me ... I felt it all really boiled down to blaming the fuel costs and/or plain old gouging on the part of WalMart, which of course she would not have mentioned.

Then just last week I was so shocked at the high number of empty shelves that I stopped another WalMart employee and asked her why they weren't stocked. I'd never seen anything like this ongoing situation, ever. This employee also seemed to have some answers ready for me, and she listed them -- starting, again, with shipping and fuel costs.

The strange thing about both these encounters was that both employees seemed almost to have been prepared to answer questions management must have known they would get from customers, but then the answers were not really satisfying or didn't make much sense to me. Honestly, I can hardly even remember anything they offered by way of reasons except for the fuel/shipping issue, largely because those "reasons" did NOT make sense! I think I just dismissed them as ridiculous after considering them at the time.

So ... this article may be BS from a BS paper, but I'm reporting firsthand on what I'm experiencing in my own locale, and it's fairly disturbing, I'll tell ya! It's not like there isn't anything at all to buy or that I have no food to eat, but the drastic changes in having the one store in this area's shelves not stocked normally has really gotten my attention -- and that of other customers too. Sometimes I find myself standing there at my cart, staring at half-empty shelves where some product I wanted used to be, looking at other options I don't really want or can't afford, and another customer will come up and have the same puzzled, frustrated look on her face. Sometimes we talk about it, but lately it seems we've all given up asking what the deal is.

So what IS the deal here?? I sure do wonder....

I did hear the topic of food shortages worldwide discussed on NPR about a week ago, too, and it was quite disturbing. And I've heard several reports on "water wars" that are getting very serious in some areas, between nations or states, or parts of states. I think we're in for some very turbulent times of privation in the near future, due mostly to the manipulation of world markets by the very rich who are always greedy for MORE. And of course it's the poorest people who are already feeling this, the soonest and the hardest.

 
Another case of liberal "Wrong, but true" politispeak.

BigDaddy44 (530 posts)      Tue Apr-22-08 05:10 PM
Response to Original message
30. I went to Kroger yesterday....
 It was empty!!! EMPTY I tell ya!! Nothing left but feminine hygiene products and greeting cards. Just a few wayward souls wandering up and down the aisles with empty carts looking to see if anything was left.

a joke? with DU you just don't know...

[Airwolf]

To bad that for all of that pot growing the Dumpmonkies do they will now have to leard how to grow some real food and maybe ,just maybe they will learn what all of us in flyover country already know, that is you have to work to get what you want don't depend on getting help from the Government.

[Lord Undies]

I scootered to Wal-Mart this afternoon to get stuff to make for dinner.  I decided not to let me get me down.

Well, let me tell you, the place was stocked like it was 1999.  Everything was available by the tons.  You name it - they have it readily available.

I bought stuff to make my wife and myself a gourmet dinner.  Good stuff.  Boneless skinless chicken breast.  Brussels sprouts, sliced mushrooms, fresh squash, a bag-O-salad, a cucumber for said salad, some lemons for the chicken.....all the stuff I'll need.

I spent $12.00.

So, if you are starving....if you can't find rice on the shelf....if your neighbor is sitting on his porch with a shotgun trying to protect his foodstuff from the less fortunate -- come to north Texas. 

We have it all!!!!!

[CactusCarlos]

I scootered to Wal-Mart this afternoon to get stuff to make for dinner.  I decided not to let me get me down.

Well, let me tell you, the place was stocked like it was 1999.  Everything was available by the tons.  You name it - they have it readily available.

I bought stuff to make my wife and myself a gourmet dinner.  Good stuff.  Boneless skinless chicken breast.  Brussels sprouts, sliced mushrooms, fresh squash, a bag-O-salad, a cucumber for said salad, some lemons for the chicken.....all the stuff I'll need.

I spent $12.00.

So, if you are starving....if you can't find rice on the shelf....if your neighbor is sitting on his porch with a shotgun trying to protect his foodstuff from the less fortunate -- come to north Texas. 

We have it all!!!!!

3/4 bong at most - No ephiphany, no conversion, no bushes, and no one can afford gourmet anything in the * economy.   

 

 

[asdf2231]

These people are ****ing delusonal!

There was a temporary shortage of 5, 10 and 20 POUND sacks of rice in some areas and bulk sacks of flour.

Wanna bet there were 1 pound bags of rice and 2 pound sacks of flour sitting on the shelves in coipious amounts?

Media driven hysteria.

[FlippyDoo]

Never fear DUmmies. I have it on good authority that when the Weekly World News ceased publication it gave Batboy some free time. Thankfully, Batboy used that free time to hook up with some aliens from the planet Krkashu. The aliens have provided Batboy with the means to convert the VRWC Hurricane Machine into a machine that will convert old growth timber into rice and flour. Adding Spotted Owls with the timber will increase the production by a factor of ten.

[Lord Undies]

I scootered to Wal-Mart this afternoon to get stuff to make for dinner.  I decided not to let me get me down.

Well, let me tell you, the place was stocked like it was 1999.  Everything was available by the tons.  You name it - they have it readily available.

I bought stuff to make my wife and myself a gourmet dinner.  Good stuff.  Boneless skinless chicken breast.  Brussels sprouts, sliced mushrooms, fresh squash, a bag-O-salad, a cucumber for said salad, some lemons for the chicken.....all the stuff I'll need.

I spent $12.00.

So, if you are starving....if you can't find rice on the shelf....if your neighbor is sitting on his porch with a shotgun trying to protect his foodstuff from the less fortunate -- come to north Texas. 

We have it all!!!!!

3/4 bong at most - No ephiphany, no conversion, no bushes, and no one can afford gourmet anything in the * economy.   

 

 

If i wasn't so tried from getting it all ready I'd bitch slap you.