from Homeland Stupidity

You have maybe two months to stock up on the necessities of life before food prices rise dramatically, potentially prompting a food panic, widespread famine, and quite possibly the long-expected collapse of the U.S. economy.

Farmers across America and in many other parts of the world are calling 2009 the worst harvest they’ve ever seen in their lives, owing largely to extended bouts of bad weather. At the same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture is officially forecasting bumper crops, while close to three-fourths of the country’s farmland is in areas declared eligible for federal disaster assistance due to failed crops.

A popular farmers’ Web site is chock full of stories of entire crops of soybeans rejected for moisture damage, long delays in harvesting corn only to find out the corn is moldy, damaged or too light to be used as animal feed or even ethanol, and farmers unsure if they’ll even have a farm for another year due to the losses they’ve taken.

Most agricultural products are purchased in futures, which are promises to deliver a quantity of a commodity at a future date. Futures carry many risks, prominent among them the possibility that the commodity simply won’t be available at the promised delivery date. While futures prices are set by the market, some of the information used to set the prices comes from the USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates reports. The unrealistic 2009 bumper crop predictions in its recent reports, which may have seemed reasonable months ago before 2009’s long string of bad weather but which USDA has failed to revise, drove futures prices artificially low.

But grain futures prices have already risen well above the USDA’s latest projections as the corn harvest threatens to drag on into March in some areas of the country, thanks to an unusually wet 2009 and unprecedented fall flooding in the Midwest.

The good news is that even with 2009 being the worst harvest in human memory, there will still be plenty of food in the U.S. to feed everyone in the U.S. The bad news — if you’re in the U.S. — is that the food won’t be used to feed everyone in the U.S.

It seems China has finally figured out what to do with all the U.S. dollars it’s holding. You’ll recall that the Federal Reserve took some pretty extreme measures over the last two years, ostensibly to save the U.S. economy. In fact, those measures have set us up the bomb. For decades China has been buying U.S. debt and financing Americans’ credit addiction as well as the government’s massive spending on millions of projects it has no business being involved in. But, it seems, they’ve had enough of the dollar and are about to pull the plug.

In the meantime, China has been using those dollars to buy every morsel of American food it can get its hands on. Combined with 2009’s bad weather and the USDA’s ridiculous numbers, this prompted a late August soybean shortage which is expected to continue through 2010.

The U.S. has a very good reason to fudge the numbers on crop estimates. If it published realistic numbers, and crop futures prices rose sharply, three things would likely happen: Wall Street would take massive losses, inflation fears would cause investors to dump bonds, frustrating the government’s attempts to finance its incredible expanding debt, and most importantly, China, whose currency is tied closely to the U.S. dollar, would allow it to appreciate. That alone would likely send the U.S. dollar into freefall; all three would mean utter economic collapse.

Of course, you can’t fool the market for long; as noted above, futures prices are already well above the USDA’s numbers. All they really managed to do with their numbers game was buy the U.S. dollar another year of life.

One market analyst believes that the 2010 food shortage will be the catalyst which not only brings about the collapse of the U.S. economy, but takes down Great Britain and Japan with it.

While a food crisis was unavoidable to some extent because of the abnormal weather and financial crisis, the total panic which will soon grip world agricultural markets is a creation of the USDA and its fictitious production estimates. If not for the USDA’s interference, food prices would have risen in the first half of 2009 in anticipation of the 2009/10 shortage. The United States Department of Agriculture has caused incalculable damage to the world economy by encouraging overconsumption of rapidly diminishing food supplies.

Once the 2010 Food Crisis starts, confidence in the US government will be shattered as a result of the USDA’s faulty estimates. The starvation and misery caused by higher food prices will also create a lot of anger . . . — Market Skeptics

In this scenario, rural banks will begin failing rapidly, especially in the Midwest, and the inevitable bailouts will drive up U.S. debt further. These bailouts, combined with the Chinese allowing the yuan to appreciate, will erode confidence in the U.S. dollar to the point that foreign banks and investors begin dumping U.S. debt at fire sale prices. At that point the Federal Reserve will have no choice but to print money, leading directly to hyperinflation.

I shouldn’t have to tell you what hyperinflation will look like, but in case you need a reminder, it will likely make the Great Depression look like a minor recession. Tens of millions of people who have never known want in their entire lives are going to be shocked to wake up broke and hungry, with no idea what happened or why it happened to them. The government will almost certainly be unable to fulfill its promises of food stamps, social security and other such welfare programs. Food riots are likely and people will almost certainly die when the government attempts to put them down.

Worst of all, almost nobody will assign blame where it truly belongs: central banks and fiat currency.

Market Skeptics and many other foreign investors I’ve seen quoted widely in foreign media but virtually never in the U.S., recommend investing in agriculture, except derivatives, and in precious metals. I also recommend you invest in as much nonperishable food as you can lay hands on in the next two months, at least a year’s supply if you can manage it. If there’s no collapse, you can eat it, and if there is, you’ll at least have something to eat. And when you read a headline such as “Yuan allowed to rise versus dollar,” it’s time to head for the hills.

by Aaron Turpen

(NaturalNews) In the United States, one of our favorite slogans comes from our national anthem: “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.” Most Americans don’t seem to realize that this statement is no longer relevant to our nation and its people. We have become the land of the diseased and the home of the wholly owned subsidiary.

Through control of the government, gained by usurping the People, large corporations have used the power of the regulatory to control who can and who cannot compete and profit in their markets. Big Agriculture and their industrialized minions have completely taken over the United States Department of Agriculture, the Congress, and the Food and Drug Administration and awarded themselves billions in subsidies for their efforts.

Every year, these corporate giants of agriculture reap rewards in the form of government (taxpayer) largesse, which they use to artificially lower food prices and edge out the little man who might compete. When a new trend, such as organic foods, emerges as a consumer preference in the marketplace, they move quickly to gain control of what is and isn’t allowed to be labeled, working the rules to their favor, and to profit even more.

Pharmaceuticals play a similar game, controlling the FDA – the very agency meant to regulate them – and thus pushing any alternatives out of the market. Despite whatever a Doctor or health expert might say about a product, if it’s not approved by the FDA (and thus Big Pharma), it’s not allowed to say anything relating to its benefits beyond the overly-general.

Through these tactics, both the Big Ag and Big Pharma cartels have managed to not only gain near-total control of the food and drug markets in the United States, but they’ve managed to generally give their competition (the alternatives) a bad name in the process by wreaking total ruination on the terms that used to mean “good” and “healthy.”

No longer is “organic” anything more than a marketing buzz word with little or no meaning. “Alternative medicine” now virtually means “quackery” to most people.

Big Pharma Owns Medicine
In his documentary film Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Pushing Drugs, Ronit Ridberg¹ manages to outline how the pharmaceutical companies have accomplished their iron fisted control of the American health care industry.

In this film, you see how total control of the industry, whose goal is supposedly to put patient care and your health needs above all else, is primarily controlled, instead, by pharmaceutical profits. What’s more, the pharmaceutical companies promote propaganda that’s so effective that Goebbels himself would be impressed – from virtually unheard-of diseases made mainstream (ala “Restless Leg Syndrome”) to diseases whose definitions are so vague that they could include nearly anyone (the “disorders”).

By controlling patent law and what can and can’t be labeled as a “medicine,” the pharmaceutical giants own the market. Then you look at who “regulates” them and you see the rest of the picture. The FDA is made up of two basic arms: scientific and managerial. The management arm ultimately makes the decisions and thus national policies on the drugs allowed to be sold on the market. Time and time again, management routinely ignores the science and sides with the pharmaceutical company.

The Vioxx scandal was a glaring example of this in action. Even after Merck, the makers of Vioxx, pulled it from shelves as being dangerously deadly, the FDA stood behind the drug anyway, even claiming before Congress that it was “safe.”^{2, 3}

Big Agra Rules Your Dinner Plate
The giant agricultural conglomerates and their regulatory arms (the USDA and the FDA) are no better off. Currently, in the U.S., genetically modified seed crops make up 91% of our soybean crops and 68% of corn.⁴ That’s just two crops. They’re working on sugar beets, wheat, and others now as well.

That is just one facet of the game. Working the other end of the stick, the big agricultural conglomerates have managed to reap up to $9 billion per year in corn subsidies.⁵ Then comes the corn as fuel subsidies, or corn ethanol payoffs from our tax dollars. This amounts to another $1.3 billion (in 2007) on top of the other subsidies the agricultural giants already receive.⁶

These subsidies don’t go to the happy family farm with a couple of milk cows out to pasture, a few crops on a hundred acres, and mom and pop working together with their teenaged son to grow healthy food. The tens and even hundred of billions in total farm bill subsidies the government throws around every year largely go to the single-crop, big agricultural conglomerates rather than to Farmer Dan and his family.

Those farmers who use traditional methods (aka “organic” or “sustainable” methods) versus the new, industrialized way of using synthetic fertilizers cannot sell their produce as “organic” or with “organic” on the label without submitting to heavy regulatory requirements and filings with the FDA.⁷ Yep, it’s illegal to use a word to describe your product without government approval.

These are just a few of the means by which Big Agra controls your food. You are fed corn syrup from genetically modified corn, sugar from over-processed cane and beets (which could also be GMO), and worse. Your milk, meat, and even your table salt are all controlled and manipulated to profit them and potentially kill you. One needs only to read a few days’ worth of headlines here at Natural News to see these concepts in action.

The Final Control
New legislation makes it basically illegal to sell naturally-sourced supplements as anything more than their scientific name and to force small, artisan and local farms and food producers out of business by adding odious requirements to their overhead and costs. These bills are brought before either of the houses of Congress every year – usually more than once per session.

Often, regulatory changes at the FDA and USDA will just slightly alter one thing or another, always to the detriment of small business and natural production.

It’s time Americans stopped being the victims and once again become the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Fight back against these infringements on your health. They’re working on taking over your well-being at the most fundamental of levels with food and medicine and on controlling what those things are and what you can have access to.

We need to take control back now, before it’s too late.

Footnotes:
1 – Big Bucks, Big Pharma low-res version (full length, about 45 minutes) available online: http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/comm…

2 – Despite Warmings, Drug Giant Took Long Path to Vioxx Recall, New York Times, November 14, 2004: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/b…

3 – Reputation of the FDA in shambles after Vioxx scandal, NaturalNews, November 6, 2004: http://www.naturalnews.com/002157_t…

4 – Racing Toward a Roundup-Ready Food Future, The Huffington Post, July 17, 2009: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy…

5 – Corn Subsidies by Year, the Environmental Working Group: http://farm.ewg.org/farm/progdetail…

6 – Are Corn Ethanol Farm Subsidies Too Complex to Understand?, gas2.0, October 24, 2008: http://gas2.org/2008/10/24/are-corn…

7 – USDA-FDA Organic Foods Label: http://usda-fda.com/Articles/Organi…

by Melanie G.

An important resource to have in times of need is a good food storage.  When I have talked to others about having an emergency supply of food in place, I have received laughter and ridicule.  I even had a neighbor to tell me when he needed emergency food, he would just come to my place.  I jokingly informed him not to bother as I had a supply of ammunition as well.  Too many people have come to rely on the grocery store.  But the threat of a snow storm here in Kentucky clears out the milk and bread in record time, this should be a testament of what it might be like should the trucks not come.

From childhood, my parents taught me the importance of having an emergency supply of food in place.  I grew up in eastern Kentucky where jobs were not plentiful.  As a result, my father changed jobs a few times.  Fortunately, the pantry that my parents filled in times of feast, fed our family of five in times of want, until my father found the next job.  If there was such a thing as unemployment or food stamps back then, I never knew.  My dad would go out and find work quickly and mom would continue to squirrel away food to feed us.

There are some guidelines for emergency food storage.  It is recommended that you have two weeks of water per person and year’s supply of food, clothing and if possible, fuel in your storage.  A first aid kit is also recommended.

An important part of any food storage system is to have on hand the basics:  flour, grains, beans/legumes, oils, rice, salt, sugar/honey, and water just to name a few.  These basics can help you to sustain your life if you are prepared in every needful way.   

My mother taught me to store items, in addition to these that families will eat every day.  Therefore, my storage not only contains these key items, it contains items that are foods we eat every day.  I store condiments, peanut butter, soups, jams, jellies, canned vegetables (both store bought and home grown), cake mixes, pasta, pasta helpers, nuts, fruits, crackers, oatmeal, canned meats (store bought and home canned), etc. etc. 

The key to a good food storage is usage.  If you store something you don’t use or eat, it will eventually go bad and you will have to replace it.  If you store something you use, then you will just replace it as you go along and your food storage will stay fresh and replenished. 

Replenishing your food storage, especially in light of rising food prices today, can be an expense.  I have my pantry to a level where most of my replenishing can be done cheaply.   I get the sales ad and purchase what is on sale.  If ketchup is on sale, I buy several.  We use this item, so it won’t go to waste.  If cereal is on sale, I get several boxes.  If ground beef is on sale, I load the cart down, go home and prep several meatloaves and throw them in the freezer.  Then over the next couple of weeks, while these items are no longer on sale, my pantry is stocked with them and I can go to the next item.  Let’s say next week, pasta is on sale, or sugar.  That is the week to stock up on that item.

To make the deal even sweeter, you can go online to your favorite coupon list and search for coupons that you can trade for and use on the sale items.  Before you shy away from this, read on.  With a good sale and coupons, you can save thousands of dollars over time.  Once, I went to Kroger’s and using coupons, I actually walked out with $100 worth of groceries and $30 more in cash than I had when I walked in.  This doesn’t normally happen, they normally won’t give you cash, and I asked the head cashier repeatedly if she was sure she could give me money.

Also, the Kroger’s supermarket cash registers print coupons out at the point of sale.  I have found free drinks, free eggs, and other items free or cheap.  There are a lot of complexities to using coupons that I haven’t even explored myself.  But it is a good resource.  Check out www.mycoupons.com,www.hotcouponworld.com and there are so many more free sites.

Another good thing to do is utilize your own back yard.  It doesn’t matter if yosu own 100 acres or a back door terrace, grow something and preserve it for later use.  Or, better yet, eat it now to save your reserves.  Fresh grown vegetables are so good for you and they don’t have all the chemicals and preservatives added to them.  You know what’s in them, because you grew them.  Nothing tastes as good as something you grew yourself. 

Even in a small confined space, you can grow in containers or boxes.  For years, I have grown straight from the bag.  I take a bag of dirt and cut an “X” in it, flip it over and cut the plastic out.  Nestled up against my house or out building, I plant two tomatoes in the bag.   I add composted manure to the dirt in the bag.  I also place worms there to enrich the soil.  I also grind up my kitchen scraps and pour around the soil.  I repeat this process every year and eventually I have built very rich vegetable beds.

This year my husband and I canned several jars of green beans, pickles, pickled okra, tomatoes, salsa, strawberry jam, grape jelly, beef, pork, chicken, soup and chili.  It was so much fun and fills you with pride knowing you have actually put away healthy food without harmful preservatives for your family. 

Another trick that will add to your storage preservation is eating your weeds [from un-sprayed areas].  A lot of the plants that are found in the wild are partially edible.  I have just begun researching this and have discovered several varieties of wild plants in my yard that are edible.  My backyard is covered in young poke salet, which I have tried.  My mother in law used the young leaves and cooked it with eggs.  This is a traditional dish in eastern Kentucky.  I am very leery of this plant as it can be very toxic is not prepared correctly.  Perhaps this is a plant to put on the “If there is nothing else to eat” list.  There are many other plants that are edible, and this would be a good skill to learn in order to survive.

This month, we will be getting a local raised cow.  The cost will average $2 per pound.  This will be mostly canned, but some frozen for later use.  Another advantage to canning meat as opposed to freezing it is that you can open it and eat the meat straight from the jar.  If frozen, you will need to thaw and cook.  If we are in times of survival, having the meat ready to eat can mean life or death.  I have friends who told me they have stored canned meat for eight years and counting and it’s still good.

If you watch for good deals and sales in the stores, use coupons and augment your stores from growing, local food, and even eating your weeds,  you can have a wonderful food storage that will sustain you and your family through most any crisis.

by Aaron Turpen of Aaron’s EnvironMental Corner

House Resolution 2749 (read it here) is a bill which would give the power to a Food and Drug Administrationofficial to decide what can and can’t be done in farming.  It allows for perpetrators of a basically unnamed offense to be prosecuted and receive up to ten years in prison and be assessed $100,000 fines.  Per offense.

That’s really the gist of the bill, though I’ve obviously been scant on real details.

A great writeup by Ethan Huff of Natural News on HR 2749 explains in much more detail how the bill works.  The Bill is called the “Food Safety Enhancement Act” and seeks to “reform the food supply” so that viruses and pathogens such as Swine Flu and Mad Cow Diseaseare better able to be controlled.

In reality, the bill is a huge nod to factory farms and GMO seed makers and a giant set of chains for small farms and local, artisan producers.

After you’ve learned about what the bill entails and how it will do nothing but put small, local (and healthy) producers out of business in favor of factory farms, you can help fight this bill’s passage:

A petition can be electronically signed to go to your representatives in Washington atPeaceTeam.net.

You can also sign a petition against HR 2749 and in support of HR 778 (to legalize raw milk products) at Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund at ftcdf.org.