Food Prices Expected to Rise Sharply

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Food inflation has been a reality for a while and the government along with a compliant media has been delaying telling you the real facts. It’s been a bad year for crops and the law of supply and demand is kicking in:

Corn is up 45 percent the last three months. We haven’t seen cotton prices this high since after the Civil War. Soybeans are up. Oil is up. Metals are up. So are coffee and cocoa.

In this era of massive liquidity, everything is up, except for food prices—specifically processed food (made from many of the same commodities and other ingredients whose prices have risen).

According to the USDA, that is going to change. In its most recent CPI report for food, the USDA reported that prices are expected to rise in 2011.

For all food, prices are expected to rise two to three percent, which is double the levels of 2010. Meat prices are expected to rise up to 3.5 percent, and dairy 5.5 percent.

“The forecast for 2011, that remains unchanged, but it’s moving to the higher part of that range,” said Ephraim Leibtag, who serves as a senior economist for the USDA and out together the report. He added, “The potential to go above that is more likely if current commodity price increases remain where they are or rise even more.”

CNBC does it’s best to put lipstick on this pig by reminding us that we’re “coming off historic lows” in commodities but all that really means is we were living in a time of plenty and now we’re not. It’s time to start putting away a supply of long lasting foods that can be stored without refrigeration. Think canned vegetables, pasta (properly stored) and canned sauces.

Emergency food supplies are also available at decent prices. A 2.25 lb can of powdered eggs can be purchased for about $25 on Amazon and that’s the equivalent of 90 eggs and will last for several years unopened and up to a year once opened. Gardeners may want to order bulk supplies of extra seeds now to start planting next spring because seed prices are going to skyrocket once the Americans feel the sticker shock of food inflation. Mylar food storage bags and a stash of food grade five gallon buckets are cheap and effective way to start storing staples that are cheap now (like pastas and rice) but are going to get more expensive as our economic collapse accelerates.

The warnings are all there. Don’t get caught with no food in the house when we start to see food prices increase beyond the reach of the average American.

A Quick Warm Up by Zuzana

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Zuzana is the Internet phenomenon who is the star of Body Rock TV. Her claim to fame is filming herself doing workouts 99% couldn’t hack on your best day, and thus shaming us all into getting a little more exercise.

A lot of supposed survivalists are in shockingly bad shape. If you believe the world is about to devolved into total anarchy or that a massive solar flare is going to send us back into the pre-industrial age getting in shape should be one of your primary concerns. To get in shape you have to start with the basics including a good warm up routine so here you go:

Cartels Setting Up “Franchises” in California

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These aren’t just gangs like MS-13 acting as proxies for the cartels, but legitimate franchise expansions that have the power of the cartels behind them. Drug war? More like an expanding empire funded in part by drugs and running like a multi-national corporation:

SAN DIEGO — When a major Mexican drug cartel opened a branch office here on the California side of the border, U.S. authorities tapped into their cellphones – then listened, watched and waited.

Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations that reached deep into Mexico and helped build a sprawling case against 43 suspects – including Mexican police and top officials – allegedly linked to a savage trafficking ring known as the Fernando Sanchez Organization.

According to the wiretaps and confidential informants, the suspects plotted kidnappings and killings and hired American teenage girls, with nicknames like Dopey, to smuggle quarter-pound loads of methamphetamine across the border for $100 a trip. To send a message to a rival, they dumped a disemboweled dog in his mother’s front yard.

But U.S. law enforcement officials say the most worrisome thing about the Fernando Sanchez Organization was how aggressively it moved to set up operations in the United States, working out of a San Diego apartment it called “The Office.”

At a time of heightened concern in Washington that drug violence along the border may spill into the United States, the case dubbed “Luz Verde,” or Green Light, shows how Mexican cartels are trying to build up their U.S. presence.

The Fernando Sanchez Organization’s San Diego venture functioned almost like a franchise, prosecutors say, giving it greater control over lucrative smuggling routes and drug distribution networks north of the border.

“They moved back and forth, from one side to the other. They commuted. We had lieutenants of the organization living here in San Diego and ordering kidnappings and murders in Mexico,” said Todd Robinson, the assistant U.S. attorney who will prosecute the alleged drug ring next year.

Franchise offices are probably opening up in many major cities, explaining the rise in gang violence we’ve all been seeing. An anonymous emailer told me that the reason they’re running “offices” like this is to prepare for the eventual legalization or at least decriminalization that is coming to America in the next five years. Be careful who you buy your weed from stoners.

h/t N.T.A.