COVID-19

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Re: COVID-19

Postby snaark » Wed May 13, 2020 8:02 pm

Go get this week's Economist. It has a briefing on food supply chains. Here's a link but it's behind a paywall:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/05/09/the-worlds-food-system-has-so-far-weathered-the-challenge-of-covid-19
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Re: COVID-19

Postby ROB » Thu May 14, 2020 10:04 am

Some extracts:

In 2007 there had been poor wheat harvests in Australia and Europe and a poor corn harvest in America; grain stocks were at their lowest since 1973, says Caitlin Welsh of the csis, a think-tank. Oil prices were sky high, which made making fertilisers and getting food to market more expensive. It also increased demand for crops, like corn and sugar, that can be used as feedstocks for biofuels.

Today cereal stocks are twice as high as they were then (see chart 2). Bulk shipping is 20 times cheaper and crude oil is just $30 a barrel. That makes all manner of inputs cheaper and pushes the price of fuel feedstocks like corn and sugar lower still to boot. If the number of importing countries has risen for most crops, so has the number of exporting countries. That makes trade more resilient to swings in supply and demand.

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America’s food-waste ratio is set to rise from 30% to 40% this year, according to André Laperrière of godan, a group which promotes open data.


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Shipping is working so smoothly that India’s locked-down coastal states have opted to buy soyabean oil from Argentina rather than trucking it from inland.

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Meat offers particularly distressing bottlenecks. Demand is quite low. Carlos Rodriguez of agro Merchants, which provides cold storage in 11 countries, says meat fridges that once had spare capacity are now “totally full”. But supply marches on; and animals born must, at some point, be slaughtered. This is hitting America’s pork industry in a big way. Shutdowns in giant abattoirs slashed the country’s pork slaughter capacity by 40%; every five days saw 1m “excess” pigs left alive on farms which have no space for them. President Donald Trump last week took on powers allowing the government to force processors to stay open. Many now are so; but absenteeism has soared.

In the rich world the result of such disruptions is not famine but inconvenience: dearer bacon and blueberries. But three dangers loom—and the longer the crisis lasts, the nastier they are likely to get.

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Some farmers deprived of markets, and thus cash, by restaurant closures and the like will leave crops to rot rather than pay for harvest. Some will go bust. In countries with low interest rates the risk is lessened. American farms pay much less to service their debt than they did in the 1980s, and are thus more secure.

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Re: COVID-19

Postby snaark » Thu May 14, 2020 10:41 am

The upshot is that supply has so far been pretty resilient and, while plenty of risks remain, there are reasons to expect this continue. The bigger risk is people going hungry because of poverty, which is why I said you're better off putting some money aside than stockpiling food.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby ROB » Thu May 14, 2020 12:46 pm

Fuck that. I just bought a 200 pack of toilet paper.

Remember that guy on bfc years ago who got really excited that because he stockpiled baked beans, when the apocalypse came he would be able to force women to give him a blow job in return for a can? I miss quality posters like that guy.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby snaark » Thu May 14, 2020 1:45 pm

ROB wrote:Fuck that. I just bought a 200 pack of toilet paper.

Remember that guy on bfc years ago who got really excited that because he stockpiled baked beans, when the apocalypse came he would be able to force women to give him a blow job in return for a can? I miss quality posters like that guy.


Haha, that's awesome.

But seriously, I'm guessing there's a lot of people who are now wondering what to do with all their toilet paper. Most supermarkets here started stocking it again here about a month ago. First it was funny Polish or Czech brands. Now shops can't seem to get rid of it. I guess noone is buying it because they already have a year's supply at home. Apparently the demise of print journalism forced a lot of paper companies to switch to making the stuff. They've all ramped up production since the pandemic started. Now there's overcapacity and oversupply. Kind of fascinating watching how supply and demand works...
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Re: COVID-19

Postby MJK » Thu May 14, 2020 6:34 pm

Haven't read the Ecomonist piece yet; I'm not putting money in Lynn Rothschild's pocket but I will thumb thru it at the store later today. Still big ass holes in the shelves at the stores in my area. Doesn't look like the local source for layer and broiler chicks will have anything up here this summer. I am curious as to whether anyone else is seeing a lack or shortage of meat, pasta and flour where they are.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby gnaruki » Thu May 14, 2020 10:10 pm

Flour and pasta are plentiful. Some stores (Costco for one) are starting ration meat purchases. The only bare shelves post panic buying are toilet paper and cleaning supplies. From what I've been reading the lower 48 won't get a meat/eggs supply squeeze until June.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby ROB » Fri May 15, 2020 5:18 am

MJK wrote:I'm not putting money in Lynn Rothschild's pocket


I guess it was only a matter of time before MJK revealed this side of himself.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby MJK » Fri May 15, 2020 7:18 am

The humor, context and point in general of your comment are cloaked in mystery; or perhaps completely absent.

Looks like the mid May cold snap in the northeastern US will possibly add to the potential shortages. It will take a few more days to shake out. I have a cousin with a small, 50 cow organic dairy in Wabasha and he was saying that many dairies were committed to producing milk for institutional use(small cartons for schools, multi gallon bags for restaurants, prisons and cafeterias)and with those places shuttered they are wondering if they should wait it out or retool at huge expense for retail sale. Hard times in the land of plenty...

There was chicken and beef at Freddies today but a 2 package limit that the meat cutters told me was probably semi permanent. Also there has been no powdered milk since this all started. Pasta and flour still blown out.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby Kurt » Fri May 15, 2020 5:08 pm

ROB wrote:Fuck that. I just bought a 200 pack of toilet paper.

Remember that guy on bfc years ago who got really excited that because he stockpiled baked beans, when the apocalypse came he would be able to force women to give him a blow job in return for a can? I miss quality posters like that guy.


Yeah, Who was that guy? I remember the Rape Camp guy who literally sat his daughter down and explained, 12 years ago, that she would be sent to Obama's rape camps and she cried (of course) and stated that she hated Obama (of course).

Of course in the US the joke is now on us, as guys like that are pretty much running things.

Also, remember the "Obama Death Panels" to decide who lives or who dies during our half assed attempt at a public medical service? Those people now basically called for the same thing in hoping COVID-19 would kill the weak.

A few things to remember about the supply chain in the US:
1. There are forced re-openings during a plague.
2, Meat packing and processing has been declared "essential" so the workers have been sent back to work by a group of people who do not believe in the germ theory of disease.
3. Those people will get sick.
4. When they are sick they wont be able to pack meat.
5. In the US, if something is essential, but cannot be done, the National Guard can be called in to do it.
6. Members of our National Guard did not sign up to work for free packing meat in a place where the workers were dropping do to COVID-19.
7. THAT, will lead to a shortage.

All the back-to-work people who want to send people back to work to prevent shortages and price increases will actually be the cause of shortages and price increases.

I remember that my survival plan is this: Stock up on 2 months food, live in a big city. Why the big city and not farm the land and shoot squirrels? Because in a time of famine people in cities riot for food but people in rural areas starve to death...I learned that from a relative of Haile Miriam back in the 80s while I went to a school filled with the non-heir children of despots.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby MJK » Fri May 15, 2020 6:05 pm

While you make interesting points Kurt, almost every source of food production has areas of human congestion similar in ways to the meat plants. We are still without a vaccine for AIDS after almost 40 years. A similar outcome for the Covid thing at this point seems as likely as anything else. Maybe the meatpacking industry could be retooled along the lines of Level IV virology labs but then where do you draw a line? Will every one be wearing MOPP gear or a biosuit in every aspect of public or common activity?

It would seem that the emerging focus on each state deciding for itself might be a way forward. If Texas and Kansas want to make meat packing jobs available to say prisoners for reduced sentences or maybe as a fast track for naturalization for immigrants, while California and New York experiment with other, more Orwellian methods like closed borders and the end of humanity as social animals(or something less extreme) the outcomes can be scrutinized. Each state could decide, "Ooh, that sucks; we don't want what happened there", or "That seems to work, let's do that". Standing on Xs, handwashing until the skin flakes away and getting reduced oxygen intake from a little paper fungus farm on my face far into the future ain't gonna cut it for me.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby rickshaw92 » Fri May 15, 2020 8:24 pm

.Because in a time of famine people in cities riot for food


Photos would be nice if things kick off.
Im reallly fuclimg pissed but fespite that I can still hit a tarfet at 1000m plus. mayVRVe bnot tonight but it qint beyond the wit if man. Nowhammy.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby ReptilianKittenEater » Sat May 16, 2020 2:36 am

Kurt wrote:
Yeah, Who was that guy? I remember the Rape Camp guy who literally sat his daughter down and explained, 12 years ago, that she would be sent to Obama's rape camps and she cried (of course) and stated that she hated Obama (of course).

.


That was Doc Watson. I liked his sense of humour.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby ROB » Sat May 16, 2020 3:36 am

ReptilianKittenEater wrote:That was Doc Watson. I liked his sense of humour.


I'm sure his 6 year old daughter saw the funny side too.
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Re: COVID-19

Postby ROB » Sat May 16, 2020 3:39 am

MJK wrote:The humor, context and point in general of your comment are cloaked in mystery; or perhaps completely absent.


Sigh. I am accusing you of anti-semitism. You hate jews or some variation on that. Can't wait to hear your Rothschild conspiracy though.

The fact that I have to explain this shit makes it like I'm kicking a puppy.
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