This is probably not the first time your hearing this, this week but now is the time to stock up on groceries over the next several weeks.

You are going to see huge increases in prices on everything come the fall after some of the worst crop yields ever for corn and other raw food. Since almost everything in the U.S. is based on corn either directly or indirectly, all food is going to go up dramatically.

So anything that is non-pershiable, stock up as you see sales for it now. Canned goods, pastas, beverages, etc. Try to lessen the sticker shock this fall.

Corn on the market is nearly double the price it was two weeks ago.

I agree -

I've been watching this for awhile now.

I am hoping that my son will be the designated grocery shopper since he can go on Base and hit the stores there. (I forget what they are called PX or something?)

Also helps my DIL is in LP at Wallyworld, so she also gets a discount.

*envious of those who have luscious gardens!!*

Actually, in the short run prices on beef and pork and perhaps other meats, will go down as ranchers send stock that they cannot afford to feed through the winter, to slaughter. I am already seeing big sales on beef and pork here and am buying a freezing.

I use a vacuum sealing device to extend the life of frozen meats to about 3-4 times as long as would be if they were frozen in Ziplock bags or freezer paper. It has paid for itself many times over, even in a household of one! It will also seal without the vacuum pump, so it's great to reseal bags of cereal, chips, etc, better than a "chip clip." There is even a special sort of bag that can be used to seal fresh veggies (in season, of course) that lets you then microvave them in the bag. The bag has cooking times for various veggies printed on it, so I don't pay extra for frozen veggies that have this handy feature. I am getting ready to blanch, skin and vacuum freeze a ton of my garden tomatoes to make winter pasta sauces, chili, etc. Same with basil pesto, zuccini, and cilantro from my small pot garden garden. A little later, I will be hitting local farm stands for other veggies to vacuum freeze.

Corn on the cob (as of yesterday) was 5/1.00, and canned for .89...I think CA is luckier as everthing is grown here.

Everything will still be cheap now. That is why you should be buying now. It's in about 6 weeks when it starts filtering down through the food chain that there will be substantial price increases across the board. Not today or next week.

Unaffected areas grow corn sufficient for fresh use, regionally. It's the drought in the Midwest States that will drive prices. They produce nearly 80% of our corn and soybeans, and loss of crop will be felt. Cattle, swine and chicken eat corn. Oils, cosmetics, margarine, meal, ethanol, alcohol, syrup . . . Predictions are that by the first of the year, corn-based and used products will show a 10% increase in price.

Maybe the price of free range chicken will come down. They eat what chickens should eat, bugs and stuff. Corn or grass fed, there's not enough of either for the cattle. Driving over into Illinois yesterday, the corn looked pitiful. The soybeans seemed to be holding their own, but just barely and there is no end in sight for the drought.

Another interesting crop that will be affected, locally they interviewed a Christmas tree farmer who has lost everything he planted this year. Larger trees, including those as recent as last year, have been able to survive. He offered up some great advice and said this year's drought will affect those prices in about 8 years and if anyone tries to jack up their prices for 2012 claiming the drought, look for another retailer

Hello from the heart of the farm belt.( OH) just to say that the Feds have just authorized disaster releif for the famers in the counties around here. No they will not make a profit, but be able to stay in business. Before any one gets up in arms about taxpayer funds, remember: they grow our food!

FYI: PX/BX. Air Force, Marines and Navy have bases. The Army has posts. PX is Post Exchange (grocery store) and BX is Base Exchange. I'm sure they have other things besides groceries, but it's been years since I've been in one. Do they still have the one-way markers on the floor so you can only go down the aisles in one direction?

Sandra,

Not sure. My son was reluctant to go to the base up in Phx., and then his fiance talked him into it. (He gets stubborn). He said he found some great deals there. I figured when I'm up there I'll whine and cajole him into driving me out so I can see.



Sandra Sue Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> FYI: PX/BX. Air Force, Marines and Navy have
> bases. The Army has posts. PX is Post Exchange
> (grocery store) and BX is Base Exchange. I'm sure
> they have other things besides groceries, but it's
> been years since I've been in one. Do they still
> have the one-way markers on the floor so you can
> only go down the aisles in one direction?

Techman01, this is frightening. We do stock up on good sales and such, but there seems to be a lot of crop failure throughout the country. Hope people listen and prepare themselves.

I am growing peas, tomatoes and beans myself.

We need to have a full garden, but as mystery shoppers who has time?

You people are scaring me! As if I didn't have enough woes from reading the news and the Internet. Yes, I know, the worries of the day are sufficient for the day--from the Bible. I need to stop reading the news, like I stopped watching Alfred Hitchcock when I was a child so I could sleep without the sheet pulled up to my ears in the summer with no air conditioning. I just kept my eyes shut until I fell asleep. I need to stop reading about the latest disease that some doctor has a miracle preventative for. I'll eat what I'll eat. Tonight it is chocolate, unsweet tea (because I'm weaning myself of Dr. Pepper), and two kinds of chips. I cleaned the kitchen today and want to get rid of them. Even the dog is not begging for the chips. Obviously, hubby is out of town.

About the news: You have to really feel sorry for the gunman, too, who had "everything". It appears that he was studying about himself, though, in his research.

Now that the flags are half-staff, another military reference: "Half-staff" is for land and "half-mast" is onboard ships.

It doesn' take much time to have a garden...depends on how much you want to. I have to say most o fthe things I have for the garden I got during shops...hardware stores for pots and soil, plants, seeds, tools.

I am a Master Gardener in my state (doesn't teach everything you may want to know) and at one time had 63 species of plants, including ornamentals, on our front porch and around it. It took a lot of my time. My husband has become enamored of container gardening because it's easy to control. We are both going to have fall gardens. I gave him some of my containers and now he has onions. His peppers got eaten by something. My cousin is growing basil and other herbs on her patio. She mentioned Miracle Gro potting soil. That's the problem right there. We live on sand and it is expensive to buy potting soil, especially when much is needed, but very productive. The veterinarian agreed to give us some manure so I guess we better get over there. Manure deteriorates fast in the sun, though, just like old potting soil.

hmm... i beg to differ... mainly because corn prices are highly subsidised...

and if it comes to a 200% price hike... corn which is now 80 cents a can will go up to $1.60...

with animals lets do some hypotheticals... lets use the 200% number again... and lets say a farmer has... 20 chickens for and two cows... im not a farmer but lets just use it for an example and they eat equivelant

which means the price for feed would go up 10 % each for the chicken and about 100% for cows...

and well since it takes about 7 pounds of feed to make one pound of meat lets use a multipul of seven

so chicken would go up 70% and beef would go up 700%

i look at my grocery now and chicken is $2.50 a pound and beef is $3.50 a pound

so the price hike would bring current chicken prices up to $4.25 and beef would go up to $24.5 a pound

chicken is fine... beef is crazy...

There are some problems with this though:

none of this is taking in the bell curve of supply and demand... which is that at a certain point prices become to high and no one buys it... so the price falls...i dont think anyone would buy meat at $24.50 a pound

also food is quite cheap... americans pay between 8-20% of their money on food and supermarkets are raking in profits quite well according to bloomberg... therefor there is space to go... yes some prices will be passed on... but not all... because the wonders of capitalism which breeds compeitition

could this be killer NO! ... it could solve the obesity epidemic... heaven forbid we eat more vegetables and less corn syrup and meat...

with gas if ethenol was totally knocked out that would cause gas prices to rise 10% a 35 cent up tick... but once again the bell curve... as well as further investments in natural gas, hybrids, and walking...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2012 08:31PM by cooldude581.

Most of the price of a can of corn is in processing,packaging, advertising and shipping, not in the price of the raw product. If the price of corn doubles, the nightly business report experts estimated that the price of a can of corm would increase about 7 percent.

The price of meat is somewhat more impacted but it is not a matter of doubling the price if corn doubles! Again, in the short run, beef and pork prices will be falling as farmers and ranchers send animals to slaughter rather than trying to pay to feed them through the winter with expensive corn.

I posted what I heard on PBS today on Irene's thread.

I'm in Iowa, and there are a lot of farmers around here who have already cut their corn down, and started on their insurance paperwork. I froze a ton of sweet corn yesterday - most of the ears were about half the size they should have been and looked pitiful :-(

We usually get a side of beef or pig processed every year, so I need to get going on that, and I think I'll stock up on some of the basics at Costco over the next few months...

We have many fresh stands on the back road where they raise veggies, fruit with Oxnard being the stawberry capitol.....still low, my concern is for chicken and beef, have bought a ton of canned corn, chickens here are about 1.29pd., with sales down to .99.....this is great for my grocery shops,
so, would you say our wonderful MSC's and clients will read into this, raise
our reimbursement when prices go up.....just asking!! This is like the price of gas, we are again in the cold and on our own......

tofu or beans anyone?

ah yes... according to npr the best environmentaly sustainable meat?

catfish...

mmmmmmm

If you haven't noticed, there is nothing that we eat (talking processed food here)
that doesn't have corn syrup as an ingredient. Corn syrup is sugar just as much as sugar cane is sugar. And they wonder why Americans are so fat? Hard to avoid sugar when its in everything offered to eat here in America. Particularly bad for me since I have a sugar problem.

And why do we have to have corn in our gas.

If they got the gd corn out of all our food and gas, there's be more for export and for animal feed, and the prices of everything wouldn';t be affected every time there's a drought ----but they say there han't been a drought like this since the 30's.

Interesting , history repeats itself. Depression of the 30's ,followed by unemployment, drought, dustbowl, huge movements of populations.

High fructose corn syrup is cheap and adds to the problem. Read some labels and you will often find it is not the only sweetener in processed foods. It is also insidious and shows up in all sorts of foods that don't even need any type of sweetener, such as many of the mainstream brands of peanut butter. That takes a great healthy ingredient and gives it the nutritional value of candy. What's worse are the people who consume the most peanut butter, children and people with limited incomes.

Ethanol on the other hand helps to reduce pollution and raise the octane in gasoline. It's cleaner, renewable and can reduce the need for fossil fuels.

Ideally corn should not be used as an animal feed anyway. It is used as a cheap way to fatten cattle, but the end result is meat that lacks the health benefits of grass fed livestock. The same thing happens with chickens. The variety of nutrients available in animals allowed to eat a natural diet is high and many of things detrimental to our health are reduced.

There are different types of corn grown for different purposes. That is also why many of us are not seeing spikes in the price of sweet corn for human consumption. It is the feed corn that is being most affected and will cause meat and dairy to go up.

I read labels and buy nothing made with corn sryup, and buy 0% transfat.
This is up to you to decide what to put into your body, change your ways,
sugar I get from fresh fruits and have cut my intake 50%, when baking, I
use half of what I normally would, and subsitute the other half with applesauce or almond milk, taste even better and wipes out those cravings.
We'll live, trust me, prices didn't actually go up with the gas prices, and
I think panic is setting in, take a deep breath.....

Yep Irene, I'm a label reader too, Takes a long time to grocery shop. That's how I know about corn syrup in everything

but I keep things in the fridge for fast meals when I get home from shopping and sitting at the computer...have found bread without corn syrup, ( Arnold's has big letters : NOW WITHOUT CORN SYRUP - so that's good, but the cold cuts have corn syrup as the third ingredient !

only thing so far that doesn't have corn syrup is the cottage cheese - even the potato chips have some kind of corn syrup.

Feh.

For lunch meat, roast a chicken or a turkey. Grow just a few veggies in pots and you will be amazed. Buy at farmers' stands along the road and freeze veggies!

Interesting piece on 60 minutes just tonight. Other than a general desire to keep sugars low, regular corn syrup doesn't bother me any more than sugar or honey. It's the engineered HFS that scares the bejesus out of me. I read, read and read labels some more at the regular grocers. Anyone lucky enough to have a Trader Joe's can give their eyes a rest. TJ's policy excludes products with HFCs and trans fats

LisaSTL, I agree and shop at TJ, whole foods and Sprouts. I saw the 60 minutes program tonight and totally believe it. My daughter who HAD a
major sweet tooth, yet excersise's like mad, had trouble losing weight.
She went to a Nutritist and cut out all processed foods, sugar and white flour, dropped 25pds in 3 months and is rid of her sugar cravings,
this diet detozed her, she looks great and feels better. I believe sugar
is the problem for obesity in this country, and FF the devil.
Afterthought....I looked for a Trader Joes up here before I moved in, was
one of my must have's. They have been around for years, wish they were shopped.

Wonder what I am doing wrong?...I have had a garden for years after learning the love of gardening from my grandmother. In my apartment days, it was in little pots along the balcony. Now, I have a nice area in my yard dedicated to a variety of foods we love to eat. Out of 8 tomato plants, I have not been able to gather enough in a few days to make 1 tomato pie. I am crossing my fingers every morning that there will be at least one to make a tomato sandwich which is my summertime lunch favorite! The peppers....not much to speak of. Cucumbers, not one turned green...just got bloated and turned to yellow. Okra, nearly rotted on the vine before it was big enough to look like a green bean. Squash and zucchini, decent yield, but not enough to make and freeze casseroles. I have never, ever, ever, had this happen before. Usually, I am so sick of tomatoes that my stomach lining feels like it is rotting from the acid overload. I normally have to beg my neighbors to take the extra yield that I cannot possibly find the time to handle before they spoil. Last year, I had cucumber sandwiches, cucumber tea, I think I even put cucumbers on my eyes a few times to see what the fuss about that is. Anyone have any tips/advice on what might have gone wrong. I am still nursing my plants. They look good, but are still barely plugging along in the yield department.