It isn’t supposed to be this cold in October. The official start of winter is still almost two months away, and yet the weather in much of the western half of the country right now resembles what we might expect in mid-January. All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week. Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested. Due to unprecedented rainfall and extreme flooding early in the year, many farmers faced extraordinary delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were hoping that good weather at the end of the season would provide time for the crops to fully mature and be harvested. Unfortunately, a nightmare scenario has materialized instead. A couple of monster snow storms have already roared through the Midwest, and now record low temperatures threaten to absolutely wreck the rest of the harvest season. (Read More...)
Food Prices
China Is “Turning To Dog Meat” As The Massive Global Pork Shortage Rapidly Intensifies
If other forms of meat suddenly became too expensive, would you feed dog meat to your family instead? Sadly, this is a dilemma that many families in China are facing right now. As I reported a few days ago, one-fourth of all the pigs in the entire world have already been wiped out by African Swine Fever. The epicenter of this crisis is in China, and as you will see below, their hog population has fallen by more than 40 percent so far. This has caused a dramatic spike in the price of pork, and as a result many Chinese citizens are now seeking out less expensive alternatives. (Read More...)
This Is Not “Normal”: There Have Been More Than 500 Tornadoes In The U.S. During The Last 30 Days
The mainstream media has been using the term “uncharted territory” to describe the unusual tornado outbreaks that have been happening in the middle of the country, but I don’t think that truly captures the historic nature of what we are witnessing. Over the last 30 days, there have been more than 500 tornadoes in the United States. That is not normal. In fact, Tuesday was the 12th day in a row when at least eight tornadoes were spawned, and that is a new all-time record. Community after community in the Midwest now looks like a “war zone”, and billions upon billions of dollars of damage has already been done. But this crisis is far from over, because forecasters are telling us that more powerful storms will roar through the middle of the country on Wednesday. (Read More...)
It Is Being Projected That U.S. Consumers Will “Pay 40% To 85% More For Vine-Ripe And Other Fresh Tomatoes” By The End Of 2019
It has been quite a year. In March, catastrophic flooding in the Midwest absolutely crippled thousands of farms and “as many as a million calves” were lost in Nebraska alone. Then in April we learned that African Swine Fever has wiped out “150-200 million pigs” in China. To put that in perspective, that is more pigs than the entire U.S. pork industry produces in an entire year. And now on top of everything else, the price of fresh tomatoes is about to go skyrocketing. But this time a natural disaster is not to blame. Instead, it is an action by the federal government that is going to cause us to pay much more for tomatoes at the supermarket. The following comes from USA Today… (Read More...)
Record Setting Flooding In The Heartland: “The Mississippi River Has Been At Major Flood Stage For 41 Days And Counting”
Thousands of farmers in the Midwest have been waiting for a very long time for floodwaters to recede so that they can finally plant some crops, but instead more rain just keeps on coming. As you will see below, it is being reported that the Mississippi River has now been at major flood stage for 41 days in a row, and a lot more rain is coming this week. Meteorologists are warning us that major flooding may extend into June, and that means that many farmers will not be able to plant crops at all this year. Unfortunately, as global weather patterns continue to shift many believe that what we are witnessing this year may become the “new normal” along the Mississippi River. (Read More...)
30 Inches Of Snow! Another Bomb Cyclone “Detonates” Over The Midwest, And The NOAA Is Warning Flooding Could Extend Into July
We aren’t supposed to have a major blizzard in April. Less than a month after a “bomb cyclone” caused apocalyptic flooding in the central part of the country, another “bomb cyclone” is hitting the exact same area. One meteorologist has called it “a life-threatening storm”, and at this moment over four million people are under blizzard warnings. South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas are going to get absolutely hammered before the storm finally moves east on Friday. The authorities are warning that this new “bomb cyclone” will cause additional flooding in the region, but at this point we do not know how bad that flooding will be. (Read More...)
100s Of Millions Of Dollars In Crops Destroyed By Flooding, And Farmers Are Being Told “There’s Nothing The U.S. Government Can Do To Help”
This is the worst economic disaster for U.S. farmers in modern American history. Our ongoing trade war with China had greatly depressed prices for wheat, corn and soybeans, and so farmers were storing more crops on their farms than ever before in early 2019. And then the floods came. The water moved so fast that the vast majority of the farmers in the affected areas could not have moved what they had stored even if they wanted to, and the scale of the losses that these farmers have suffered is starting to become clearer. According to UPI, “hundreds of millions of dollars in crops” that were destroyed by the flooding were not covered by insurance… (Read More...)