Staff of life

Someone listening to our broadcast of July of 2016 found fault with a statement I made about grain reserves. The show was actually about Tracking the Beast.

About 15 minutes into the recording the critic thought I said "the silos are empty and we are out of grain". He wanted proof of this and of course I had none because that is not what I said.

What I said was that we use to have years and years of grain supplies in this country referring to strategic reserves of grain for a time when there could be major crop failures consecutively. Part of that surplus grain was what was called the "strategic grain supply".

He noted that "Today corn is being piled on the ground in huge mountains because there isn't enough storage space." Of course that is very common to pile grain on the ground until it can be shipped to some place.

In crop year 2008/2009, a total of approximately 2.24 billion metric tons of grain were produced worldwide.

So what does that mean?

I use to pile grain on the ground back in the 60's until it could be shipped to buyers but there was 6 to 7 years supply of grain in silos on the farm at the time. That meant you could have 7 years of crops failing and still have some wheat for annual consumption.

On farm storage of wheat has dropped from 190 to 175 million bushels since 1996. In America much of this loss of storage capacity is due to the fact that there is no real support for a grain reserve so people have turned silos into vacation homes. Many silos are full but the private storage capacity has decreased in relationship to the increased demand. And in many countries the only grain storage increase is government controlled.

The individual went on to say he was "very in tune with the amount of grains and to say the amount of grain reserves in the USA is 'burdensome' would be a huge understatement."

What is strategic grain reserve?

The "strategic grain reserve" was proposed back in the 1930's by Benjamin Graham. It was meant to moderate the boom and bust cycle of grain prices that often caused bankruptcy when grain prices dropped in surplus years.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a grain reserve that also helped American farms during the Depression. In the 1970s the government redesigned the Farmer-Owned Grain Reserve by offering low-cost and even no-interest loans for stored grain and subsidized the storage costs. But global markets over the following decades until the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act abolished the national system of effective grain reserve.

The reserve which had once been a 6 or 7 years supply of grain for the whole country dwindled and what was left became part of the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust under the authority of the secretary of Agriculture, which is seriously depleted.

• "The stores were gradually depleted until 2008, when the USDA decided to convert all of what was left into its dollar equivalent. And so the grain that once stabilized prices for farmers, bakers and American consumers ended up as a number on a spreadsheet in the Department of Agriculture."

Grain has played a greater role in the success and failure of major civilization from Egypt to Rome and China and India. Our modern world is not immune to global famine. In fact we were never more vulnerable.

The rise of power in imperial Rome was directly related to the price of grain. Grain was used to dull the sense of the people through the Bread and circuses freely given but paid for by Benefactors who exercised authority.

In a world of self centered people there is little vision of man in the course of history. Our personal vanity keeps us from seeing the truth or hearing it when we are told it. Over the last 4000 there have been many instances of world wide famine due to weather changes which had nothing to do with fossil fuels or carbon taxes.

The Maunder Minimum, a "prolonged sunspot minimum" from 1645 through 1715, caused crop failures world wide and a reduction in world population. There have been numerous "Little Ice Ages" over the last two millenniums due to volcanic eruptions that also brought world wide famine. In 1315, cold weather and torrential rains decimated crops across Europe which destabilized countries as millions of people starved. Volcanic eruptions in the years following 540 A.D. produced the coldest decade in more than 2300 years and caused world wide famine and cannibalism from Europe to China.

This can all happen again. Our modern dependence on technology does not make us less vulnerable but more. And our reliance on central government to come to our aid makes us foolish from an historical point of view. Governments of strong centralized power do not draw men of love and compassion but men who see power and control. Power corrupts and in hard times the people will not come first. In fact people who would take a bite out of their neighbor to obtain personal benefits in good times will literally devour their neighbor in hard times.

So what is the actual reserve today?

Estimates world wide for Grains for 2015/2016 is 2453.35 Million Metric Tons with a total supply of 3030.58 Million Metric Tons and in the US those numbers would be 428.85 Million Metric Tons with a total supply of 505.47 Million Metric Tons. Of course of that we will trade away at least 81.33 Million Metric Tons which is good for our trade deficit and only use about 348.73 Million Metric Tons. That leaves us with an ending stock of 75.42 Million Metric Tons.

If there was any kind of a crop failure prices would go through the roof and there would be food riots. No one would want to see that would they?

What if you had global weather change and crops begin to fail several years in a row. In the case of world wide crop failure the people will be starving within months of a major interruption.

If there was really global weather change on the horizon and the government loved the people or the people just loved each other there would be a massive push to grow, buy and store grain since very few food products can be stored for so long more economically than grain. But they are not doing that because people do not love one another and their governments are not governments of love but force.

Global grain supply were still low in 2013 after droughts in the US. While the crops have been good for the most part since then there has been no real attempt to go back to the strategic storage levels of the past.

In fact crops in America have been so good that Loan Deficiency Payments are are starting in some place. These LDPs are a farm income support created by the Food Security Act of 1985. That act was not only inadequate with its "swampbuster" clause but it seemed more concerned with "Determining Where Farm Products are located" rather than creating a real usable reserve.

I am not suggesting another giant government boondoggle program to creat a reserve but in a government of, for and by the people they should be gathering to create their own private and community controlled reserves.

There use to be hundreds of grain buyers in business out here in the west but that part of the grain economy is now controlled by a few large companies.

The modern debt economy requires that everyone sell what they produce as soon as possible to pay off loans since everyone including the government is operating on credit.

Some Reserve Reports

U.S. Food Supply More Vulnerable Than Ever
After Government Sold Off Emergency Grain Reserves
http://www.collapse.news/2016-01-29-u-s-food-supply-more-vulnerable-than-ever-after-government-sold-off-emergency-grain-reserves.html

World Whatch Institute
Grain Harvest Sets Record, But Supplies Still Tight
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5539

USA Today
Surplus U.S. food supplies dry up
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2008-05-01-usda-food-supply_N.htm

International grain supplies are the tightest in three decades, and prices of ... The nation for years has maintained a strategic petroleum reserve as a form of ...

Striking with thy Staff
Wheat and War
http://www.hisholychurch.org/news/articles/wheat.php

No Bread in the Land
Your Daily Bread and
Your Faith Emergency Management Auxiliary!
http://www.hisholychurch.org/news/articles/nobread.php

Bread and circuses
... idiom for a superficial means of appeasement.

Daily bread

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