A quick note this morning.
The issues in the food supply don’t seem to be improving. In some ways they seem to be getting worse.
I was at our local Meijer last night and on a Thursday evening they were completely sold out of chicken. Like the whole refrigerated section where chicken is sold was empty. Most of the frozen chicken was also gone, including the bagged stuff like chicken nuggets and strips. Pork looked OK and there was some beef but it was pretty picked over as well. Thankfully there were some bags of chicken wings so we are having buffalo wings tonight.
Tonight in the upper Midwest we are expecting temperatures well below freezing, that bodes ill for a lot of vegetable gardens and fruit trees. The Amish women are kind of panicking a little, normally they could cover the plants up but it might be cold enough to kill the young plants even through a plastic cover, and greenhouses are getting swamped so finding replacement plants might get very difficult. Losing entire orchards of just blooming fruit trees? Also pretty bad.
Not only are the big meat packing houses either way behind or just shut down completely, but local butchers are swamped as well. I was at one today and scheduled a steer to be butchered, the earliest date he had was a couple of day before Thanksgiving. The entire month of December is also booked completely and he is taking appointments for 2021. A different butcher we have used in the past is completely booked for 2020 and is scheduling for 2021. I was next to one of my steers this morning and he is enormous, we probably should butcher him right now but it looks like we have six months to go.
The cataclysmic shocks to the food supply chain are likely going to only get worse and we are seeing a renewed push for plant-based “meat substitutes” and lab grown “meat”, which makes me more than a little suspicious. Not only are consumers impacted but farmers are in trouble as well. Watch this 9 minute video for some background.
Food might become scarce and even worse, should we see another calamity, whether a new disease or significant natural disaster or war, the entire food chain could come off the rails.
Don’t get caught unprepared.
All over the world there are issues with food. You're crazy if you don't "panic" buy right now. My normal weekly grocery shop has almost doubled in price and on top of that I have to try and buy for when there's none available.
Toilet paper is back on the shelf but now it's eggs and meat. Canned meat is difficult to source as well. We're in so much trouble. I feel like I'm Ralph Wiggum, sitting on the bus with a big smile saying "I'm in danger"
FWIW I don't know why you don't have a busy comment section. Keep up the great work
Prices are quietly going up on a lot of stuff too, it is going to get awfully expensive to buy food in a month or two.
And thanks, I don't get a lot of page views but I keep plugging away at it.