Jim:
Two months ago you could purchase Almond Nut Butter for around $7.50 per 16 ounce jar. Today the Almond butter is selling for $17.00 per jar. Today Cashew Nut Butter sells for around $11.50 and two months ago it sold for around $6.00 per 16 ounce jar. A clerk at Walmart commented that prices are rising fast.
Rosauers Grocery Store in Kalispell, Montana had raised its prices more than 11 percent in February and has raised them again in April, some up to 17%. They blame rising fuel costs. What you purchase today will not cost the same next week because oil and food commodities future prices are soaring.
A local feed store that also sells food grains had one of its largest selling days ever Monday when the east and west coast food shortages hit the major media. I saw one fellow purchase a 3/4 ton pick up truck full of sacked food grains and beans. Money is coming out of the local mattresses to stock up before panic shopping starts.
It is possible that those food shortage news stories set into motion a hoarding collapse of our eight day national supply of grain before the stories were spiked. We will know by the end of the coming week the effects of Monday’s strategic nationwide shopping. The e-mail re these news stories is still being sent around the Internet. Each time a new food shortage occurs somewhere in the nation expect to see more strategic buying. After we reach the end of our just in time national grain supply we will see food riots and I expect the government will formally declare martial law and impose food rationing. The media will step in blaming hoarders for the food shortages.
Yesterday COSTCO showed my wife what we purchased in 2008 on the hand held checkout wand and that we had already exceeded our 2007 purchases in the first quarter of 2008. Needless to say this tells us all of our shopping habits are being carefully tracked. I believe that people are being profiled as resistors or hoarders. [Some deleted, for brevity] – Rosie the Bull, in Montana