SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”. Today, we focus on the post-flood food crisis in the Corn Belt.
Food Crisis in the Corn Belt
G.P. sent this: A Food Crisis Is Here: Trouble For Farmers In The Corn Belt. JWR’s Comment: As soon as we saw the headlines about the floods, we could see this coming.,The Law of Supply and Demand cannot be escaped. Retail grain and beef prices will surely rise. So stock up! Here is a sbippet:
“Corn planting is already behind on schedule. The weather in the United States has made farming difficult as of late, while bankruptcies soar and flooding continues. As the weather in four of the top six states for corn production couples with the skyrocketing number of bankruptcies of American farmers, we could be on the precipice of a food crisis. And to make matters worse, none of the weather is expected to improve, putting even more financial pressure on the already stressed farmers according to the latest Crop Progress report is issued Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), according to an AccuWeather analysis.”
Middle of U.S. Awaits Severe Weather
Middle of country on high alert for potentially deadly severe weather outbreak.
Trudeau Has ‘Secret Plan’ on ‘Sweeping Gun Ban’
Meanwhile, in Canada: Trudeau Has ‘Secret Plan’ on ‘Sweeping Gun Ban,’ MP Clement Says
An Interesting Look at Urban Defense
Regular link contributor Tim J. sent us this 2018 series penned by Clay Martin, by way of Bayou Renaissance Man: An interesting look at urban defense. Here is a quote from the series introduction:
“For the first four episodes, we are going with the premise here that you can’t leave your location or you waited so long that the roads are choked with wrecked cars and dumpster fires. I think that is a pretty solid hypothesis, most of us can’t take Tuesday off to go camping. And if you have ever seen a natural disaster, you know how quickly things go pear-shaped in terms of exit routes. That leaves the shelter you have in place as the best option. We are also calling this an isolated major city problem, not an end of the world scenario. Order will be restored, it just might take a while. Which makes walking out a much greater risk than necessary. That said, our last episode will discuss escape plans and tactical movement as a group or family, just in case, everything goes to h**l.”
Kamala Harris Goes Full Gun Control
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently made a large number of false assertions on crime involving firearms. Just as I predicted, she is attempting to “Out Gun Control” her rival candidates, including Cory Booker. I believe that this is just the beginning of their hostile anti-gun rhetoric. The Democrats now almost invariably look at “gun control” as some sort of nostrum or panacea. See: Kamala Harris: If Elected I Will Take Gun Dealers’ Licenses Away with Executive Action. Not only is Harris now citing false statistics, but she is boxing herself into a corner on her planned gun-grabbing policies.
Building The Border Fence
Over at The Daily Wire: Pentagon Moves Forward: Transfers $1.5 Billion For 80 More Miles Of Border Wall. A pericope:
“On Friday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan confirmed that the Pentagon has authorized an additional $1.5 billion to extend the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border 80 more miles.
Shanahan stated, according to Stars and Stripes: “The Department of Defense is fully engaged in addressing the crisis on our southwest border, with more than 4,000 servicemembers and 19 aircraft currently supporting the Department of Homeland Security. Today, I authorized the transfer of $1.5 billion toward the construction of more than 80 miles of border barrier. The funds were drawn from a variety of sources, including cost savings, programmatic changes, and revised requirements, and therefore will have minimal impact on force readiness.”
The additional $1.5 billion comes after the transfer of $1 billion for an additional 60 miles of wall in Yuma, Arizona and El Paso, Texas, that was made in March.”
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You can send your news tips to JWR. (Either via e-mail of via our Contact form.) Thanks!
@ Food Crisis in the Corn Belt – Dont buy the hype. I looked at every link presented, and I found several ways that this story is a non-story. First, each of the links that attempt to support this story are written for a different audience, each of which have a different way to frame a story for their audience. With all the stories linked, each tells a very different story.
2 – None of this corn is edible without extensive processing that is then used to blend with other types of food.
3 – Without government subsidies, corn is often an economic loser.
4 – Linking to SHTFPlan, which is a fear mongering, always a worst case scenario website, is perhaps not the best source for validating a story. Furthermore, independent farmers have been going bankrupt for generations, and the single 2019 corn season is absolutely not a factor within the larger pattern of things. From the farmers I have spoken with, it seems the more recent issue is with the trade war with China. Many of those farmers were subsidized last year.
5 – Rather than going out and stocking up, consider researching what types of corn are produced today, how that corn is used, the types of politics that are behind the corn industry, recognize how that industry attempts to blend your safety with their economic struggles as if they are one and the same, and spend your money not on stocking up, but rather some process that lessens your reliability on this consumer system.
Excellent! I would add that much ‘news’ is money driven. Once something of economic impact is in the news it usually means that the traders are going to try to pump and dump the last 5 to 10 percent upside. Government agricultural reports are post fact compilations. There is nothing a first hand observer doesn’t already know that is in these reports. All news, being for profit, is somebody’s propaganda. I’m not against profit, as you point out, simply know your sources and their motives.
Excellent comment.
1. Looks like Canada is establishing the steps for a future police state. Better make plans to put up a second wall.
2. Kamala Harris is making promises that will lead to the return to Jim Crow laws America’s African Americans. How? By making it impossible for them to legally purchase guns for home defense. Anti-semitic, apparently racist and longs for Canada’s coming police state also.
Building The Border Fence:
Broward and Palm Beach counties bracing for planeloads of immigrants from crowded U.S. camps
By Brittany Wallman and Skyler Swisher
South Florida Sun Sentinel
May 16, 2019
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-immigrants-coming-south-florida-20190516-kxbobliqnvandgs5sqq7d6m5rm-story.html
Academia is totally petrified by this development. It is the summer break and across America, on college campuses, there is space available, empty dorms, to house all of these immigrants and many more, along with facilities to feed them and provide healthcare. Academia has pushed open borders and takes a lot of federal funding. But, when it comes to actually housing these people on their campuses, they are not so enthusiastic. No, you probably won’t be reading about the presidents of Harvard or Yale, volunteering to “open” their campuses… It is funny how folks want open borders, but don’t want to house these immigrants in their neighborhoods…
Kamala Harris is a snake. Years ago when she was attorney general in Ca. she cut a deal with the banks for $125 million to avoid prosecution for their illegal foreclosure practices and to avoid jail time. She then transferred $100 million to Jerry Brown’s General Fund. You know what a general fund is? It is where your tax dollars disappear down an ever enlarging sink hole of mismanagement. Alas, here is the best part of the deal the $25million was dealt out to folks who had lost their homes. We received a check for $600.00 to compensate us for the home they stole with altered documents. How they arrived at this pittance was never explained. Just another fact to pass on to anyone that maybe thinking about voting for this government toady.
I’m pretty sure that by “ever enlarging sink hole of mismanagement” you meant; purposeful theft, right?
I’m sad people are dumb enough to believe the Liberal Party would ever have the wherewithal and ambition to ‘ban guns’ or whatever the vague threat is supposed to mean. The Liberals are infamous for dragging their feet and throwing policy to the provinces, good luck getting them to sit down and do something about gun crime in Winnipeg or Toronto!
Trudeau Has ‘Secret Plan’ on ‘Sweeping Gun Ban’
It’s important to point out that the US government has the similar plans and that the legislation is already written. Tick Tock.
“Kamala Harris Goes Full Gun Control”
I’m going to vote for some of these leftists. Maybe, all of the ‘conservatives’ who swore that this time they wouldn’t fall asleep will wake back up when another commie, and sooner or later one WILL, gets in the white house.
@Fred, where are these ‘conservatives’ you refer to? Specifically who is supporting zero theft and demanding that government spending be seriously cut? Who is supporting Jesus’ principle of non-aggression and an end to these foreign wars?
Yep, good points all. I know very few people that want less government. Most just want their team to have control for their own purposes. Go team R, go team R, rah rah!
Fred, … I’m NOT creating an argument. >Historically, Americans have wanted a ~good government. … The argument is about how to obtain it, and are the government policies good for ~everyone [both the people that work, and the people that sit home].
The founding fathers of the USA understood this, when the Declaration of Independence was ratified and accepted:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, >Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the >consent of the governed, …”
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I follow SurvivalBlog, as I think more people are considering the old traditional and religious ideas to be no longer relevant. … There is a big push for ‘new’ ideas to be implemented in the USA. ~ The ‘new’ ideas are just recycled old ideas, that have previously failed.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
The quote is about ‘ideas’ and NOT technology.
Regarding urban warfare book here is a link to an indepth review of fighting in an urban center in the Philippines when some Islamist took over an urban center. The battle lasted 5 months. Insightful read.
https://www.cove.org.au/adaptation/article-the-battle-of-marawi-small-team-lessons-learned-for-the-close-fight/
The citizens of the USA, need to accept the idea, that many people want to fundamentally change the USA, as we know it. = Many politicians, businesses and people do NOT want a border wall or a secure border. They hope to change America over to a new group of people.
The SurvivalBlog referenced article is worth a read ~~>Clay Martin, by way of Bayou Renaissance Man: An interesting look at urban defense.~~ [I bookmarked it to read again]. Some ideas are new, some ideas are standard good advice. ……. As many of us are just frogs sitting in the cooking water, it might be worthwhile to know our possible fate.
The article could have been enhanced with some sage advice from, a SurvivalBlog’s Ol’ Remus type: =
1. Often Urban Violence isn’t like the movies about robberies. >Historically and >currently ~ violence is often carried out by men that enjoy: Rape, Murder, Mayhem, Pillaging, Burning and Destroying someone else’s property.
2. “This Life’s Hard, But It’s Harder If You’re Stupid.” ~ I read another instance, where a family lived through a long period of loss of electricity because of a hurricane. The family had a good supply of long burning candles, a Coleman stove, food and drinking water.
Cheap shower curtains, previously painted black, were duct-taped to the inside of some windows, to conceal their usage of the preps. [Sounds harsh, but neighbors with gas powered generators were visited by complete strangers, wanting to ‘borrow’ a generator for their own place.] … SurvivalBlog recommends donating through a church or charitable organization, as it’s ~personally safer.
Plus, a big tub filled with ordinary rainwater water was useful, for simply soaking feet for body temperature cooling; during the hot days after the hurricane. … SurvivalBlog has advertisers selling Water Filtration Systems and Storage Food. Plastic beverage tubs are cheap; might work better than a five gallon bucket. (+The bucket might be in use as a needed toilet)
We are living in interesting times no doubt, and I expect they will get even more interesting as time goes on. Consider, with the entire population of the entire US, the current circus of buffoons the progs are running for president, this it the best they can come up with? It’s been quite clear for a goodly amount of time now that none of them are playing with a full deck. They are only concerned with the accumulation of absolute power and have zero tolerance for rule of law, history, other people and ideas. They are only concerned with their agenda at al costs and will do and say absolutely anything to achieve it.
With the newer generation of no nothings and the completely brainwashed from the public indoctrination centers they appear to be gaining. I’m guessing, from one who has witnessed the societal decay of the last 40-50 years, we are in for hard times ahead. B ready!
I drove through the Mid-west this past week. All I saw was miles and miles of wet, black dirt with nothing planted. This is not good.
@ Iceman, the ideal window to plant corn in the Midwest is between April 15th to May 8th +/-, depending on ones knowledge of the land. Also, who is planting what, from a economic perspective, is going to have relationships with government subsidies. This is to say that in some instances, the government pays farmers to not plant their land, and also dictate what types of crops are to be grown for particular subsidies.
The 2018 corn crop in the US was .2 below the record setting year of 2017. 2018 yielded 176.4 bushels per acre with 2017, a record year, at 176.6 bushels per acre.
There is no cause for concern at this time and I suspect this situation is more political than an impact of natural weather patterns. Trade war with China impacts US farmers. Price drops, control supply, price increases. Next thing you know we are gonna start seeing reports from tractor manufactures saying they are going to be impacted. I bet money on it.