Days of cheap wheat may be over

[Krayola]

"For decades, wheat was king on the Great Plains and prices were low everywhere. Those days are over."
Full article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042802509_2.html?sid=ST2008042802532

Thought this was interesting also:
The U.S. government stopped holding large stocks of wheat in the 1980s, but the United States, nearly alone among wheat producers, allows countries to shop here even when others have shut off exports.

This free-trade policy resulted in a run on the 2007 U.S. wheat crop this year by foreign buyers taking advantage of the favorable dollar exchange rate to stock up, even as Ukraine, Argentina and Kazakhstan blocked exports.

"It was a perfect storm," said Jochum Wiersma, a grains specialist with the University of Minnesota.

Problems started last summer with poor European harvests and a disappointing winter wheat crop in the southern Great Plains. U.S. prices moved above $7 a bushel, then crossed $10 after Australia harvested yet another drought-damaged crop in December. As supplies of wheat ran low, foreign countries began grabbing limited stocks of premium wheat from the northern plains...

[Joseph The Carpenter]

Sounds like our goverment has never heard of a man named Joseph.:doh

[Cookies4me]

Sounds like our goverment has never heard of a man named Joseph.:doh

That was my thought.

[SummerSailing81]

Exactly who is making these "brilliant" decisions in this country? :doh

[lmenningen]

Sounds like our goverment has never heard of a man named Joseph.Actually that article is a series and it does mention the reserves we used to have - unfortunately many foreign companies and countries are taking advantage of the low value of the US dollar and are buying up all the wheat (and other products) they can at the fallen dollar values, believing the price of the dollar may rise, so they are ones now storing up. The Post says one reason for the shortage is the unusual number of those purchases, noting the crop yield itself is approximately the same - down but mainly in proportion to the shift to corn.

[Cowgirl4Christ]

This is from a link that JDS provided a while back (one of the sites he visits regularly).... Urbansurvival.com

http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm

Food Shortages Growing?

An email from a reader in the Midwest causes me some concern:

"Last night at the daughter's horse riding lesson the price of horse feed came between my wife & the stable owner/riding instructor. One of her friends in Kansas said that his winter wheat looked great, but there was no wheat in the wheat plant heads (kernel/seed-I don't know the correct term). He reported that the grain miller that they normally use said that they are having trouble getting any wheat to prepare. Same thing from many Kansas wheat growers; plants look great, but no wheat to harvest. This is a family business that has been going since early 1900s. They made it through 2 world wars & the dust bowl. They are not sure if they can survive this year if they can't locate some wheat for processing. Nothing to mill, nothing to grind. That doesn't bode well for later in the year.

I couldn't find anything online about this, but the riding instructor is pretty mainstream & doesn't seem to be a conspiracy buff. She said that the lack of harvestable wheat, when the plants look normal, has never been seen before."

This report touches on something I have already started to work on for Peoplenomics.com subscribers this weekend. But, when I tell you there is growing urgency to starting a garden, I'm not a kidding...

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The commodities market apparently isn't worried as "Wheat falls below $8 as investors expect rate cut will be last" says one headline. But, remember, fundamentals matter. and I am wildly bullish on grains and food stuffs. This from the guy who told you in 2005 that he was buying silver at $7, remember?