Rice Rationing, Freeze in California

By now you've probably seen the news that Costco and Sam's Club are limiting sales of rice, seemingly to discourage hording now that prices are skyrocketing and Vietnam and India are placing bans on some rice exports due to shortages.

"There is no rice," said Rita Patel of San Jose, a native of India who couldn't find any at Costco on Hostetter Road in northeast San Jose on Tuesday night, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

This applies to Jasmine and Basmati rice, though there is no shortage of US-grown rice. Costco is also limiting soybean oil sales, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Food hoarding appears to be driven as much by budget worries as concern of shortages. Consumers, feeling pinched by inflation, are loading up before prices rise again. A Queens, N.Y., Costco limited sales of soybean oil several weeks ago. The store had noticed customers buying up flour and placed a brief limit on purchases. The oil limit is still in effect.

Meanwhile, a freeze on Monday and Tuesday in California has damaged organic crops. Organic Partners reports:

Heavy hit are: Prunes, peaches, apricots, walnuts and other tree crops.  Vegetable crops will not show the full extent of the damage until there is some hot weather to accelerate the decay in the plants.

Comments

[Anna]

I hadn't realized how much my food sourcing, cooking, and eating habits had changed over the past few years until I started reading the headlines about rising prices, shortages, hoarding (stockpiling), and international food riots, and everyone was complaining about the cost of food (after so many decades of artificially cheap foods, thanks to the USDA. Of course, I figured that with so much corn going into biofuels, that some of this would happen eventually, though it's sooner and faster than I had expected.

Why haven't we felt it until it made the news headlines?

Well, our family doesn't eat much grain or processed grain products anymore, nor do we eat much of them on the rare occasions we go to restaurants, so the increasing grain prices or short supplies aren't hitting us very directly. Even directly, the impact is minimal so far as we don't eat much grain-fed livestock at home. Our local "hobby farm" egg supplier is finally raising prices because her grain prices have gone up. I've tried to pay her more for the fantastic eggs for a year because her eggs were much much better and much cheaper ($2/doz) than the Trader Joe's eggs I had been buying ($3.50 or so/doz).

I also buy pork and pork fat (to make rendered lard for cooking) from the local "hobby" farm and the price has remained very reasonable. I've been preferring more of the "thrift cuts" than premium cuts, anyway, as the bones add great flavor and minerals to the diet and make much better broth than the water down, chemical-flavored stuff from the store. Cooking slowly on the BBQ, oven, or range, as well as a slow cooker appliance, is a great way to make use of cheaper cuts, with leftover meat to remake into new dishes, or for snacks or lunches later.

I don't buy vegetable oil, either, especially soybean oil, or many processed food products with added vegetable oil, so that has little impact on us either. I make salad dressing and mayo at home each week for pennies with some olive oil and about 5-10 minutes' time, so perhaps that will increase my costs a bit if OO goes up, but I can probably absorb pretty easily that as it isn't a huge amount of oil. I do buy coconut oil, but that has always been a bit expensive.

I have a freezer that is getting low on the venison from a share of my sister's hunting trip and the whole lamb from a local farm, so I am buying and splitting a grass-fed bison this year (a whole bison yields 250-450 pounds of meat) through a co-op pricing program. So while it is a big chunk o' change up front, my meat expenditures will be $0 for some time to come and my shopping list will be shorter.

For the first time in my two years of membership, my CSA farm share program has raised the quarterly share price by a few dollars per box, probably due to the cost of fuel. Still a bargain and saves time at the store as I breeze past the produce section. I've learned not to give in very often to the seduction of out-of-season, long-distance fruits and veggies, so that cuts costs tremendously.

I am thinking about expanding my edible gardening this year, to produce a bit more than the lazy stuff I already grow on trees (citrus, figs), blueberry bushes, bananas, artichokes, and a few favorite items in our Square Foot Garden raised bed. I might get an apple tree and perhaps an avocado. Our California Poppies in the front garden are past their peak; perhaps some colorful Bright Lights chard and eggplant will both add color and something edible to the front garden, even though it technically isn't a vegetable garden (but it does have citrus, blueberries, and rosemary right up front).

I realize not everyone can source food the way I do, but I know many who can, but choose not to. They think being a slave to processed foods, commodity agriculture, and grocery store shopping is more convenient and cost-effective. We'll see.

[Samuel Fromartz]

Anna Thanks. We harvested the first spinach, frisee and radish's from our community garden plot last week and made a fantastic salad. From now until November we should have steady greens, salad, beets, and many other veggies - not bad for inner city DC...

[susan]

Another area this blog should check into that will put a big burden on the food supply is NAIS -national animal id system---NAIS can best be explained like this… though touted as a plan to protect us from animal disease, NAIS is actually a business plan designed by and for corporate ag and chip makers to open up global markets by showing the world what a "safe" food supply we have. NAIS plans are to keep track of every livestock animal in the US EXCEPT the ones on the factory farms...while those who own even one chicken or horse or llama or pig or other critters have to register their premises, tag and file reports on every move those animals make BUT Big Ag gets ONE lot number for their groups of animals and does not have to tag/track every critter...
NAIS tracibility ends at the moment the animal goes to slaughter, which is when most food safety issues occur.
see nonais.org for more info, then I highly suggest the owner of this blog give it high priority as an article to inform all those who eat. Another article deals with how livestock owners lose their property rights....
http://www.newswithviews.com/Hannes/doreen4.htm

[susan]

oh yes forgot the last part of NAIS...the final insult to registering premises, microchipping and filing animal movement reports (only convicted sex offenders are required to do this) If animal disease is suspected the USDA can come in and depopulate (kill) an entire 6 mile radius of animals, that is 140 sq. miles. The FMD outbreak in England where millions of animals were killed while only a few 1000 tested positive; they got the virus from one that "escaped" from a local lab. Now Plum Island, the lab that studies disease, located off the coast of Long Island is thinking about moving to mainland USA.
Who ever reads this needs to call your congress critters to protest this move.