Got rice?

Subject: Got rice? Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:23 pm

Everyone is in a panic. Stores are putting a limit on how much rice (and some other items as well) you can buy! It seems that with so many farms now producing crops for bio fuel, many staple type foods (corn and rice just to name two) will be at a premium due to short supply. Even more than before. Did you plant your garden yet?

Contributing to that, food costs are zooming due to the cost of trucking items from there to here and here to there!

Time to hitch the horse to the plow and get planting, I guess. This will be a great deal for truck farmers and farmer's markets. That is, if the customers can afford the gas to get there!
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Zada Connaway
Mother's Journals: parts 1, 2 and 3 ISBN # 1-4241-6969-0

http://www.zadaconnaway.com/

Subject: Re: Got rice? Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:47 pm

I tried planting a garden in my back yard a few years back. Not enough sun, unfortunately. I had tomato plants five feet tall with no tomatoes. The cucumbers looked like golf balls.

At least the squirrels enjoyed it.
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Southern fiction with a madhatter twist...
www.rhettdevane.com

Subject: Re: Got rice? Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:15 pm

The two main causes of the increase of food prices, in my opinion, are the high price of oil and the growing of crops that would otherwise be used for food to make bio fuel. The high price of oil has caused increases in the costs of opperating farm equipment, transporting crops and food, and the price of pesticides and fertalizers, many of which are petroleum based, have also gone up. Here in the U.S. there is a lot of talk about making ethonal, an alternative to gasoline, from corn grain. This will increase the price of corn and the price of meet, as many livestock are feed corn. Besides, corn isn't the best source of ethonal. Switch grass can yield nearly four times as much ethonal per acre as corn grain, but those in power have been swayed by the powerful corn lobby, which wants to increase the profits of the mega agribusinesses who grow most of the corn. So, in short, the desire to ues corn for ethonal is driven by greed. pig

Subject: Re: Got rice? Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:27 pm

You're right Gordon,
the mentality is to make a buck. They don't care about the side effects. The rich continue to get richer and the poor, poorer.
A farmer in the midwest was quoted on CNN as saying that he was developing the "Kuwait of the midwest" with his grain for fuel farm.
To make matters worse, they are being subsidized to do it.
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"To Beirut and Back"
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Subject: Re: Got rice? Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:33 pm

You folks are right; isn't it curious how we have it all figured out here, and yet "out there" it does not seem to be the case. No wonder my kids don't want to have kids...I may never get any grandbaby cuddles at all and cannot blame them one little bit. Neutral

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Pam Robertson

http://andthebandplayedonmylawn.blogspot.com

Subject: Re: Got rice? Mon Apr 28, 2008 6:57 am

Subject: Re: Got rice? Mon Apr 28, 2008 1:02 pm

I think things will get worse before they can get better. Being frugal is very important. I suppose those of us who are older remember the bad times and what our parents did to survive.
Where I live, everyone has a garden - everyone! If we have overages, we share and people reciprocate. In addition to vineyards, we also have orchards. During the summer months we never buy any vegetables - everything fresh from the garden. And yes, it's all "bio" grown. Isn't it ridiculous how the marketers jumped in on the "bio grown" thing? I wonder how much that they claim to be "bio" really is?
The people in my town are not poor but they work and live modestly. They conserve and that's why they have what they do.
When our friends drive to the next town for something, they ask if there's something we need. Saving a trip saves gas.
Sometimes I have to just realize how good I have it compared to others. On the other hand, no one gave me anything for nothing. It's not how much you earn but how much you keep from what you earn that's important. As Benjamin Franklin said, "a penny saved is a penny earned."
I suggest you start a garden. If you don't have much space for a garden, try planting things in large flower pots. Before you jump into the car to go somewhere, ask yourself if you could walk or bike there. If you must drive on an errand, you might want to ask someone if they need anything. People will reciprocate.
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"To Beirut and Back"
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Subject: Re: Got rice? Mon Apr 28, 2008 2:20 pm

Abe you are certainly right about the gardening. I've done some very successful container gardening (tomato, peppers and lettuce) and also spread stuff (like herbs) through flower beds.
There is nothing so yummy as fresh veg from the garden, I just hope that over time I can get stuff going in the clay pit that is my current back yard.
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Pam Robertson

http://andthebandplayedonmylawn.blogspot.com

Subject: Re: Got rice? Mon Apr 28, 2008 2:53 pm

It sounds like you live in a pleasant place, Abe.

We always have a garden of some sort, but our growing season is extremely short. We are lucky if we get 40 days of summer, so cold weather crops do well. We swap with our neighbors, and I can get tomatoes to grow in containers.

You are so right about 'bio grown'. It is amazing how little regulation there is on that end. Often it seems just another way to raise prices on things. Here theye call it 'organic'. But anything grown in dirt could possibly be called organic.

But I am not certain if I could turn an area in a 'rice paddy'. Nor would I know how to harvest it, or be physically able.

I am told that many foreign born individuals are buying rice in the stores and shipping it back to their home country. That is what prompted me to start this thread. Trucking anything is going to send the price through the roof.

Thank heavens I have a well stocked pantry and full freezers! Now I just need to find a catalog outlet (Corn doesn't grow well for us) and save extra newsprint for the indoor 'outhouse'! Laughing

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Zada Connaway
Mother's Journals: parts 1, 2 and 3 ISBN # 1-4241-6969-0

http://www.zadaconnaway.com/

Subject: Re: Got rice? Mon Apr 28, 2008 10:05 pm

If I had to choose I prefer potato over rice because they have way more vitamin power and have not been "refined" to a wee white stick, so as long as I continue living in a potato belt I probably won't starve. There are a lot of small farms around here, and they were quite disgusted to learn what the big guys do with their organically grown produce...because the average shopper does not like to see any lil bugs on their produce, organic food are pushed into the same warehouse as the biohazardous produce, and it all gets coated with a pesticide. So although they may have been organically grown, they are not always organically sold.
Shocked

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Pam Robertson

http://andthebandplayedonmylawn.blogspot.com

Subject: Re: Got rice? Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:15 am

It seems that with so many farms now producing crops for bio fuel, many staple type foods

This is NOT the problem. Have you heard of anybody growing ethonol crops in a rice paddy?

We are being FED this by the media (there latest craze that will be all over for three weeks, then forgotten) but it is NOT the reason for raising food prices.
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