MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare.
“I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn’t believe it ”” this is the first time in my life I’ve wanted to try baking cakes and I can’t get any butter,” said the frustrated cook.
Japan’s acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.
The article is probably accurate, and it comes close to revealing the [b]real source of the problem — [i]government intervention.[/i][/b]
Why are the Government of Japan setting the price of grain for millers? Why are [i]government[/i] funds used (apparently exclusively) to import wheat from Australia?
Mention is also made of Argentina halting wheat exports. Not quite. The government of Argentina informed farmers that they would not be allowed to sell wheat domestically at the world price, and that any price realised above the government set price would be taxed away in full. Same thing with soyabeans.
“Inflation” is essentially money chasing goods. If you will, the ratio of money to goods widens, as (for example) when central banks are pouring “liquidity” into an economy to reduce or remove the normal economic consequences of malinvestment. As they are now doing.
Most commonly the money-to-goods ratio widens because prices rise. When, however, government intervenes to “steady” rising prices the ratio widens all the same, but it widens via a [b]decrease in the quantity of goods[/b] available. The Russian Communists bragged that they had “no inflation” because their prices were stable.
What happened was their goods disappeared from the shelves.
Singapore and Hong Kong import [i]all[/i] their goods, but are not reporting any shortages or problems. Maybe there’s a connection to their being two of the most economically free places on Earth.
You know it really is not that difficult to raise food for the table. This summer we will have an extensive vegetable garden in our (one eight acre) back yard that we will can for winter, and greenhouse (via plastic sheeting stretched over the fence) in fall.
We plan to experiment with winter wheat in the back lawn. We will simply sow the wheat in our current grass. It will come up over winter, we will harvest, and the dormant normal grass should come up and look like a normal back yard for spring summer and fall. Winter wheat is a hybrid and does not propagate. It’s kernals can be soaked for a couple of days, to “sprout” the grain, and then ground, and two cups of “sprout grain” will make excellent nutritious bread (with far more protein and incomparably more of the vitamins of the usual kind) that can be baked in one’s normal oven. (It is flat, and tastes like what Sri Lankans call “Roti”. Add a handful of raisins or a grated apple (we are growing grape vines in our back yard and have planted three fruit trees in our front yard) and it is delicious.
I might add that we are thinking of raising tilapia in vats in the back yard. Fish jerky can be easily dried and stores for six months at room temperature.
Other folks around here, who are more talented than myself hunt and fish as well, but while I plan to learn to shoot and fish, I doubt that I will do that.
If all of us were to go back to farming our backyards, instead of growing a monoculture of grass there would be no problem feeding the nation. Or most any nation, including Japan.
That is what happened in WWII.
In case it wasn’t obvious, winter wheat kernals keep very well in storage.
I might add, that given the ability to intensively grow food in a small area the typical suburban backyard can easily raise more food than did the pioneers on their 40 acres. This is because nowadays we can get good soil, good fertilizer, excellent seed, can begin transplants in the home, and have warning before frosts come, so as to cover young plants. We use square foot gardening techniques using raised beds, and have a 2 foot by 30 foot row on our south wall. In general each adult needs about 4 feet by 4 feet, and each child needs about 2 feet by 2 feet.
I might add that our garden and home looks quite “normal”. The front garden has a nice green lawn, with a variety of flowering shrubs, like roses, holly, azalias and the like. We have planted berry vines and blue berry bushes which should be pretty when they come up. The back yard also looks very pretty, but in any case is behind a fence.
We were considering having hens in the back yard. (It is not necessary to have a rooster to have (infertile) eggs, and hens don’t crow. However hens only lay for about 2 years. I don’t think I could bring myself to kill them, so I don’t think we could do this.
If there are enough flowers in the back yard (in 2 years) we may be able to support a small hive, but this is a project for later. I do not want complaints from our suburban neighbors, so we will ask their opinions, and if they object, or if their is any child in the neighborhood with bee sting allergy, we wont do so. If we had a couple of area, we would certainly keep bees. Actually if I had a couple of acres, I would probably keep goats and milk them for both milk, ice cream, butter and cheese. (None of this is particularly difficult, and information on how to do this is readily available on the internet, with helpful internet forums that will link folks with experienced farmers.
We have also largely eliminated our heating bills by installing a wood pellet stove (ashes will be used for lime) and we anticipate that the whole house fan and the attic insulation will eliminate our air conditioning bills this summer.
There will be hard times, but America is resourceful. The information is available. We can get through the depression that is soon to come on us.
Oh by the way, we both work. We devote about 4 hours work on the weekend to ensure the above. It isn’t difficult if you try.
Shari
There was a time when many Japanese people found butter revolting. They had a word (perhaps “butasaki”) meaning “smells of butter” to refer to foreign-inspired practices and ideas. Butter seems to have become more welcome.
You can make butter (and milk and ice cream) from soybeans, which can also be grown in a backyard garden. Some folks flavor it with apples or other fruit. However I don’t have enough need for this to bother to try (yet).
There is really no reason why food inflation cannot be met with a gigantic outpouring of home grown food.
Oil, food, mortgage crisis and falling house prices – quite a trifecta we’re coming up for.
ANWR and oil shales now!
Coincidentaly, there is an article about suburban farming (more or less along the lines of what Shari’s been talking about) on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal.
This article hypes short-term supply problems as harbingers of horrendous long-term scarcity. However true that may be for the very poor, it will not be true for rich countries like Japan. High prices will stimulate increased production and more efficient use, but it takes time for supply and demand to find new equilibria.
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Plenty of U.S. dairy farmers would be delighted to commit their future output to producing butter for the Japanese.
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The United States could increase the global food supply—and save tax dollars—by trimming ethanol subsidies.
I learned last night that one can make excellent cheese (hard and cottage) from nuts and seeds (anything with a high oil content). One can also make oil, butter, and yogurt from cheese. It sounds interesting and quite easy and there are excellent receipies for “sun cheese” and “nut cheese” available on the internet. One of the folks at church has been making delicious sesamie seed cheese for years. Since we have a pecan tree we will try making nut cheese with the produce, (a matter of chopping it and grinding it in a blender, and straining the slurry (the curds) in a “cheese cloth”, hanging it up to dry for a few hours for cottage cheese, and then drying it slowly (like jerky) in a food dryer to make hard cheese (which keeps well for months) .
I shall try sunflower seeds in the side garden. They are bright and funny looking, and make me think of giraffes in a botanical zoo. I have always liked them, and it will be a pleasure to be able to make oil, butter, yogurt, and cheese from them.
I note that none of this stuff is costing me money. Seeds are incredibly inexpensive, dirt is as “cheap as dirt” and compost can be easily made, and is given out free for the hauling away by our local city recycling plant. I anticipate saving money, and my goal is to be independant for food, housing, energy, and transportation costs in 5-10 years, (probably with the assistance of some bartering for goods with like minded neighbors and friends). All leftovers can be contributed to the local food banks. I anticipate that the coming depression will be at its nadir in 5-10 years, so independance in living expenses is important to me.
“Saving” in the form of independance of living expenses, unlike saving in 401k or IRA, also cannot be taxed away. This is important as there will be an inevitable increase in tax rates to pay for the Boomer’s leaving the work force. Taxes are currently at a historical low. 401ks and IRAs are “pretax” income that are expected to be taxed on withdrawal at whatever income rates are present at withdrawal, and withdrawal is mandatory at age 70 if not earlier. (The top tax rates were at 70% as recently as 1969, and were 90% during the 1940s). Thus, to my mind it makes much more sense to pay off all debt including mortgage debt before saving in a 401k whose value will not only be taxed more heavily than was income during our working years, but is likely to fall as the long bull market, caused by the Boomers saving for retirement, is followed by an equally long bear market, caused by the Boomers withdrawing their savings for retirement.
“Savings” in the form of living expenses also cannot be confiscated, (as Rosevelt confiscated gold and silver in bank strong boxes during the last depression). I might add that the Patriot act permits the government to secure and inspect strong boxes and it is entirely likely, as fiat currency begins to fail, that another confiscation might occur.
Finally, these benefits are not confined to those who own their homes. Renters can grow plenty of food in “container gardens” on porch or patio, and I have grown over 2 bushels of potatoes in a container garden made from two motorcycle tires (the rubber increases heat and yield) and stacked and painted look attractive. One can also grow a surprising amount in a window box inside.
If the pioneers were able to carve a future for themselves and their children with nothing but sun, water and land, there is no reason why we cannot do the same for ourselves and our posterity with the same gifts God gave us, together with the good soil, seeds, fertilizer, knowledge, weather informatics, and technology that we have acquired over the past 200 years.
And it will be fun.
Shari