Grocery stores and Wallymart try to cover it up, but i see shortages every time i go to one of these places. There used to be a huge section for a certain food product, now it is a tiny section, with much higher prices. It is all over if you just look/notice.
One time i went to a grocery store and half an isle was covered, one can deep of some other product. Half an isle was barren in reality.
And i am watching low crop yields. And food processing plants burning down. And vegetables which should be in season not showing up in the grocery store. I have watched potatoes, which used to be a whole island in themselves, become more expensive and fewer in number.
Food, due to manipulation, less than adequate weather AND soil depletion, is becoming scarcer. I know that food riots are coming in the future, but if do not know if they are because of lack of food, lack of delivery, or a response to city riots.
So, if there is going to be a food shortage, should you go buy futures on the commodities market?
Commodity Markets fail during a shortage.
The supply-demand curve fails / breaks down whenever there are shortages of needs.
If there is more demand, and a non-flexible demand, then supply, their is no price that balances supply and demand.
For a shortage of food, the price quickly becomes "how much money do you have?"
And what makes this worse is that the rich are so rich, that they can buy up ALL the supply. Berkshire-Hathaway is sitting on so much cash right now that they can become the commodities market.
The poor can't afford one meal. The rich can buy the entire market.
This disparity causes people to die.
And it doesn't matter how high the prices of food are, it takes a year to grow more food. So, the poor supply-demand curve breaks down again. Because no further supply can happen, this year. And next year, last years price really doesn't matter. There may be more food, but everyone is already dead. The demand is gone.
Greedy people will make matters worse.
It never fails (well, it may fail this time) that when the price of wheat / rice / corn starts going up, more people pile into the commodities market sending the price even higher.
And, as i said, if it is a need, the commodity will never find equilibrium, it will just continue to go higher. And, during a shortage, this will just make matters worse. Usually much worse.
Betting on food prices is only sorta ok during good times.
But betting on food during times of shortage should be a hangin offence.
The wall street power broker, especially the image of them from the 80s-90s, when hostile takeovers were in full swing, is that they will do anything to make a buck. Selling out their grandmothers pension and all.
And i doubt that things will be different this time.
Greed will take over the market and govern-cement will have to step in (just after all their friends sell at huge profit)
But, this time, i believe it is even worse than that. I believe manipulators are keeping the price down, and in such, selling all our grain stores to China. So, we may run into the very real problem of the paper contracts being sky high, but their actually being no real commodities behind it. Just paper contracts based on promises.
The aftermath
The empty silos will become apparent, and the "investors" will be blamed for it! And they may be hunted down and hung.
Unfortunately, this will not make things better. The food is gone. The farmers did not get the price signals to plant more acres, or expend more fertilizer to pump up the crops. The manipulation today is going to get a lot of people killed. And i believe the manipulators are counting on that.
What the manipulators will not count on is that there is going to be a group of people who see through the manipulation and point the masses at the real culprits to the famine. These people will be dug out of their bunkers, wherever they try to hide.
Things will not go back to the way thing were. The commodities markets will not be betting pools. Nor will they be ways to squeeze the farmer from both sides. So, also, be ready for the COMEX to die a horrible death.
Unless you know when to get out of commodities market (when all the rich pull out just before the govern-cement jumps in to make everything worse) you will lose money betting on other people's food.
Further, you will probably feel bad as being part of the problem of people starving to death.
Buying on the COMEX is not going to get you food when others are starving. For one thing, you buy in grain trucks full, you are not going to use that much food. And the other is that when food is sky high and people are starving, food delivery becomes fraught with peril.
However, during these years when things are going ok, do buy extra food. Have food storage that will get you through this upcoming manipulation/famine.
Buying extra food now will cause more farmers to plant more fields, as they see the added demand.
And then, when the crisis happens, you are not only prepared in yourself, but since you can go without the grocery store, you are alleviating a burden on the market.