Here comes the big squeeze...

[phantom power]

I was a bit bemused by the statement regarding poultry prices: "Poultry doesn't have the option of passing along costs to consumers..." Passing along costs isn't an "option." You either pass along your costs, or you aren't in business.

PAIN AT THE PUMP: COMMUTERS WORK MORE TO PAY FOR GAS

"If you go the construction site with your tools and trailers, and the site's in Little Rock and you live in Pine Bluff, that's 90 miles every day in a 16 mile-per-gallon truck," Hughes said. "You can't lose your job, and you can't afford to keep this up. You can't afford to go home to your family at night, and you can't afford a hotel. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't."

(...)

"I was talking to a logger yesterday, one of the better operators, who told me it was costing $350 more a day to get his trucks going than it did last year," Bolin said. "He didn't know how he was going to continue doing it. Many won't. We're going to have people going out of business and equipment for sale soon. Those without a nest egg will be the first ones to go. If this crisis continues, it's going to catch up with them all, no matter how good they are." Of that $350 a day increase, $240 of it was in the last three weeks, Bolin said.

(...)

In poultry, everything that has to do with the product has to be transported, Harriman said. Grain for feed is moved by rail from the Midwest. The grain and chickens from hatcheries are distributed over the countryside to growers by trucks. The chickens are brought in to the processing plants by trucks. Finally, the product is shipped worldwide and the litter left at farms is taken away in trucks.

Poultry doesn't have any option of passing along costs to consumers in the very competitive food market, Harriman said. "The marketplace sets the price of our product," he said.

http://www.pbcommercial.com/articles/2005/08/20/news/news1.txt

[thereismore]

1. it's called looming economic depression. nt

[Coastie for Truth]

2. No - we'll invade Venezuela and get rid of their terrorists

and seize their oil.

Chavez is hiding WMD's.

:sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[Viking12]

4. Pat Robertson has a simpler answer

Assasinate Chavez :puke:

[phantom power]

5. It's what Jesus would do.

I say unto you, if any Man of Color should deny thine Black Gold, it is My will that sinner be put to death.

[Viking12]

6. That must be from the lost chapter of the Bible

The Book of PNAC 4:18.

[phantom power]

7. LOL!

Yes, the Book of PNAC is generally counted among the Apocrypha, but is considered to be gospel in the Church of Republican Jesus.
:rofl:

[dcfirefighter]

3. Seizing other's Oil

still leaves us with high priced gas, plus war debt.
It only helps those who get to 'own' the oil after the war.
See Iraq.

[PaulaFarrell]

8. Small local mixed farming would solve all these problems

no need to ship in grain from the midwest or chickens around the world. I can't say I will really be upset if factory farming goes to the wall. Unfortunately there are so few genuiine small farms left.

[phantom power]

9. Could be. I'm skeptical of "small farming" solutions.

I don't know exactly why. I agree with the principle of the thing.

Maybe it's that the process of adaptation is frought with chaos. As you say, there aren't many small farms. Where are all these new "small-farmers" going to come from? How are they going to learn their new trade? Who's going to want to do it? What will those first years be like, when nobody knows what they are doing, and everybody's crops fail, due to newby mistakes?

And, then there are external factors. The climate is changing, and it isn't for the better. All these "unusal" droughts we're having are very likely to be the new normal. That's obviously a problem for any kind of farming, but it's just one more big complication to a difficult transition.

Maybe that's just how it's going to be. Hard times, no matter how we slice it.