There’s a Wheat Shortage, Haven’t You Heard?

Last night at Costco, we heard that they are rationing 50 pound bags of wheat. “If somebody wants to buy more than a few bags, they check to see how many they usually buy and if it’s too high they can’t get it,” the cashier told us. She didn’t know why this was happening, but I’ve been reading about this in the national press and it has impact on just about everyone. There’s a grain shortage and we’re just beginning to feel the effects. Watch the price of pizza go up soon.

We also learned that the store no longer will carry our plain soymilk that we buy by the case for the cafe, due to the price being too high. Again, it’s the farmers and the cost of this crop, soybeans. She said if she told the higher-ups a customer was begging, they might get it back.

In Australia and the Ukraine, there have been severe droughts that have cut the wheat harvest down to less than half. Today the US grain supplies are at a 30 year low. The massive grain elevators are no longer full. In Nigeria and Egypt, demand for wheat has never been so high, making it even harder to keep up with demand.

For the first time that most of us can recall, food prices are soaring, and for once, farmers are happy and they are making real money. A story in the WSJ quoted a farmer saying that he’s being asked, no, begged to plant any kind of grain, and in many cases on land that hasn’t been used in years. It’s a wheat/corn/soybeans/alfalfa boom and it’s a great time to plant crops for our growing world.