Low-Income Americans Most at Risk as Meat, Egg, and Dairy Prices Soar, The

megaphone-2

Advisory: Be careful of what you read on social media. The algorithms used by these platforms have no regard for Biblical truth. They target your emotions to keep you engaged on their site so their advertisers can drop more ads. These platforms exist to enrich their stockholders. Consider God’s promise to Believers in James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

Featured Story

Coming Food Shortage…

What Planet Do These Government Officials Live On, There’s Going to Be Food Shortages, No More Happy Talk From Trump Administration’s Puppeteers, Strengthen you’re (Faith) Get Prepared, It’s Coming. Stevie Ray Hansen…

Food prices across the United States have skyrocketed due to the effects of the CCP virus, as consumer stockpiling, panic buying, and supply chain difficulties have combined to produce the “largest monthly increase since February 1974,” according to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Director of Food Policy at the Consumer Federation of America Thomas Gremillion told The Epoch Times that according to recent studies, more Americans than ever before are now forced to rely on food banks to feed their families. “This price rise will particularly affect low-income Americans, who were already struggling to put food on the table,” said Gremillion.

His sentiments were echoed by Nailah John, food safety and nutrition fellow at the National Consumers League. “The most affected are the impoverished and the 22 million unemployed Americans due to COVID-19,” she told The Epoch Times. “In addition, rising food prices make it difficult for households with little or no income to provide for themselves and their families.”

Meat, Fish, Eggs Rise Most

According to figures from the BLS, the food index increased by 1.5 percent in April, which followed a 0.3 percent rise in March. However, the grocery-based ‘food at home’ index increased by a substantial 2.6 percent, with each of the six major supermarket groups recording increases of at least 1.5 percent for April.

The price increases were not uniform, however, with massive increases for specific foodstuffs.

According to the BLS, “The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increased the most, rising 4.3 percent as the index for eggs increased 16.1 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products rose 2.9 percent in April, its largest monthly increase ever.”

Indexes for both dairy products and fruit and vegetables also increased by a considerable 1.5 percent.

The price index for nonalcoholic beverages increased by 2.9 percent for April—which the BLS confirmed was its fourth consecutive increase. Prices for “food away from home” increased by a more modest 0.1 percent, which followed an increase of 0.2 percent in March.

Food Prices Could Remain Unstable

John said food prices are likely to increase further. “This trend of increase in prices will continue due to the many new and rapidly changing factors during COVID-19, which can influence meat, poultry, eggs, dairy prices over the rest of the year,” she said.

“There is a greater demand for these products in grocery stores with many limiting the amount to two for each customer.” The worst of the increases may be over, however. “According to the USDA, there is an expected increase of between 0.5 to 1.5 percent for the rest of the year,” John said.

Gremillion said food price stability going forward will depend on a number of factors. The most important of these, he told The Epoch Times, is “whether large food processors can adapt their facilities and personnel practices to protect their workers from infection, which has led to the closure of plants across the country over the past two months.”

Gremillion also said food companies have to be more flexible in adjusting their operations away from restaurants and foodservice operators and to redirect more food to grocery stores.

Gremillion said that exports have also impacted food prices in the United States, as some foreign customers have placed additional orders during the CCP virus crisis.

“As meat and poultry processing capacity has declined, exports of these products to China and other countries has soared. That has led at least one large processor to pledge to sell more of its product to domestic buyers.”

Reasons Behind Food Price Surge

Both John and Gremillion believe that while the CCP virus crisis has brought hardship to America’s most vulnerable consumers, and especially low-income groups, it may have inadvertently exposed unanticipated consumption behaviors and weaknesses in our food provision systems that can now be remedied.

“Panic buying and stockpiling resulted in price gouging,” said John, “which impacted consumers and also limited supply in grocery stores, which [in turn] resulted in prices going up.” She also referenced meat and poultry plant closures as a factor in current price increases.

“Unfortunately,” said Gremillion, “this crisis has exposed some critical weaknesses in the food system. Meat and poultry processing, in particular, is far too concentrated.” He espoused the value of a resilient food-provision system in the United States, and said the path to this goal “should begin with rigorous anti-trust enforcement.”

CPI Falls Overall as Food Rises

Overall, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for urban consumers fell by 0.8 percent in April—” the largest monthly decline since December 2008,” according to the BLS, a phenomenon closely linked to energy, transport, and retail restrictions in April.

“A 20.6 percent decline in the gasoline index was the largest contributor to the monthly decrease in the seasonally adjusted all items index, but the indexes for apparel, motor vehicle insurance, airline fares, and lodging away from home all fell sharply as well,” according to the statement from the BLS.

“The energy index declined mostly due to the decrease in the gasoline index, though some energy component indexes rose.

The index for all items less food and energy fell 0.4 percent in April, the largest monthly decline in the history of the series, which dates to 1957. Along with the indexes mentioned above, the indexes for used cars and trucks and recreation also declined. The indexes for rent, owners’ equivalent rent, medical care, and household furnishings and operations all increased in April,” according to the BLS.

The Coming Food Shortage

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue testifies during a House Agriculture Committee hearing in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington on March 4, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said on Friday that he does not expect any food shortages in the coming months due to COVID-19 outbreaks in meat processing plants.

In an interview Friday on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Perdue said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) tracks meat processing plant openings and capacity, and on that basis, he does not expect shortages. Source: theepochtimes

What Planet Do These Government Officials Live On, There’s Going to Be Food Shortages, No More Happy Talk From Trump Administration’s Puppeteers, Strengthen you’re (Faith) Get Prepared, It’s Coming. Stevie Ray Hansen

Images of empty grocery store shelvesfarmers dumping thousands of gallons of milk, and long lines at food banks have sparked fears this week of mass food shortages in the U.S.— a prospect that experts say is extremely unlikely, though due to the sudden disruption to normal distribution channels, consumers may see temporary, minor shortages of some items as the food system adapts to changes. 

Essential Workers Keep Businesses Open And Serve Customers During COVID-19 Pandemic
MIAMI, FLORIDA – APRIL 13: A grocery store worker restocking the meat section. JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

KEY FACTS

The New York Times reported this week that farmers are destroying excess crops as client demand from restaurants, universities and corporations evaporated due to government-mandated shutdowns; since it’s nearly impossible for supply chain producers to reroute their food as this would cost farmers more, the food is going to waste instead of hungry consumers.

Staple foods like rice, grain, and beans that are typically imported to the U.S. are suddenly in short supply or costing consumers more as other countries limit their exports: Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan are restricting grain exports, Cambodia and India are limiting rice exports and Egypt has ceased legume exports for three months, according to Reuters.

With consumers now preparing and eating all of their food at home, demand for grocery store goods has skyrocketed: major grocery chain Kroger said sales grew 30% month-over-month in March.

Food banks, which have seen a sudden 40% increase in demand due to the rising number of employed Americans, typically rely on supermarket donations to feed their communities; because supermarkets are now being emptied by consumers, the food banks are seeing a serious shortage of inventory.

The food supply chain is also vulnerable to the disease itself, not just the shutdown: On Monday, Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor, closed its Sioux Falls, South Dakota factory due to a coronavirus outbreak, raising concerns about a shortage of pork and processed meat reaching consumers.

There’s plenty of food in the U.S. with hundreds of millions of pounds of meat in cold storage, the challenge is the lack of processing options (with facilities like Smithfield closing), which could result in less product variety, “We have a lot of pork, we have a lot of chicken, we have a lot of beef in cold storage,” said Steve Meyer, a Kerns and Associates economist to CNN. “We can draw on that should we have some shortages.”

CRITICAL QUOTE

“Consumers like to have a lot of different choices, and the reality is in the short term, we just don’t have the labor to make that happen,” Rabobank meat industry analyst Christine McCracken told New York Times.

KEY BACKGROUND

The food retail system is a $1.46 trillion industry in the United States with American grocery stores bringing in $650 billion a year. Stores typically stock 40,000 to 50,000 items per location, up from about 7,000 in the 1990s. While there may be a lack of options for all the reasons mentioned above, shoppers today will likely walk away from grocery stores with everything they need—except, maybe, toilet paper.  Source: forbes

GOD GIVES TRUMP THE TREASURES OF DARKNESS AND HIDDEN RICHES

The World Is In Big Trouble, for Those That Believe We Will Go Back to Some Sense of Normal Life Here on Earth, You Will Be Sadly Disappointed, Seven and Half Years of Hell on Earth Which Began January 1, 2020

“Our courts oppose the righteous, and justice is nowhere to be found. Truth stumbles in the streets, and honesty has been outlawed” (Isa. 59:14, NLT)…We Turned Our Backs On GOD, Now We Have Been Left To Our Own Devices, Enjoy…

While Mainstream Media Continues to Push a False Narrative, Big Tech Has to Keep the Truth From Coming out by Shadow Banning Conservatives, Christians, and Like-Minded People, Those Death Attributed to the Coronavirus Is a Result of Those Mentioned, They Truly Are Evil…

Source: HNewsWire

StevieRay Hansen
Editor, HNewsWire.com
Watchmen does not confuse truth with consensus The Watchmen does not confuse God’s word with the word of those in power…

In police-state fashion, Big Tech took the list of accused (including this site), declared all those named guilty and promptly shadow-banned, de-platformed or de-monetized us all without coming clean about how they engineered the crushing of dissent, Now more than ever big Tech has exposed there hand engaging in devious underhanded tactics to make the sinister look saintly, one of Satan’s greatest weapons happens to be deceit…

The accumulating death toll from Covid-19 can be seen minute-by-minute on cable news channels. But there’s another death toll few seem to care much about: the number of poverty-related deaths being set in motion by deliberately plunging millions of Americans into poverty and despair.

American health care, as we call it today, and for all its high-tech miracles, has evolved into one of the most atrocious rackets the world has ever seen. By racket, I mean an enterprise organized explicitly to make money dishonestly.

All the official reassurances won’t be worth a bucket of warm spit. The Globals are behind the CoronaVirus, It Is a Man-Made Bioweapon.

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; avoid such men as these.

Among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes’s and Jambres’s folly was also. Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 

But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. 

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
2 Timothy 3:1-4:5

According to the word of God, as Christians, we are living in difficult or perilous times. One of the greatest of those perils is the threat posed by false teachers. This site is a call to action for believers. The call to action is this: Trust(1) in the truthfulness and sufficiency of God’s word. Submit(2) to His sovereignty over our lives. Study(3) His word with humility and fear. Test(4) those who call themselves Apostles or claim any other title of spiritual authority. Prove(5) your love for God by not fearing man, and warn those who do not know God whether or not they claim to be Christian. Expose(6) the lies that claim to be God’s truth. Love(7) others sacrificially. Judge(8) with righteous judgment. Examine(9) yourself to see if you’re in the faith. Endure(10) to the end.

watchman-on-wall

Tagged In

Newsletter

Must Read

Long-Journey-Home-1
One-Thing
Mark-Cahill-Ministries-1
One-Blinding-Vision

Other Sources

USSANews

Latest News

Watchman: Former Director of Black Voices for Trump Still in Jail in the Fulton Case as Others Post Bond: Where Is Trump’s Support for This Man? Trump Has Gone Missing Yet Again. Why Isn’t Anyone Standing Up for This Man? That’s an 11-Year Marine Veteran

By StevieRay Hansen | August 26, 2023

SRH: There is no one in the Bible who was a power for God who did not have enemies and was not despised. The world…

Read More

A GOV’T AND A PEOPLE ORDAINED OF GOD WORKS NO ILL TO NEIGHBORS- Rom.13

By Edward O'Hara | August 26, 2023

HnewsWire: By Edward O’Hara First I want to say that I am hoping that during these studies through Romans people are seeing that the ‘Roman…

Read More

Catherine Englebrecht, Founder of True to Vote posted about 67,284 more stories from the 2020 Elections in Georgia !

By Dinesh Kaushiva | August 26, 2023

Dinesh Kaushiva August 26, 2023 Though in this presentation these factual documented reported, recorded and archived accounts of the 2020 Elections are just from Georgia…

Read More

Watchman: Artist Laughs at GOP Debaters for Mentioning Viral Song “Rich Men North of Richmond” He Is the Real Deal

By StevieRay Hansen | August 26, 2023

SRH: In his lyrics, we can definitely hear how frustrated he is. Our kids are the ones who have to go through the government’s bad…

Read More

Watchman: Robb Butler, Executive Director for Who Europe Has Suggested It Is Time for Countries to Have a Conversation About Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines, Saying: “It’s a Healthy Debate to Have” — Death By Kill Shot Is a Healthy Debate? REALLY!

By StevieRay Hansen | August 26, 2023

Satan Soldier a.k.a. Robb Butler, executive director for Demonic WHO Europe, told Kay Burley on Sky News: “Mandatory (Kill Shot) vaccination can, but doesn’t always…

Read More
Focused-Protection-1
Place Your Ad Here

We make every effort to acknowledge sources used in our news articles. In a few cases, the sources were lost due to a technological glitch. If you believe we have not given sufficient credit for your source material, please contact us, and we will be more than happy to link to your article.

StevieRay Hansen

In his riveting memoir, "A Long Journey Home", StevieRay Hansen will lead you through his incredible journey from homeless kid to multimillionaire oilman willing to give a helping hand to other throwaway kids. Available on Amazon.

1 Comment

  1. Patrick Galasso on June 26, 2020 at 6:30 pm

    They are pushing a world soviet run by private interests. It is not the communism you have been taught about; is not the true communism. It is a corporate fascism on top, directing a compartmentalized soviet communitarian model on the bottom. Two different systems.

Leave a Comment