"Beef Is Now A 'Luxury Meat' And Goldman Sachs Says
To Brace For “One Of The Largest Energy Supply Shocks Ever”
by Michael Snyder
"The new global economic crisis that we have entered into is starting to hit home with hard working American families in a major way. I have been hearing from so many people that are absolutely horrified by how rapidly the price of gasoline is rising. Especially for those that have to drive a lot, this is going to cause a tremendous amount of pain. Food prices continue to surge as well, and this is particularly true when it comes to meat. Unless you are a vegan or a vegetarian, you are probably accustomed to eating quite a bit of meat on a regular basis. Unfortunately, now we are being told that Americans are going to have to cut back due to global supply problems. In fact, a Yahoo Finance article that I came across earlier today actually referred to beef as a “luxury meat”…
"Americans could be cutting steaks and burgers from their diets as inflation soars, if beef-packer profit margins are any indication. Processors like Tyson Foods Inc. and JBS USA are making the least amount of money per head of cattle slaughtered in more than two years, according to data from HedgersEdge LLC. That’s a sign that demand for the luxury meat is flagging."
In my entire life, I have never heard beef called a “luxury meat” before. Have you? But with the way that the price of beef is rising, many Americans will soon only be able to eat it once in a while.
In normal times, those moving away from beef would be able to eat more chicken and more turkey, but thanks to a devastating new outbreak supplies of chicken and turkey are going to be getting a whole lot tighter. For much more on this, please see an article that I just published entitled “Nearly 2.8 Million Birds (Mostly Chickens And Turkeys) Have Died In The First Month Of America’s Raging New Bird Flu Pandemic”.
Of course it isn’t just meat supplies that are going to be tightening. Ukraine and Russia normally account for about 30 percent of all global wheat exports, but now the war is going to cause that number to drop precipitously. As panic about global food supplies spreads, some countries are already placing restrictions on how much can be sent out of the country. For example, on Wednesday Indonesia “tightened curbs on palm oil exports”.
And in eastern Europe, Serbia, Hungary and Bulgaria have all recently made moves to make sure that their people have enough to eat… "Serbia announced on Wednesday it will ban exports of wheat, corn, flour and cooking oil as of Thursday to counter price increases while Hungary banned all grain exports last week. Bulgaria has also announced it will increase its grain reserves and might restrict exports until it has carried out planned purchases."
But of even greater concern is what Ukraine has decided to do. Normally, Ukraine is one of the biggest exporters in the entire world, but now the Ukrainian government has issued an emergency order which essentially bans the export of most food… "Ukraine, known as the “breadbasket of Europe” given it’s long been among the world’s top ten wheat exporters and supplied over $6 billion in agricultural products to the European Union in 2020, has issued an emergency order Wednesday banning the export of grains and other products.
The ban includes the export of wheat, oats, millet, buckwheat, sugar, live cattle, meat, and other products considered vital to the global economy. But amid wartime, and with Ukraine’s government saying many of its citizens are now starving under Russian siege, Ukraine’s minister of agrarian and food policy Roman Leshchenko said the drastic action was taken to avert a “humanitarian crisis in Ukraine,” stabilize the market and “meet the needs of the population in critical food products,” according to the AP."
I can understand why Ukraine has made this decision, but this is going to have a devastating domino effect. Lebanon normally gets 60 percent of the wheat that it uses from Ukraine, and the fact that they have been cut off from Ukrainian wheat is already causing major problems…"Lebanon could face wheat shortages from July, forcing the government to reduce subsidized flat rounds of Arabic bread, which sustain the 80 percent of Lebanon’s population who live in poverty, according to a report by The Irish Times. Flour mills in Lebanon delivered supplies only to bread bakeries on Monday and Tuesday, forcing bakers who make pastries and thyme pizzas to close as a means of rationing wheat imported from Ukraine, which supplies 60 percent of the country’s wheat needs."
I am stunned when I read things like that. If the war stretches on for an extended period of time, how bad will things be 6 months from now?
Here in the United States, fertilizer prices are causing havoc for farmers all over the country. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you will believe a prominent farmer from Iowa that Tucker Carlson just interviewed… "Ben Riensche, the owner of Blue Diamond Farming Company in Iowa and a farmer of 16,000 acres in that state, told Carlson that the sanctions will have a far-reaching impact on our food supplies in the very near future. “Soaring fertilizer prices are likely to bring spiked food prices,” Riensche said. “If you’re upset that gas is up a dollar or two a gallon, wait until your grocery bill is up $1,000 a month, and it might not just manifest itself in terms of price. It could be quantity as well. Empty-shelf syndrome may be starting.”
Weeks ago, I passed along what a farming insider shared with me. He explained that some fertilizer prices had doubled or even tripled in price, and he warned that this would make growing corn unprofitable for farmers all over America this year. And that was before the war in Ukraine started.
Speaking of the war, Goldman Sachs is now telling us that it could result in “one of the largest energy supply shocks ever”… “Given Russia’s key role in global energy supply, the global economy could soon be faced with one of the largest energy supply shocks ever,” Goldman Sachs said in the Monday night report, adding that the scale of the shock is “potentially enormous.”
I have been writing a lot about the price of oil lately, because it affects just about all of us on a daily basis. We all have to fill up our vehicles with gasoline, and that is going to become a lot more expensive. For example, gas prices in Washington D.C. have been shooting up dramatically… "The trajectory of gas prices at the Mobil station four miles north of the White House has been brutal, clocking in at $3.85 a week ago, $4.17 on Friday, then $4.43 Tuesday, leaving Elizabeth Lopez, a mother of three and employer of six, feeling trapped. “I don’t know how we can do it,” Lopez said, filling up a Chrysler minivan across from a shuttered tire shop in Northwest Washington."
Needless to say, this is just the beginning. If people think that things are bad now, how are they going to feel when the price of gasoline is six or seven dollars a gallon?
And as the price of gasoline rises, so does gasoline theft. In fact, it is being reported that thieves are already drilling holes in fuel tanks so that they can siphon off the gasoline inside…"A FOX 11 viewer shared photos of what happened to a vehicle - a thief drilled a hole in the fuel tank, draining all the gas. AAA is seeing a rise in gas siphoning and theft across the country, and now they’re warning car owners about how to keep their vehicles safe. “This is a sign of the times you know,” AAA’s Doug Shupe said. “It’s thieves looking for ways that they can make money by stealing what is becoming an increasingly more expensive and valuable commodity, gasoline.”
At one time, I never would have imagined that anyone would ever drill a hole in my fuel tank so that they could steal my gasoline. But times have completely changed, and the worse things get the more desperate people are going to become.
I know that this article is getting quite long, but I wanted to squeeze as much in as I could. Global events have really started to accelerate, and conditions are changing at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking. We really have entered a “perfect storm”, and things are only going to get crazier in the months ahead."
