The shape of things to come?

[valarltd]

I had a mini-meltdown in Wal-Mart last night.

We had gone in for tea and peppermints and a few other things. There was not a bag of peppermints to be had. The Brachs were stripped. The Best Choice were gone.

I know it was 9:30 on a Sunday and the trucks hadn't come in yet. But I started looking and seeing other empty shelves. Places where a whole product was missing and hadn't been restocked.
Wal-Mart had 15 ocean-going containers in their parking lot. Why the hell don't they have peppermints?

I've been noticing this more and more. Wal-Mart is OUT of things. This is not supposed to happen. It makes my world feel insecure. And sometimes Kroger and Walgreens and Big Star and Save A Lot are out too. There are times when the (very common) item I want is not to be had in my town.

This is only going to become more common. There's a drought this year. There will be famines. Not so much here, except for rising food prices, but elsewhere. And unless we get agriculture and our lives under control, it will touch us.

But that is not our way. We drive the car off the cliff first and fasten our seatbelt after.

You read it here: I'm predicting food riots in ten years.

Please feel free to laugh at me and call me a nervous nelly in 2025. I'd rather that than be right.

Is it pre-election jitters?
Is it pre-cog I can't control?
Is it just a lot of free-floating angst about my kids' future?
Is it incipient depression?
I don't know. I'll keep writing my stories and making my crafts until my arthritic fingers can take no more. Then I'll dictate them.

Comments

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

No offense, but I really hope this is just depression &/or angsting about the kids.

That said, climatologists and food scientists already know that we're going to have shortages/absences of certain foods. A lot of different alcohols are going to become more expensive and lower quality or vanish altogether. For instance, wine grapes require very specific soil and weather conditions, and the regions they grow best in are going to be or are already being negatively impacted by rising temperatures. Tequila is probably going to vanish entirely, as the agave will become economically non-viable to farm. Barley malt for beer is going to get burned a lot more easily by rising temps/droughts.

Chocolate is probably going to take a hit, as is pork (pigs require a lot of water & mud for optimum health). We've already seen how wheat and corn were devastated by this year's drought, which is going to have a ripple effect through the food market both directly (foods that use flour or corn) and indirectly (animal feed).

Ugh. I've just convinced myself that you're probably at least partially right. :-( I don't think that there'll be food riots (in the USA at least; we've grown to complacent for large scale rioting), but there WILL be food hoarding.