Drought In U.S. Reaching Levels Not Seen In 50 Years …
A drought gripping the Corn Belt and more than half the United States has reached proportions not seen in more than 50 years, the government reported Monday, jacking up crop prices and threatening to drive up the cost of food.
Though agriculture is a small part of the U.S. economy, the shortfall comes as the nation struggles to regain its economic footing. Last week, the Agriculture Department declared more than 1,000 counties in 26 states as natural-disaster areas.
About 55 percent of the continental United States is now designated as in moderate drought or worse, the largest percentage since December 1956, according to the National Climatic Data Center, and the outlook is grim.
“The drought could get a lot worse before it gets better,” said Joe Glauber, chief economist at the Agriculture Department.
Corn is among the most valuable of U.S. crops, and its price has multiple economic ripple effects, reaching into food and energy markets. Rising corn prices mean higher costs for beef producers that use it to feed their livestock. The increase also means that some fields planted with other crops will be shifted into corn production. And a corn price spike can put upward pressure on the price of ethanol, which consumes more than a third of the U.S. harvest.
Over the past two months, the price of a bushel of corn has risen more than 50 percent to $7.72.
The United States has already cut its estimates of the corn harvest by 12 percent, and given the forecast for continuing dryness, the figure could drop further, officials said.
A drought gripping the Corn Belt and more than half the United States has reached proportions not seen in more than 50 years, the government reported Monday, jacking up crop prices and threatening to drive up the cost of food.
Though agriculture is a small part of the U.S. economy, the shortfall comes as the nation struggles to regain its economic footing. Last week, the Agriculture Department declared more than 1,000 counties in 26 states as natural-disaster areas.
About 55 percent of the continental United States is now designated as in moderate drought or worse, the largest percentage since December 1956, according to the National Climatic Data Center, and the outlook is grim.
“The drought could get a lot worse before it gets better,” said Joe Glauber, chief economist at the Agriculture Department.
Corn is among the most valuable of U.S. crops, and its price has multiple economic ripple effects, reaching into food and energy markets. Rising corn prices mean higher costs for beef producers that use it to feed their livestock. The increase also means that some fields planted with other crops will be shifted into corn production. And a corn price spike can put upward pressure on the price of ethanol, which consumes more than a third of the U.S. harvest.
Over the past two months, the price of a bushel of corn has risen more than 50 percent to $7.72.
The United States has already cut its estimates of the corn harvest by 12 percent, and given the forecast for continuing dryness, the figure could drop further, officials said.
“Minimally, we have lost 10 percent of the crop, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we have lost 20 percent,” said Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, an Omaha-based commodity consulting firm. “We have not seen this kind of weather in at least 30 years. Farmers in many areas are resigned to the fact that they have anywhere from modest losses to complete losses of their crop.”
Forecasters expect a high-pressure area to remain entrenched over the Rockies and central United States. As a result, any storm systems will probably track across southern Canada, missing the worst-affected areas.
The bottom line: No significant rain is expected.
“The core of the drought region is not forecast to be affected by rain over a significant area in the next two weeks,” said Matthew Rosencrans, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The Agriculture Department on Monday said 38 percent of the U.S. corn crop was in poor or very poor condition, up from 30 percent a week ago. Those are the worst July conditions since 1988, when half of the nation’s corn crop was rated very poor to poor, the agency said.
The rapid rise in the price of corn, however, does not directly translate into similar jumps in consumer prices.
Only about 14 or 15 cents of each dollar a consumer spends on food is attributable to the farm, said Glauber, the economist. The rest of the cost of food arises from processing, transportation and other factors such as demand.
As a result, even large swings in crop prices can have relatively muted effects on what consumers pay at the supermarket.
On the other hand, a run-up in crop prices in 2008 — driven by a very tight wheat market, strong growth in Asia and an energy price spike — caused inflation for food consumed at home to rise more than 7 percent, Glauber said.
That jump was felt most keenly by lower-income Americans.
“The effect of food inflation on poorer households is more significant because they tend to spend a larger share of their household income on food,” Glauber said.
Farmers also bear the brunt of the bad weather, though many are covered by insurance.
“I have had multiple customers tell me that they have been farming for 40 or 50 years, through the severe droughts of the 1980s, and that this is the worst they’ve seen,” said Scott Docherty, general manager at Topflight Grain Cooperative, which runs storage bins and grain elevators in a dozen Illinois towns.
Docherty said it takes about three months for grain to make its way from elevators to consumer products, which is when many consumers should begin feeling price increases, Docherty said.
Brandon Hunnicutt has grown corn, soybeans and popcorn on a 2,600-acre farm in Giltner, Neb., with his father and brother for the past 14 years. He said this year’s drought is “as tough as any I can remember.”
He said farmers in his area compare conditions now to those during the severe drought years of 1988, or even 1977.
Despite it all, he said, his family’s crop is “looking pretty good,” since 95 percent of the farm is irrigated. “Our crop should be about average. It is just a matter of keeping everything watered.
But, he added, “the dry-land guys are really hurting.” -By Peter Whoriskey and Michael A. Fletcher/The Washington Times/July 16, 2012
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Calls To Destroy Egypt’s Great Pyramids Begin
According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”
This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity. While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself—deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran—was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command.
However, while book-burning was an easy activity in the 7th century, destroying the mountain-like pyramids and their guardian Sphinx was not—even if Egypt’s Medieval Mamluk rulers “de-nosed” the latter during target practice (though popular legend still attributes it to a Westerner, Napoleon).
Now, however, as Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sheikhs” observes, and thanks to modern technology, the pyramids can be destroyed. The only question left is whether the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt is “pious” enough—if he is willing to complete the Islamization process that started under the hands of Egypt’s first Islamic conqueror.
Nor is such a course of action implausible. History is laden with examples of Muslims destroying their own pre-Islamic heritage—starting with Islam’s prophet Muhammad himself, who destroyed Arabia’s Ka‘ba temple, transforming it into a mosque.
Asking “What is it about Islam that so often turns its adherents against their own patrimony?” Daniel Pipes provides several examples, from Medieval Muslims in India destroying their forefathers’ temples, to contemporary Muslims destroying their non-Islamic heritage in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Malaysia, and Tunisia.
Currently, in what the International Criminal Court is describing as a possible “war crime,” Islamic fanatics are destroying the ancient heritage of the city of Timbuktu in Mali—all to Islam’s triumphant war cry, “Allahu Akbar!”
Much of this hate for their own pre-Islamic heritage is tied to the fact that, traditionally, Muslims do not identify with this or that nation, culture, heritage, or language, but only with the Islamic nation—the Umma.
Accordingly, while many Egyptians—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—see themselves as Egyptians, Islamists have no national identity, identifying only with Islam’s “culture,” based on the “sunna” of the prophet and Islam’s language, Arabic. This sentiment was clearly reflected when the former Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Akef, declared “the hell with Egypt,” indicating that the interests of his country are secondary to Islam’s.
It is further telling that such calls are being made now—immediately after a Muslim Brotherhood member became Egypt’s president. In fact, the same reports discussing the call to demolish the last of the Seven Wonders of the World, also note that Egyptian Salafis are calling on Morsi to banish all Shias and Baha’is from Egypt.
In other words, Morsi’s call to release the Blind Sheikh, a terrorist mastermind, may be the tip of the iceberg in coming audacity. From calls to legalize Islamic sex-slave marriage to calls to institute “morality police” to calls to destroy Egypt’s mountain-like monuments, under Muslim Brotherhood tutelage, the bottle has been uncorked, and the genie unleashed in Egypt.
Will all those international institutions, which make it a point to look the other way whenever human rights abuses are committed by Muslims, lest they appear “Islamophobic,” at least take note now that the Great Pyramids appear to be next on Islam’s hit list, or will the fact that Muslims are involved silence them once again—even as those most ancient symbols of human civilization are pummeled to the ground? -By Raymond Ibrahim/Front Page Mag/July 11, 2012
According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”
This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity. While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself—deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran—was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command.
However, while book-burning was an easy activity in the 7th century, destroying the mountain-like pyramids and their guardian Sphinx was not—even if Egypt’s Medieval Mamluk rulers “de-nosed” the latter during target practice (though popular legend still attributes it to a Westerner, Napoleon).
Now, however, as Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sheikhs” observes, and thanks to modern technology, the pyramids can be destroyed. The only question left is whether the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt is “pious” enough—if he is willing to complete the Islamization process that started under the hands of Egypt’s first Islamic conqueror.
Nor is such a course of action implausible. History is laden with examples of Muslims destroying their own pre-Islamic heritage—starting with Islam’s prophet Muhammad himself, who destroyed Arabia’s Ka‘ba temple, transforming it into a mosque.
Asking “What is it about Islam that so often turns its adherents against their own patrimony?” Daniel Pipes provides several examples, from Medieval Muslims in India destroying their forefathers’ temples, to contemporary Muslims destroying their non-Islamic heritage in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Malaysia, and Tunisia.
Currently, in what the International Criminal Court is describing as a possible “war crime,” Islamic fanatics are destroying the ancient heritage of the city of Timbuktu in Mali—all to Islam’s triumphant war cry, “Allahu Akbar!”
Much of this hate for their own pre-Islamic heritage is tied to the fact that, traditionally, Muslims do not identify with this or that nation, culture, heritage, or language, but only with the Islamic nation—the Umma.
Accordingly, while many Egyptians—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—see themselves as Egyptians, Islamists have no national identity, identifying only with Islam’s “culture,” based on the “sunna” of the prophet and Islam’s language, Arabic. This sentiment was clearly reflected when the former Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Akef, declared “the hell with Egypt,” indicating that the interests of his country are secondary to Islam’s.
It is further telling that such calls are being made now—immediately after a Muslim Brotherhood member became Egypt’s president. In fact, the same reports discussing the call to demolish the last of the Seven Wonders of the World, also note that Egyptian Salafis are calling on Morsi to banish all Shias and Baha’is from Egypt.
In other words, Morsi’s call to release the Blind Sheikh, a terrorist mastermind, may be the tip of the iceberg in coming audacity. From calls to legalize Islamic sex-slave marriage to calls to institute “morality police” to calls to destroy Egypt’s mountain-like monuments, under Muslim Brotherhood tutelage, the bottle has been uncorked, and the genie unleashed in Egypt.
Will all those international institutions, which make it a point to look the other way whenever human rights abuses are committed by Muslims, lest they appear “Islamophobic,” at least take note now that the Great Pyramids appear to be next on Islam’s hit list, or will the fact that Muslims are involved silence them once again—even as those most ancient symbols of human civilization are pummeled to the ground? -By Raymond Ibrahim/Front Page Mag/July 11, 2012
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Surprise? Apple Underpays American Workers
Though Apple seems to have dodged the controversy surrounding the working conditions at its subcontractors’ facilities in China, recent allegations have surfaced that hit far closer to home. According to a New York Times investigation, the pay of Apple store workers, who make up over two thirds of the company’s American workforce, is not commensurate to the amount of cash that these workers generate for the company. Indeed, workers who move on average almost half a million dollars worth of product annually have a starting salary of just $25,000 with little opportunity for growth.
Apple, exploiting a perpetually weak labor market for young workers and their naivete, is able to squeeze these workers in several different ways, including:
paying employees less than they would make at comparable electronics stores such as Verizon, let alone Costco, despite moving much more money;
violating state labor laws by discouraging workers from taking their legally mandated breaks;
providing few, if any, opportunities for career advancement;
and overworking employees to the point where they suffer from stress-related illnesses.
Unfortunately, what allows Apple to continue to do this is its perpetual popularity — people will buy iPhones and iPads regardless of whether or not Apple is an ethical company, and there will be young people willing to work for cheap as long as the economy remains in a recession. Though one might argue that the high demand for Apple products justifies the low price of labor (that is, anyone could sell an iPad to a willing customer), the New York Times investigation disproves this notion, indicating that salespeople are especially crucial to selling the lucrative “add-ons” such as warranties and training.
These revelations further show the importance of encouraging ethical consumption and production. As a recent Care2 post argued, “Informed customers who care about the environment, their community and business ethics are a huge force for change.” The more aware we are of unethical behavior like this, the easier it is for us to consume ethically or demand change in company practice, moving the market with our purchasing decisions.
At the same time, B-Corporations focus on the production side of markets: instead of trying to maximize profit, they make it possible to pursue ethical and sustainable business practices. Indeed, as more states allow B-Corporations to exist, it will be easier for consumers to find products that were made and sold ethically instead of falling to a default like Apple. –By Sam Taxy/Care2/June 25, 2012
Though Apple seems to have dodged the controversy surrounding the working conditions at its subcontractors’ facilities in China, recent allegations have surfaced that hit far closer to home. According to a New York Times investigation, the pay of Apple store workers, who make up over two thirds of the company’s American workforce, is not commensurate to the amount of cash that these workers generate for the company. Indeed, workers who move on average almost half a million dollars worth of product annually have a starting salary of just $25,000 with little opportunity for growth.
Apple, exploiting a perpetually weak labor market for young workers and their naivete, is able to squeeze these workers in several different ways, including:
paying employees less than they would make at comparable electronics stores such as Verizon, let alone Costco, despite moving much more money;
violating state labor laws by discouraging workers from taking their legally mandated breaks;
providing few, if any, opportunities for career advancement;
and overworking employees to the point where they suffer from stress-related illnesses.
Unfortunately, what allows Apple to continue to do this is its perpetual popularity — people will buy iPhones and iPads regardless of whether or not Apple is an ethical company, and there will be young people willing to work for cheap as long as the economy remains in a recession. Though one might argue that the high demand for Apple products justifies the low price of labor (that is, anyone could sell an iPad to a willing customer), the New York Times investigation disproves this notion, indicating that salespeople are especially crucial to selling the lucrative “add-ons” such as warranties and training.
These revelations further show the importance of encouraging ethical consumption and production. As a recent Care2 post argued, “Informed customers who care about the environment, their community and business ethics are a huge force for change.” The more aware we are of unethical behavior like this, the easier it is for us to consume ethically or demand change in company practice, moving the market with our purchasing decisions.
At the same time, B-Corporations focus on the production side of markets: instead of trying to maximize profit, they make it possible to pursue ethical and sustainable business practices. Indeed, as more states allow B-Corporations to exist, it will be easier for consumers to find products that were made and sold ethically instead of falling to a default like Apple. –By Sam Taxy/Care2/June 25, 2012
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