what conditions would trigger food riots in the US?

[leftofthedial]

what price for bread or milk?

what shortages or unavailability of which foods?

or what?

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. I suspect we are not that far from them

we have a bunch of the former middle class now living in Hoovervilles (the BBC covered that story)

So the conditions are getting there FAST

[scarletwoman]

2. Maybe February 2009, when the TV signal changes. Seriously. (nt)

[rpannier]

6. That's probably more true than most people would believe

With the new signal reguiring a different TV, there will probably be a lot of outrage.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. We ain't buying a new teevee. Do your research, as long as you have

Cable, your fine. Signal will still come down the same wire

[Manifestor_of_Light]

13. A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE do NOT have cable, for your information.

Some people think that everybody has cable. I don't have cable. I am moving to a rural area and will probably have to get it in order to get high speed internet.

I haven't had cable since 1988. My ex hubby got it taken out to "punish" me, even though he was the one that watched cop shows full of sirens and screeching tires every night after work.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. You are right a lot of people don't have cable

BUT... you will need to get it anyway. The TEEVEE ain't gonna come through the airwaves this is what this give away was all about.

The trigger was 70% + of people with Cable

FYI I live in an urban area, in a valley... no cable no reception. It is that simply

[MercutioATC]

16. A $50 converter box will solve the problem if you don't want to buy a new TV.

A mountain has been made of this digital molehill. You will have the same basic access to television programming with a $50 digital/analog converter.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. YEP you are right

but from what I understand you will still need a physical cable since the frequencies have been sold

And don't get me started on what I think bout it.

Worst idea ever, for disaster services

[NCDem60]

24. Signals will

still be going out over the air. The available converter box will make them viewable by older TVs. There won't be anymore need for cable than there is today.

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Good, that part I must have missed, since they have sold the frecs

[lapfog_1]

32. Only one gotcha...

the new digital signals will, apparently, not have the same reach as the previous analog signals... i.e. if you were in a spotty area of analog reception before (maybe a little "snow", etc)... now, after you hook up the dandy little converter box... you simply get NO signal, or at least not enough so the converter can un-encrypt it and put out a good picture so it opts to deliver zip.

[madeline_con]

63. During disasters, like hurricanes ,we...

assume the electricity and cable will be screwed for a few days, so we have a radio with batteries.

Thinking one will have TV during a disaster is bad planning, IMO.

[JDPriestly]

26. A lot of elderly people who do not have cable and who

do not understand about the converter box will be without TV. Also, I'm wondering whether the converter boxes will provide the same kind of reception that people get today. I suspect there will be glitches as people try to connect converter boxes to very old TVs.

[Fumesucker]

38. Not only that

But you can get a free coupon from the government worth $40 toward the purchase of a converter box.

https://www.dtv2009.gov/

Two coupons are allowed per household.

I have an ATSC (HDTV) tuner in my computer and live behind a high ridge from all the local stations.. My analog TV was never very good at all but I can pick up about eight HDTV stations with an indoor antenna.

I'm sure if I put up an outdoor antenna I could probably double the number of stations I can get.

[scarletwoman]

10. Yup. TV is the opiate of the masses. (nt)

[napoleon_in_rags]

3. Food banks running empty.

A lot of people already depend on food banks, because they are out of jobs. The first riots would be homeless and the like who can't eat.

[Betsy Ross]

4. During the Cuban missile crisis

people were fighting over bags of sugar in the supermarket.

[Lasher]

45. You mean like when it's Christmas?

Well, Christmas shopping was not like that last year. Junior kept saying the economy was booming but I was pretty sure he was lying since the stores weren't filled with people trying to snatch the favored toy of the year from my hands.

[jgraz]

5. Hell, I'm out of Cool Ranch Doritos and I feel a riot coming on.

[Marr]

31. lol :D

[Echo In Light]

37. Ha..imagining crazed, shotgun wielding person w/Doritos in hand running through isles at Hellmart

[grasswire]

7. empty shelves

I'm seeing some sparse shelves at my Kroger locally. They were out of canned store brand tuna for a couple of weeks.

[liberal4truth]

21. Not so bad really. Tuna are overfished and full of toxic mercury anyhow.

Having said that, I love tuna myself. :-(

[villager]

9. "A riot is an ugly thing. And -- I think it is just about time that we had one!"

--Kenneth Mars, in "Young Frankenstein"

[newmajority]

11. Closest thing I've seen to a food riot was in the Spring of 1985

When this little scam happened.....



What many people failed to realize was that the REAL scam actually came two months later.....



This was marketed as the return of "old Coke". But it really wasn't. It was reformulated with High Fructose Corn Poison. And after 2 months without, they figured most people wouldn't notice the difference, as long as it tasted better than the New Coke shit, which it did.

Real Coca Cola is still out there though. In Mexico. And I've heard, in parts of Canada. And on every other continent on the planet. And even in cities with a large Jewish population right now, because the rabbis went to Atlanta and told them that grain-based sweeteners aren't Kosher for Passover. So they DO produce a very limited quantity of real Coke in the US every Spring, but it doesn't get anywhere near my one-synagogue town, unfortunately. Occasionally, I can find the Mexican stuff at Costco, but it's three times the cost of the high fructose corn poison variety.

Given the rising corn prices (thanks to Big Agribusiness cashing in on biofuels) I'm hoping these imbeciles do the right thing and go back to sugar full time. Maybe other companies will follow suit and with less of a corn demand, the prices will drop somewhat (though not as much as they would if we put the oil criminals in prison)

[rwenos]

14. British Columbia

The INSTANT I tasted a can of Coke at the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island . . . I knew instantly. It was cane-sugar Coke. Unmistakeable. Took me back to the 1960's.

I'm on the prowl for Passover Coke in LA right now. Comes in 2-liter bottles, and they have a YELLOW plastic cap. (The red cap is the regular stuff.)

True addicts UNDERSTAND.

[Hannah Bell]

34. HFCS is a subsidy to archer daniels midland, same as ethanol.

They won't go back to sugar even if the price triples. The gov't pays the freight, like they're paying it for ethanol.

"The federal government subsidizes ethanol producers with a tax credit of 51 cents per gallon of fuel ethanol; those subsidies will total about $1.4 billion this year. This is in addition to the billions of dollars -- more than $4 billion in 2004 -- the U.S. provides in subsidies for the production of corn, from which most domestically produced ethanol is derived...

A recent careful study by Cornell University's David Pimentel and the University of California at Berkeley's Tad Patzek added up all the energy consumption that goes into ethanol production. They took account of the energy it takes to build and run tractors. They added in the energy embodied in the other inputs and irrigation. They parsed out how much is used at the ethanol plant.

Putting it all together, they found that it takes 29 percent more energy to make ethanol from corn than is contained in the ethanol itself.

Why does Congress keep throwing money at it?

The answer appears to be that elected officials from corn- growing states such as Iowa and Illinois see it as a cash cow for their constituents. The ethanol business is a pretty good source of cash for the lawmakers too. The political action committee of Archer Daniels Midland Co., the world's largest producer of corn-based ethanol fuel, gave $69,000 to federal candidates for the 2004 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2002, before such unlimited ``soft money'' donations were outlawed, ADM gave $1.8 million to political parties. Its political action committee gave close to $200,000 to individual campaigns and committees."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=aSVm3V6ipm8I

[Old Codger]

43. I don't know if anyone is

Aware of the fact that the so called "flex fuel" vehicles get really terrible mileage. I bought one, same model, same size engine as a good friend had, his was gas mine was flex it could use E85, his got 30+ miles per gallon mine got 17, next thing was that E85 is not available anywhere in Oregon, and at that time actually was not available in very many places at all (I didn't research it very well I will admit) The whole ethanol thing is a booming business for ADM (archer daniels midland) they have most of the government rights to produce it.

[murielm99]

35. Where will we get the cane sugar? n/t

[KansDem]

48. Try a Mexican restaurant that has a little market, too.

There's an excellent Mexican restaurant near where I live that has authentic products from Mexico. Their Cokes have sugar, not HFCS.

Although I gave up Coke and other HFSC-based soft drinks in January of 1980, I don't mind taking my kids to this restaurant since I know their getting real sugar instead of HFCS, if they choose to have a sugar-based soft drink.

[alittlelark]

59. I get the 'real' Coke at local Taquerias.....

....it's a wonderful treat!

[DaveJ]

61. Thanks for the Info...

I usually buy diet, but occasionally try a regular soft drink hoping it will be nice change, but I'm always disappointed. Now I know why....

[MercutioATC]

12. The most probable condition in the short term?

Anything that interrupts distribution...and it'd have to be major (like a pandemic) to create real "food riots".

[w8liftinglady]

17. I hate tio think of this

there will be time before we seek refugee

[liberal4truth]

19. When the Beer trucks stop rolling, all hell is going to break loose!

Alcohol and TV is the glue that keeps the masses from rioting over * right now, IMO.

[bdamomma]

42. or when they take down sites like these!

then all of us will be in the streets??? right?

[napoleon_in_rags]

20. How it would go down.

I posted above but your post got me thinking about how it would/will go down.

You start out with increasing unemployment, and a major strain is placed on social services like food stamps, which is happening now:
http://i2.democracynow.org/2008/4/2/record_number_of_food_stamp_recipients
You also have the food banks and soup kitchens start to run short, which is also happening now:
http://www.mcall.com/news/opinion/all-editorial1.6352016apr10,0,630140.story
Then all you need is bump to aggravate already strained conditions. Say an unexpected oil price increase which plunges the economy and sends food prices up. At this point you get a surge in panic spending, which can actually help things out... But if the bump is bigger than the surge, and people clamp down after their panic spending and stop spending, you get wider unemployment as companies trim back expendible services to survive the drought. This puts more people on the street. If it puts enough out there so that the social programs and soup kitchens can't provide, people are put in the situation where they either commit crimes or die, and history has shown they do the former.

A few things happen here: 1) small scale crime, violent and otherwise increases as individuals try to get by 2) large scale crime increases as gangs and syndicates draw on the new source of cheap desperate labor to fill their ranks with soldiers 3) the two previous things further damages the struggling non-criminal economy, as strained police forces are increasingly unable to deal with widescale racketeering and extortion brought about by the newly enlarged syndicates.

Social fabric decays as individuals compete for dwindling resources, and as classic "war-zone" symptoms like widescale prostitution, violence etc. manifest. At this point, regional, racial or sectarian conflicts could arise in the US which would threaten infrastructure that had previously been left intact.

***

Anyway, that's the "libertarian" way things could go to hell. With the government stepping and pro-actively organizing them, we could transition to a much cooler world.

[Ytzak]

22. Well, by the time hit food riots....

Most of the restaurants will have gone belly up. Spiralling food costs will lead to people eating less and less until a wave of bankruptcies hits local restaurants. I don't know when that will be, but watch the local restaurants, especially the mom and pop places. When they start to close, get ready.

[Selatius]

23. 20 percent unemployment or higher and you're looking at 1930s-style food riots.

Add on top of that gas at 4.00/gallon and double-digit inflation for food.

[cliffordu]

25. DING DING DING We have a winner!!!

I believe you have it right, Selatius.

Anyone who thinks we are too genteel a country for that is nuts...


Puttin' away corn, beans and rice, even as we speak.

odd:

80% of the beehives are dead here in western Washington state.

:patriot:

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. And we are closer to that than people realize

:-(

[cliffordu]

29. Yep - We're standing right on top of it....

one two week interruption in the oil supply like back in 1974 and shit goes south in a hurry -

Back then warehousing for food was local, as much as possible - now it's Just In Time trucking running into the stores from a huge distribution centers a state or two away -

I live in the fucking country, and don't know anyone who raises their own beef or chickens for eggs.......

[newmajority]

51. It's gonna be a bad year for bees around here, due to the "extended" winter.

Heard on the radio that it's actually supposed to be in the mid 70's today or tomorrow, but considering it's about 30 degrees outside right now, I'll believe that when I see it. It was somewhere in the 20's overnight, and a 50 degree difference in temperature within 24 hours ain't that common around here.

And if it does happen, the poor bees will probably think "Yes! Spring is finally here!!" and freeze their little butts off when the sun goes down :evilfrown:

[chknltl]

30. The cancelation of American Idol!

If Simon Cowell came out of the closet, that might be bad too.





























sorry it is late and resistance WAS futile.... :hide:

[Yukari Yakumo]

33. Hyper-inflation driving prices into the stratussphere

Anything else won't work.

[ChicagoRonin]

36. Well, imagine this combination . . .

1) Katrina-type natural disaster (shutting down distribution, transportation, power and sanitation infrastructure)
2) Rising fuel prices (increasing cost of food production and distribution)
3) Global warming (reducing capacity for agricultural cultivation in key regions)
4) Reduced freshwater supplies (due to overstretching of natural resources due to water bottling, supplying suburban sprawl, watering of oversized corporate farming, and contamination by industrial waste)

As for which foods, pretty much everything. Any of the above would make it difficult to grow key staple crops (corn, wheat, soy, etc.), plus feed crops to sustain livestock.

[DFW]

39. Hungry people.

That's what usually does it in other countries.

[bdamomma]

44. I agree when our bellies are not as full, that is when we will take action.

[DFW]

46. Full bellies seldom fight

Empty ones have nothing left to lose.

[bdamomma]

50. exactly.

[Old Codger]

40. mostly

Most cities in the US are no more than 30 days away from food shortages. A truckers strike that lasted much more than 2 weeks would most likely trigger a food buying frenzy which could quite easily lead to riots....

[liberal4truth]

54. Truckers cant afford to strike. At most when fuel is too expensive they will park them until

the prices are controlled. Most drivers are having a hard time making a living right now.

[Huron]

67. Never let it be said our fearless leaders are not prepared

for every eventuality:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/149239-Concentration-Camps-in-America-The-Consequences-of-40-Years-of-Fear">Concentration Camps in America: The Consequences of 40 Years of Fear

From the article:

"Dated November 1985, a United States Army field manual entitled, "Civil Disturbances," says "if there are more detainees than civil detention facilities can handle, civil authorities may ask the control forces to set up and operate temporary facilities.... These temporary facilities are set up on the nearest military installation or on suitable property under federal control...supervised and controlled by MP officers and NCOs trained and experienced in Army correctional operations."

At the same time as these plans and manuals were being developed and issued, President Reagan authorized a secret program for the imposition of martial law and massive detentions. First revealed by Oliver North during his congressional testimony, the plan was known as Readiness Exercise 1984, or REX 84. The program was originally intended to confront a "mass exodus" of illegal aliens across the Mexican-U.S. border, and to provide confinement facilities where they could be locked up by FEMA.

Otherwise known as a continuity of government plan, REX 84 involved an actual civil readiness exercise in April 1984 by FEMA in association with 34 other federal agencies. In a combined exercise with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Night Train 84 involved multi-emergency scenarios at play inside and outside the U.S. Confronted with civil disturbances, major demonstrations and labor strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization, and to fight subversive activities, the military was authorized to arrest as many as 400,000 people and to move them to military facilities for confinement."

Who is naive enough to think the US is immune from an http://www.gregpalast.com/sell-the-lexus-burn-the-olive-treernglobalization-and-its-discontents/">IMF Riot?

[The2ndWheel]

41. Pizza

When it is no longer affordable, then we might have issues.

[mandyky]

47. Water

I have read lately tap water is filled with drugs, waste, and poisons.

[AngryAmish]

49. What is gained by a riot?

Who benefits? Follow the money.

[leftofthedial]

52. the guy at the window repair place is behind food inflation?

:shrug:

[hulklogan]

53. No cheetos.

at least in my part of Colorado. They're more of a staple than milk.

[sentelle]

55. it'll never happen?

The media will tell us that everything is the way it is supposed to be. A riot may begin in an area, and the media will call them 'looters' and 'gangs of petty criminals'.

After all, how many people were talking about riots if gas ever went to $3.00 (back when gas was $2.00 a gallon). Now its what $3.30? Where are the riots? And we are already getting ready for $4.00 gas. Will we ever riot? No, the media will say the food prices are just 'fluctuating' because of gas price. Yeah, that's it. If you are gonna complain about fluctuations, then you are an unamerican illegal commie terrorist who commits abortion and tries to date children.

The point is this: the media will make the conditions 'the new normal (tm)' complete with trademark. And so, we will go back to sleep.

Riot, yeah sure.

[cynatnite]

56. Watching your child starve n/t

[kittykitty]

57. Watch Bill Moyers Journal now!

Watch the rich get richer for not farming their land.

[flvegan]

58. Dollarmillionaire bankruptcy at the McD.

God forbid we can't get cheap, fast shit to shove down our gullets.

[coriolis]

60. I'm pretty old but I don't know exactly what a 'food riot' is.

So...what is it?

[ret5hd]

62. when you are eating spiced mud like this child:

things like this start to happen:

[coriolis]

64. I guess I'm even older than I thought. Because I don't understand your post.

People can't eat mud...if that's what the picture is showing. I see some fire in the second one but without any context it looks like some guy throwing gasoline on a burning trash fire. I wasn't being snarky, I seriously wondered but your reply didn't really help. Sorry.

[BluePatriot]

66. Haiti

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22902512/

[ret5hd]

70. Do you understand now?

[alfredo]

65. When gas hits $5 a gallon, the price of food will skyrocket.

Just wait for the heat of the summer when people are cranky anyway. Hot, uncomfortable and hungry is a recipe for unrest.

[NickB79]

68. It's both terrifying and heartening to hear people seriously discussing issues like this

Because it means the public is waking up to the shit-storm that's bearing down on us if we don't take action and make serious changes.

[Life Long Dem]

69. Starvation would set up a riot. That's a riot of the food left.

I think riots would happen if "starving happens" regardless of the risk, as long as you-do have enough energy.