As if we're not all freaked out enough....

[kmeyrick]

Apparently the feds are stockpiling. Does anybody know if there's any truth to this? I'm not familiar with this news source

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.p...w&pageId=70281

But Hopkins said it was his opinion the government is purchasing huge quantities of food for stockpiles, and Americans will have to surmise why.

"We don't have shelters that [are being] stocked with food. We're not doing this for the public. My only conclusion is that they're stocking up for themselves," he said of government officials

Is this legit?

ETA, I don't think it is, but I've seen this get passed around. Any knowledgeable people out there who would know? (It's rather old).

[Belleweather]

World Net Daily, while interesting, is not what one would generally consider "a reliable news source".

It's also worth pointing out that the US Government purchase huge quantities of food every year as a part of agricultural price support programs so saying that "the government is purchasing huge quantities of food for stockpiles, and Americans will have to surmise why" is disengenuious.

[mightymoo]

I know the US government purchases food for farming subsidies. That's what farming subsidies are - the government promising to buy the food at a set price. When they do that, they often either store the food to sell at a later date when it wouldn't undermind the price of the food they are subsidizing, or turn it into something else and sell it cheap.

Corn is a great example - the US government has been subsidizing it for years. When corn would otherwise drop below a set price, the government starts buying to keep the price up. What does it do with the extra corn? They turn it into HFCS and sell it, thus not lowering the price of corn the farmers are selling. That's how we end up with such cheap high fructose corn syrup which is in everything.

[kmeyrick]

Originally Posted by Belleweather

World Net Daily, while interesting, is not what one would generally consider "a reliable news source".

It's also worth pointing out that the US Government purchase huge quantities of food every year as a part of agricultural price support programs so saying that "the government is purchasing huge quantities of food for stockpiles, and Americans will have to surmise why" is disengenuious.

That's what I thought. I actually found the thought that they might NOT stockpile a little more disturbing.

[Denvergirlie]

First of all this article was published back in July 2008, so it's 8 months old.

WND, while the do have true stories things are normally spun to the extreme, not all, but some.

As for stockpiling, it is fact that there were some very large purchases in the long term survival food catergory about this time last year. Many of these suppliers were simply out of food to fill other orders, so someone, someplace was making huge pruchases and "clearing the shelves" per se. That is a fact.

I know we bought a Berkey water filter about this time last year and the gov't had just placed a huge order, ours ended up taking about 2 months to get to us with the factory running on overtime.

[p1gg1e]

Yep I saw that 8 months ago..Ive seen more I'll see if I can dig later and post them. I think it was a big reason for the hike in food prices last summer before the fuel prices hit food...wait till this summer