U.S. Has No Remaining Grain Reserves

[Demeter]

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/10/us-has-no-remaining.html

Is the U.S. Running out of emergency grain reserves?
“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory report there are only 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be only 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned .

“Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The only thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat, which is about enough wheat to make 1⁄2 of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.

[grasswire]

1. so why did they sell 18 billion tons of wheat from the reserve?

and who profited from that?

[gristy]

2. This story was posted a month ago, and I'll ask now what I asked then (to the extent I can remember)

What happens once this grain is "sold"? Is it then all shipped to the bakeries and they make 1.5 billion loaves of bread and that's that? What is the typical grain reserve on June 22?

This article is so short on information or context it is worse than worthless.

[psychmommy]

3. the original site for this article is questionable

they also discuss the aliens that are outside of the solar system watching over us. they were sent by the creator and will soon join us. it is quite an interesting site. they have another article that sites one of those all natural infomercial guys. they have an obama article that states obama claims the un is gonna disarm us. please don't bring questionable crap. there is too much real scary stuff that is going on.

[Phred42]

5. Tx for the Head-up

[Igel]

4. I question the importance of the figures.

It's one specific inventory; there are others.

Now, it's good to have some excess sitting around in case of emergencies. I'm not convinced this is the only such inventory, however.

Moreover, I'm fairly sure that many companies have their own stocks. A May 11, 2008 article from Reuters estimates 242 million bushels. It doesn't give a date for when its estimate will be able to be judged correct or in error. The number seems to be the "carry forward" amount, the amount left in various reserves at the beginning of the next wheat harvest, and that's probably a reasonably well-known quantity amount wheat traders. Selling off 18 million more would be a dent in that number, but only a dent.

But then the article embarks on what can only be intentionally misleading.

The error? In implying that grain = wheat. It doesn't. Wheat certainly is grain, but there are numerous kinds of grain other than wheat; reducing the wheat inventory to zero says nothing about what's left in grain reserves, just what's been removed.