I have heard that Georgia declared a state of emergency due to shortages brought on by supply chain issues. Has that affected anyone here?
Best I can tell, it's an executive order signed by the governor for 30 days, with the option of extension. It makes price-gouging on gas and diesel illegal, extends hours truck drivers are allowed to drive on a shift, allows permits to increase the load limits of trucks in Georgia, and allows noncitizens holding state driver's licenses to apply for renewal for 120 days past their original expiration date. Gov. Kemp is running for re-election this November. Things seemed to be getting back to more normal in our little county. I don't know about others. Maybe there are shortages in Atlanta metro.
It looks like this kind of thing could soon be happening in more states as well. We already have the supply chain shortages, partially due to the shipping containers from China and other places not being able to dock and unload, then we have problems with the rising fuel prices, which are affecting the truck drivers and other delivery workers. Inflation is making it even harder to purchase necessary food and other items even when there is not a shortage, so that is a facto in all of this , too. This morning, I was just reading about meat processing factories burning down suddenly , and that seems pretty suspicious to me, another direct hit to our economy.
I have heard of tentative plans for National Guard activation in October or November to regulate food distribution here, too. I don't know if that will also involve trucking. It is said by some that the ships waiting to dock off Chinese ports is now worse than the situation off U.S. ports earlier this year. Not as many ships off U.S. ports now as they are awaiting lading in China.
Looks like the governor of Texas had to back down on his double inspection of commercial vehicles coming across the border from Mexico. "State troopers' increased inspections at commercial bridges ... gridlocked commercial traffic throughout the Texas-Mexico border for more than a week. Backups left truckers waiting for hours and sometimes days to get loads of produce, auto parts and other goods into the U.S. Adding cost to all the products shipped." Gov. Abbott may have got caught between two competing election issues – security at the border, and supply chain delays. He said he made deals with 4 Mexican states to stop the inspections, calling the deals “historic,” an example of how border states can work together on immigration. But three of the four Mexican governors said they will simply continue security measures they put in place before Gov. Abbott ordered the state inspections. The fourth, whose state shares only 9 miles of the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border, agreed to set up new checkpoints for commercial trucks." Texas Tribune
Back during covid 1, there were all sorts of meat shortages from processing plant problems. I wondered about that. There were plenty of farmers wanting to ship their beef and no where to ship to. It is not that there was no meat in the stores, just not the meat people wanted for the price they wanted. Now the price is going up because of 'inflation'. I still don't know how real people eat or feed their families.
A lot of the cattle and other ranchers ended up selling off their livestock and poultry back then, @Mary Stetler ; so we have already been short of beef, etc ever since that happened. Because of everything shut down for the pandemic, many stores were closed, or not having many people coming in, schools were closed, restaurants were closed; so the whole meat and vegetable markets suffered back then. Now, we have fewer livestock to start with, plus higher prices for their feed and shipping of the cattle and other livestock and poultry. The shortage of fertilizer will make it worse because of smaller feed crops; and I think that by fall, at this rate, we might all become vegetarians, like it or not.
The shortage of sufficient USDA butchering facilities presents a real choke-point. This puts the government in direct control of how much beef enters the market, controlling both price and consumption.
Kinda puts a question mark on who said or did what in relation to the “one hamburger per month” debacle. Biden’s promise to curtail carbon emissions by 50% somehow overflowed into the beef industry whereby some articles have attributed a proposed reduction in beef sales to the Biden administration. Other articles citing a spokesperson with the USDA wrote that the prior articles are incorrect and the proposal was actually a result of a University of Michigan study gone public and later [falsely] linked to Biden. The tangled web of information has the fact checkers at a veritable war with each other leaving the consumer to decide whom to blame for the rising costs and the lowering of the supply of beef. Personally, I couldn’t figure out how the AOC green new deal would eliminate cow farts if ranchers still raised cattle but here we have a bottle neck in supply produced by whomever which makes me a little more convinced that it isn’t a result of an “inconvenient truth” but totally orchestrated by this administration.
I saw one prediction that the hay crop would be greatly reduced this year due to the fact that fertilizer is in short supply and expensive, so it won't be used on hay. I also noticed that lawn fertilizer prices here have more that doubled since last year, so I won't be feeding my lawn this spring either.
Here is a map that shows food processing plants that have been burned or had serious “accidents” in just the last few months.
I have seen conspiracy theories about the fires. There are more since the map was posted. I know of at least one in Oregon as well. Some think it is coincidence, and some think it may be part of a cyber war, as there have been many similar fires throughout Russia. Who knows? I have also heard of reports of goings-on in China. China has lots of food stored up, perhaps as much as 18 months for the entire country, but truckers are trying to deliver into cities like Shanghai that are locked down and are being turned away. There are reports that the truckers are just dumping the loads of rice and such along the road and then going home since they can't do their jobs. I don't know if it it true...rumors on the internet.
Another food processing plant caught fire last night, this one is Virginia. It processed foods like grains and soybeans, so foods that can feed a lot of people and are easy to store.