"Minnesota chicken farmer culls 5+ million due to bird flu." OH NOES, NO MORE CHIKN AT GROCERY STORE, WE ALL DIES!!!!@#%!
Yeah, not so much. Fear porn is real. Most of the food shortage....not so much.
I won't be so flippant to say there aren't limited quantities for some things, but lets be realistic frens, when Team Evil messes with the supply chain, things happen. Yes, certain things may be short right now. Things will be short in the future too. Some things yes, but remember a certain other commodity was recently believed to be stopped in production but had actually increased production nation wide by over 400% (ammo anyone?)
The reason for the shortage was not so much gov't interfearance (though they've been trying), as new gun owners, hording, and general high demand.
Will we run out of food and have to eat dandelions, dirt and bugs? Unlikely. Right now we are seeing hording, and therefore high demand. We also collectively have millions more mouths to feed more than anticipated (immigrants eat food you know, even illegal ones).
Both take a toll on our generally precise just-in-time inventory system, which is a must up and down the food supply chain to prevent spoilage. Add to that some fairly simple shinnanigans on shipping and some media fear from the left and bingo, fake mass food shortages.
"But Rooks", you say, "With all this surplus food in peoples houses, won't demand dip down again when hrders reach 2 months reserve? Your argument defeated by logixs!"
Hold up there wonder puppy. You forget, NPCs arent firing on all cylinders...or even thinking straight, just left. Remember that guy in CA who filled his truckbed with gas, just by lining it with tarps, then drove off sloshing gas all over the road and sidewalks?
Yeah, its like that.
Last food run i saw people buying 2 months of not just canned corn, but also milk, bread, yogurt, fruits, and deli sushi.
Can't fix stupid.
.
Anyways, So I work with farmers every day. Cow, pig, chicken, duck, crops. Only reason i see they cull a barn herd is when it is actual threat to the barn (local labs/vets checking, plus the farmers themselves, many amish too).
Farmers tend to be pretty based, and don't have time for much nonsense. Any farmer still out there (the American farmer is NOT gone) tends to also have pretty good business savvy, they have to, to survive. Long story short, wiping out large volumes of product isn't something you just say "do it" and they comply.
In addition. Believe it or not, wiping out a million here/there is not that unusual. Uncommon, yes. Notable, barely. Had a farmer just down the road take out .5 million due to flu, 3 years ago. Heard about 40k pig put down due to swine flu (yes, it was real swine flu). Didn't bat an eye, both still in production to this day. One SMALL farmer alone has 5 chicken barns, .5 mill IN EACH BARN. There are hundreds of these all over northern indiana alone.
Once you realize the actual scale of food production in the US, you will see the fear is manufactured, and 5 million dead chickens is... uh... chicken feed compared to actual DAILY production.
Yes, there is a lot more to it than that, yes there is industrial espionage in farms. The whole PETA highring people to work undercover at farms, then inciting/forcing/coercing others to video them doing cruelty to animals, yeah that is real. I personally know a larger farm that was targeted like that by PETA.
You always hear about the leaked video, but not when they find the dudes that did it were plants, and are now in jail for lying to officials during an investigation, false pretenses, conspiracy, not to mention fired and sued by the farm for lying on job app, breach of policy, etc.
Anyways, just a little bit of my take on this.
Best if you are worried, get out of the city, plant a garden, live in the country and make friends with farmers. When a city starves, i guarantee today's farmers won't.
Now im gonna go grill the family some T-bones, sirloins, and make me some mashed 'taters, and a salad, just because i can.... and its mothers day weekend....that too 😉
Monster deer by comparison. What's the story of chronic wasting disease in the deer population in Michigan?
Hasn't made it's way this far south yet.
Overblown for the most part. In some areas its a problem but its a symptom of a broken management system. We have tons of deer. To the point they are a nuisance species. Urban and suburban areas are over run. But where Texas has as many bucks as does, does here outnumber bucks by 4 or 5 to 1. This huge surplus of does is bound to bring disease. They have been working on better management. At one point I could take a doe a day during the Oct 1 to Nov 14 early bow and again during late bow from Dec 1 to Jan 1. And they have an early 2 week gun and a 2 week youth hunt in Sept, does only. Last year they upped the antler size on bucks. I cant remember what it is because I only take trophys any more. Most of the deer I take are archery and does for food and to quit eating my damn garden and fruit trees. I saved my cut hair and hung it from the fruit trees and garden posts last year and it did help I think. Learned that trick from the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg.
Cut hair, Cool tip I'll have to try it. Like you, I'm no longer after the rack, spend my youth in foolish pursuit of things that just don't matter anymore, one of the benefits of growing old. A doe a day could fill a freezer fast.
Chronic Wasting Disease is also tied to animal based protein supplement fed to grow those antlers. It's a prion disease, that's not just mismanagement that's plain stupid.
But I agree buck to doe ratio is important for a healthy herd.
Garden, fruit trees, abundant game population, fishing, sounds like you have a sweet setup.
Ice fishing is on my to do list one day, don't know if it was misrepresented, but on "grumpy old men" and in other movies it looked like a cool way to spend a winter day. Some of those shacks look like glorified man caves.
Tks for sharing fren, stay frosty.
Dude you should see Tip Up Town on Houghton Lake. A week long ice fishing party to end all parties.
On the State land adjacent to my property there is a small lake that we plow and play hockey on. We always have our tip ups going and some nights have fresh caught pike over the fire along with our hot cider and Jack. We spear fish through the ice too. Thats a lot of fun. Watching a big muskie come up mouth wide open and full of teeth from directly below your shiner and then spearing it makes hair grow on the balls. I used to do late winter steelhead fishing but Im too old for that weather anymore lol. Nice thing about Michigan is we have real Pacific salmon up to 40 pounds on the big lakes and there are Lake Trout if you have a big enough boat. And the best trout fishing in the world.
Yea, that's a different kinda fishing all together you lucky dog. :-)