Back in my Junior High days (which were those days in which I attended what had just been renamed a “middle school” but what I had anticipated attending as “junior high” so we will call it “junior high”) I would get up when it was still dark. Pappy had already gotten up and left for work. Mama and Elvis were, I think, still sleeping. Elvis may have already left, but I doubt it. Don’t know when he got up, but anyway, Pappy would leave me a pecan roll and some sausage in the toaster over. I learned to hate the consistent mediocrity of the pecan roll and miss the sausage some days.
I don’t think I miss the meat so much as that Pappy thought to have a warm breakfast waiting for me. That’s sweeter than I gave him credit for being. At the time, I just sat there eating that damn pecan roll and watching the farm report before Ralph Emery came on. Needless to say, I was not enraptured by the commodities report. At 6:30 in the morning, who cares what the price of corn for July delivery is? Betty Jane Ledbetter at the Black Mountain Welcome Table does, that’s for sure.
Not that Betty Jane is heavy into corn, but when corn is low, she gets to eat. See, the Black Mountain Welcome Table gets food supplies through The Emergency Food Assistance Program. It’s sort of like government cheese, except that the cheese doesn’t go right to Betty. The federal government buys the corn, or green beans, or whatever, and distributes it through the states to programs like the Welcome Table. The government buys the corn, or green beans, or whatever, so that people don’t starve, but they also buy them to keep the corn prices from going way down and wrecking the farmers.
In normal times this all kind of evens out. The government stabilizes some prices, stores some food, and helps feed some hungry folks. In the last couple of years, there have been more potentially hungry folks, more federal funding available for purchasing, and lower prices on products. Voila! More food for people who need it.
But as you may have heard, the supply picture is getting tighter around the world. It’s not THE reason, but it is A reason that the North Africans are revolting. Tighter markets + the end of stimulus money + lower federal budgets = less food available for potentially hungry people. The problem being that there are not proportionally less hungry people. Shit! What are we going to do now?