True Discernment

Many people think that there are actual wheat and rice shortages, THERE ARE NOT. What is driving up the price of wheat and other commodities such as rice is speculation by greedy investors! With the Global Stock Markets being in the doldrums, greedy investors have been piling into commodity markets in order to make a larger profit on their investments.  

The commodity markets have two components: The Spot contract market, and the Futures contract market. The spot market is for making on the “spot†for immediate delivery, purchases of large quantities of commodities. The Futures Contract market is for making a contract to purchase a set amount of a commodity at a set price at a set date in the future. The key difference in these markets is, on the spot market the purchaser must make immediate full payment for the commodity. In the futures market the purchaser is only required to pay a nominal token percentage of the full price for the commodities that they have contracted to purchase at a future date. And they do not have to pay any more of the full price for the commodity until the actual date in the future that the contract has to be completed, if they choose to exercise that contract.  

They can in fact cancel the contract before the actual agreed purchase date, thereby losing only their token down payment or they can sell on the right to buy that commodity for that contract to someone else. And when they sell the contract if the price of the commodity has risen, then they make a huge profit because even though they have not paid the full purchase price for the set amount of commodity they contracted for, they get the full margin of profit between the original price of the commodities in the contract, and the current price of the full amount of commodities in the contract at the current price.  

They make such huge profits by making a bet that the general price of the commodity will rise from the time they initiated the contract to the time they sold the contract on. Now when you have an increasing amount of people piling into the commodities futures market to make money, the futures price of commodities rises dramatically. And this then feeds into driving the spot price of commodities up as people tend to act with a “herd†mentality by panicking and buying up more of the commodity on the immediate spot market to avoid what is perceived as higher prices and a scarcer commodity in the future.  

What this does is just reinforce the cycle of driving the price of commodities higher. And this is what greedy investors count on “panicking real buyers and users of the commodity†so they can make more money off of their fear! Have you have heard of “hedge funds� These are investment groups that profit off of Stock Market and Commodities market volatility. They make huge profits for their greedy investors by making bets on what the perceived fears of the general population will do to specific stocks and commodities. And they also have a tendency to “manufacture†fear in order to then make huge profits off of that fear. It is one reason why stock and commodity markets have become increasingly more volatile in the last few years.  

In the end the people who suffer the most are poor people in third world countries who make barely enough to feed themselves and their families. Now I ask you is there any other circumstance in these last days that Revelation 6:6 more closely describes than what we see today in the global commodity markets? 

Revelation 6:6 

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.â€Â 

The article below describes a disease that is spreading that will add to the increasing price of commodities and to the fear and panic of actual buyers of commodities, and it is one that Hedge funds and greedy investors will exploit as much as they can to drive the price of basic foodstuffs higher and higher, so they can profit more and more. However as the poor of the world sink into famine from not being able to afford the cost of basic foodstuffs, the super rich greedy investors will be able to enjoy more “oil and the wine†with their increased “wealthâ€

John Baker

Wheat disease threatens supplies 

A lethal variant on an ancient disease affecting wheat has spread from its base in Africa to Iran and now threatens vast fields in South Asia, the Middle East and Europe at a time of global food shortages, agricultural specialists warn.

The new strain of wheat-stem rust, first identified in Uganda nine years ago, is threatening crops during a global crisis over rising food prices, depleted reserves, rising agricultural trade barriers and violent food-related protests on four continents.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported in early March that the new wheat fungus had been found in fields in western Iran far earlier than computer models anticipated, perhaps carried on the high winds generated by Cyclone Gonu in June. The geographical leap means that the spread of the disease to countries such as Pakistan and India may be just a matter of time.

“The detection of the wheat-rust fungus in Iran is very worrisome,” Shivaji Pandey, director of the FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division, said in early March. “The fungus is spreading rapidly and could seriously lower wheat production in countries at direct risk.”

Wheat represents nearly a third of the world grain-crop production and a fifth of the world’s caloric intake, but soaring prices and competition for land from biofuels have left reserves low and prices high. Wheat hit a record $13.49 a bushel in February, up 67 percent in just 12 months.

In part because of rising global demand, drought and natural disasters, prices have been soaring for several staple foods, including rice, corn and soybeans. Many developing countries face intense pressures to restrain food prices and ensure adequate stocks of staple goods.

The Asian Development Bank said this week that more than 1 billion Asians may sink back into extreme poverty without extra aid to counter soaring food prices.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has become increasingly outspoken about the threat to the international system from the crisis in agriculture.

“If not properly handled, this crisis could cascade into multiple crises affecting trade, development and even social and political security around the world. The livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people are threatened,” he told reporters in New York after a fact-finding trip on the food crisis to Africa and Europe.

The East African stem rust, which is resistant to two main genetic defenses bred into 90 percent of the world’s grain crop, could pose a greater risk to stability in the Middle East than the Iranian missile program, the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to the Middle East Times.

“All these threats pale almost into insignificance by comparison with the confirmation [that the wheat-rust strain] has crossed the Red Sea,” the journal said in an editorial last month.

Stem-rust diseases have long been a bane of wheat harvesters. The ancient Romans prayed to a god named Robigus to protect their crops from the disease. As recently as the early 1950s, nearly half of the U.S. and Canadian spring wheat crop was lost to an attack of stem rust.

The “Green Revolution” of the second half of the 20th century benefited from more productive strands of wheat and from the development of new wheat variations that were bred specifically to resist stem rust.

U.S. agronomist Norman Borlaug, who earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for helping foster the Green Revolution, has been outspoken about the dangers posed by the new wheat-rust strain.

Mr. Borlaug said the new fungus variations originating in Uganda in 1999 are “much more dangerous” than the earlier stem-rust strains.

“The rust pathogens recognize no political boundaries, and their spores need no passport to travel thousands of miles in the jet streams,” the 94-year-old researcher said at a recent conference on the wheat crisis in northern Mexico.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last month approved a $26.8 million grant to Cornell University, working with 15 research partners in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and East Asia, to deal with the global menace.

The research partnership will focus on developing new wheat strains resistant to the disease.

“Farmers need access to wheat varieties that can resist the new type of wheat-stem rust, especially in developing nations where reliance on wheat is high and budgets for fungicides almost nonexistent,” Ronnie Coffman, director of the Cornell project, said in a statement.

Researchers say a solution may be more urgent, given the discovery in March in Iran.