I have been worried about this one.  It has started to impact our local area.  We are seeing more and more empty shelves.  Anyone else seeing this problem now.  Milk is down to one gallon per purchase and meat is getting harder to find. Glad I got the canned stuff.  My cousin who works in the food industry says that China brought a lot of meat last month and left very little to sell on the international markets.  Chicken is very hard to find, and pork is impossible to buy due to the prices.  Glad I got spam .    It's going to a rough few weeks for those who are shopping.   Canned Soups and frozen meals are getting scarce and beer is harder to find.    Dairy is a mess and Cereals are expensive.  

Kind of worried for others 

ME163 Vicki, Jill and Becky. 

Where are you?  I am in Colorado,US and there are minimal shortages here so far.

I've been watching the shortages in Australia where Omicron is running rife. Apparently there's a real problem globally at meat processing plants as the workers stand close together and the moist atmostphere allows covid to spread rapidly. If workers aren't off with Covid, then they are off self isolating because they've been in close contact with other workers who have it. 

Added to that, they have a shortage of workers to load the trucks, drive them and unload them. Australia is like New Zealand in that we produce way more food than we eat, but the problem seems to be in the processing and delivery of it. I suspect NZ will be in much the same way in a few weeks time.

Kansas

USA

nonproblem getting meat from here in Kansas

Did notice some bare shelves but haven't been affected in the least, just checked the lay down freezers full of elk and deer from hunting season as well as about a couple dozen grouse and plenty of halibut, tuna ,salmon, shrimp  from fishing season. Don't have as many packages of clams as I'd like, but there are a few digs happening so working on that. Was a great year for green beans and corn so plenty of canned green beans and frozen corn and the greenhouse grows potatoes year round. Was also a good year for blue berries and black berries so plenty of those for the missus to make pies and cobblers. And the chickens just keep laying eggs and the hogs keep getting fatter.  A country boy and his can thrive and sure as hell aren't gonna starve. And it's a great way to recreate in the great out of doors all year round.   

[url]https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/the-pandemic-discussion-forum/economics-at-flutrackers/supply-chain-issues/935519-u-s-grocery-shortages-deepen-as-pandemic-dries-supplies[/url] or https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/the-pandemic-discussion-forum/economics-at-flutrackers/supply-chain-issues/935519-u-s-grocery-shortages-deepen-as-pandemic-dries-supplies - https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/the-pandemic-discussion-forum/economics-at-flutrackers/supply-chain-issues/935519-u-s-grocery-shortages-deepen-as-pandemic-dries-supplies ; Source:  https://news.yahoo.com/u-grocery-shortages-deepen-pandemic-180518711.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(35, 121, 181); text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(235, 244, 249); - https://news.yahoo.com/u-grocery-sho...180518711.html

U.S. grocery shortages deepen as pandemic dries supplies
Siddharth Cavale and Christopher Walljasper
Fri, January 14, 2022, 1:05 PM·4 min read

(Reuters) - High demand for groceries combined with soaring freight costs and Omicron-related labor shortages are creating a new round of backlogs at processed food and fresh produce companies, leading to empty supermarket shelves at major retailers across the United States.

Growers of perishable produce across the West Coast are paying nearly triple pre-pandemic trucking rates to ship things like lettuce and berries before they spoil. Shay Myers, CEO of Owyhee Produce, which grows onions, watermelons and asparagus along the border of Idaho and Oregon, said he has been holding off shipping onions to retail distributors until freight costs go down.

Myers said transportation disruptions in the last three weeks, caused by a lack of truck drivers and recent highway-blocking storms, have led to a doubling of freight costs for fruit and vegetable producers, on top of already-elevated pandemic prices. "We typically will ship, East Coast to West Coast – we used to do it for about $7,000," he said. "Today it’s somewhere between $18,000 and $22,000."

Birds Eye frozen vegetables maker Conagra Brands' CEO Sean Connolly told investors last week that supplies from its U.S. plants could be constrained for at least the next month due to Omicron-related absences.

Earlier this week, Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran said he expects the supermarket chain to confront more supply chain challenges over the next four to six weeks as Omicron has put a dent in its efforts to plug supply chain gaps...

and [url]https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/world/canadian-truckers-to-go-full-strike-january-23-store-shelves-will-be-empty-until-vax-mandates-are-gone[/url] or https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/world/canadian-truckers-to-go-full-strike-january-23-store-shelves-will-be-empty-until-vax-mandates-are-gone - https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/world/canadian-truckers-to-go-full-strike-january-23-store-shelves-will-be-empty-until-vax-mandates-are-gone ; 

There was widespread news earlier this week that the previously announced vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers would take effect January 15.   

Just a day or two before that date, the Canadian government announced they would NOT begin the requirement because it would create an instant trucker shortage.  Folks were happy and the issue seemed dealt with.  Not so!   The government turned around and said the mandate WOULD be imposed.

Truckers in Canada are now saying "Starve to death" because we're shutting down all trucking in Canada beginning January 23 and we will not return to work until ALL the mandates are permanently removed.

DJ US cases +7%, deaths +12%...in some US states cases going down (as far as tested)...However other countries still facing outbreaks. Canada cases now -19% but hospitals at limits, deaths +78%. China shutting (export)ports to "stop the spread" also stopping export of chips/parts disrupting global production further increasing costs....

Outlook not good, this pandemic is "disrupting socio-economic processes" from healthcare, education to supermarket supply and car-industry. Will further push up costs. Also finding people to do the jobs may see low(er) paid workers in health care (cleaners, other health care jobs) switching to better paid-lower risk-better hours "market jobs" further worsening this pandemic by decreasing health care capacity...

So I stand corrected.  I sorta live in the boonies in Colorado so our local grocery has been pretty stocked.  I went to walmart today and i saw a ton of empty shelves and a ton of those refrigerated middle containers empty!  It was quit shocking!  

We took a trip to a larger city today to buy some preps and get out of the house.   Wow, prices were insane and worse yet I was told it was going to get worse.   Food shortages and shipping costs have wiped out many of our friends food budgets.  People who were used to spending 500 dollars a month on food were telling us that  they had to spend 800 dollars for the same  food .   We got ammo and more canned foods. Prices were insane for staples.   So glad that we got  plenty of food and supplies.  We are going to be ok.   flour was up by 50 cents from last month.  Pasta was just not anywhere. 

 Jill and Becky 

We're frequently out of flour here. There's a limit of 2 bags per person. I was chatting to my neighbour yesterday who said they were amazed at the gaps on the shelves, so I guess it just got worse since my last trip. It's not helped by the newspaper here publishing 3 or 4 articles last week about impending shortages. If anything is going to encourage panic buying it's that. We've stopped buying our favourite bacon as it's gone from $10 to $11 overnight, and that's for 200g of it, about 9 rashers.

roni3470 wrote: Where are you?  I am in Colorado,US and there are minimal shortages here so far.

Same here in NY.  But I noticed that you posted later that you tend to shop in local smaller shops.  So do I.  I've said this before, but I think that this is key as to why we're not seeing any major shortages.  The big box stores like Target, Costco, and Walmart depend on overseas imports, mostly from China, to keep prices low.  

Like everyone, I am seeing climbing food prices so when I see meat on sale I stock up. The last stock up was port chops.  They worked out to be less than $2 a lb so I nabbed a dozen, vacuumed sealed them, and into the freezer.  I'm thinking of not waiting on sales on chicken.  I worry about Avian Flu popping.  Not so much among humans (yet) but decimating chicken population.

I agree with the bird flu! We had the biggest outbreak ever here and it is already effecting our chicken supply. I assume eggs will be the same. 

I went to buy an iceberg lettuce yesterday and found that the price had doubled. Instead of being $2.50, it was $5. I know the owner and asked him why, and he told me that the local grower has decided to shut up shop because he can't get the workers to come and pick the lettuce and to tend them. The few workers who are available have been demanding much higher wages, knowing that there's a shortage of labour, and he couldn't make the business pay so instead he's stopped growing. 

So now those lettuces are having to come from Nelson, at the top of the south island, and travel by road for about 300km, and it's a long and winding road at that so the journey takes ages going through the mountain passes, and we're stuck with $5 lettuces. He also told me that as soon as summer ends, the price might double again!!!!!!!!!

This is exactly what happened in the middle ages in Europe after the Black Death swept through in the mid 14th century. The shortage of labour gave the remaining labourers value and they demanded wages, and the ultimate consequence of this was the end of the feudal system in Britain. For decades afterwards there were fields that were left untended and rewilded, and the landlords lost their income and with it, their power.

Went to Dollar General and found the shelves half empty. Huge gaps in the food section.  Things are getting really bad here.  

Jill and Becky 

[url]https://nltimes.nl/2022/01/20/omicron-pushing-sick-leave-absenteeism-50-higher-pre-covid[/url] or https://nltimes.nl/2022/01/20/omicron-pushing-sick-leave-absenteeism-50-higher-pre-covid - https://nltimes.nl/2022/01/20/omicron-pushing-sick-leave-absenteeism-50-higher-pre-covid ; Absenteeism was highest in healthcare (6.7 percent), industry (5.6 percent), education (5.5 percent), and construction (5.1 percent) - all sectors where employees work on locations. Sick leave was much lower among people who worked from home.

DJ Supermarkets have growing staff problems here in NL. A lot of the workforce is young, in part not fully vaccinated. Logistics also with limited problems...getting goods from places were people can mostly not work from home to shops where people work-not from home...