peaknix

As of this writing, light sweet crude is down $4.04 for the day to $124.38/barrel. I can not help but feel an infinitesimal loosening of stress in my body (mostly in the gut) when I hear the price ticking down. I expect it to go back up and keep going, in due course, but these few days of down-tick serve to help one integrate the experience versus feeling the nail-scratching slide over the edge.

Truly, it is mostly a moment to reflect on what yet needs to be done. We need to get the funds together to get that wood fired furnace/water heating system in place, for the 4 season greenhouse in the backyard so that our garden can feed us longer/better (see this link for those details – Humble Garden) so many things yet to do.

What little we save from a slight dip in gas prices should and will be pumped into these activities.

On NPR the other day, I heard news about how the meat industry is warning that meat prices will soon jump 25% and Kraft warning that their products will jump some 20 – 25%. I have been wondering when this would finally happen, its been like waiting for a shoe to drop. They admitted in the report that costs had not been passed on to consumers in recent times but that they can no longer afford to hold back (perhaps they were waiting for an unspoken consensus for an industry wide jump so that the consumer had no where to turn – “trust” issues?)

I am sure you know, there are oil related reasons for food prices to spike (Ammonia for fertilizers require petroleum for the haber-bosch process (WIKI LINK), diesel for machinery, transport, electricity for cooling etc), there are climate change reasons for the spike – midwest’s flooding problems (one predicted aspect of climate change is focalized storm excesses leading to flooding (LINK for a bit of a review) and also extended drought), there is the impact of biofuel subsidies driving farmers to pull marginal (flood protective) lands out of fallow/conservation into monoculture of corn/soybeans and also to convert any of their other fields that may have been growing non-corn into corn, and likely other dynamics I am not yet really in touch with.

Heck even the price of popcorn in the movie theater is being impacted (though I suspect that this venue – pure luxury and compulsive eating – is likely to spike somewhat artificially). NPR reported on this on July 14, 2008:

The cost of popcorn is up. Jim Boyd, a movie theater owner in Van Wert, Ohio, says he pays 50 percent more for a bag of popcorn than he did at the beginning of 2008.

School will soon be back in session and I do not know how our local elementary school (which is chronically underfunded, across the board) will feed the kids anything but the most depleted crap. NPR did a piece on this on June 24th, 2008 (LINK)

Lennon had a taste of sticker shock this year, when milk prices rose 21 percent — an added expense of almost $60,000 to her overall budget of $3 million a year. She handled that by raising the price of the a la carte items the school cafeterias offer — like individual cookies and juice drinks. But such patches only go so far.

…

So Chicopee (MA) is finding other ways to fill the gaps: extras like Jell-O and cake are out, and Fairview cook manager Susan Lacasse says one day’s leftover spaghetti goes into the next day’s soup.

From TIME:

Higher prices are also calling into question one of the staples of kiddie cafeterias. “Do we have to really offer milk with every breakfast and every lunch we serve?” Pavel Matustik, who runs nutrition programs for five school districts in southern California, asked during his testimony before Congress Wednesday. For every penny the price of milk goes up, he added, the cost of preparing school meals increases $54 million nationally.

This is, perhaps, before the most recent statements referenced above about the 25% increase. If so, there may come a point where school lunch collapses as a viable program. I can promise you it was already on the very edge before this oil shock. The VERY edge.

The only reason why our little school district can keep it’s buses running this year and heat the buildings is because they had negotiated the price of heating fuel and diesel BEFORE the shock.

Come time for those contracts to be up, I am not certain what our town will do. Our town of 1700 people usually has to choose between paying for salt and plowing in the winter and the school or for the senior center. Soon, I think town meetings will be even MORE contentious and depressing than they usually are.