Iowa Flooding Adds to Food Inflation Woes

The recent flooding in Iowa in Cedar Rapids and other cities and of prime farmlands adds to already considerable pressures on the food inflation front. Consumer food inflation woes will not be going away any time soon.

The floods were of record setting proportions. In fact, long standing records were not just broken, they were shattered. Flood waters crested at a level that was 12 feet higher than the previous record set more than 150 years ago. Flood damage to properties and to crops will be in the hundreds of millions of Dollars.

Iowa is one of the prime corn producing regions of the United States. News of the extensive flooding of corn producing areas caused rounds of panic buying of corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). By week’s end corn futures went over $7.00 a bushel for the first time ever.

while we keep hearing that one weather event does not mean that climate change is under way I maintain that a whole series of events has to be taken seriously in that regard. So far weather events for 2008 have been drastic in the US as they have been around the world. With the US hurricane season just getting underway the next few months will be highly interesting. So far in 2008 tornado and severe thunderstorm activity has lead to a record number of storm related deaths. With the hurricane season kicking in this record is likely to be extended.

It looks to me to be past time to consider the prospect of a dangerous and long term climate change due to global warming as a very real possibility. Just ask the poor people living in Cedar Rapids what they now think about climate change. No one was prepared for the level of flooding that they are still trying to cope with.

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