And So It Goes, Until It Is All Gone

Staying in South Africa you get to see a first world country fall apart right close up. By first world I mean a place where there is an operating electricity grid, transport channels including fuel, roads, rail and air, and of course an operating economy where there are goods for sale - especially food.

Going by experiences in the past few months, the scene here (empty shelves, a perplexed shop owner and a pissed off public) is going to be common very soon in South African shops

The abundance of cheap Chinese goods is masking the emerging problem which you won't see in the CPI index. The bottom line is that not enough food is being produced in South Africa, which is sending up prices, leading to dubious food quality and also resulting in empty shelves on occasion. These are first signs that the productive economy, when it comes to food, is at the top of a slippery slope. It's all a result of killing farmers and chasing the few remaining living ones out of agriculture. Of course all commercial farmers are white because you need a brain in order to farm commercially.

This is what has been happening at the local supermarkets in my comfortable neighbourhood in our well-to-do town. The following products have been unavailable on occasion when they were never, but never, unavailable. These include:
* Milk
* Cream
* Eggs
* Chicken
* Potatoes
* Tomatoes
* Cabbages

The shop owners were as mystified about the shortages as the public. Please note that the list includes important staple foods and the cheapest protein available.

Then there has been significant "value engineering" on a wide variety of products including chocolates, chips, soft drinks, tinned food, processed meats, deli meats, bakery products, coffee, tea, cereals, spices and packaged "junk" food like noodles, powdered soups, cold drinks and biscuits. In other words you are getting cheaper ingredients and processing, and less volume, for the same or more money.

Finally there have been extreme price rises in a wide variety of foodstuffs including most fruits an vegetables - especially tomatoes, dried pulses, tinned food, maize meal and red meat - which is fast becoming an extreme luxury. And so you fork out more, budget more wisely and hope it will get better.

Which it certainly will not, and the first to riot about it are going to be the urban poor. Actually they have already started. It's just that you don't read about it in the mainstream press.