I'd been trained to do that since I was a baby as a form of osmosis picked up from the few words my dad would say at the dinner table. The hands would be talking a bit and my mom would be chattering and one of the hands would say something and my dad would grunt.
"Soy isn't going to be worth the price of sand next year."
And when I got older I'd try to figure out why he knew that. And he was usually right.
There's going to be a glut in the soy market next year. Why?
Long-term weather looked right for soy. China was projected to do a big buy. Monsanto had just come out with a new seed strain that was going to increase yields, on average, by two percent. (Which, right there, was enough to cause a glut, believe it or not.)
Big corporations were shifting towards soy. Managers were talking about it over coffee in the corner greasy spoon, around the counter in the feed store. Bio-diesel from soy. Soy was the word. "Soy's going to be big next year."
And it was. Bumper crop. Perfect weather, great seeds . . .
China wasn't buying as much as predicted. Bio-diesel wasn't really taking off. Overall sales were about the same or down.
Supply and demand. High supply, low to normal demand. It was worth the price of sand.
This, by the way, is what "commodity markets" are all about. Dad didn't buy his seed in cash. He bought it, everyone bought it, on "futures." That is, credit. But the seed had to be paid for by something. So commodity markets gambled on what was going to be big in next year's crop. Or even this year's crop. People put money into the market, the market created the "margin" for the seed and pesticides and everything else. And at the end of the year you found out if you'd made money or not.
Hell, you could "day trade" on the commodity market. Going "long" on wheat, selling "short" on sow-belly (bacon). But it was always, truly, about going long. It was reading the crystal ball. By December all the money was counted and all the bills were paid or you'd lost the bet. You'd gotten the wrong answer from the crystal ball.
My dad was the fucking prophet Elijah, every single year. Which was why we stayed in business. Hell, I always wondered why he didn't just give up farming and trade in commodities. He would have made a killing.
I wasn't a prophet but you only had to be reasonably keyed in to see where we were heading. You only had to have the sort of head that could put five or ten variables, not complicated ones, together, plug in the known constants and get an answer.
The "model" in my head said that we were looking at a famine in 2020 and 2021. Could be marginal, looked to be major. But there simply wasn't going to be enough food for all our remaining mouths. And the winter was going to be another killer.
And the internal ESM models said the same about both production and weather.
Then I'd look at what the USDA and the Met office was saying and shake my head. That, by the way, was one of the variables. The fact that the people who should have been making accurate predictions were making predictions based purely on politics and fantasy.
Commodity markets were back up by spring of 2020. USDA was saying one thing. Independent research firms were saying the exact opposite. (Army data was secret but leaked.) Trading was all over the board. Long on wheat? Short on wheat? Hell, was there going to be any wheat?
Generally, the trading was very "stagnant." Which meant less money available for supplies. But just about anyone who got into the commodities market in 2020 got their balls handed to them.
It was supposed to be pre-planting. Met office was saying temps were going to be coming up, fast. USDA was predicting soil temperatures that were on with 2018 or earlier. Like they were totally ignoring the fact that we were entering an ice age.
But it was so clear, by then, that all but the most "government uber alles" tofu-heads were tuning them out. They'd constantly predicted better temperature regimes. Because of "global warming." Which everyone was starting to realize was so much bunk. They'd stood in food lines in below zero, Farenheit, temperatures. They knew it wasn't getting warmer. Not that year, by God.
And the Bitch was starting to campaign for office. She still had supporters. Some. The core of the news media, for sure. The "limousine liberals" who had managed to sail through the Plague and the Chill because, of course they got immunized and of course they got paid and had access to all their usual foods. But even that was starting to crumble.
Her opponents were beating her with a stick every time they got a second of airtime. Polls showed her numbers to be in the low twenties. And going down.
So then she started . . . reacting.
Chapter Two
We Are TOO Going to Have an Election!
In March of 2020 the Bitch "nationalized" a major radio network. It had always been fairly right wing. It broadcast not only on local stations but on satellite. And it had hung in there, barely, through the whole Plague and the depression that followed. Lots of marginal stations just shut down, but it was still hanging in there.
Then it was announced, on all the stations, that they had been seized by the federal government for "violation of Fair Use laws." Essentially, their commentators had been saying Bad Things about the Bitch and thus she shut them down.
The FCC was ordered to ensure "Fair Use" of airtime in all radio and broadcast TV stations.
Short of simply turning off all the radio stations, she couldn't get rid of every person working for the company. And most of the "talent" were not exactly Friends of Warrick. But they knew the score. Toe the Party Line or toe the soup line.
But, hell, they were experts in playing with words. I got sent an MP3 in an e-mail from a guy who was still on his talk show down in Georgia. Very right wing. But he was "toeing the party line." The opening:
"We have another pronouncement of better things for tomorrow from our glorious leader President Warrick!" All in a tone of utter sincerity.
Subtle propaganda works for Americans. It was the stock in trade of the MSM. Over the top propaganda they spot in a heartbeat. And laugh their asses off.
But they weren't being "unfair." They were giving Warrick almost all their airtime. And when they spoke of her opponents it was . . .
"Today, the evil Senator from Tennessee, Fred Carson, who has the audacity to think he can best our glorious leader in November, suggested to a paltry group of scum-sucking supporters that perhaps some of her actions were uncalled for or perhaps wrongly judged. How dare he! The evil of the man suggesting that the vaccine distribution was, and I quote as the words cause bile in my mouth, 'less than optimal.' He should be shot and then hanged and then torn to pieces for suggesting our glorious leader is not perfect in every way!"
Yeah, they were "fair." Don't you think?
(Actually, there were people who complained about the presentation of Warrick's opponents as being "unfair" and "destructive." Some people just cannot get a joke.)
But we were getting into normal planting time in Minnesota. And snow was barely melting in Virginia. USDA estimates of "optimum soil temperature regimes" for various foods passed and were updated, passed and were updated. Based on those estimates, the tofu-eaters following the directions on the packet (that packet being the pamphlets they'd gotten from the county agents who were passing them from USDA headquarters) had laid in seeds, where available, for planting that were designed for a normal season.