Warnings - Unheeded

I've been sounding the warning of grocery store shelves not becoming empty, but rather becoming shorter with greater spaces between.  These past few months have greatly confirmed that and I have been led to share this further.

We will not go along, business as usual, to suddenly find bare shelves one day.  First, the store won't open if the shelves are bare!  There has been a a subtle reduction in the shelving space for the past few years since the last Shemitah [Sabbath of the land] was ignored, and in my most recent visit to the store, the desensitization has became painfully obvious.

In 2007, our economic struggles became nationally painful and was announced in 2008.  Now for 3 years straight the warnings of failing agriculture have made some dramatic headlines.  There was the excrutiating drought that killed entire herds of cattle in 2011, 2012 drought in the southern range land.  The 2013 snow storm in SD has affected again the cattle herds of that state, which are the livelihood of the ranchers and part of the food supply of this nation.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/johngara/powerful-photos-of-the-texas-drought

http://www.weather.com/news/drought-disaster-new-data-20120715

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-great-drought-of-2011-14-states-suffering-us-south-2011-7

Not only are the cattle herds affected, and the rancher's sustainability to even maintain his livelihood, but the crops are also affect by too much or too little moisture.  The failed grain crops haven't made the headlines like the images of dead cattle, but the drought affected the row crops as well.

Insurance is great to keep the farmer from losing his place when the crop fails, and hopefully having enough gas to start the tractor the next year at planting season, but it doesn't literally replace the loss.  Rebuilding a herd takes time and money, lots of both.  A lost crop is just that, lost.  It doesn't yield product or seed.

Cattle basically require just under three years from the time a heifer is bred to produce the meat in the case.  Of course most produce is harvested annually, sometimes two harvests a year, but if the farmer collects insurance rather than the harvest, there is no "people food or livestock feed."  By that same token, when drought affects the pasture, it also affects the hay crop, causing it to be both scarce and expensive.  A few months ago, the grocery store I shop in made an alarming change.  The fresh meat case has been moved to a much smaller area and the case that used to hold primarily fresh cuts of beef, now has a great number of prepackaged meat products and most of them are pork based.

I do not have photos of the change in the meat case, as it was quite unexpected, but I will be able to provide an "after" photo including the former "before" in a future edition.  Meanwhile I've incuded some photos that show where the shelves have bee moved and the aisles widened.

The wax and marks of the shelving support has marked the floor about 2 1/2 feet out from where it now sits.  So the "feet of the shelves" were formerly that much farther extended.

This is the same shelving at the other end of the store and the marks on the floor indicate it has been shortened on this end by about 1 1/2 feet.  Stockers have been working endlessly while shoppers move through the aisles, but for the most part, the stockers are removing and relocating inventory, rather than traditional stocking.

In the photo below, notice the aisle signs on the ceiling.  Those used to be contained within the aisle itself.  Still viewable from most of the store, but the signs were not beyond the shelving and this space between the end of each aisle and the check out has been moved three times.  The reflection on the floor in this photo indicate the various wax shines and buffing.  It also verifies where the signs used to be in relation to the end of the aisles.

   

Until just last week, I had no idea there were any green tiles in the store.  I don't know, if at one time this served as some sort of perimeter for the produce section or what.  And to be fully honest, I don't frequent the produce section in the summer, but since the relocation of so much inventory, this different color of floor tile has become visible.

Here, is further evidence of continued reduction of the length of the shelving in the store.  The very old tile is now exposed in the aisle at the back, in the older part of the store.

The photograph below gives an image that was not exclusive to this one end shelf.  The aisles that used to be crowded with a buggy going each way, now easily accommodates shoppers headed both directions with significant room to spare.  

We're not going to suddenly find empty shelves, we're going to subtly be desensitized to them, then an electronic glitch or two, while having ignored the Instructions of our Creator to let the land rest . . . 

The Sabbath year for the land begins in the fall of 2014.  Whether we observe that set apart time, in our belief and behavior or not, we have had three years of warning.  Famine is coming to America.

But in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, a Sabbath for YHWH: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.  Torah of Holy Scripture