You can't believe everything you read or, Is this really happening?

Yet another entry from the e-mail files. Received an e-mail today saying that the sender had received a message and wanting to know if anyone in their e-mail realm could verify it or not. Can you? Here is the message, minus the added personal commentary, plus the extremely limited editing, and compliments of copy and paste:

"I just don't know how true this is - it sounds really wackky. So will have to see what is up.

I had a conversation last night with a family member who lives in north central Missouri out in farm country. We were discussing the signs of the times and he told me something that made my blood run cold! His friend/neighbor works for an agricultural supply company that furnishes fertilizer, pesticides, and the next season's crop seeds to most of the farmers throughout his region there in Missouri.

According to his friend, business at his company should be going full throttle right now, they'll do 80% of their business in a four month time frame. But right now, their business is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD! When the orders didn't start coming in at the end of Feb. like they usually do in years past, the company called the farmers to see when they were going to start ordering. They got the same answer from almost everyone, THEY WOULDN'T BE PLANTING THIS YEAR!

The agricultural supply company's business IS DOWN 85% over the same time last year, the farmers can't get credit from the banks to buy their seed and supplies for the beginning of the growing season. If this problem is typical across the country then the horse manure will be hitting the fan THIS YEAR. I'd like to get a sense of what's going on in other parts of the country and see if this credit problem is regional or national in scope. I'm hoping members of the forum can check in their local areas to see what's happening.

My relative's friend said that there is typically a 6-8 week lag time between ordering these supplies then getting them in and then out to the farmers. If the credit backup broke loose tomorrow, they could still get most of the supplies in and out to the farmers by the end of the planting season. But if the problem persists for another 30 days or more then forget it. This season will be toast as far as the food supply is concerned.

With all the talk in recent months about drought, floods, cold weather, wheat rust, false smut, and the like, I never considered the fact that perhaps the single biggest threat to our food supply would be the lack of credit!

I posed this on another thread a few days ago. Add to this the current world food storage supply which has been severely depleted and we are talking disaster here. The writing is on the wall. If building up your food storage is not your primary goal this year, then you are just plain nuts.

One of my best friends tells me of another of her friends- they own and supply about half of the dairy to the Las Vegas area.The Government is forcing them to sell their milk at a certain price which does not cover their expenses. They are about bankrupt. When they finally do go bankrupt the Government plans on taking over their business."

End of e-mail.

I asked the person who sent it to me if I could post this on this blog, and the first reaction they had was to wait until we found out if it was true or not. I said maybe someone in this national network knows if this is true, so it was agreed that I could post it. Anyone know what the status is with farming this year? I know that farming is down--I've posted about the decrease on my other blog. This, however, if true, is a decrease on a much larger scale.

Then there is the classic "friend of a friend" or "friend of a relative" thing going on. I'm always suspicious of reports where it's someone's best friend's uncle's mechanic's friend of a friend or something vague like that. Hard to know if it's true or not, because it could just be an attempt to respect someone's anonymity.

Not trying to perpetuate rumors, just trying to find out what is really going on. I actually checked out snopes.com before writing this post, but there was nothing there, at least under what I entered as the main ideas. Things can be scary enough without exaggerating an already difficult situation. If someone has the facts, I would appreciate the input....