Brace for impact. Food and natural resources look to be "going critical".

 

Michael Yon warns:

PanFaWar [Pandemic, Famine, War] is Here

Chances are extremely high of tens or hundreds of millions dying of PanFaWar in next several years.

Notice they blame Putin for the lot. The reality is that this elective war creates additive stresses that can, and likely will, lead to toppling of governments. Mass migrations. Possibly a toppling of various State governments in the United States, and even of the Federal Government. And all this is without a use of a single WMD other than hunger and other forms of silent attack such as fake ‘vaccines.’

That said, chances that nuclear weapons will be employed has never been higher other than just before bombs detonated over Japan. We are toe-to-toe with World War III. Even short of nuclear weapons, conditions are growing to create massive starvations that would make the term Biblical entirely appropriate.

Consequences of failure to prepare may be final.

Prediction: By 2025, or even 2024, human population on earth will decrease.

Don't take Mr. Yon's warning about nuclear weapons lightly.  Not only are they a definite threat in the Ukraine war if things go badly for Russia, but they may also be used in the Middle East before too long, as we discussed earlier this morning.

Mr. Yon cites an article in the Telegraph, London, outlining the severity of the economic problems facing us.  It's behind a paywall there, but has been reprinted without restriction in the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, from which these excerpts are taken.

The world was facing a grain supply crunch even before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ... The world faces what amounts to a commodity “black swan” across the gamut of primary resources. Oil, gas, coal and the “ags” are all spiralling higher together, with metals catching up fast. It is a systemic stagflation shock, an intractable problem for central bankers. It acts like a war reparations tax on the economies of importing nations and is ultimately contractionary.

. . .

Unlike the West, China is prepared. It has been stocking up for months and holds 84 per cent of the world’s copper, 70 per cent of its corn and 51 per cent of its wheat. “China has bought enormous quantities of US soy in recent weeks,” said Rabobank. One might ask if Xi Jinping knew something in advance.

Record food commodity prices are an ordeal by fire for some 45 poorer countries that rely heavily on food imports ... The World Food Programme warned of “catastrophic” scarcity for several hundred million people last November. The picture is worse today.

“Everything is going up vertically. The whole production chain for food is under pressure from every side,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, the ex-head of agro-markets at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

“I have never seen anything like it in 30 years and I fear that prices are going to go much higher in the 2022-2023 season. The situation is just awful and at some point people are going to realise what may be coming. We’re all going to have to tighten our belts, and the mood could get very nasty even in OECD countries like Britain,” he said.

Energy and farm commodities are interlinked. Natural gas is a feedstock for fertiliser production in Europe, and lest we forget, Russia and Belarus together account for a third of the world’s exports of potash. Rocketing oil prices are driving a switch to biodiesel in south-east Asia, further tightening the global market for vegetable oils.

. . .

Roughly a third of world exports of barley come from Russia and Ukraine combined, 29 per cent of wheat, 19 per cent of maize, as well as 80 per cent of sunflower oil. Much of this is usually shipped through the Black Sea ports of Odesa, or Kherson - scene of hand-to-hand street battles until it fell on Wednesday - or Mykolaiv, where a Russian missile hit a Bangladeshi-flagged bulk carrier this week and killed one of the crew.

. . .

“Russian and Ukrainian wheat are not being offered. Critical corn flows to the world are being stymied. If Ukraine farmers do not plant substantial quantities of corn next month, the supply crunch will be very severe,” said Rabobank.

Smaller farmers in Russia have been shut out of the domestic credit market just before planting season. Emergency tightening by the central bank has lifted average loan cost to 27 per cent this week.

Chicago wheat futures have hit an all-time high of $US1,131. The squeeze is worse for the rest of the world because the broad dollar index is up 30 per cent since the last peak in 2008.

For good measure, Rabobank says we must contend with intense La Niña weather patterns and drought in Brazil and Argentina. “Grain shortfalls are likely to be so pronounced as to require demand destruction, or rationing,” it said.

The commodity index of the International Monetary Fund - purer than misleading market indexes - shows that primary commodities are today more expensive as a whole in real terms than in 2008 even in US dollars. It is much higher for Europe or Africa. This is fast resembling the raw material shock of the early 1970s.

. . .

We are now learning ... what it means to eject the world’s only full-spectrum commodity superpower from the international financial and trading system.

We have not even begun to feel the blowback for the Western aerospace and semiconductor industry should Russia retaliate by exploiting its lockhold over the global supply chain for titanium, palladium and neon ... As for the “ags”, all the makings of an enduring food crisis are before our eyes.

Again, more at the link.

If you're in any doubt about the worsening supply situation, consider the price you're paying for gasoline.  Everything relies on gas and diesel - getting seeds to farmers, powering the agricultural machinery that cultivates it, harvesting the crop, processing it and getting it to market, not to mention moving every other item we need from importer/manufacturer to distributor to retailer to consumer.  Consider, too, the price of agricultural futures on US commodities exchanges.  All the evidence is there, and it's incontrovertible.  It's made worse, of course, by the feckless incompetence of the Biden administration, plus its deliberate efforts to make energy more expensive in order to promote its "green" agenda for non-fossil fuels.  Compare the price of fuel when President Trump left office to what it is today.  A very large proportion of that increase is due solely to Biden administration policies.

I can only hope that readers here have heeded the warnings I've posted over the years, and laid by a store of their most essential needs to help alleviate current and future shortages.  We're all feeling the pinch already, and it's going to get a lot worse, very quickly.  Watch inflation skyrocket as shortages add to other pressures on our economy.

Folks, I'm not being alarmist.  This is real, and it's staring us in the face right now.  If anyone still thinks this is some sort of extremist survivalist nonsense, it isn't.  Your own wallet is confirming that every time you go shopping.

Don't just lay by a supply of food.  Think of all your routine needs, the sort of things you take for granted, and stock up on them, too.  Do you have a favorite brand of toothpaste, or feminine hygiene products?  Do you can your own food, and therefore need regular supplies of jars, lids, rings, etc.?  Do you change the oil in your vehicle or lawnmower or generator, using a particular brand or viscosity of motor oil?  In these and many other cases (I'm sure you can think of your own), I strongly recommend buying some reserve supplies of what you prefer to use, because amid worsening shortages they may not be available when you want them, and the alternatives (if any) may not be ones you want.

I'm not saying we have to stock up for the next five or ten years:  most of us can't afford that, and we'll soon run out of storage space if we try.  However, a six-month supply is no more than prudent, and even a year's supply of critical items may be justifiable, depending on individual circumstances.  Only you can judge what's needed in your own situation.

Peter