A few reflections on the worldwide food crisis

 

We've spoken often in these pages about the current food crisis, threatening real famine in many parts of the world, and certainly affecting the USA as well.  Recent articles here include:

• Food, food, food - or the lack thereof...
• The global food crisis - some people still don't get it
• Food inflation and scarcity: another blogger weighs in
• The food crisis is showing the first signs of real famine
• The growing worldwide refugee crisis is now clear to see

This post will build on that foundation, highlighting a few recent articles on the subject.

First, the latest World Food Situation report from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization offers this interesting chart of food prices worldwide over time:

Read it left to right for each year, then jump upward to the following year.  The start point for each year is approximately the end point for the previous year.  Notice a trend?  It's a grim tale of constantly increasing prices, rising sharply this year to a new peak.  The slight easing over the past couple of months is merely the calm before the storm as grain shortages caused by the Russia-Ukraine war begin to bite harder, as they will when this year's harvest (which was not planted in large areas thanks to the war) can't be gathered.  We've seen the same price pain play out on our own supermarket shelves.

Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota reminds us that "Food security is national security".  From that perspective, she's worried about the amazingly frequent fires and other disasters affecting US food producers over the past year.

Food production facility fires are ... enormously disruptive events. A 2019 fire at the nation’s second-largest beef packing plant in Holcomb, Kansas shuttered the facility for four months; at that time, the plant was responsible for six percent of total daily beef slaughter. Whether 2022’s incidents are anomalous or the result of something more sinister, the point is we need more information.

Mainstream media outlets are busy attempting to lampoon anyone who expresses even the remotest concern about incidents at food processing facilities today. The repeated refrain is ‘there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing, so drop it.’ But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Coming at a time of shortages in such everyday essentials as fuel, semiconductors, and even baby formula, the American people have every right to be skeptical and to demand answers about the incidents shutting down food facilities. Americans deserve to have their leaders treat disruptions in our food system – from foreign interference to fires to shortages – with concern.

There's more at the link.

Kit Knightly, whom we've met in these pages before, says the food crisis is intended to benefit the powers that be.  He writes about "The REAL agenda behind the created food crisis".

Just as we saw lockdowns break the economy to pieces whilst the billionaire class land record profits whilst corporate megaliths expanded their monopolies, so too will any proposed food security policies end up benefiting the already mega-rich or installing infrastructure for corporate control.

They just announced the building of the largest “cultured meat factory” in the world. Fake meat, of course, can’t be raised at home and is subject to patented processes of creation. Genetically edited or modified plants and animals are likewise subject to patents.

Supranational companies, with profits larger than the budget of some nations, are developing carbon footprint tracker apps which reward people for making the “right decisions”. That could easily be applied to food.

Bill Gates has quietly become the largest owner of agricultural land in the United States. Land on which he can grow new Frankencrops, or which the US government will pay him not to use.

The play is clear: Right now they’re getting ready to tear all our old food systems down, with the stated aim of building them back better.

But better for them, not us.

More at the link.

Michael Yon points out that famine inevitably leads to illness, mass migration and conflict - the unholy trilogy he calls PANFAWAR (Pandemic, Famine, War).

Malnutrition undermines the immune system. When millions are malnourished, the entire herd is weakened. Many migrate. Traveling through new bio-terrain, eating things they’ve never seen, meeting people’s they never knew existed, delivering and acquiring transmissible disease — pandemic emerges.

Screenshot this page. As famines spread, we will begin to see reports of pandemic.

Potential accelerant: There is a low rumble among the credible-class — a class who emerged during this ‘pandemic’ — that these experimental drugs, mislabeled “vaccines” may be causing severely weakened immune systems. In other words, many jab-victims appear to be suffering from an Acquired Immune Deficiency Disorder.

No person — including Donald Trump — who rushed these experimental drugs into veins across the world, is among the credible class.

A little voice in the back of my mind whispers “don’t call these chemicals experimental drugs. There is no public evidence to indicate these were rushed — other than the mass production.”

• The plandemic was clearly weaponized
• The energy crisis is transparent sabotage.
• The food shortage overwhelmingly manmade — atop mega-drought in USA
• The alien invasion is manufactured and facilitated by OGUS
• The fentanyl and other poisons are practically invited
• Cancel culture is open warfare
• Genocide is unfolding

Again, more at the link.

Food is, of course, distributed through local, regional, national and international supply chains, all of which are profoundly affected right now by overloads and undersupply.  FreightWaves claims that "Supply chains are never returning to normal".

Buffer stocks of products are far less likely in the future, as the cost of producing those items continues to rise. Cheap labor, offered by large populations of young people, is largely a thing of the past. This will make it more expensive for companies to produce buffer stock and far less likely that supply chains will enjoy the ability to absorb short-term shocks that are inherent to complex global networks.

More at the link.  The implications for the security and stability of our food supply are obvious.  An IBM executive recently commented that "Every day in the supply chain has a black swan" - something that one couldn't imagine happening, but it happens.  FreightWaves' CEO predicted a couple of months ago that he believed a freight recession is imminent.  Events on the ground seem to be supporting his position.

Finally, "Mish" Shedlock, a noted economic commentator, warns bluntly:  "Expect a Deep Recession to Start This Quarter or Early Third Quarter".  This is corroborated by other economic data, including FreightWaves' warning that "US import demand is dropping off a cliff".  Again, if our economy goes down the tubes, food supplies and their distribution are likely to go with it.

I said some weeks ago that, looking at the signs of the times and events all around us, I believe that we're facing "A totalitarian onslaught against freedom on a worldwide scale".  I've seen nothing since then to make me change my mind - only support my conclusions.  I regard the food crisis as just one element of that onslaught.  If you haven't already done so, I recommend you read my earlier article, and decide for yourself on the basis of the available evidence - then prepare accordingly.

Peter