The food situation, here and worldwide

 

This blog post is not, repeat, NOT designed to make you afraid, or scare you into "prepping" if you're not already there, or anything like that.  Its intention is to simply present facts, and let you make up your own mind what you need to do to prepare for the shortages that are coming.  In the USA, there will undoubtedly be shortages of some food groups, and much higher prices for others;  but we're fortunate to live in a country that is more likely than others to produce enough food to keep most people alive.  In other parts of the world, that's anything but the case.  Genuine, worldwide famine is now being forecast by the United Nations and other authorities, and they're not joking.

In the first place, understand that the vast majority of foods available to us are produced by corporate conglomerates who will produce what the market most wants.  That's how they make their money, after all.  That means those products with limited customer demand will almost certainly be downplayed in favor of others that are more popular.  Therefore, those with special dietary needs (e.g. gluten-free food, those who use specialized agricultural products such as A2 milk, those who follow paleo or carnivore diets with a heavy emphasis on eating meat) are likely to find harder times ahead than most of us will face, and much higher costs, too.  Therefore, if you fall into such groups, you should be planning right now to build up your supplies of those ingredients/foods, so that you have a cushion if their supply becomes restricted.

Corporate "Big Ag" will also produce what their political masters tell them to produce.  Note the World Economic Forum's emphasis on eating insects rather than meat.  There are already national campaigns to popularize insect protein at the expense of meat, and companies are getting behind it.  What's more, the United Nations' Agenda 2030 calls for a 30% reduction in land used for agriculture (with an inevitable concomitant reduction in the amount of food produced).  The Biden administration's "30 by 30" conservation plan envisages something similar for US land use.  This does not bode well for feeding the world's population . . . unless the side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccines produce a significant rise in the death rate, as some are already observing and/or predicting.  That's a topic for an article on its own.

To give you an idea of this political and corporate pressure to produce what's most in demand, rather than more specialized foods, and what's "politically correct" rather than popular, here's a chart provided by Dr. Robert Lufkin a couple of months ago, showing 11 companies that control 70% (i.e. more than two-thirds) of the processed foods we eat.  Click the image for a larger view.

Much of the more specialized or limited-interest foods on the market are not produced by these conglomerates, but by more focused smaller companies that can cater to smaller markets.  In the event of severe agricultural shortages, I would not expect such smaller companies to be able to continue, because their access to raw materials will be drastically curtailed.

Here's another look at the "Big Ag" problem, this time from the relatively liberal, left-wing ETC Group.  Notwithstanding their political orientation, they provide a valuable service in investigating the food industry (among others) and bringing to light important concentrations of power and influence.  They call their list "Food Barons 2022".  The chart below comes from page 7 of their report.

Do please read the small print in the above image (clickit to biggit).  The implications of such concentration are frightening.  (For example, if BASF in Germany shuts down, as the company has already said may happen if natural gas supplies grow any tighter there, just look at how much of the market would be affected by that.)  As always, forewarned is forearmed.

With that concentration of corporate power in mind, here's a lengthy (almost half-an-hour) video from Meet My Neighbor Productions, which describes itself as "a grassroots movement to educate, inform, and help protect agricultural producers".  In other words, it's concentrating on actual food producers - farmers, ranchers, and those who work on the production rather than the processing and consumption side of agriculture.  They list many videos on their site, which are both entertaining and informative;  if the subject interests you, I highly recommend going to their Web site and browsing the list of what's available.  Kudos to this husband-and-wife team for building up such an educational business.

In this video, Charlie Rankin describes what he's observed on the ground, in farms across the nation, so far in 2022.  It's not a news aggregation from reporters in some big city - it's what his own eyes have seen, and what he's heard in person.  He puts that together with news from other sources to describe what he expects to happen in the US agricultural sector over the next year or two.  It's not good news, but we need to hear it in order to know what to expect.  I do highly recommend that you take the time to watch it, and consider your own food position while supplies are still relatively freely available.

Consider that Mr. Rankin is focusing on agriculture and ranching in the USA.  As other countries run short of food (because the fertilizer shortage is worldwide, and without enough fertilizer, many countries won't be able to produce enough food for their populations), they're going to turn to the USA to buy what they need:  and, if they offer enough money, our producers will export to them rather than supply the local market.  (This is already happening in the natural gas market, for example:  don't think it won't spread from there.)

That, in turn, will affect domestic prices.  If a producer can get, say, $10 for a bushel of widgets by exporting them, but only $5 per bushel on the domestic market, guess where he's going to sell his widgets?  The government may try to control that by restricting exports, but in that case, the producer has little incentive to produce more.  He'd rather save money by not investing in a less profitable market.  Thus, overseas demand will affect US prices.

I hope this blog post has given you some idea of what lies ahead.  It certainly motivates me to get ready for it as best I can.

Peter