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We really are reaching a major crisis point. Thanks to soaring fertilizer prices, insane weather patterns and the war in Ukraine, global food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter. So we really needed a banner year for agricultural production in both the United States and Europe in 2022, and that is not going to happen. In fact, unprecedented drought is absolutely devastating crops all over the northern hemisphere. A lot of people are complaining about how high food prices are right now, but just wait. If some sort of a miracle doesn’t happen, agricultural production is going to be way below expectations in both the United States and Europe, and that is going to have very serious implications for 2023.

Let me start by talking about the nightmare that is starting to unfold in Europe.

According to CNN, it is now being projected that farmers in Italy have lost “up to 80% of their harvest” because the drought has become so severe…

In Italy, farmers in some parts of the country have lost up to 80% of their harvest this year due to severe weather anomalies, the Coldretti farming association said Thursday.

How are those farmers going to survive?

Many farmers in France are facing similar losses because they have only been receiving a fraction of the rainfall that they normally get…

In France, where an intense drought has hammered farmers and prompted widespread limits on freshwater use, there was just 9.7 millimetres (0.38 inches) of rain last month, Meteo France said.

That was 84 percent down on the average levels seen for July between 1991 and 2022, making it the driest month since March 1961, the agency added.

Crop failures in France would be a really, really big deal, because France is normally “the fourth-largest exporter of wheat” in the entire world…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Should Aspire to be Peasants

August 11, 2022

We Should Aspire to be Peasants

Painting by Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern – Public Domain

Rising food prices — as the USDA has forecast for 2022 — may seem like a good thing for farmers.

After all, who wouldn’t like to see some more cash? Farmers, like everyone else, have been through a lot lately. Years of stagnant or falling farm income in many ways paralleled the stagnant wages of so many Americans. The COVID-19 pandemic sent shockwaves through our supply chain, crashing farm prices and disrupting markets.

But the story is not so simple.

Inputs – that’s where the problem lies. Whether it’s fertilizer, seed, machinery or fuel, farmers are having to pay more to grow our nation’s food. The war in Ukraine has led to fuel and fertilizer shortages, another component of the soaring input costs.

Clearly, corporations are also price gouging. With every aspect of agriculture being highly consolidated, it’s easy for companies to do as they wish, as just four firms control over 60% of our seed, another four determine what happens with 75% of fertilizer in the U.S., and still four others set the terms for over 75% of grain sales. Meanwhile, some corporations, instead of allowing farmers to repair their own machinery, require them to seek out pricey company-authorized technicians when things break down.

Corporate agribusiness controls the food system, racking up profits while farmers and consumers dance to their tune.

So, what’s the answer, who should we look to in times like these?

Peasants, that’s who. Peasants actually produce food for their families and communities, not commodities for the global economy.

Most American farmers probably think it laughable to see peasant farming as a model. American farmers are told that they feed the world, while peasants work small acreages and think in terms of food diversity and food sovereignty, not mono-cultures and global markets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Let Them Eat Bugs

August 11, 2022

Let Them Eat Bugs

A study earlier this year from four prestigious institutions proclaimed that you should eat bugs and spiders.

And not only that. The study — conducted by BI Norwegian Business School (BI), Chuo University, Miyagi University and Oxford University — also said that the way to convince people to do this is to have celebrities do it on YouTube videos.

Like clockwork, they are suddenly everywhere. You are welcome to look them up. I personally find them revolting. As in they make me want to revolt.

These are the same folks who pushed for lockdowns, masking, jabs and a war with Russia. Now they say we have to get used to eating bugs because all the other policies they pushed have dramatically increased world hunger. Indeed, it is reaching a crisis point.

For many people, bug eating will soon be the only answer.

One Step Before Cannibalism

I’m going to take it as a given that the evolution of society selected against bug eating. It is not something people prefer over, for example, eating chicken, fish, beef and vegetables. I would further postulate that most people, in general, would not eat bugs unless they had to.

I’m sure there are many venerable bureaucrats at the UN who would dispute the above, but I don’t care.

There is a name for bug eating: entomophagy. Sounds fancy, but ultimately it means living as if there is a famine going on. It is one step before cannibalism and finally eating tree bark.

Sometimes it happens. We call those periods of history deeply tragic. It’s not what we want. The difference this time is that entomophagy is being pushed by top Hollywood influencers.

When it arrives, the famine will be celebrated on social media.

Food Is Already Scarce

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Food – are we facing a Crisis or an Opportunity?

August 11, 2022

Food – are we facing a Crisis or an Opportunity?

This post shares four things. The one that takes up the most space is about those two little words “food crisis” that are starting to make headlines. There’s a reason they’re making headlines, and it might not be the reason you think.

The other items in this post are two tips for ethical buying/browsing choices, and a little piece of wisdom about the language we use.

Ethical internet searching

Ecosia.org is an internet search engine (like Google) that plants trees (unlike Google).

Planting — Image by Rommel Diaz from Pixabay

They do a lot of other things unlike Google, too. In their words:

“We dedicate all our profits to the regeneration of the planet. We even signed a legal contract binding us to our not-for-profit purpose forever. Ecosia can’t be sold … and we can’t take money out of the company.”

Also in their words:

“… if everyone switched from Google to Ecosia, we could plant 300 billion trees — every year.”

Google offers so many free tools in addition to its search engine that it’s hard to go past them for sheer convenience. That’s one of the reasons they’re so influential and powerful.

What might a company like Ecosia achieve in the next 10, the next 20, 30 years… if enough people supported them to enable them to start offering other services the same way Google did?

You can read their manifesto here.

Ethical undies

Do you wear socks or undies? Me too. And the other day I finally found a socks ‘n’ jocks company that I feel good about buying from. I was so excited, my kids rolled their eyes. What’s Mum on about now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rather Than Focus on What You Don’t Control (“The News”), Focus on What You Do Control: What You Grow, Eat and Own

August 7, 2022

Rather Than Focus on What You Don’t Control (“The News”), Focus on What You Do Control: What You Grow, Eat and Own

Now that globalization and financialization are finally unraveling, people are slowly awakening to the national security foundations of localizing production.

What exactly is “the news” other than an inducement to passivity, despair and derangement? Since we exert zero control over what happens in distant lands and global economies, why waste time passively consuming “if it bleeds it leads” offal designed to addict us to a steady stream of despair and derangement?

Why not ditch “the news” in favor of focusing on what we do control: what we grow, eat and own? It’s almost a binary choice: either focus on screens of addictive offal for hours every day or act on our own behalf in the real world.

Food inflation is highlighting the financial value of home gardens. Paul of the Silver Doctors and I discuss turning gardening savings into more ownership of something we control (for example, precious metals) in Save Money On Food, Get Free Gold & Silver, Beat Price Inflation (1:08 hrs).

I’ve been posting about the value of gardening for over a decade, describing the financial and health benefits. I Dig Dirt: The Remedy for Derealization (July 23, 2011) The Hidden Value of Gardens (September 13, 2014)

Food inflation simply increases the gains: One Solution to Soaring Food Prices: Start Your 2022 Garden Now (November 6, 2021).

Municipalities can either encourage or hinder local food production. Cities once grew between a third and a half of their own food within city limits: Could Urban Gardens Supply 1/3 of a City’s Food? Yes. (March 13, 2010).

If we’re not allowed to grow food, that’s a problem that can be solved by local lobbying or moving to a place where there are fewer restrictions on growing our own food…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

No Farmers, No Food, No Life

July 31, 2022

No Farmers, No Food, No Life

The world is now facing a man-made food catastrophe. It is reaching crisis levels.

Current policies in many parts of the world place a priority on climate change for realizing a green new deal. Meanwhile, such policies will contribute to children dying from severe malnutrition due to broken food systems, with shortages of food and water, stress, anxiety, fear, and dangerous chemical exposure.

More negative pressure on farmers and the food system is asking for a catastrophe. The immune system of many people, especially children, has lost its resilience and has weakened too far with high risks for intoxication, infections, non-communicable and infectious diseases, deaths and infertility.

Dutch farmers, of whom many will face a cost of living crisis after 2030, have drawn the line. They are supported by an increasing number of farmers and citizens worldwide.

It’s not the farmers who are the most heavy polluters of the environment, but industries who make the products needed for a technocracy revolution to green energy, data mining, and Artificial Intelligence. As more of the WEF plans are rolled out by politicians, inequalities grow, and conflicts are rising all over the world.

The strong farmers’ revolt in the Netherlands is a call for an urgent transition to a people-oriented, free and healthy world with nutritious food cultivated and harvested in respect to natural processes. The cooperation of ordinary people worldwide is on the rise to prevent a mass famine catastrophe caused by the plan of scientism and technocracy to rule and control the world by unelected scientists and elites.

Enough food, access to food is the problem

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

UN, World Economic Forum Behind Global ‘War on Farmers’: Experts

July 30, 2022

A sign of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is seen at the Congress centre during its annual meeting in Davos on May 23, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

US NEWS

UN, World Economic Forum Behind Global ‘War on Farmers’: Experts

They say ‘Agenda 2030’ development goals at root of sustainability policies that could lead to food shortages

The escalating regulatory attack on agricultural producers from Holland and the United States to Sri Lanka and beyond is closely tied to the United Nations’ “Agenda 2030” Sustainable Development Goals and the U.N.’s partners at the World Economic Forum (WEF), numerous experts told The Epoch Times.

Indeed, several of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are directly implicated in policies that are squeezing farmers, ranchers, and food supplies around the world.

High-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members within the U.N. system helped create the SDGs and are currently helping lead the organization’s implementation of the global plan, The Epoch Times has previously documented.

If left unchecked, multiple experts said, the U.N.-backed sustainability policies on agriculture and food production would lead to economic devastation, shortages of critical goods, widespread famine, and a dramatic loss of individual freedoms.

Epoch Times Photo — Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), is seen at the opening of the WEF Davos Agenda in Cologny, Switzerland, on Jan. 17, 2022. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)

Already, millions of people worldwide are facing dangerous food shortages, and officials around the world say those are set to get worse as the year goes on.

There is an agenda behind it all, experts told The Epoch Times.

Even private land ownership is in the crosshairs, as global food production and the world economy are transformed to meet the global sustainability goals, U.N. documents reviewed by The Epoch Times show.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BASF Prepares To Slash Ammonia Production In Germany Amid Worsening NatGas Crunch

July 27, 2022

BASF Prepares To Slash Ammonia Production In Germany Amid Worsening NatGas Crunch

German chemicals company BASF SE paid an extra 800 million euros ($809.5 million) to keep its plants operating in the second quarter compared with a year earlier amid skyrocketing natural gas prices. The impact of high energy prices has forced the company to make a difficult decision: slash the production of ammonia, which could have potential consequences for farming to the food industry.

“We are reducing production at facilities that require large volumes of natural gas, such as ammonia plants,” BASF Chief Executive Martin Brudermuller said in a conference call after an earnings report.

Brudermuller said BASF would tap external suppliers to fill the deficit as German plants reduced output. He warned about potential supply disruptions that could boost fertilizer costs for farmers.

Reuters details how ammonia plays a critical role in manufacturing nitrogen-based fertilizers, plastic-making, and diesel exhaust fluid. A byproduct of ammonia production is high-purity carbon dioxide (CO2) which is heavily used in the food industry.

The news of BASF reducing ammonia production because of soaring NatGas prices comes as Russian state-owned energy producer Gazprom PJSC is expected to halve supplies via Nord Stream 1 to Europe to about 20% today. EU member states agreed Tuesday to reduce NatGas demand by 15% over the next eight months, though countries like Germany, without any liquefied natural gas (LNG) port terminals to replace Russian pipeline NatGas, might have to make more considerable sacrifices.

Benchmark NatGas prices in Europe at the Dutch TTF hub hit their highest level since March. Prices have shot up 35% in a week, over 200 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh), as Putin turns the screws on Europe by reducing pipeline capacity to Europe.

“Chemical companies are the biggest industrial natural-gas users in Germany, and ammonia is the single most gas-intensive product within that industry,” Reuters said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Ukraine, a proxy war on the planet

July 22, 2022

In Ukraine, a proxy war on the planet

As the Ukraine crisis causes global havoc, US officials won’t negotiate with Russia to end the fighting — and are even willing to “countenance” mounting hunger as a result.

(Marine Corps Cpl. Jailine Alicea-Santiago / media.defense.gov)

In 2015, one year after a US-backed coup ushered in a US-friendly, far-right-dominated government in Kiev, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer issued a stark warning. “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path,” he said. “And the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

Mearsheimer’s cause for concern was what he identified as a US-led campaign to convert Ukraine into a NATO proxy on Russia’s border. The events since have proved him to be both tragically prescient, and understated.

In using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there”, as Adam Schiff put it in January 2020, the US has not only sacrificed countless Ukrainian lives. Four months into Russia’s invasion, the Biden administration is signaling its willingness to sacrifice the rest of the planet, particularly the most vulnerable areas.

In an article headlined “Ukraine War Pushes Millions of the World’s Poorest Toward Starvation,” the Wall Street Journal summarizes the impact of the Ukraine war on global hunger:

The World Food Program says that increases in the cost of food and fuel since March have pushed an additional 47 million people into acute food insecurity, when a person is no longer able to consume enough calories to sustain her life and livelihood, taking the total to 345 million people world-wide. Of those, some 50 million are living on the edge of famine.

In the energy crisis that has followed Russia’s invasion, the New York Times adds, “the poorest and most vulnerable” have felt “the harshest effects.” In Asia and Africa, the International Energy Agency recently warned that “higher energy prices have meant an additional 90 million people in Asia and Africa do not have access to electricity.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The great unravelling

July 14, 2022

The great unravelling

Real life Bond villain Klaus Schwab has become the focus of ridicule following crude attempts to remove articles praising Sri Lanka’s “Vision 2025” economic plan from the World economic Forum (WEF) website – the world’s leading proponent of the hi-tech fourth industrial revolution apparently not realising that nothing ever disappears from the internet.

Sri Lanka was supposed to be the poster child for the Great Green New Reset, scoring a 98 percent ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) ranking. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa winning considerable praise from globalist leaders and climate activists alike for his speech to the COP26 conference in Glasgow last November:

“Sri Lanka recently restricted imports of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and weedicides due to public health concerns, water contamination, soil degradation, and biodiversity impacts.

“Although opposed by entrenched lobbies, this has created opportunities for innovation and investment into organic agriculture that will be healthier and more sustainable in future.”

Critics of climate action have understandably focussed on this policy as “the reason” for Sri Lanka’s economic collapse and descent into political chaos – Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe having fled the country after the hungry masses invaded the presidential palace last week. In spite of praise from organisations like the WEF and the world bank, however, the Sri Lankan economy was highly indebted and vulnerable to economic shocks long before the country’s leaders decided that a mass crash diet was in order. The country’s main sources of foreign currency – without which it could not repay its debts – are tea exports and tourism. Tourism was, of course, crushed in 2020 and 2021, as countries locked down and air travel ground to a halt. In 2022, moreover, air travel is still disrupted, and far fewer consumers can afford international travel.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dutch Farmers Livid Over EU’s ‘Green’ Nitrogen Rule Block Border Between Holland And Germany

July 1, 2022

Dutch Farmers Livid Over EU’s ‘Green’ Nitrogen Rule Block Border Between Holland And Germany

Thousands of tractor-driving Dutch protesters came out this week to continue demonstrations against the government’s radical plan to cut nitrogen emissions by 30% – 70% as part of their ‘green’ agenda.

Farmers from the world’s 5th largest exporter of food are demanding that the Hague immediately reverse course, and have blocked the border between Holland and Germany over the rule which would lead to the closure of dozens of farms and cattle ranches.

On Wednesday, dozens of tractors blocked a highway close to the German border, according to traffic authorities.

Even larger protests are scheduled for July 4, with organizers taking to Telegram to call people to action against rules they say will “flatten” the country’s agriculture industry.

According to the Epoch Times, the message calls on concerned farmers and citizens to organize their own regional actions with the goal of closing all “distribution centers for food supplies and all major polluters” until “the government changes its plans.”

One viral call for a July 4 protest came from a large truckers’ Telegram group, suggesting that some truckers in the Netherlands may find themselves in solidarity with the nation’s agriculturalists.

The farmers, who plan to protest at many of the nation’s airports, specifically mentioned Schiphol and Eindhoven. NLTimes.nl has reported that spokespersons for both airports say they are monitoring the situation but have little information at present.

In 2021, the Netherlands’ coalition government proposed slashing livestock numbers in the country by 30 percent to meet nitrogen emissions targets.

The country has already implemented stringent restrictions on new construction with the aim of curbing nitrogen emissions.

Rabobank has argued that those new hurdles have slowed down homebuilding in the Netherlands, intensifying a housing shortage in the densely populated coastal nation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Marti’s Corner – 70

June 23, 2022

Marti’s Corner – 70

Marti's Corner at City Prepping Hi Everyone,

NOTES:

** You should be familiar with the website: Alert RivCo | Emergency Management Department | Riverside County Most communities now have a similar alert system to Riverside’s. It’s always an advantage to get a heads-up. From this page, you can sign up to have alerts sent to your phone in case of emergencies. Scroll down until you see “registration portal” and click on that.

** You can also go to Find Your Home’s Climate Risks | Risk Factor. You type in your address and they tell you what dangers you should be aware of. My house is “unlikely” to flood in the next 30 years. Whew. And I have an 11.8% chance of being in a fire. So……. now I can sleep at night.

You can get risk information about your community and lists of providers that offer insurance.

GARDEN HAPPENINGS:

**Pest of the week.

So, I was in the garden and decided it was time to start inspecting the “underside” of the plant leaves. I’m not always good about it because there are just SOOOOO many leaves and it’s tiresome to look under them all. But at the bottom of the cucumbers, I found this on the backside of a leaf:

It was totally invisible from the top.

Not EXACTLY sure what they are, but they don’t belong there and I think they are aphids. I sprayed them with safer soap. It seemed to do the trick.

I also found them on this new baby cuke:

I sprayed those too. I found a few leaves with leaf miner damage and pulled those off. As the weather gets warmer, the life cycle of the bugs speeds up. You have to be a good detective! Spray, spray, spray. Do NOT let it go.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“We Are Teetering On The Edge”: Food Shortage Worries Mount As PA Farms “Crushed” By Record Diesel Prices

June 16, 2022

“We Are Teetering On The Edge”: Food Shortage Worries Mount As PA Farms “Crushed” By Record Diesel Prices

There’s nothing like the sweet smell of Building Back Better…

Pennsylvania farmers are being “crushed” by the record cost of diesel – so much so, that questions about a food crisis are starting to loom, the Morning Call reported.

One farmer in Lehigh County is quoted as saying: “I’ve got a tractor hooked up to my corn planter out here, no diesel fuel, and I can’t afford to get any.”

That farmer was airing his gripes to Kyle Kotzmoyer, a legislative affairs specialist for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. Kotzmoyer then turned around and testified to state lawmakers: “We have reached that point to where it is very close to being a sinking ship. We are teetering on the edge right now.”

The situation looks as though it will continue to push food prices higher, after the government reported that food prices in May were 10.1% higher than last year.

Kotzmoyer lamented the possibility of a food shortage: “One, if they can’t afford to put it in the ground. Or, two, if they can’t afford to take it out.”

The PA average for diesel is now $6.19 per gallon, up about 75% from a year ago, the report notes. It is a “huge, huge expense” for farmers, Kotzmoyer told state legislators.

One farmer who works on about 3,500 acres burns through about 2,000 gallons of diesel per month, he said. “If the farmers cannot get crops out of the ground, then there is not food on the shelves.”

Honeybees: A holistic perspective on a superorganism

May 25, 2022

Honeybees: A holistic perspective on a superorganism

It is a great privilege to call myself a beekeeper. Having bees in my life, constantly reminds me to notice the sheer wonder of the world around me and often leaves me with a visceral sense of my place within this world. Honeybees have seen a dramatic rise in public awareness and beekeeping has exponentially increased in popularity, however the mindset of industrial farming is still alarmingly prevalent in beekeeping practice, and how it is discussed and taught to the next generation of beekeepers.

I trained as a beekeeper about 10 years ago, and when I started I had already completed training as an organic grower. As I studied beekeeping, I was alarmed at the similarities between the methods I was being taught and the mindset of industrial farming. I was unsettled by some of the practices that seemed to be very common. Routine use of miticide within the hive, routine disturbance of the nest space, routine suppression of reproduction and routine sugar feeding, all seemed at odds with what I had learnt as an organic grower. A defining moment was a visit to a teaching apiary to inspect the bees. We opened the hives and carefully checked through the brood nest, the area where the young bees are developing, if we found any developing queens we would kill them. Our presence obviously disturbed the bees who defended their nest space, in hive after hive that we opened, by attacking us. The bees were clearly communicating the threat they felt and I was struck by the violence of this process which was charged with conflict – even putting on the beekeeper’s suit had the feel of preparing for battle. There was a clear cognitive dissonance between this experience and my imagined harmony between beekeeper and bees…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

3 Sustainable Ways To Reduce Your Dependence on the Supply Chain

May 25, 2022

3 Sustainable Ways To Reduce Your Dependence on the Supply Chain

It’s no secret that the supply chain disruptions have created global impacts on us. Many of us are feeling the burn of soaring food prices and are ready to do what is necessary to continue to feed our families. It’s not about choice, it’s about survival, and now is the time to take the necessary steps to ensure you can make it when the entire food supply system crashes.

One of the easiest ways to reduce your dependence on the supply chain is to start finding ways to phase out food sourcing and make it a priority! That means you will need to be innovative and think of other ways food can be acquired than just going to the grocery store.

23 Things You Can Forage For From April to June

Create more sustainability around your life and you learn to live more simply in the process. You will realize how much you actually have and other ways of putting items to use. As well, as building a more localized food supply. You will also be reducing greenhouse gases due to the gas used to distribute fresh produce. This also boosts local economies and strengthens food security locally, which is where the focus needs to be. Quite honestly, it’s already around you – you just have to know where to find it.

FORAGE: A simple way to start is to learn how to forage for edible plants. These plants live all around us, are abundant, and better yet; are free! Not only that, these edible plants can be medicinal and will have a lot of nutritional value! Here are some food freebies you can find in your own backyard.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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