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(Bloomberg) — The combined forces of El Niño and La Niña have crippled Latin American soy output. Ukrainian and Russian grain farmers have gone to war. Indonesia has banned shipments of palm oil to Europe, while China is hungry for crops. The Mediterranean region is getting more like a desert.

The year is 2024. “Food shortage in Europe? The only question is when, but they don’t listen,” says an unidentified voice in a video broadcast. The audience sits quietly — listening.

The dramatic collision of events, of course, hasn’t yet come to pass. But over two days in central Brussels last month, some 60 European Union and government officials, food security experts, industry representatives and a few journalists gathered to confront the possibility of something barely on the radar a few years ago: a full-blown food crisis.

The group sat down in a refurbished art deco Shell building to simulate what might happen, and help design policies aimed at prevention and response. A few streets away, farmers were stepping up their protests against the EU, disrupting supplies to supermarkets as if to sharpen the focus of the participants.

The plush co-working space was hardly a bunker or secure basement in a warzone. But the video images of drought, floods and civil unrest to the pounding beat of ominous music created a sense of urgency.

“Expect a level of chaos,” warned Piotr Magnuszewski, a systems modeler and game designer who has worked with the United Nations. “You may be confused at times and not have enough information. There will be time travel.”

To watch one of the best-fed regions in the world stress test its food system underscores a growing level of alarm among governments over securing supplies for their populations. In the space of four years, multiple shocks have shaken up the way food is grown, distributed and consumed.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Europe Is Alarmed Enough To Begin Wargaming A Food Crisis

March 7, 2024

Europe Is Alarmed Enough To Begin Wargaming A Food Crisis

Governments of the European Union are engaged in wargames which simulate and foresee a global food crisis. A mix of major factors including the Russia-Ukraine war and impact on grain supplies there, as well as weather events like El Niño and La Niña and their impact on Latin American soy output, and the anti-EU farmers’ protests which have disrupted supermarket supply chains, have been cause for alarm, European officials say. Of course there’s also the example of how drastically a pandemic can interfere with supply chains. Panic buying was a trend and constant fear within the early months of the coronavirus crisis.

Bloomberg details of a conference held in Brussels last month that envisioned a 2024 to 2025 food shortage in Europe: “…over two days in central Brussels last month, some 60 European Union and government officials, food security experts, industry representatives and a few journalists gathered to confront the possibility of something barely on the radar a few years ago: a full-blown food crisis.”

Piotr Magnuszewski, a systems modeler and game designer who helped put the conference gaming scenario together told participants to “Expect a level of chaos” and cautioned, “You may be confused at times and not have enough information.”

As the report underscores, what’s remarkable about this is the fact that a continent which stands out as among the best-fed regions in the world is now busy stress testing its food system.

Below are some of the scenarios put before participants in the wargaming event last month:

* * *

Harvest failures:

“And so, it’s 2025 and there are more harvest failures. They impact animal feed prices, which curbs livestock and fish production. Some ships carrying crops turn away from Europe to cater to higher bidders elsewhere.”

Palm oil exports cut:

…click on the above link to read the rest…

From Trucker Boycotts To Grid Down – There’s Only One Way To Survive A Food Crisis

February 29, 2024

From Trucker Boycotts To Grid Down – There’s Only One Way To Survive A Food Crisis

If there is one reality that Americans need to accept, it’s that every system has a breaking point and there are no exceptions. Human beings are built to adapt and this has given us incredible resilience, but it also means we have a tendency to wait too long to fix the parts of our society that are broken. Instead, we let the problems build and fester until, sadly, the final straw falls and everything comes crashing down.

Sometimes this collapse is by chance and sometimes it’s by design. In either case the catalyst is the same – The public does not prepare and they don’t take action to correct the people creating the crisis until it’s too late.

In our modern era of invasive technology, economic weakness, nuclear weapons and biowarfare, this is an unsustainable model. We can no longer ignore threats on instability in the hopes that they will go away or that governments will defuse the danger, nor can we simply pick up the pieces over and over again after each calamity. There may come a time when the mess is so big we won’t be able to clean it up. People must plan ahead, and they must stop tolerating the notion of passive involvement in the mechanisms that influence their lives and future.

I write often about hypothetical trigger events and breakdown scenarios because a large number of people still need to be educated on how fragile the western world truly is right now. For example, any significant disruption to supply chains and logistics at this time would be devastating for a large number of Americans (or Europeans).

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Mainstream Media Admits That We Are Facing “The Worst Food Crisis In Modern History”

January 21, 2023

The Mainstream Media Admits That We Are Facing “The Worst Food Crisis In Modern History”

People on the other side of the planet are dropping dead from starvation right now, but most people don’t even realize that this is happening. Unfortunately, most people just assume that everything is fine and dandy. If you are one of those people that believe that everything is just wonderful, I would encourage you to pay close attention to the details that I am about to share with you. Global hunger is rapidly spreading, and that is because global food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter. If current trends continue, we could potentially be facing a nightmare scenario before this calendar year is over.

Pakistan is not one of the poorest nations in the world, but the lack of affordable food is starting to cause panic inside that country. The following comes from Time Magazine…

Last Saturday in Mirpur Khas, a city in Pakistan’s Sindh province, hundreds of people lined up for hours outside a park to buy subsidized wheat flour, offered for 65 rupees a kilogram instead of the current, inflated rate of about 140 to 160 rupees.

When a few trucks arrived, the crowd surged forward, leaving several injured. One man, Harsingh Kolhi, who was there to bring a five kg bag of flour home for his wife and children, was crushed and killed in the chaos.

We are seeing similar things happen all over the planet.

Just because you still may have enough food to eat doesn’t mean that everybody else is okay.

In fact, things have already gotten so bad that even CNN is admitting that we are facing “the worst food crisis in modern history”…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Food Crisis Of 2023 Is Going To Be Far Worse Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine

October 20, 2022

The Food Crisis Of 2023 Is Going To Be Far Worse Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine

I am trying to sound the alarm about this as loudly as I can. The global food crisis just continues to intensify, and things are going to get really bad in 2023. As you will see below, two-thirds of European fertilizer production has already been shut down, currency problems are causing massive headaches for poor nations that need to import food, global weather patterns continue to be completely crazy, and the bird flu is killing millions upon millions of chickens and turkeys all over the planet. On top of everything else, the war in Ukraine is going to restrict the flow of agricultural and fertilizer exports from that part of the world for a long time to come, because there is no end to the war in sight. In essence, we are facing a “perfect storm” for global food production, and that “perfect storm” is only going to get worse in the months ahead.

Global hunger has been on the rise for years, and the UN World Food Program is warning that we are heading for “yet another year of record hunger”…

The world is at risk of yet another year of record hunger as the global food crisis continues to drive yet more people into worsening levels of severe hunger, warns the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in a call for urgent action to address the root causes of today’s crisis ahead of World Food Day on October 16.

The global food crisis is a confluence of competing crises – caused by climate shocks, conflict and economic pressures – that has pushed the number of severely hungry people around the world from 282 million to 345 million in just the first months of 2022…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Humanity’s Biggest Crisis Since WW2?

October 4, 2022

Humanity’s Biggest Crisis Since WW2?

Global Food Supply Crises May Worsen Due to Poor US Harvest

September 23, 2022

Farmer harvests corn in Princeton, Ind., on Oct. 11, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Global Food Supply Crises May Worsen Due to Poor US Harvest

U.S. agriculture has been facing a poor harvest this year, aggravating the global food supply crisis, industry executives have said.

The supply of food worldwide has been tight, since Russia’s war in Ukraine cut off vital shipments of resources needed to make fertilizer and grain products from the region.

Several high-level executives from big agricultural firms such as Bayer, Corteva, Archer Daniels Midland, and Bunge, told The Wall Street Journal that it will take at least two more years of good harvests in North and South America to ease the supply pressures.

“The current market expectation is that global grain and oilseeds markets need two consecutive normal crop years to stabilize global supplies,” said Chuck Magro, chief executive of Corteva, at an investor presentation this week.

This year’s grain harvest has fallen below normal yields in the West, hindering efforts to restock global crop supplies he explained.

The United States and South America, two of the world’s major crop exporters, faced persistent drought conditions this summer.

The hot summer worsened drought conditions in states throughout the U.S. Grain Belt, which saw a major reduction in the harvest due to lack of water and a wet spring planting season earlier in the year.

The Agriculture Department announced on Sept. 12, that it had lowered its nationwide corn production estimates to 13.9 billion bushels.

This is 3 percent lower than its projections in August, about 8 percent lower than the total amount harvested last year.

Projections for soybean production estimates in September were down 3 percent from August, down slightly from 2021.

Maintaining a Food Truce

Global recession fears have also weighed on food commodity markets and the prolonged conflict in Ukraine has not helped matters.

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

Europe’s Natural Gas Shortage Could Trigger A Food Crisis

September 14, 2022

Europe’s Natural Gas Shortage Could Trigger A Food Crisis

Energy crises impact nearly every aspect of our lives, and that is particularly true of food markets, with food production next year expected to be severely threatened.
About 70 percent of the cost of fertilizer production is solely the price of natural gas, and as the price of energy soars, the cost of making and moving food is increasing alongside it.
At the same time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and threats from Putin that Russia may alter grain export routes have only added to uncertainty in food markets.

The problem with an energy crisis is that it’s actually an everything crisis. In a world where virtually every industry relies on energy in some form, runaway inflation is an inevitability. This phenomenon is not news – you’ve been experiencing it for the better part of two years now. But while global governments are using every tool in their kits to curb the rising inflation rates, there’s far less they can do about the coming food shortage.

For months, the agricultural industry has been warning the rest of the world that next year’s food production is severely threatened, as the fertilizer industry is in shambles. Industrial NPK fertilizers (so named for their makeup of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium oxide), are heavily reliant on natural gas supplies. About 70 percent of the cost of fertilizer production is solely the price of natural gas, which is used in liberal amounts to make the ammonia phosphate slurries that turn into fertilizer. Indeed, according to CRU Group, European fertilizer producers in the region are currently losing approximately $2,000 for every ton of ammonia produced. So as Russia has stemmed and then indefinitely stopped the flow of natural gas into Europe, sending gas prices through the roof, the continent’s fertilizer sector has halted as much as 70 percent of its production capacity.

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

World’s Largest Fertilizer Company Warns Crop Nutrient Disruptions Through 2023

May 5, 2022

World’s Largest Fertilizer Company Warns Crop Nutrient Disruptions Through 2023

The world’s largest fertilizer company warned supply disruptions could extend into 2023. A bulk of the world’s supply has been taken offline due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This has sparked soaring prices and shortages of crop nutrients in top growing areas worldwide; an early indication of a global food crisis could be in the beginning innings.

Bloomberg reports Canada-based Nutrien Ltd.’s CEO Ken Seitz told investors on Tuesday during a conference call that he expects to increase potash production following supply disruptions in Russia and Ukraine (both major fertilizer suppliers). Seitz expects disruptions “could last well beyond 2022.”

Seitz said the conflict plus Western sanctions on Russia and Belarus has reduced fertilizer supply on global markets and could reshape crop nutrient trade, thus creating even more supply uncertainty.

“Could there be a change in global trade patterns as a result? We think that’s a possibility,” he said.

Fertilizer disruptions could be a multi-year event. Already, farmers worldwide are reducing fertilizers, which may threaten yields come harvest time. The repercussions could be huge: Lower yields may exacerbate the food crisis.

Here are the latest signs commercial farmers worldwide are reducing fertilizer usage because of higher prices or shortages.

Revealed last week, SLC Agricola SA, one of Brazil’s largest farming operations, managing fields of soybeans, corn, and cotton fields in an area larger than the state of Delaware, will reduce the use of fertilizer by 20% and 25%.

Coffee farmers in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, some of the largest coffee-producing countries, are expected to spread less fertilizer because of high costs and shortages. A coffee cooperative representing 1,200 farmers in Costa Rica predicts coffee output could slip 15% next year because of soaring fertilizer costs.

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

Ukraine war: World Bank warns of ‘human catastrophe’ food crisis

April 23, 2022

Ukraine war: World Bank warns of ‘human catastrophe’ food crisis

The world faces a “human catastrophe” from a food crisis arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, World Bank president David Malpass has said.

He told the BBC that record rises in food prices would push hundreds of millions people into poverty and lower nutrition, if the crisis continues.

The World Bank calculates there could be a “huge” 37% jump in food prices.

This would hit the poor hardest, who will “eat less and have less money for anything else such as schooling”.

In an interview with BBC economics editor Faisal Islam, Mr Malpass, who leads the institution charged with global alleviation of poverty, said the impact on the poor made it “an unfair kind of crisis… that was true also of Covid”.

“It’s a human catastrophe, meaning nutrition goes down. But then it also becomes a political challenge for governments who can’t do anything about it, they didn’t cause it and they see the prices going up,” he said on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington.

The price rises are broad and deep, he said: “It’s affecting food of all different kinds oils, grains, and then it gets into other crops, corn crops, because they go up when wheat goes up”.

There was enough food in the world to feed everybody, he said, and global stockpiles are large by historical standards, but there will have to be a sharing or sales process to get the food to where it is needed.

Mr Malpass also discouraged countries from subsidising production or capping prices.

Instead, he said, the focus needed to be on increasing supplies across the world of fertilisers and food, alongside targeted assistance for the very poorest people.

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

The Coming Removal of the Mandate of Heaven, Part 2: Water

April 23, 2022

The Coming Removal of the Mandate of Heaven, Part 2: Water

Water, water everywhere but all of it polluted

Before I started I wanted to address my last post. I wrote it a little too hastily due to a sick daughter and I plan to go back and clean it up somewhat. The political infighting aspect will be trimmed down as I plan to discuss that more in Part 3, with only the parts directly addressing the food issue being kept in.

China has also started taking efforts to address some of these issues and I want to address what they’re doing. I fully admit to having an axe to grind when it comes to the CCP, but I want to make sure I’m as intellectually honest as possible. This includes giving them credit on the rare instances they manage to do something smart.

The fact these plans will wind up making it worse is just icing on the cake.

I also want to reformat it according to the template I plan to use going forward.

I’ll also be doing a Part 0 for this series which will include a table of contents for all of the posts in this series, and which will provide an overview of the relevant portions of Chinese history with a special focus on the Confucian concept of the Mandate of Heaven and its removal.

I hope to get that done tomorrow evening, but can’t guarantee that will occur.

Water Thresholds

In order to understand the grave danger China is facing, we need to understand water usage and thresholds below which the population begins to face some level of danger. For that, we’re going to turn to Reuters for an overview.

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

Rockefeller Foundation President Starts Countdown Until All Hell Breaks Loose

April 23, 2022

Rockefeller Foundation President Starts Countdown Until All Hell Breaks Loose

Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah told Bloomberg Television’s David Westin a “massive, immediate food crisis” is on the horizon.

Shah provides what could be a timeline for the next global food crisis that could begin “in the next six months.”

He said global fertilizer supply disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine would have an “even worse” impact on the crisis, slashing crop yields worldwide.

Shah said debt relief and emergency aid for emerging market countries are needed to mitigate the effects of the food crisis.

Shah’s appearance on Bloomberg is interesting because of the foundation’s repetitive talk about the need for the global food supply to be reset to a more sustainable one. The foundation has closely aligned views with the World Economic Forum (WEF), advocating for a ‘global reset‘.

WEF founder Klaus Schwab famously said in early 2020, months after the virus pandemic began, “The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.”

While Schwab and other global elites have been calling for a global reset, Rockefeller Foundation’s managing director of Food Initiative Sara Farley has echoed the same message.

Farley’s note published on WEF’s website titled “How to reimagine our food systems for a post-COVID world” outlined the need to “redesign supply chains with nutrition and human health in mind.”

Rockefeller Foundation’s senior vice president of Food Initiative Roy Steiner recently said, “the world is spending far too much on foods that are bad for people and bad for the planet.”

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

How You Can Prepare For the Next Global Food Crisis

April 17, 2022

How You Can Prepare For the Next Global Food Crisis

Whether we choose to look the other way or not, the planet is facing a food crisis. Even if your grocery store is fully stocked, it won’t take long for food to run out if people come from towns over because their store is out. The food crisis is looming and it is going to get worse before it gets better, so it’s best to prepare now.

Whether we choose to look the other way or not, the planet is facing a food crisis. Even if your grocery store is fully stocked, it won’t take long for food to run out if people come from towns over because their store is out. Recently, President Biden warned of food shortages due to the Russia-Ukraine war. The food crisis is looming and it is going to get worse before it gets better, so it’s best to prepare now.

If you already have a stockpile of food in a prepper’s pantry, you should go through everything and make sure you didn’t use things up or that some things aren’t close to expiring. If you are just beginning to put some food away for a rainy day, start with these 25 food staples. If they are close to expiring, use them now, and replace them. For the rest of us, we should consider changing our shopping style when it comes to food. Gone are the days of running out to the store to splurge on a few expensive items. Prices are going up and we are staring down the barrel of what could be the worst food crisis in centuries.

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

Putin’s energy shock is becoming a world food crisis. Brace for rationing.

March 6, 2022

Putin’s energy shock is becoming a world food crisis. Brace for rationing.

The world was facing a grain supply crunch even before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The United Nations food price index was already higher in real terms than at the height of the global hunger crisis a decade ago, when Tunisian bread protests set off the Arab Spring.

The tight global market for grains, vegetable oil and fertilisers was probably one of the many reasons that Putin chose this moment to strike, calculating – wrongly it may prove – that the West would not dare to squeeze him too hard.

Wheat grain is pumped into a truck during the harvest in Chernihiv, Ukraine. Close to a third of the world’s wheat exports come from Russia and Ukraine.CREDIT:BLOOMBERG

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.

Natasha Kaneva, from JP Morgan, said inventories of tradable commodities are critically low and the world is running out of safety buffers. This is a recipe for “non-linear price increases”, she said.

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 Maghreb, the non-oil Middle East, swathes of Africa, Bangladesh or Afghanistan…

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

Food Crisis Imminent: Hungary Bans All Grains Exports Effective Immediately

March 4, 2022

Food Crisis Imminent: Hungary Bans All Grains Exports Effective Immediately

(Update 1:25pm ET) – Those who have it, are no longer giving it away, and those that don’t will soon find themselves in the middle of an epic food crisis.

Just hours after we reported that Russia effectively banned exports of fertilizers, moments ago Hungary – one of Europe’s most grain rich nations – has circled the wagons and realizing which way the wind is blowing, just announced that it will banning all grain exports effective immediately, in a statement .

Expect wheat prices, already at record highs, to promptly double from here in the next few weeks as the world realizes the extent of the global food crisis that is coming.

Our suggestion: buy flour, rice, barley and any other grains you can now, rather than waiting one month to buy them because you have to.

* * *

Earlier

This morning we listed some of the countries that are dangerously (and almost exclusively) reliant on Russia and Ukraine for their wheat imports, highlighting Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and others…

… which are facing an “Arab Spring” style food crisis (and potential uprising) in the coming weeks unless the Ukraine conflict is resolved.

And unfortunately, we can now confidently predict that the coming food crisis will strike every country that is using food fertilizer – which is all – because moments ago, Russian Interfax reported that as part of Moscow’s countersanctions, Russia has recommended fertilizer makers to halt exports, a move which will sent not only fertilizer prices orbitally higher, but all food prices will soon follow.

*RUSSIA RECOMMENDS FERTILIZER MAKERS TO HALT EXPORTS: IFX
*RUSSIAN MINISTRY CITES LOGISTICS ISSUES ON FERTILIZERS: IFX

Worse still, natural gas is required in the manufacturing process for most nitrogen/fertilizer products and so the recent surge in European NatGas prices to record highs will only exacerbate the cost of fertilizer from any halt from Russia…

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

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