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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…

A Winter of Anger

August 7, 2022

A Winter of Anger

Vincent van Gogh Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather 1882

It is very simple: if you’d ask most citizens of whichever EU country if they are willing to risk being unable to feed and heat their children in order to support Ukraine and Zelensky, they would say NO. Hell no! But that is what they’re all being pushed towards. Food prices look to at least double from here, after they’ve doubled once already, while energy prices are set to triple or worse. And there’s no logical reason for it.This is not due to some inevitable market mechanism, it’s because the west decided to halt all Russian imports after the latter’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine. All western leaders found that reason enough to cut all, or nearly all, imports from Russia. Gas, oil, fertilizer, food. Essentials. They could have been sitting around a negotiating table, but chose not to. Which only works as long as things remain sort of affordable. And then, it does not.

Problem is, they had and have no alternative to the Russian supplies of these goods (and there’s many more). See, this is how we know they don’t make their own decisions. Those are made in Brussels and Davos, and then the “leaders” have to carry out the preconceived programs, and they will.

No elected official on his/her own would risk to destroy their own country’s energy or food safety, with elections coming up every few years. But their WEF/Davos connections have changed that “logic”. The WEF makes sure no western leader gets elected who is not a member of their club. There’s only one path to power these days.

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

“The Summer Of Starvation”: Soaring Fertilizer Prices Unleash Chaos, Hunger Worldwide

June 8, 2022

“The Summer Of Starvation”: Soaring Fertilizer Prices Unleash Chaos, Hunger Worldwide

One of the most pernicious consequences – if primarily for the anti-Russia west – resulting from the Ukraine war, has been the unprecedented spike in fertilizer prices which among other things, has sparked a historic surge in food prices and collapse in supply chains around the globe, as we discussed in these articles published over the past few months:

Fast forwarding to today, when we have some good, some bad and some pretty terrible news. The good news it that fertilizer prices have eased modestly from all time highs, as the following chart of Tampa Ammonia CFR spot prices shows.

The bad news is that the the price hasn’t dropped nearly enough: according to Bloomberg, the glut of fertilizers piling up at the biggest Brazilian ports signals that the price of the nutrients has to drop further before farmers start buying.

In Paranagua, private warehouses reached their maximum storage capacity of 3.5 million tons, Luiz Teixeira da Silva, Paranagua’s operations director told Bloomberg. A terminal operated by VLI Logistics, one of the two at Santos port that store fertilizers, is also full, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public.

As noted above, the price of fertilizers across the globe has exploded to unprecedented levels, and Brazil has been no exception.

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

The Shame of Global Hunger

January 8, 2021

The Shame of Global Hunger

We live in a world of plenty, resource rich, financially wealthy, but despite this abundance an estimated 700 million people go hungry every day. Millions more are food insecure, meaning they may have food today, but have no idea if they will have any tomorrow or next week. Additional millions can only afford nutritionally barren, poor quality food laced with salt and sugar, increasing the risk of illness and obesity.

According to a detailed report published by the Global Hunger Index (GHI) in September 2020 if rich countries doubled “their aid commitments” to $330 billion, and supported poor countries to improve “agricultural R&D, technology, innovation, education, social protection and trade facilitation,” the world could be free of hunger by 2030. In fact with effective food distribution under the stewardship of the UN World Food Programme hunger could be eradicated long before then; there is an abundance of produce and foodstuff in the world.

Hunger and malnutrition statistics are disturbing and shameful; the GHI lists 11 countries with ‘alarming levels of hunger’, eight of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa; two are war zones: Yemen and Syria. A further 31 nations (26 are in Africa) are listed as having ‘serious levels of hunger’. Since 2015, after years of decline, the number of undernourished people has been increasing yearly: from 2018 to 2019 it grew by 10 million, and Covid has intensified this trend. Hunger is a violent act, a shameful scar on our collective consciousness that now affects 9% of the world population – 60% of whom are women and children. The World Health Organization (WHO) state that around 45% of deaths among children under 5 years of age are linked to under-nutrition.”

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

Record Low Temps Up To 50 Degrees Below Normal Threaten To Absolutely Wreck The Rest Of The Harvest Season

October 31, 2019

Record Low Temps Up To 50 Degrees Below Normal Threaten To Absolutely Wreck The Rest Of The Harvest Season

It isn’t supposed to be this cold in October. The official start of winter is still almost two months away, and yet the weather in much of the western half of the country right now resembles what we might expect in mid-January. All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week. Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested. Due to unprecedented rainfall and extreme flooding early in the year, many farmers faced extraordinary delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were hoping that good weather at the end of the season would provide time for the crops to fully mature and be harvested. Unfortunately, a nightmare scenario has materialized instead. A couple of monster snow storms have already roared through the Midwest, and now record low temperatures threaten to absolutely wreck the rest of the harvest season.

When temperatures get significantly below zero for more than a few hours, scientists tell us that it will kill standing corn…

A significant freeze (28°F or colder for a few hours) will kill the whole plant, and any frost will act to defoliate plants, resulting in diminished grain filling for the seeds, especially on the upper half of the plants.

And right now we are facing a crisis because less than half of all U.S. corn has been harvested.

In fact, according to the latest USDA Crop Progress Report just 41 percent of all U.S. corn has been harvested so far…

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

Global Authorities Brace For A Worldwide Protein Shortage As “One-Quarter Of Earth’s Pigs Have Been Wiped Out”

October 27, 2019

Global Authorities Brace For A Worldwide Protein Shortage As “One-Quarter Of Earth’s Pigs Have Been Wiped Out”

African Swine Fever is killing millions upon millions of pigs all over the world, and this threatens to create a crippling global shortage of protein as we head into 2020. This epidemic began in China last year, and it is now also running wild in North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines. But this crisis is certainly not limited to Asia. According to the Washington Post, so far in 2019 there have also been outbreaks “in Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.” Overall, cases of African Swine Fever have been documented “in nearly 50 nations”, and U.S. pork producers are extremely concerned that it could start spreading here too.

African Swine Fever is extremely contagious, there is no vaccine, and there is no cure. Once it starts spreading in a certain area, there isn’t much that can be done “other than culling herds and loading carcasses into hazardous waste sites”. Literally, we are talking about an unstoppable global plague that is an existential threat to our food supply. Of course many of us don’t eat pork, but there will also be an immense strain on supplies of beef and chicken as those that eat pork are forced to turn to other alternatives. This is an exceedingly serious situation, and with each month it is just getting worse.

China is the epicenter for this crisis, and CNN is reporting that the Chinese herd has “shrunk by around 130 million” since this epidemic first began last year…

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

Surviving in a Venezuelan City: “You have no clue about how people really are when they are faced with hunger”

January 17, 2019

Surviving in a Venezuelan City: “You have no clue about how people really are when they are faced with hunger”

Surviving in a Venezuelan city is a lot different than it is in a country retreat. Each location has its own problems and benefits. I wrote before about the dangers of rural retreats and today I will write about the dangers in a city. You must not underestimate people because they are different then they deal with hunger and poverty.

I would like to dissect a little bit about the importance of a parameter that is paramount for “the retreat,” or whatever you may want to call it. Location is everything when it comes to your safety, especially when you live in the city.

It is all about the location before and after a collapse.

I like to think that I am a smart buyer. After all, money is made when you buy, not exactly when you sell something. For me, buying our home was a lengthy process. Selection of the place was not just based on pricing, like most of my fellow co-workers.

We looked for a house located in an area of the city close enough to go to the supermarket on foot, and near a school, too. I used an engineering method to select the best option after we had selected five neighborhoods. It was quite an interesting exercise for the intellect.

You need to select the must-have variables, pondering each one in a debate (that is, if you and your family can do it peacefully LOL), and summarize the results to provide a final conclusion, based on an evaluation supported by a common ground that enhances the most important parameter, selected by the work team based on its relative importance.

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

A Collapse Update from Venezuela: Corruption, Hunger, and Crime

November 22, 2018

A Collapse Update from Venezuela: Corruption, Hunger, and Crime

Editor’s Note: In this update, Jose talks about the worsening corruption, hunger, and crime in Venezuela. It’s hard to imagine, but things are still getting worse there. As we get together to feast with our families this week, please remember the people of Venezuela, where 80% of the population does not have enough food. ~ Daisy

I have been trying to solve a couple of issues this past week, mainly related to my parents’ health. Dad just had an event with his equilibrium (he is almost 80 so it is perfectly understandable), and he hardly could come back home in his old car. Amazingly, he did not crash or got injured in the way back. In the pictures, I have seen he is alarmingly thinner. I will send him some nutritional additions as soon as I can. I have been going through some personal and familial issues that demanded lots of attention and care and had to leave the city for some days up to work a few days in a place without any kind of coverage, not even landline, in the middle of nowhere. I survived though.

Let’s begin.

Why the collapse is still going on.

Well, it is a known fact that a slow, painful collapse is definitely the worst possible scenario. Its effects are long term, the suffering it inflicts has effects on too many people, and last too much time. It affects other countries’ economies and societies, on time.

In our example, this is exactly what is happening. I read the report of a Venezuelan journalist, much smarter than me, where he explains the exact reason with very clever words, of why the mafia is still in power. His analysis is that the regime is not a vertical structure.

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

The hidden cost of UK food: Is malnutrition a national scandal?

March 30, 2018

The hidden cost of UK food: Is malnutrition a national scandal?

According to the WHO, world hunger is on the rise again due to conflict and climate change, after falling for the previous decade. In a report published September 2017, it estimated that 815 million people were suffering from hunger, more than one in every ten people globally, 98% of whom are found in developing countries.

However, while hunger is a prevalent form of malnutrition in developing countries, malnourishment can also be found far closer to home, here in the UK, where its impact is significant and increasing. NHS England calls malnutrition a “common problem”, affecting millions of people in the UK. It is largely a concern for those with long-term health issues that affect appetite, people who are socially isolated and with limited mobility, and most commonly, the elderly. Following a study undertaken by the Office of National Statistics, which showed that 391 people died in the UK from malnutrition in 2015, former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron called it a, “national scandal that anyone is being admitted to hospital from malnutrition.” So, what is really is to blame for such high rates of the condition, in one of the world’s richest nations?

‘Malnutrition’ means, literally, ‘poor nutrition’ and technically it can refer to over-nutrition – getting more nutrients than you need, as well as under-nutrition – not getting enough nutrients or an inadequate balance of nutrients. In the UK the available statistics for malnutrition relate only to under-nutrition, hence our focus on this issue in the Sustainable Food Trust’s recently published report, The Hidden Cost of UK Food.

Drawing on published research, the report calculated that malnutrition costs the country approximately £17 billion annually. This includes the cost of treating malnourished people in hospitals and long-term care facilities, GP visits and outpatient appointments. In general, rates of malnutrition are not due to a shortage of food per se, but to a range of complex issues which include increased consumption of processed foods and reduced preparation of meals from fresh primary ingredients, part of which relates to low incomes and part of which relates to poor nutritional education and/or the lack of adequate food preparation facilities.

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

This Region Of The World Is Being Hit By The Worst Economic Collapse It Has Ever Experienced

March 9, 2017

This Region Of The World Is Being Hit By The Worst Economic Collapse It Has Ever Experienced

The ninth largest economy in the entire world is currently experiencing “its longest and deepest recession in recorded history”, and in a country right next door people are being encouraged to label their trash so that the thousands upon thousands of desperately hungry people that are digging through trash bins on the streets can find discarded food more easily. Of course the two nations that I am talking about are Brazil and Venezuela. The Brazilian economy was once the seventh largest on the globe, but after shrinking for eight consecutive quarters it has now fallen to ninth place. And in Venezuela the economic collapse has gotten so bad that more than 70 percent of the population lost weight last year due to a severe lack of food. Most of us living in the northern hemisphere don’t think that anything like this could happen to us any time soon, but the truth is that trouble signs are already starting to erupt all around us. It is just a matter of time before the things currently happening in Brazil and Venezuela start happening here, but unfortunately most people are not heeding the warnings.

Just a few years ago, the Brazilian economy was absolutely roaring and it was being hailed as a model for the rest of the world to follow. But now Brazil’s GDP has been imploding for two years in a row, and this downturn is being described as “the worst recession in recorded history” for that South American nation…

Latin America’s largest economy Brazil has contracted by 3.6 percent in 2016, shrinking for the second year in a row; statistics agency IBGE said on Tuesday. It confirmed the country is facing its longest and deepest recession in recorded history.

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

Dangerous Situation: Venezuelan National Guard Assault Members Of The Press During Protests

June 4, 2016

Dangerous Situation: Venezuelan National Guard Assault Members Of The Press During Protests

During Thursday’s protest over food in Caracas, chaos erupted after supermarket shoppers were told that regulated goods they had expected to be available would not be up for sale. In a sign of just how bad things have gotten, at least 19 journalists were attacked while trying to cover the chaotic events Bloomberg reports.

Espacio Publico, a non-government organization that monitors freedom of expression said that the assaults include robberies by members of the National Guard and armed civilians.

“We categorically reject the criminalization that the press is being subject to as they are held hostage, threatened and repeatedly intimidated by armed groups while they cover the street” the organization said in a separate statement.

Venezuela’s opposition is pushing for a recall referendum on Maduro’s rule to be held this year, and after the country’s election board known as CNE canceled a scheduled meeting to discuss the status of the request, the 2 million Venezuelans who had signed the petition calling for the recall were urged to march in order to “ratify” their signatures.

Jesus “Chuo” Torrealba, the executive secretary of Venezuela’s opposition alliance known as MUD said “we collected over 2 million signatures, and the CNE hasn’t yet said how the process will go. We already have five times the signatures needed to start the process.”

“There were some very rough hours today in downtown Caracas. Venezuela is a time bomb of social and economic discontent” he added.

Time bomb of social and economic discontent is an understatement…

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José Miguel Sardo @jmsardo

#Venezuela: Journalists reportedly attacked by pro-govt groups at “hunger demo” in #Caracas pic.twitter.com/tt6qF5TUbo pic.twitter.com/0lYPVcbLaz

3:30 PM – 2 Jun 2016

Scenes From The Venezuela Apocalypse: “Countless Wounded” After 5,000 Loot Supermarket Looking For Food

May 14, 2016

Scenes From The Venezuela Apocalypse: “Countless Wounded” After 5,000 Loot Supermarket Looking For Food

Over the last several years we have documented with clockwork regularity Venezuela’s collapse into failed state status, which was cemented several weeks ago when news hit that “Venezuela had officially run out of money to print new money.” At that point the best one could do was merely to step back and watch as local society and civilization turned on itself, unleashing what would ultimately turn into Venezuela’s own, sad apocalypse.

Last night we showed what Caracas, looks like this week:

As we wrote then these are simply hungry Venezuelans protesting that their children are dying from lack of food and medicine and that they do not have enough water or electricity. As AgainstCronyCapitalism added, this is a country with more oil than Saudi Arabia, and the government has stolen all the money and now they bottleneck peaceful protesters and threaten them with bombs (or haul them to prison and torture them).

As pure desperation has set in, crime has becomes inevitable. A man accused of mugging people in the streets of Caracas was surrounded by a mob of onlookers, beaten and set on fire, who published a pixeled-out but still graphic video of the man burning as mob justice is now the supreme arbiter of who lives and who dies:

“Roberto Fuentes Bernal, 42, was reportedly caught trying to mug passersby in the Venezuelan capital, and before police arrived at the scene, the crowd took the law into their own hands.” The video can be seen here.

Now, in the latest shocking development, Venezuela saw a new wave of looting this week that resulted in at least two deaths, countless wounded, and millions of dollars in losses and damages.

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

Land Degradation Could Create 50 Million Climate Refugees Within a Decade

September 22, 2015

Land Degradation Could Create 50 Million Climate Refugees Within a Decade

Anti-desertification sand fences in Morocco. (Anderson Sady / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Fifty million refugees fleeing hunger and poverty could be created in the next decade unless the world’s land degradation crisis is addressed, according to a new U.N.-backed study.

The report, titled “The Value of Land,” estimates that between $6.3 trillion and $10.6 trillion worth of resources—including agricultural products, soil quality and benefits in tackling climate change—are lost each year due to land degradation. This is equivalent to between 10 and 17 percent of global annual GDP.

From the International Business Times:

“Our lands are no longer able to keep up with the pressures placed on its limited resources. Increasing misuse and demands for its goods are resulting in rapidly intensifying desertification and land degradation globally—an issue of growing importance for all people and at all scales,” the report said.

Globally, 2.6 billion people depend directly on agriculture. According to the report, soil degradation—exacerbated by deforestation and pollution—drought and desertification affect approximately 52 percent of arable land. Over the next 25 years, this might reduce global food production by up to 12 percent, raising global food prices by as much as 30 percent.

However, the authors added, “the economics of land degradation is about a lot more than agriculture.”

Desertification also threatens water availability and quality—a phenomenon that is believed to have played a key role in pushing Syria toward a brutal, protracted civil war that has cost nearly 300,000 lives. According to a previous study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an unprecedented drought in Syria between 2007 and 2010 triggered an exodus of nearly 1.5 million farmers to cities in search of food and work—a “contributing factor” that eventually led to the civil war.

Additionally, desertification also jeopardizes global biodiversity. Some estimates suggest that our planet might currently be losing approximately 27,000 species every year, a number that is likely to escalate with increase in the rate of desertification.

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

Food Security: a Hostage to Wall Street

June 26, 2015

Food Security: a Hostage to Wall Street

Imperialism and the Control of Agriculture

In October of last year, World Food Day celebrated ‘Family Farming: Feeding the world, caring for the earth’. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s website, the family farming theme was chosen to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farmers. The aim was to focus world attention on the significant role of family farming in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development, especially in rural areas.

Family farming should indeed be celebrated because it really does feed the world. This claim is supported by a 2014 report by GRAIN, which revealed that small farms produce most of the world’s food.

Around 56% of Russia ‘s agricultural output comes from family farms which occupy less than 9% of arable land. These farms produce 90% of the country’s potatoes, 83% of its vegetables, 55% of its of milk, 39% of its meat and 22% of its cereals (Russian Federation Federal State Statistics Services figures for 2011).

In Brazil, 84% of farms are small and control 24% of the land, yet they produce: 87% of cassava, 69% of beans, 67% of goat milk, 59% of pork, 58% of cow milk, 50% of chickens, 46% of maize, 38% of coffee, 33.8% of rice and 30% of cattle.

In Cuba, with 27% of the land, small farmers produce: 98% of fruits, 95% of beans, 80% of maize, 75% of pork, 65% of vegetables, 55% of cow milk, 55% of cattle and 35% of rice (Braulio Machin et al, ANAP-Via Campesina, “Revolucion agroecologica, resumen ejectivo”).

In Ukraine, small farmers operate 16% of agricultural land, but provide 55% of agricultural output, including: 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk (State Statistics Service of Ukraine. “Main agricultural characteristics of households in rural areas in 2011″).

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

Greeks Face First Product Shortages As Cash Runs Out, “It’s Worse Than In 2012”

March 10, 2015

Greeks Face First Product Shortages As Cash Runs Out, “It’s Worse Than In 2012”

Just when you thought it was getting better (or so you would believe if you listened to the mainstream media’s punditry) Greece faces what ekathimerini reports is a “situation worse than in 2012.” From well-known Belgian beer to electronics equipment, the first occurrences of shortages in imported goods and raw materials have arisen as a result of Greek enterprises’ inability to pay with cash in advance.

In 2013, there were food riots as people could not afford the staples as a six-day strike led to food shortages…

Hundreds of people jostled for free vegetables handed out by farmers in a symbolic protest earlier on Wednesday, trampling one man and prompting an outcry over the growing desperation created by economic crisis.

Images of people struggling to seize bags of tomatoes and leeks thrown from a truck dominated television, triggering a bout of soul-searching over the new depths of poverty in the debt-laden country.

“These images make me angry. Angry for a proud people who have no food to eat, who can’t afford to keep warm, who can’t make ends meet,” said Kostas Barkas, a lawmaker from the leftist Syriza party.

Other lawmakers from across the political spectrum decried the images “of people on the brink of despair” and the sense of “sadness for a proud people who have ended up like this“.

People have seen their living standards crumble as the country faces its sixth year of recession that has driven unemployment to record highs.

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

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