Global Food Crisis

The United Nations Is Sounding The Alarm About The Dramatic Increase In Global Food Prices

Conditions are heading in the direction that we have been anticipating, and that is not good news at all.  Food prices are rising at a very alarming rate, and at this point even the United Nations is sounding the alarm.  Most of my readers remember the global food riots that we witnessed in 2008 and 2011, and if conditions continue to deteriorate we could soon be facing something even worse.  Of course this crisis has not emerged out of a vacuum.  We struggle to feed the entire world even in the best of years, and for a very long time I have been warning that we would eventually be facing extremely painful food prices and serious shortages of food in the poorer areas of the planet.  But those running things just kept assuring us that everything would work out just fine somehow.

Unfortunately, they were wrong.

This week, even the United Nations was forced to admit that we are entering very dangerous territory after global food prices shot up for a 12th month in a row…

A United Nations gauge of world food costs climbed for a 12th straight month in May, its longest stretch in a decade. The continued advance risks accelerating broader inflation, complicating central banks efforts to provide more stimulus.

Drought in key Brazilian growing regions is crippling crops from corn to coffee, and vegetable oil production growth has slowed in Southeast Asia. That’s boosting costs for livestock producers and risks further straining global grain stockpiles that have been depleted by soaring Chinese demand. The surge has stirred memories of 2008 and 2011, when price spikes led to food riots in more than 30 nations.

Sadly, global food inflation appears to be accelerating.  We are being told that last month’s jump in prices was the largest “in more than 10 years”.

Here in the western world, we can just dig a little deeper into our pockets in order to pay our rising grocery bills.

But in the poorest areas of the world, higher prices can mean the difference between eating and not eating.

Things have already gotten so bad that one UN official is warning that we have “very little room for any production shock”…

“We have very little room for any production shock. We have very little room for any unexpected surge in demand in any country,” Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said by phone. “Any of those things could push prices up further than they are now, and then we could start getting worried.”

Of course there are “production shocks” happening all over the globe at this point.  The drought that is crippling agricultural production in Brazil and other South American countries has been absolutely devastating, and yesterday I wrote an entire article about how the endless megadrought in the western half of the United States is forcing some farmers to destroy their crops.

Things are especially dire in California right now.  It is being reported that the reservoirs in the state are “50% lower than normal”, and water levels are dropping much faster than they did during the previous drought…

Temperatures hit triple digits in much of California over the Memorial Day weekend, earlier than expected. State officials were surprised earlier this year when about 500,000 acre feet (61,674 hectare meters) of water they were expecting to flow into reservoirs never showed up. One acre-foot is enough water to supply up to two households for one year.

“In the previous drought, it took (the reservoirs) three years to get this low as they are in the second year of this drought,” Lund said.

California residents may soon be facing draconian water restrictions, and farmers in the state have already been informed that they will be receiving very little or no irrigation water this year depending on where they live.

Without enough water to irrigate their crops, many California farmers won’t be producing much at all this year.

And that is really bad news, because California produces more of our fruits and vegetables than anyone else does by a very wide margin.

What this means is that food prices are going to continue to rise aggressively.

Needless to say, the price of just about everything has been going up these days, and Americans have been doing more Google searches for “inflation” than ever before…

According to Google Trends, searches for the word “inflation” hit the highest level since 2004 between May 9 and May 15. That’s as far back as the data goes. Google charts trends numerically and during that time period interest in “inflation” went all the way up to 100.

In the end, it is just basic economics.

There are way too many dollars chasing way too few goods and services, and my readers knew that this sort of painful inflation was coming in advance.

As inflation rises, our standard of living goes down, and more Americans are being pushed out of the middle class with each passing day.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, poverty and homelessness have been absolutely exploding, and even those that live in wealthy areas are now discovering that this crisis is starting to show up on their doorsteps.

In fact, it appears that Hunter Biden has decided to move out of the luxury home that he was renting in Venice Beach, California because of the epidemic of homelessness that is ravaging that community…

Hunter Biden appears to have moved out of the luxury $5.4 million home he was renting in Venice Beach, California amid a crime and homelessness wave that has hit the beach-front Los Angeles city.

The son of President Joe Biden was reportedly paying $25,000 a month to rent the three-story property on the Venice canals – just a block away from the beach.

But on Monday, DailyMail.com spotted a moving truck outside the palatial home with furniture being loaded into it.

For an idea of what life is like in Venice Beach today, just check out this video.

Once upon a time, Venice Beach was one of the most beautiful locations in the entire country.

Now it has been completely ruined, and the same could be said for much of the rest of the nation.

But if you think that things are bad now, just wait, because the chapters ahead are going to be even more terrifying.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

The Global Famine Begins: UN Announces That The Worst Food Crisis Since World War II Is Happening Right Now

Horse Famine - Public DomainWe always knew that this would start happening.  Earlier this month, I wrote about the severe economic problems that are plaguing South America, but up to this point I have neglected to discuss the horrific famines that are breaking out all over Africa.  Right now there is a desperate need for food in South Sudan, Somalia, northeast Nigeria, Eritrea and Kenya.  And Yemen, even though it is not technically part of Africa, is being affected by many of the same factors that are crippling nations all over eastern Africa.  The United Nations says that more than 20 million people could die from starvation and disease if nothing is done.  When I write about economic collapse, this is the kind of thing that I am talking about, and we are starting to see alarming conditions spread across the globe.  Many believe that we could never possibly face this kind of food crisis in the western world, but unfortunately wishful thinking will only get you so far.

The United Nations was formed in 1945, and the UN has just announced that what we are facing this year is “the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN”.  The following comes from a CNN article entitled “20 million at risk of starvation in world’s largest crisis since 1945, UN says“…

“We stand at a critical point in history. Already at the beginning of the year we are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN,” UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said Friday.

“Now, more than 20 million people across four countries face starvation and famine. Without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death. Many more will suffer and die from disease.”

It would be hard to overstate the level of human suffering that we are witnessing in many parts of Africa at this moment.  In Somalia, the UN estimates that more than 6 million people are in desperate need of food aid…

As Somalia inches closer to a calamitous famine, the prospect of utter devastation and colossal loss of human life is once again becoming an imminent reality. The humanitarian situation in Somalia is deteriorating by the day with up to 6.2 million people in need of urgent aid. People across Somalia have been forced to walk hundreds of miles in search of food, water and shelter- with women and children disproportionately affected. Over 300,000 children under the age of five are severely malnourished, with over 200,000 more children at risk of acute malnutrition.

In South Sudan, close to half the population is in dire need of assistance, and things have gotten so bad there that people will literally eat grass if they can find it…

Across South Sudan more than one million children are believed to be acutely malnourished and UNICEF have said that if urgent aid does not reach them, many of them will die. “There is no food, we eat anything we can find,” one South Sudanese mother told ITV. “We will find grass, we will eat it. That’s just the way it us for us now.”

Over in Yemen, there are about seven million people in need of food help, and authorities are warning that if nothing is done “millions of children” could starve to death…

“The numbers affected are absolutely extraordinary,” said Mark Kaye, Save the Children’s Yemen spokesperson.

“We keep on talking about a country that’s on the brink of famine, but for me these numbers highlight that we’re at the point of no return. If things are not done now we are going to be looking back on this and millions of children will have starved to death, and we’ll all have been aware of this for some time. That will shame us as an international community for years to come.

Eritrea was not specifically included in the recent UN alert, but it should have been.  Much of the country has been hit by a crippling drought, and approximately half of all children in Eritrea are stunted…

But we cannot understand why Eritrea is not included in the appeal. Unicef has confirmed what we know from our friends and families inside the country. In a report in January, the agency said that the El Niño drought has hit half of all Eritrea’s regions. Acute malnutrition is widespread. As Unicef put it: “Malnutrition rates already exceeded emergency levels, with 22,700 children under five projected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2017 … Half of all children in Eritrea are stunted, and as a result, these children are even more vulnerable to malnutrition and disease outbreaks.”

We have been warned that there would be famines in diverse places in these times.  But here in the western world we tend to be lulled into a false sense of security by our comfortable lives, not realizing that the massively inflated standard of living that we have been enjoying has been fueled by the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet.

In Kenya, a national emergency has been declared due to drought and famine.  For those of you that are parents, what would you do if your children were crying out for food but you didn’t have anything to give them?  The following story from Kenya is beyond heartbreaking…

Emmanuel Ayapar is three years old and can no longer walk. The flesh on his legs, which dangle from his mother’s hip as she carries him around, is wasting away.

He seems listless and sad, tongue flicking repeatedly in and out of his mouth.

‘We do not have enough food,’ said Veronica, his 28-year-old mother. ‘We eat only once a day.’

The little boy is suffering from severe malnutrition and is at risk of starving to death. He weighs just 15lb – half the typical weight for a boy of his age.

I don’t even know what to say after that.

In the western world we can be so incredibly self-absorbed that we don’t even realize that children are literally starving to death on the other side of the planet.

Hopefully those of us that live in “wealthy” western countries will step up to the plate and aid those in need, and hopefully this crisis will also help us to understand that we need to prepare for the day when things get difficult in our own nations too.

What Is The Government Preparing For?

UN Vehicle - Jeff SternYou may not be getting prepared for a major national disaster, but the government sure is.  I have been informed that in recent months numerous emergency food companies have been contacted by the government, and they have been told that their inventories could potentially be seized in the event of a significant emergency.  And as you will see below, the government recently participated in an exercise that simulated “an unprecedented global food crisis lasting as long as a decade”.  In addition, NPR has just revealed details about the very secretive Strategic National Stockpile program that is storing billions of dollars worth of medical supplies in warehouses around the nation.  This is a program that most Americans do not even know exists.  On top of everything else, strange reports of military vehicles with UN markings have been coming in from all over the nation.  So what in the world is the government up to?  Why are they working so feverishly hard to get prepared?

Let’s begin our discussion with the Strategic National Stockpile.  According to NPR, there are at least six of these warehouses at various locations around the country, and they are holding at least seven billion dollars worth of supplies…

Thousands of lives might someday depend on this stockpile, which holds all kinds of medical supplies that the officials would need in the wake of a terrorist attack with a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon.

The location of these warehouses is secret. How many there are is secret. (Although a former government official recently said at a public meeting that there are six.) And exactly what’s in them is secret.

“If everybody knows exactly what we have, then you know exactly what you can do to us that we can’t fix,” says Burel. “And we just don’t want that to happen.”

What he will reveal is how much the stockpile is worth: “We currently value the inventory at a little over $7 billion.“

The NPR report indicates that most of the supplies are medical in nature, and this includes “millions of doses of vaccines“.

Could it be possible that the government is anticipating a major pandemic in our near future?

As I mentioned above, the government has also been preparing for a major food crisis.  The following comes from Vice…

The US national security industry is planning for the impact of an unprecedented global food crisis lasting as long as a decade, according to reports by a government contractor.

The studies published by CNA Corporation in December 2015, unreported until now, describe a detailed simulation of a protracted global food crisis from 2020 to 2030.

The simulation, titled ‘Food Chain Reaction’, was a desktop gaming exercise involving the participation of 65 officials from the US, Europe, Africa, India, Brazil, and key multilateral and intergovernmental institutions.

So could we actually see such a major food crisis during the years ahead?

Well, according to Reuters global demand for food has already been surging, and one new report indicates that it won’t be too long before we could see “a doubling of food prices”…

Swelling populations and demand for food combined with ever scarcer water and land resources could lead to a doubling of food prices and trigger civil unrest in some developing countries, a new report says.

Demand for food with a higher environmental impact, such as meat, has surged as emerging countries like China and India grow in size and in wealth, said Martin Halle, policy analyst at Global Footprint Network (GFN).

“A few things are very clear: the demand for food is going up tremendously because of population growth,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Of course it is the job of the government to prepare for various apocalyptic scenarios.  If government officials weren’t planning for how our nation would make it through a major disaster, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs.

But what are we to make of all of the strange sightings of UN vehicles all over America recently?

According to my friend Ray Gano, UN military vehicle activity has recently been reported “in Texas, Mississippi, Arizona, Florida and now in Virginia“.

In particular, a series of photos of white UN military vehicles traveling through Virginia that were posted on Facebook by Jeff Stern has popped up in news stories worldwide.

Is all of this activity unusual?  If so, should we be alarmed by it?  Brandon Turbeville apparently thinks so…

For the past day or so, military convoys have been witnessed traveling both North and South, with lines of equipment ranging from Humvees, troop transport trucks, and tankers to military personnel following the convoy in civilian vehicles. Interestingly enough, many of the soldiers traveling in the convoy were seen wearing helmets, an unusual procedure for a simple convoy. In addition, the convoys were carrying what appeared to be construction equipment.

Although the troop movement may indeed have been a routine convoy and the United Nations vehicles may also have been a routine shipment from a manufacturing facility or even a simple and benign transport, the controversy brewing in the United States elections and the potential for civil unrest, the dangers of economic collapse, and the potential conflict with Russia are all potentials for use of United Nations “peace keepers” inside the United States as many have posited in the past as well as for some type of “martial law” scenario.

The armored UN vehicles that were spotted being transported through Virginia are quite impressive.  Here is some info on them from the Daily Mail…

The VX weighs in at 16,600lbs.

Seating for two plus eight crew.

Windows do not roll down, instead there are locked gun ports on the vehicle that can be opened to shoot bullets out or accept documents in and are even big enough to pass through a can of soda.

In addition, these heavily armored vehicles are designed to withstand a gas attack and to be impervious to small arms fire…

Internal fans can keep bad air out, such as in the event of a gas attack, or bring fresh air in when reversed.

PA system to speak to the outside world.

Remote-controlled spotlights on the roof and pairs of red and blue strobe lights are mounted to each four sides of the vehicle.

Every window on the vehicle is filled with ballistic glass that’ll shed small arms fire like they’re pebbles and even resist a close-range shot from a high-powered rifle.

Each vehicle has nine gun ports, and so when they are fully manned they can lay down a very impressive field of fire.

At the end of the day, I don’t know what all of this means.

Everything that I just detailed could just be part of normal government activity that is simply receiving some unusual attention right now.

Or of course it could also be possible that the government is getting prepared for something really big, but even if they were, they would not tell us in advance anyway.

Personally, I am convinced that this period of time leading up to the election will be highly chaotic in America, and so my eyebrows definitely perked up when I came across these various news stories.

But ultimately the significance of all of this will be determined by what happens during the weeks and months to come.  Without a doubt things have become much more serious in this nation lately, and I have a feeling that they are about to get a whole lot more serious…

Are You Ready For The Price Of Food To More Than Double By The End Of This Decade?

Supermarket - Photo by AbrahamiDo you think that the price of food is high now?  Just wait.  If current trends continue, many of the most common food items that Americans buy will cost more than twice as much by the end of this decade.  Global demand for food continues to rise steadily as crippling droughts ravage key agricultural regions all over the planet.  You see, it isn’t just the multi-year California drought that is affecting food prices.  Down in Brazil (one of the leading exporters of food in the world), the drought has gotten so bad that 142 cities were rationing water at one point earlier this year.  And outbreaks of disease are also having a significant impact on our food supply.  A devastating pig virus that has never been seen in the U.S. before has already killed up to 6 million pigs.  Even if nothing else bad happens (and that is a very questionable assumption to make), our food prices are going to be moving aggressively upward for the foreseeable future.  But what if something does happen?  In recent years, global food reserves have dipped to extremely low levels, and a single major global event (war, pandemic, terror attack, planetary natural disaster, etc.) could create an unprecedented global food crisis very rapidly.

A professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University named Timothy Richards has calculated what the drought in California is going to do to produce prices at our supermarkets in the near future.  His projections are quite sobering…

  • Avocados likely to go up 17  to 35 cents to as much as $1.60 each.
  • Berries likely to rise 21 to 43 cents to as much as $3.46 per clamshell container.
  • Broccoli likely to go up 20 to 40 cents to a possible $2.18 per pound.
  • Grapes likely to rise 26 to 50 cents to a possible $2.93 per pound.
  • Lettuce likely to rise 31 to 62 cents to as much as $2.44 per head.
  • Packaged salad likely to go up 17 to 34 cents to a possible $3.03 per bag.
  • Peppers likely to go up 18 to 35 cents to a possible $2.48 per pound.
  • Tomatoes likely to rise 22 to 45 cents to a possible $2.84 per pound.

So what happens if the drought does not end any time soon?

Scientist Lynn Ingram, who has studied the climate history of the state of California extensively, told CBS News that we could potentially be facing “a century-long megadrought” in California.  If that does indeed turn out to be the case, we could be facing huge price increases for produce year after year.

And it isn’t just crops that are grown in the United States that we need to be concerned about.  As NBC News recently reported, the price of cocoa is absolutely soaring and that is going to mean much higher prices for chocolate…

As cocoa prices surge to near-record highs on demand for emerging markets, chocoholics brace for a hike in price – and maybe even a different taste, as chocolate makers hunt out cheaper ingredients.

Cocoa futures are up 10 percent so far this year, hitting almost £1,900 on ($3,195) a ton in March. Last year prices rose 20 percent.

In fact, experts are now warning that chocolate may soon become a “high-end luxury item” because it is becoming so expensive.

Meat prices are also starting to spiral out of control.

A virus known as porcine epidemic diarrhea has pushed pork prices up to new all-time record highs.  It has already spread to 27 states, and as I mentioned above, it has already killed up to 6 million pigs.  It is being projected that U.S. pork production will decline by about 7 percent this year as a result, and Americans could end up paying up to 20 percent more for pork by the end of the year.

The price of beef has also soared to a brand new all-time record high.  Due to the drought that never seems to let up in the western half of the country, the total size of the U.S. cattle herd has been declining for seven years in a row, and it is now the smallest that is has been since 1951.

If the overall price of food in this country increases by just an average of a little more than 12 percent a year, it will double by the end of this decade.

What would you do if you suddenly walked into the grocery store and everything was twice as much?

That is a frightening thing to think about.

Meanwhile, all of our other bills just keep going up as well.  For example, we just learned that the price of electricity hit a brand new all-time record high for the month of March.

If our incomes were keeping up with all of these price increases, that would be one thing.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  As I wrote about earlier this week, the quality of our jobs continues to go down and more Americans fall out of the middle class every single day.

According to CNBC, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans with college degrees that are working for minimum wage right now…

While a college degree might help get a job, it doesn’t necessarily mean a good salary. According to a report released last month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 260,000 workers with bachelor’s degrees and 200,000 workers with associate’s degrees are making the minimum wage.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and the minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour. Some cities and states have recently raised their minimum wage, but the BLS report defines only those making $7.25 an hour or less as “minimum wage workers.”

And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has dropped for five years in a row.

This is why so many families are financially stressed these days.  The cost of living is going up at a steady pace, but for the most part our paychecks are not keeping up.  Average Americans are having to stretch their money farther than ever, and many families have reached the breaking point.

So what is going on in your neck of the woods?  Are you starting to see prices rise at the grocery stores where you live?  Please feel free to join the discussion by leaving a comment below…