(OPINION) There isn’t going to be enough food for everyone this year. We have been waiting for the nightmarish global food crisis that so many have warned us about, but we don’t have to wait for it anymore because it is already here.
Millions upon millions of people around the globe will be desperately hungry tonight, but what we are experiencing right now is just the tip of the iceberg because things will be so much worse by the end of 2022. If you don’t want to believe me, hopefully, you will believe some of the experts that I quote in this article.
For example, the CEO of Gro Intelligence just told the UN Security Council that we are facing a “seismic” crisis that will reach an extremely painful phase in about 10 weeks…
The world has only 10 weeks’ worth of wheat left to deal with the crisis, according to Sara Menker, CEO of Gro Intelligence. “This is seismic,” Menker said during a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council. “Even if the war were to end tomorrow, our food security problem isn’t going away anytime soon without concerted action.”
Of course, many others are issuing similar warnings. A top aide to Vladimir Putin named Maksim Oreshkin says that a worldwide famine “will occur closer to autumn”… “It is important that in the conditions, for example, of a global famine that will occur closer to autumn, by the end of this year all over the world, Russia should not suffer, but be fully provided with food,” Oreshkin said.
On the other side of the conflict, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is warning that the war in his nation is going to have a catastrophic impact all over the globe…
“Russia has blocked almost all ports and all, so to speak, maritime opportunities to export food – our grain, barley, sunflower and more. A lot of things,” Zelenskyy said Saturday. “There will be a crisis in the world. The second crisis after the energy one, which was provoked by Russia.”
“Now it will create a food crisis if we do not unblock the routes for Ukraine, do not help the countries of Africa, Europe, Asia, which need these food products,” he added.
Let me give you one more source. The head of the UN World Food Program is telling us that global food shortages are “worse” than anything that we witnessed back in 2011…
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, David Beasley, executive director at the UN World Food Programme, warned the world’s food security conditions are “worse” than what was observed during Arab Spring over a decade ago.
He is particularly concerned about the lack of exports from Ukraine, because that country “normally feeds 400 million people”… “What happens when you take a nation [Ukraine] that normally feeds 400 million people and sideline that … it’s devastating to global food security,” he warned.
This crisis is very real, and it is going to affect every man, woman, and child on the entire planet. The truth is that we were heading toward a horrifying global food crisis even before the war in Ukraine erupted, and that is because fertilizer prices have gone absolutely crazy.
Of course, the war has made things even worse because Russia alone normally accounts for approximately 20 percent of all global nitrogen fertilizer exports. And it would be extremely difficult to overstate the importance of nitrogen fertilizer…
In fact, according to noted Canadian energy researcher Vaclav Smil, two-fifths of humanity –more than three billion people—are alive because of nitrogen fertilizer, the main ingredient in the Green Revolution that supercharged the agricultural sector in the 1960s.
The chemical fertilizer trifecta that tripled global grain production—nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)—enabled the greatest human population growth the planet has ever seen. Now, it is in short supply, and farmers, fertilizer companies, and governments around the globe are scrambling to avert a seemingly inevitable tumble in crop yields.
“I’m not sure it’s possible any more to avoid a food crisis,” says World Farmers’ Organization President Theo de Jager. “The question is how wide and deep it will be. Most importantly, farmers need peace. And peace needs farmers.” Here in the United States, soaring fertilizer prices are putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress of our farmers. READ MORE
