(OPINION) Crops are failing all over the globe this summer, but most people don’t even know that this is happening because the big television news channels aren’t talking much about it. Instead, they remain intensely focused on politics day after day.
Without a doubt, the political realm is important, but there should also be plenty of time to discuss a raging global crisis that is going to deeply affect all of us. The food that is not being grown this year is not going to be on our plates next year, but the vast majority of the population doesn’t understand this. They see plenty of food in the stores now and they just assume that everything is going to be okay.
Unfortunately, everything is not going to be okay. Over in the UK, a major British news source is warning of “widespread crop failures across England”… Experts have warned of widespread crop failures across England, as charities and farmers criticized water companies for dithering over hosepipe bans despite drought being declared across much of the country.
So what sort of losses are we talking about? Well, it is now being projected that losses could reach up to 50 percent for a wide variety of crops… Half of the potato crop is expected to fail as it cannot be irrigated, and even crops that are usually drought-tolerant, such as maize, have been failing.
The group was told “irrigation options are diminishing with reservoirs being emptied fast”, and losses of 10-50% are expected for crops including carrots, onions, sugar beet, apples and hops. Milk production is also down nationally because of a lack of food for cows, and wildfires are putting large areas of farmland at risk.
The British are assuming that they will just get enough food to feed their population from someone else. But that is what everyone else is assuming too. As global food supplies get tighter and tighter, the wealthy countries will buy up food at elevated prices, and many poor countries will be left out and will suffer tremendously. Things are even worse in Italy. As I covered the other day, some farmers in Italy have already lost “up to 80% of their harvest”…
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. So where will Italy get enough food to feed its population? Just like the British, the plan is to get it from someone else. But who is someone else going to be?
Here in the United States, agricultural production is going to be way below expectations because of the endless drought that is plaguing about half the country. Just yesterday, I wrote an article about how tomato production is being absolutely devastated in the state of California. READ MORE
