(OPINION) In 2015, UN officials established a goal of completely eliminating global hunger by the year 2030. Needless to say, they have failed dramatically.
According to the UN, someone is dying from starvation “every few seconds” as the global food crisis continues to accelerate. Unfortunately, experts agree that what we are experiencing right now is just the beginning, because land is being degraded at a staggering pace.
As you will see below, 40 percent of the world’s land is already degraded, and it is expected that figure will reach 95 percent by 2050. Here in the western world, we can still use various methods to temporarily improve the quality of our soil, but the head of the UN World Food Program says that in some of the poorest parts of the planet we have already reached a point where there are “zero harvests” left…
Droughts and flooding have become so common in some of the poorest places on Earth that the land can no longer sustain crops, the director of the World Food Programme’s global office has said.
Martin Frick told the BBC that some of the most deprived areas had now reached a tipping point of having “zero” harvests left, as extreme weather was pushing already degraded land beyond use.
He said that as a result, parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America were now dependent on humanitarian aid. Sadly, it won’t be too long before most of the land in wealthier nations is degraded too.
According to an article that was posted by the BBC last week, it is being projected that “95% of the world’s land could become degraded by 2050″…
The Global Environment Facility estimates that 95% of the world’s land could become degraded by 2050. The UN says that 40% is already degraded.
When soil degrades, the organic matter that binds it together dies off. This means that it is less able to support plant life – reducing crop yields – and absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
So what happens when 95 percent of all global land is degraded? We are done. According to the chief science officer of environmental group Save Soil, when we get to that point “it’s going to be like Mad Max”…
“It’s going to be disaster for human beings,” Praveena Sridhar, chief science officer of environmental group Save Soil, said. “It’s going to be like Mad Max.”
She added: “There will be no humanity. There will be no charity. There will be no fairness… The only thing that lets you be will be survival.”
She is right. I have been trying to warn about this for years, but when I write about soil it doesn’t tend to get much attention.
If you want to get an idea of what our future will be like, just look at what is happening in Sudan right now. It is being estimated that 5 percent of the entire population of the country could starve to death by the end of 2024…
As of now, more than half of the country’s 45 million people urgently need humanitarian assistance. In May, the United Nations warned that 18 million Sudanese are “acutely hungry” including 3.6 million children who are “acutely malnourished.” The western region of Darfur, where the threat is greatest, is nearly cut off from humanitarian aid. According to one projection, as much as five percent of Sudan’s population could die of starvation by the end of the year.
In previous articles, I have described how some people in Sudan are literally using water to roll dirt into a ball and then eating it just to have something in their stomachs.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is warning that in Darfur and Kordofan alone more than 2.5 million people could perish by the end of the month of September…
The Ethiopian famine killed a million people between 1983 and 1985, according to UN estimates. Thomas-Greenfield said that in a worst-case scenario, a famine in Sudan could become even more lethal.
“We’ve seen mortality projections estimating that in excess of 2.5 million people, about 15% of the population in Darfur and Kordofan – the hardest hit regions – could die by the end of September,” the ambassador said.
“This is the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet. And yet, somehow, it threatens to get worse,” she added.
But hardly anyone in the western world even knows this is happening, and that is because the big media outlets are deeply focused on other matters.
In addition to the catastrophic decline of the quality of our soil, global food production is also being threatened by absolutely insane weather patterns.
In Mexico, an all-time record for the entire country was broken last week when the temperature in the Sonoran Desert hit a whopping 125 degrees…
Last week, Mexico recorded the hottest day in its history, scientists have stated, with temperatures in the Sonoran Desert hitting 125 degrees.
These extraordinary temperatures, measured by Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at Climate Central, were part of a deadly heat wave that has swept across Mexico, Central America and the Southwestern United States, killing 125 people.
Here in the United States, the “largest” dust storm that our scientists have ever seen just ripped through the state of New Mexico…
All eyes were on New Mexico Wednesday as a unique weather event swept through the region, enveloping many cities across the state in a thick brown haze momentarily.
The dust storm, also known as a “haboob” hit New Mexico and northern Mexico, carving 200-mile path through the area in seconds, according to satellite video footage obtained by USA TODAY.
Scientists in the area were more surprised by the haboob’s size than by its pace, with a couple revealing on social media that it was the “largest” dust storm they had ever witnessed.
For a long time we have been warned that Dust Bowl conditions would be returning, and now it is happening.
In the Midwest, they are facing a different sort of a problem. “Catastrophic flooding” has hit the region, and this is causing tremendous chaos in farming communities all over the heartland of America…
In Rock Valley, Iowa, all homes north of Highway 18 were evacuated amid high floodwaters Saturday. “I cannot even believe what I’m seeing right now,” said Daniel Heitritter, who evacuated his neighborhood in Spencer on Saturday.
As water in his home reached shin-deep, he flagged down a boat to come pick him, his wife and cat up, he said. On Saturday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds issued a disaster proclamation for 21 counties in northwest Iowa and directed all available state resources to assist Rock Valley and other communities in response to “catastrophic flooding.” (READ MORE)
