“Fifty million people in 45 countries [are] knocking on famine’s door,” he told the outlet. “If we don’t reach these people, you will have famine, starvation, destabilization of nations unlike anything we saw in 2007-2008 and 2011, and you will have mass migration.”
A growing hunger crisis risks “famine, starvation” and the “destabilization of nations,” the head of the World Food Program warned
Around 50 million people are now on the brink of famine, while even greater numbers face other forms of food insecurity, according to UN food chief David Beasley.
He warned of global “chaos” and unrest if nations fail to resolve major shortages in fuel, grain, fertilizer, and other essential goods in food production.
Speaking to the Associated Press for an interview on Thursday, Beasley urged donor countries and private philanthropists to take action to prevent a catastrophic hunger crisis amid ongoing shortages, stating there would be “chaos all over the world” otherwise.
“Fifty million people in 45 countries [are] knocking on famine’s door,” he told the outlet. “If we don’t reach these people, you will have famine, starvation, destabilization of nations unlike anything we saw in 2007-2008 and 2011, and you will have mass migration.”
If we don’t get on top of this quickly – and I don’t mean next year, I mean this year – you will have a food availability problem in 2023. And that’s going to be hell.
While the World Food Program director said a total of around 80 million people faced some level of food insecurity when he took the job in 2017, that figure has since ballooned to 345 million thanks to a series of causes – what Beasley called “a perfect storm on top of a perfect storm.” Among other factors, he cited the lingering economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic and related shutdown measures, as well as significant supply chain issues caused by the conflict still raging in Ukraine and retaliatory sanctions imposed by the West.
Grain shipments from both Ukraine and Russia, which typically export enough goods to feed hundreds of millions of people, have fallen sharply amid the fighting, as have fertilizer exports from Russia, the world’s second-largest producer behind China. Economic sanctions and outright embargoes on Russian products have also exacerbated the issue, though some countries, including the United States, have made exceptions to compensate for shortages.
Beasley went on to explain that the world produces enough food for the global population of some 7.7 billion but said farmers can only achieve the proper yields using fertilizer, which has struggled to reach world markets. Without it, he predicted “havoc” around the globe, particularly in Asia, where he said, “rice production is at a critical state right now.”
The official called on Gulf nations, in particular, to “step up” contributions to the food program, noting that some countries have reaped major financial gains due to soaring oil prices.
“We’re not talking about asking for a trillion dollars here. We’re just talking about asking for a few days’ worth of your profits to stabilize the world,” he said, adding “Even if you don’t give it to me, even if you don’t give it to the World Food Program, get in the game… People are suffering and dying around the world. When a child dies every five seconds from hunger – shame on us.”
In December 2013 President Viktor Yanukovych had announced following months of debate that Ukraine would join the Russian Eurasian Economic Union on the promise of a $15 billion Russian purchase of Ukraine’s state debt and a 33% reduction in the cost of imported Russian gas.
The competing offer had been a paltry “associate membership” in the EU tied to Ukraine’s acceptance of a draconian IMF and World Bank loan package that would force the privatization of Ukraine’s invaluable agricultural land, allow the planting of GMO crops, as well as imposing severe pension cuts and social austerity. In return for a $17 billion IMF loan, Ukraine would also have to raise personal income taxes by as much as 66% and pay 50% more for natural gas. Workers would have to work ten years longer to get pensions. The aim was to open Ukraine to “foreign investment.” The usual IMF rape of the economy on behalf of globalist corporate interests.
The Washington-imposed IMF loan conditions required that Ukraine also reverse its ban on genetically engineered crops, and enable private corporations like Monsanto to plant its GMO seeds and spray the fields with Monsanto’s Roundup.
Monsanto, DuPont, Cargill, and other Western GMO purveyors secretly and illegally began spreading their patented GMO seeds in the black earth of Ukraine. Small landowners would lease their land to large Ukrainian oligarchs, who in turn would enter secret agreements with Monsanto and others to plant GMO corn and soybeans.
A great humanitarian uproar in recent weeks demanding the safe shipping of Ukrainian grain to ease a hunger crisis in Africa and elsewhere is deceptive on many levels.
Not the least is who owns the land on which the grain is grown and whether that grain is actually illegal GMO patented corn and other grains. A corrupt Zelenskyy regime has quietly made deals with the major GMO agribusiness companies in the West who have been stealthily taking control of some of the world’s most productive “black earth” farmland.
The 2014 CIA Coup
In February 2014 a US Government-backed coup d’etat forced the elected president of Ukraine to flee for his life to Russia. In December 2013 President Viktor Yanukovych had announced following months of debate that Ukraine would join the Russian Eurasian Economic Union on the promise of a $15 billion Russian purchase of Ukraine’s state debt and a 33% reduction in the cost of imported Russian gas.
The competing offer had been a paltry “associate membership” in the EU tied to Ukraine’s acceptance of a draconian IMF and World Bank loan package that would force the privatization of Ukraine’s invaluable agricultural land, allow the planting of GMO crops, as well as imposing severe pension cuts and social austerity. In return for a $17 billion IMF loan, Ukraine would also have to raise personal income taxes by as much as 66% and pay 50% more for natural gas. Workers would have to work ten years longer to get pensions. The aim was to open Ukraine to “foreign investment.” The usual IMF rape of the economy on behalf of globalist corporate interests.
A key provision of the US and IMF demands on the post-coup government of US-picked Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk , a leader of the CIA-backed Maiden protests against Yanukovych, was to finally open Ukraine’s rich agricultural land to foreign Agribusiness giants, above all GMO giants including Monsanto and DuPont. Three of the Yatsenyuk cabinet , including the key Finance and Economy ministers, were foreign nationals, dictated to Kiev by the US State Department’s Victoria Nuland and then-Vice President Joe Biden. The Washington-imposed IMF loan conditions required that Ukraine also reverse its ban on genetically engineered crops, and enable private corporations like Monsanto to plant its GMO seeds and spray the fields with Monsanto’s Roundup.
Since Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, keeping control of Ukraine’s precious “black earth” land has been one of the most heated issues in national politics. Recent polls show that 79% of Ukrainians want to retain control of their land from a foreign takeover. Ukraine, like southern Russia, is home to valuable black earth or chernozems, a dark, humus-rich soil that is very productive and needs little artificial fertilizer.
2001 Moratorium
A 2001 Ukraine law imposed a moratorium on the private sale of farmland to larger companies or foreign investors. The moratorium was to halt buy-up by corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs and their leasing to foreign agribusiness of the rich farmlands. By then Monsanto and other Western agribusiness had made significant inroads into Ukraine.
When Ukraine left the Soviet Union in 1991, farmers who had worked on the Soviet collective farms were each given small plots of land. To prevent the sale of the plots to hungry foreign agribusiness, the 2001 moratorium was voted. Seven million Ukrainian farmers owned small plots totaling some 79 million acres. The remaining 25 million acres were owned by the state. The cultivation of GMO crops was strictly illegal.
Despite the moratorium, Monsanto, DuPont, Cargill, and other Western GMO purveyors secretly and illegally began spreading their patented GMO seeds in the black earth of Ukraine. Small landowners would lease their land to large Ukrainian oligarchs, who in turn would enter secret agreements with Monsanto and others to plant GMO corn and soybeans. By the end of 2016 according to a now-deleted US Department of Agriculture report, about 80% of Ukraine’s soybeans, and 10% of corn, were grown illegally from genetically modified seeds. The Zelenskyy 2021 law has allowed this open door to GMOs to be vastly expanded.
Enter the Comedian
In May 2019 Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Ukrainian TV comedian, a protégé of notoriously corrupt Ukraine oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky, was elected President in a tragic popular revolt “against government corruption.” One of Zelenskyy’s first acts in 2019 was to try to overturn the 2001 land moratorium. Farmers and citizens staged huge protests throughout 2020 to block the changes proposed by Zelenskyy.
Finally, taking advantage of the covid lockdown restrictions and bans on public protests, in May 2021 Zelenskyy signed Bill No. 2194, deregulating land, calling it the “key” to the “farmland market.” He was right. In a sneaky move to calm farmer opposition, Zelensky claimed the new law allows only Ukrainian citizens to buy or sell valuable farmland in the first few years. He did not mention the huge loophole allowing foreign-owned companies like Monsanto (today part of Bayer AG) or DuPont (now Corteva), or other companies which have been operating in Ukraine for more than three years, to also buy the desired land.
The 2021 law also gave ownership to notoriously corrupt municipal and village governments who can change the land purpose. After January 2024 Ukraine citizens, as well as corporations, can buy up to 10,000 hectares of land. And an April 2021 amendment to the land market law– “On Amendments to the Land Code of Ukraine and other Legislative Acts concerning the improvement of the management system and deregulation in the field of land relations”– opened another huge loophole for foreign agribusiness to take control of the rich Ukraine black earth. The amendment circumvents the ban on the sale of land to foreigners by changing the purpose of the land, say from cropland to commercial land. Then it can be sold to anyone, including foreigners who can in turn repurpose it to farmland. Zelenskyy signed the bill and went back on his campaign pledge to hold a national referendum on any change in land ownership.
Should there be any doubt as to interest of US GMO-linked agribusiness in grabbing Ukraine prime farmland, a look at the current Board of Directors of the US-Ukraine Business Council is instructive. It includes the largest private grain and agribusiness giant in the world, Cargill. It includes Monsanto/Bayer which owns patented GMO seeds and the deadly pesticide, Roundup. It includes Corteva, the huge GMO fusion of DuPont and Dow Chemicals. It includes fellow grain cartel giants Bunge and Louis Dreyfus. It includes the major farm equipment maker John Deere.
These were the powerful agribusiness corporations reportedly behind Zelenskyy’s betrayal of his election promise.
With Bayer/Monsanto, Corteva and Cargill already controlling a reported 16.7 million hectares of prime Ukraine black earth farmland, and with a de facto bribe from the IMF and World Bank, Zelenskyy’s government caved in and sold out. The result will be very bad for the future of what was until recently the “breadbasket of Europe.” With Ukraine now being pried open by the GMO cartel companies, it leaves only Russia which banned GMO crops in 2016 as the only major world grain supplier without GMO. The EU is reportedly working on a new law that would overturn the long-established critical approval process for GMO crops and open the floodgates there to the GMO takeover.
Posh British supermarkets Waitrose and Marks & Spencer have been forced to beef up their security staff… to save their bacon.
It seems the upmarket chains were losing ‘thousands of pounds worth of stock’ every week thanks to hamburglars beating it with their meat. Shoplifting is hardly a new problem, says town manager Robyn Bunyan (who did not mince his words). It was hardly rare before but has been well done in recent months due to lax policing and emboldened criminals, with coppers not having time to grill their suspects. But most of all it’s because of soaring prices bringing out the wurst in people. Quite literally, the steaks have never been higher.
I guess you could say the guards are on a steak out.
At least 38% of the grain exported from Ukraine under the UN-brokered deal is shipped to the EU instead of the developing countries in Africa for which it was intended, Spain’s El Pais newspaper reported on Thursday, citing UN data and ship tracking figures.
According to the report, more than 2.3 million tons of corn, wheat, barley and other agricultural products were exported through the Black Sea corridor from Ukraine between August 1 and September 7. Of this total, about 900,000 tons were sent to the ports of EU member states. The report notes that it is impossible to trace from the available data whether the EU is the final destination of the shipments or a transit point.
On July 22, multilateral agreements were signed in Istanbul establishing the framework of exports of Ukrainian grain, food, and fertilizers via the Black Sea. The agreements also lifted restrictions on Russian grain and fertilizer exports. However, according to Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, the part of the food deal that concerns the export of Russian products has not been implemented, which could lead to the termination of the deal by Moscow.
Speaking at a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Western nations of lying when they claimed Ukraine needed access to sea shipping to alleviate surging food prices and the risk of famine in poor countries, as a lion’s share of the grain is being exported to Western states. In his remark earlier on Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sided with the Russian leader, saying that Ukrainian grain is “unfortunately” going mostly to rich countries.
As the Russian leader said, only two vessels were loaded under the UN’s global food program, which particularly implies assistance to those countries most in need
VLADIVOSTOK, September 7. /TASS/. Almost all grain delivered from Ukraine is gone to EU countries, not the poorest nations, to which only two vessels out of 87 have been sent, President Vladimir Putin said at a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) on Wednesday.
“Excluding Turkey as a mediating country, almost all grain supplied from Ukraine has been sent not to developing and poorest countries, but to the European Union countries,” he said.
“Only two vessels were loaded under the UN’s global food program, which particularly implies the assistance to those countries most in need. I should note: only two out of 87. They carried 60,000 tonnes of food from 2 mln tonnes, which means only 3% sent to developing countries,” Putin added.
The president believes the volume of food to be supplied from Ukraine to developing countries should have been defined as the grain deal was concluded. “Unfortunately, those documents do not mention the volume of food, including that supplied from Ukraine, to be delivered to developing countries,” he said, noting that the grain deal was concluded “under the pretext of ensuring the interests of poorest countries to prevent famine there.”
In yet another truly astonishing announcement that demonstrates the desperation of this hour, German steelmaker ArcelorMittal, one of the largest steel production facilities in Europe, has shuttered operations due to high energy prices. (See their announcement here, in German.)
“With gas and electricity prices increasing tenfold within just a few months, we are no longer competitive in a market that is 25% supplied by imports,” said CEO Reiner Blaschek.
This comes after announced closures of aluminum smelters, copper smelters, and ammonia production plants over the last few weeks. Ammonia — necessary for fertilizer — is now 70% offline in the EU.
Adding to the misery, in just the last 24 hours, Russia announced a complete ban on natural gas exports to Europe until the West’s economic sanctions are lifted. This means the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is now shuttered for the foreseeable future, since delusional NATO countries are incapable of correcting their errors and backing down from Russia.
With steel and other industrial metals also offline, one wonders how Western Europe is supposed to function over the next six months of winter:
No steel = No industry (or industry jobs)
No fertilizer = No food
No natural gas = No electricity or heat
In essence, three of the pillars that allow a modern society to function are being severely crippled by economic sanctions and sky-high energy prices across Europe.
And it’s only the first week of September. The cold weather hasn’t even arrived yet. No matter how much natural gas is already stored for the winter, Europeans are facing both sky-high costs and scarcity on a level that hasn’t been experienced since World War II.
There simply isn’t enough energy available to power European cities and heat all the buildings this winter, and there’s not enough food in the pipeline to feed everyone in 2023, either.
Take that, Putin!
California’s rolling blackouts may begin today
The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting today that rolling blackouts may begin in California this evening. There’s simply not enough electricity to meet demand, so thousands of homes and businesses are going to be forcefully disconnected from the power grid. This is after the state begging electric vehicle owners to avoid charging their EVs from 4 – 9 pm. (Question: What happens if millions more Californians buy electric vehicles and plug them in?)
Via the Chronicle:
State officials anticipate needing 48,817 megawatts of electricity Monday, which would leave the state with a 2,000 to 4,000 megawatt deficit, according to the California Independent System Operator.
Ruh-roh. It turns out that dismantling the power grid infrastructure in order to appease left-wing greenies doesn’t keep the lights on. This must be incredibly confusing to the Leftists, given that they thought if all fossil fuels were shut down, a magical utopia would spontaneously emerge. Instead, they’ll be burning candles, cranking wind-up radios and crapping in buckets when the water towers run dry due to lack of electricity for the water pumps.
To combat the rising prices of electricity and food, Gov. Newsom has just signed a bill requiring fast food restaurants to pay as much as $22 / hour to workers. This is going to bankrupt many restaurants in California, worsening the lack of food options and job opportunities for locals. Via the WSJ:
“You can’t charge enough for food to offset what will happen from a labor perspective,” said Greg Flynn, president of Flynn Restaurant Group, which operates franchise brands in 44 states and owns 105 restaurants in California.
Mr. Flynn says he donated to Newsom’s political campaigns. It turns out you always get the tyranny you support. As long as oblivious Californians keep voting for Democrats, they’re going to continue collapsing into destitution and authoritarianism.
Where are all the people in Jackson, Mississippi crapping?
Don’t forget that the entire municipal water system has failed in Jackson, Mississippi, meaning there’s no water to flush toilets. It begs the question: Where are all the people crapping there?
If they’re crapping in the toilets, they have to hand-carry water to flush them. Where are they getting all that water?
Or maybe they’re crapping in buckets and tossing the contents in the back yard. That’s going to create a nightmare for the Health Dept and some interesting conversations among neighbors, especially when it rains again.
How are businesses functioning in the city if there are no working toilets? When locals need to get together for a meeting, do they ask to meet at the corner of Cholera and E.Coli? Seriously, at what point does all the feces become a public health issue reminiscent of a collapsed Third World nation like Haiti?
It’s all breaking down
All by design, globalists are decimating the pillars of civilization in order to cause collapse and depopulation. They are attacking:
Food
Energy
Health (vaccines, bioweapons)
Supply chains
Finance
Elections (massive rigging / mules)
Liberty and self-defense
Weather / geoengineering
The overarching goal is to exterminate the vast majority of the human population, then enslave the survivors.
The oblivious masses are going along with it, having no clue that if they took multiple covid jabs, they’re probably already dead.
Learn more in today’s hard-hitting Situation Update podcast:
“Although there have been several high-profile and large-scale protests during the first half of 2022, the worst is undoubtedly yet to come,” the firm warned.
Soaring food, energy, and shelter inflation have led to what could be a new era of civil unrest worldwide. Pockets of unrest have been observed in Sri Lanka, Peru, Kenya, Ecuador, Iran, and Europe. New research forecasts a broader wave of discontent is just ahead.
Earlier this year, Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv warned that a “massive, immediate food crisis” is nearing. The UN said this summer that the world is “marching towards starvation” with an increased likelihood of civil unrest and political violence.
Making sense of the impending global turmoil is Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consulting and intelligence firm. They have just published an updated version of the Civil Unrest Index (CUI), covering seven years of data, showing the last quarter saw the most countries ever since the index was created move higher in civil unrest risks (101 of the 198 countries tracked by the firm saw increased risks of civil unrest, while only 42 experienced reduced risks).
“The impact is evident across the globe, with popular discontent over rising living costs emerging on the streets of developed and emerging markets alike, stretching from the EU, Sri Lanka, Peru to Kenya, Ecuador, and Iran, ” Verisk wrote in the report, adding conditions are worsening as the frequency of protests and labor strikes could accelerate into fall.
“Although there have been several high-profile and large-scale protests during the first half of 2022, the worst is undoubtedly yet to come,” the firm warned.
Verisk noted Algeria has the highest likelihood of projected civil unrest over the next half year because of rising inflation. Other areas include Europe, mainly due to energy hyperinflation decimating household finances.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, and Ukraine are all among the states with the biggest projected increases in risk,” the report said.
“Only a significant reduction in global food and energy prices can arrest the negative global trend in civil unrest risk. Recession fears are mounting, and inflation is expected to be worse in 2023 than in 2022,” Verisk said.
The question remains if central banks can arrest inflation with the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades. If not, then Verisk expects: “the next six months are likely to be even more disruptive” than earlier this year.
The rest of us are reducing our food expenditure because we cannot afford it. Oh, the life of privilege.
Someone is voting in these elitist dunces. The media, owned by elites, tells the common citizen who to vote for. The poor citizen votes for them out of fear and ignorance. Perfect formula. And we get a petulant fart for Premier.
If Justin would spend this much of our money on groceries, what would he spend on a non-disclosure agreement? pic.twitter.com/mt0QyXTFMX
In March 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.
Guterres said food, fuel and fertiliser prices were skyrocketing with supply chains being disrupted and added this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.
We see an abundance of food but skyrocketing prices. The issue is not food shortage but speculation on food commodities and the manipulation of an inherently flawed global food system that serves the interests of corporate agribusiness traders and suppliers of inputs at the expense of people’s needs and genuine food security.
The war in Ukraine is a geopolitical trade and energy conflict. It is largely about the US engaging in a proxy war against Russia and Europe by attempting to separate Europe from Russia and imposing sanctions on Russia to harm Europe and make it further dependent on the US.
Economist Professor Michael Hudson recently stated that ultimately the war is against Europe and Germany. The purpose of the sanctions is to prevent Europe and other allies from increasing their trade and investment with Russia and China.
Neoliberal policies since the 1980s have hollowed out the US economy. With its productive base severely weakened, the only way for the US to maintain hegemony is to undermine China and Russia and weaken Europe.
Hudson says that beginning a year ago, Biden and the US neocons attempted to block Nord Stream 2 and all (energy) trade with Russia so that the US could monopolise it itself.
Despite the ‘green agenda’ currently being pushed, the US still relies on fossil fuel-based energy to project its power abroad. Even as Russia and China move away from the dollar, the control and pricing of oil and gas (and resulting debt) in dollars remains key to US attempts to retain hegemony.
The US knew beforehand how sanctions on Russia would play out. They would serve to divide the world into two blocks and fuel a new cold war with the US and Europe on one side with China and Russia being the two main countries on the other.
US policymakers knew Europe would be devastated by higher energy and food prices and food importing countries in the Global South would suffer due to rising costs.
It is not the first time the US has engineered a major crisis to maintain global hegemony and a spike in key commodity prices that effectively trap countries into dependency and debt.
In 2009, Andrew Gavin Marshall described how in 1973 – not long after coming off the gold standard – Henry Kissinger was integral to manipulating events in the Middle East (the Arab-Israeli war and the ‘energy crisis’). This served to continue global hegemony for the US, which had virtually bankrupted itself due to its war in Vietnam and had been threatened by the economic rise of Germany and Japan.
Kissinger helped secure huge OPEC oil price rises and thus sufficient profits for Anglo-American oil companies that had over-leveraged themselves in North Sea oil. He also cemented the petrodollar system with the Saudis and subsequently placed African nations, which had embarked on a path of (oil-based) industrialisation, on a treadmill of dependency and debt due to the spike in oil prices.
It is widely believed that the high-priced oil policy was aimed at hurting Europe, Japan, and the developing world.
Today, the US is again waging a war on vast swathes of humanity, whose impoverishment is intended to ensure they remain dependent on the US and the financial institutions it uses to create dependency and indebtedness – the World Bank and IMF.
Hundreds of millions will experience (are experiencing) poverty and hunger due to US policy. These people (the ones that the US and Pfizer et al supposedly cared so much about and wanted to get a jab into each of their arms) are regarded with contempt and collateral damage in the great geopolitical game.
Contrary to what many believe, the US has not miscalculated the outcome of the sanctions placed on Russia. Michael Hudson notes energy prices are increasing, benefiting US oil companies and US balance of payments as an energy exporter. Moreover, by sanctioning Russia, the aim is to curtail Russian exports (of wheat and gas used for fertiliser production) and for agricultural commodity prices to therefore increase. This too will also benefit the US as an agricultural exporter.
This is how the US seeks to maintain dominance over other countries.
Current policies are designed to create a food and debt crisis for poorer nations especially. The US can use this debt crisis to force countries to continue privatising and selling off their public assets in order to service the debts to pay for the higher oil and food imports.
This imperialist strategy comes on the back of ‘COVID relief’ loans which have served a similar purpose. In 2021, an Oxfam review of IMF COVID-19 loans showed that 33 African countries were encouraged to pursue austerity policies. The world’s poorest countries are due to pay $43 billion in debt repayments in 2022, which could otherwise cover the costs of their food imports.
Oxfam and Development Finance International have also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totaling $183 billion over the next five years.
The closure of the world economy in March 2020 (‘lockdown’) served to trigger an unprecedented process of global indebtedness. Conditionalities mean national governments will have to capitulate to the demands of Western financial institutions. These debts are largely dollar-denominated, helping to strengthen the US dollar and US leverage over countries.
The US is creating a new world order and needs to ensure much of the Global South remains in its orbit of influence rather than ending up in the Russian and especially Chinese camp and its belt road initiative for economic prosperity.
Post-COVID, this is what the war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and the engineered food and energy crisis are really about.
Back in 2014, Michael Hudson stated that the US has been able to dominate most of the Global South through agriculture and control of the food supply. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has transformed countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.
The oil sector and agribusiness have been joined at the hip as part of US geopolitical strategy.
The dominant notion of ‘food security’ promoted by global agribusiness players like Cargill, Archer Daniel Midland, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus and supported by the World Bank is based on the ability of people and nations to purchase food. It has nothing to do with self-sufficiency and everything to do with global markets and supply chains controlled by giant agribusiness players.
Along with oil, the control of global agriculture has been a linchpin of US geopolitical strategy for many decades. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests and poorer nations adopted agri-capital’s chemical- and oil-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development.
It entailed trapping nations into a globalised food system that relies on export commodity mono-cropping to earn foreign exchange linked to sovereign dollar-denominated debt repayment and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives. What we have seen has been the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.
And what we have also seen is countries being placed on commodity crop production treadmills. The need for foreign currency (US dollars) to buy oil and food entrenches the need to increase cash crop production for exports.
The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) set out the trade regime necessary for this type of corporate dependency that masquerades as ‘global food security’.
This is explained in a July 2022 report by Navdanya International – Sowing Hunger, Reaping Profits – A Food Crisis by Design – which notes international trade laws and trade liberalisation has benefited large agribusiness and continue to piggyback off the implementation of the Green Revolution.
The report states that US lobby and trade negotiations were headed by former Cargill Investors Service CEO and Goldman Sachs executive – Dan Amstutz – who in 1988 was appointed chief negotiator for the Uruguay round of GATT by Ronald Reagan. This helped to enshrine the interests of US agribusiness into the new rules that would govern the global trade of commodities and subsequent waves of industrial agriculture expansion.
The AoA removed protection of farmers from global market prices and fluctuations. At the same time, exceptions were made for the US and the EU to continue subsidising their agriculture to the advantage of large agribusiness.
Navdanya notes:
“With the removal of state tariff protections and subsidies, small farmers were left destitute. The result has been a disparity in what farmers earn for what they produce, versus what consumers pay, with farmers earning less and consumers paying more as agribusiness middlemen take the biggest cut.”
‘Food security’ has led to the dismantling of food sovereignty and food self-sufficiency for the sake of global market integration and corporate power.
We need look no further than India to see this in action. The now-repealed recent farm legislation in India was aimed at giving the country the ‘shock therapy’ of neoliberalism that other countries have experienced.
The ‘liberalising’ legislation was in part aimed at benefiting US agribusiness interests and trapping India into food insecurity by compelling the country to eradicate its food buffer stocks – so vital to the nation’s food security – and then bid for food on a volatile global market from agribusiness traders with its foreign reserves.
The Indian government was only prevented from following this route by the massive, year-long farmer protest that occurred.
The current crisis is also being fuelled by speculation. Navdanya cites an investigation by Lighthouse Reports and The Wire to show how speculation by investment firms, banks and hedge funds on agricultural commodities are profiting off rising food prices. Commodity future prices are no longer linked to actual supply and demand in the market but are based purely on speculation.
Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus and investment funds like Black Rock and Vanguard continue to make huge financial killings, resulting in the price of bread almost doubling in some poorer countries.
The cynical ‘solution’ promoted by global agribusiness to the current food crisis is to urge farmers to produce more and seek better yields as if the crisis is that of underproduction. It means more chemical inputs, more genetic engineering techniques and suchlike, placing more farmers in debt and trapped in dependency.
It is the same old industry lie that the world will starve without its products and requires more of them. The reality is that the world is facing hunger and rising food prices because of the system big agribusiness has instituted.
And it is the same old story – pushing out new technologies in search of a problem and then using crises as justification for their rollout while ignoring the underlying reasons for such crises.
Navdanya sets out possible solutions to the current situation based on principles of agroecology, short supply lines, food sovereignty and economic democracy – policies that have been described at length in many articles and official reports over the years.
As for fighting back against the onslaught on ordinary people’s living standards, support is gathering among the labour movement in places like the UK. Rail union leader Mick Lynch is calling for a working class movement based on solidarity and class consciousness to fight back against a billionaire class that is acutely aware of its own class interests.
For too long, ‘class’ has been absent from mainstream political discourse. It is only through organised, united protest that ordinary people will have any chance of meaningful impact against the new world order of tyrannical authoritarianism and the devastating attacks on ordinary people’s rights, livelihoods and standards of living that we are witnessing.
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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal.
The author receives no payment from any media outlet or organization for his work. If you appreciated this article, consider sending a few coins his way: colintodhunter@outlook.com
We are being warned well ahead of time that it is coming. Joe Biden has publicly admitted that the coming food shortages are “going to be real”, and the head of the UN World Food Program is now telling us that we could soon see “hell on Earth” because the lack of food will be so severe. Food prices are already escalating dramatically all over the globe, and food riots have already erupted in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. But most people in the western world are treating this crisis as if it is no big deal. Many seem to assume that our leaders have everything under control and that things will work out just fine somehow.
Unfortunately, the truth is that everything is not going to be okay.
So far this year, the number of hungry people around the globe has risen to more than 800 million…
Currently around 811 million people are experiencing hunger. Levels of food insecurity have doubled from 2019, increasing from 135 million to 276 million. Of this total around 48.9 million people are facing acute or emergency levels of food insecurity that require humanitarian intervention.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Much worse is ahead, and David Beasley is openly warning that “hell on Earth” is coming…
The UN has warned that there could be “hell on earth” due to the global economic impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Guardian reports that David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), has said that the war has been “devastating” in conjunction with various other factors.
He said, “Even before the Ukraine crisis, we were facing an unprecedented global food crisis because of Covid and fuel price increases. Then, we thought it couldn’t get any worse, but this war has been devastating.”
According to Beasley, we will soon see “frightening” shortages of food, and those shortages could potentially spark civil unrest in literally dozens of different nations…
Dozens of countries risk protests, riots and political violence this year as food prices surge around the world, the head of the food-aid branch of the United Nations has warned.
Speaking in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday, David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said the world faced “frightening” shortages that could destabilise countries that depend on wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia.
But most Americans are not paying much attention to this rapidly growing crisis because they don’t think that it will really impact them personally.
For the vast majority of us, a lack of food is something that we have never had to be concerned about before.
During “normal” times, we could always go to the grocery store and fill up our carts with mountains of super cheap food whenever we wanted.
Three weeks ago John Boyd Jr., the President of the National Black Farmers Association, said “We are in a crisis right now as far as the food chain goes with the farmer in this country,” adding “We’re going to see a lot of empty shelves and a lot more high food prices.”
In his forty-year career as a farmer, Boyd said he never imagined he would be “paying $5.63 for a gallon of diesel fuel, $900 a ton for fertilizer, and all-time high prices for soybean seeds.” All of the prices he mentioned are at record highs, pressuring farmers’ margins.
Of course we are already seeing widespread shortages of certain products around the country.
For example, Fox Business is reporting on the serious shortage of tampons that has recently started making headlines…
A spokesperson for Tampax, which is owned by P&G, told FOX Business in a statement that this is “a temporary situation, and the Tampax team is producing tampons 24/7 to meet the increased demand for our products.”
Parents aren’t getting much of a break as the out-of-stock rate for baby formula rose to 73% nationwide for the week ending May 29, according to the most recent data by retail data firm Datasembly. It’s a significant increase from earlier in the month, when the national out-of-stock rate for baby formula stood at 45%.
In April, Huy Fong Foods, Inc., the nation’s leading sriracha sauce manufacturer, sent a letter to customers about an impending shortage, which would directly impact retailers and restaurants.
“Unfortunately, we can confirm that there is an unprecedented shortage of our products,” Huy Fong Foods told Fox News Digital in an email.
These shortages are just a very small preview of what is approaching.
As I have been warning on my website throughout 2022, conditions are going to deteriorate quite a bit more in the months ahead.
So what is your plan to make it through the worst global food crisis in any of our lifetimes?
Have you been stocking up?
Earlier this year, I published a list of 50 basic items that I would recommend having on hand. The following list is certainly not exhaustive, but it will help you cover many of the essentials…
#1 A Generator
#2 A Berkey Water Filter
#3 A Rainwater Collection System If You Do Not Have A Natural Supply Of Water Near Your Home
#4 An Emergency Medical Kit
#5 Rice
#6 Pasta
#7 Canned Soup
#8 Canned Vegetables
#9 Canned Fruit
#10 Canned Chicken
#11 Jars Of Peanut Butter
#12 Salt
#13 Sugar
#14 Powdered Milk
#15 Bags Of Flour
#16 Yeast
#17 Lots Of Extra Coffee (If You Drink It)
#18 Buckets Of Long-Term Storable Food
#19 Extra Vitamins
#20 Lighters Or Matches
#21 Candles
#22 Flashlights Or Lanterns
#23 Plenty Of Wood To Burn
#24 Extra Blankets
#25 Extra Sleeping Bags
#26 A Sun Oven
#27 An Extra Fan If You Live In A Hot Climate
#28 Hand Sanitizer
#29 Toilet Paper
#30 Extra Soap And Shampoo
#31 Extra Toothpaste
#32 Extra Razors
#33 Bottles Of Bleach
#34 A Battery-Powered Radio
#35 Extra Batteries
#36 Solar Chargers
#37 Trash Bags
#38 Tarps
#39 A Pocket Knife
#40 A Hammer
#41 An Axe
#42 A Shovel
#43 Work Gloves
#44 N95 Masks
#45 Seeds For A Garden
#46 Canning Jars
#47 Extra Supplies For Your Pets
#48 An Emergency Supply Of Cash
#49 Bibles For Every Member Of Your Family
#50 A “Bug Out Bag” For Every Member Of Your Family
Many of the items on this list are now much more expensive than they were earlier this year.
And if you wait, many of them will continue to become much more expensive.
If you don’t like my list, come up with your own.
The important thing is to have a plan.
Global events are really starting to spiral out of control, and I expect the second half of this year to be even more chaotic than the first half of this year has been.
The Governor of the Bank of England has warned of “apocalyptic” global food price rises and said he is “helpless” in the face of surging inflation as the economy is battered by the war in Ukraine.
Apocalyptic food shortages 2022
Andrew Bailey said he has “run out of horsemen” when counting the shocks facing Britain, with runaway energy and food costs driven by global market forces beyond his control.
Prices are rising at the fastest rate in 30 years, creating a “very big income shock” that is expected to intensify in the coming months with a risk of double-digit inflation before the end of the year.
Mr.Bailey told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee that he is increasingly concerned about a further surge in food costs if Ukraine, a major crop grower, is unable to ship wheat and cooking oils from its warehouses because of a Russian blockade.
The Governor said that he had spoken to Ukraine’s finance minister and added: “The [risk] I’m going to sound rather apocalyptic about I guess is food.
“Ukraine does have food in store but it can’t get it out at the moment. While [the finance minister] was optimistic about crop planting, he said at the moment we have no way of shipping it out as things stand, and it is getting worse.
“That is a major worry. It is not just a major worry for this country, it is a major worry for the developing world.
“I am by no stretch of the imagination a military strategist, but whatever can be done to help Ukraine get its food out would be a huge contribution.”
The comments from Mr. Bailey are likely to increase pressure on the Bank from Conservative MPs who are increasingly exasperated that he failed to act sooner.
Many experts believe the institution acted too slowly in increasing interest rates as prices took off last year, and it has also been criticized for failing to reduce its quantitative easing money-printing program over the past decade.
The bleak assessment will also likely add to pressure on the Treasury to hold an emergency Budget to tackle the cost of living crisis, after Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, chose to raise taxes at the same times as incomes were being squeezed.
Food prices are already surging because of fears about disruption. Ukraine supplies large parts of the Middle East with grain, and there is a risk that families will be unable to afford to eat unless a solution is found. Wheat prices rose as much as 6pc on Monday.
inflation food and gas prices
The Governor also admitted that the Bank has little hope of bringing inflation back to its 2pc target, with prices already climbing by 7pc and a further surge expected in the coming months.
Asked by MPs on the Treasury Select Committee if he felt “helpless” to control inflation, Mr Bailey said: “Yes.”
He said: “It is a very very, more than uncomfortable – I am trying to think of a word that is even more severe than that – it is a very very difficult place to be.
“To forecast 10pc inflation and to say there is not a lot we can do about 80pc of it, I can tell you it is an extremely difficult place to be. We have to recognise the reality of the situation we face.”
The traditional policy requires the Bank to raise interest rates to combat high inflation, which works by raising borrowing costs and slowing the domestic economy. But most price rises currently are coming from global markets, so this would have little effect in the short run.
Instead, the Bank has only increased rates from 0.1pc in December to 1pc now in the hope of stopping these cost increases feeding into the wider economy.
Once the energy price shock has passed it hopes inflation will fall back to 2pc.
So far the biggest impact on the UK has come through soaring gas bills and higher petrol prices, which could worsen depending on the supply of fossil fuels from Russia.
The series of shocks to inflation are so severe that a Cabinet minister criticized the Bank over the weekend for failing in its “one job – to keep inflation at around 2pc”.
extreme volatility in gas prices
Another cabinet minister told The Telegraph that Government figures are “now questioning its independence”.
Mr. Bailey hit back that the Bank’s independence and the trust placed in it to bring inflation back down are vital at a time of rampant price rises.
He said: “This is the biggest test of the monetary policy framework that we have had in its 25 years.
“What I would say to these people is, this is when the independence of the Bank and the target framework and the nominal anchor matter more than ever – more than in the easy times.”
If you have enough time here is the whole discussion:
He implied that he would be prepared to raise rates to control inflation even if that led to a recession, saying: “We have to get [inflation] back to target. And that is clear.”
Mr. Bailey suggested that he does not expect higher rates to trigger a house price crash, arguing that growth is likely to cool as the crisis bites but a “structural” shortage of properties will prevent a plunge.
Sir Dave Ramsden, a deputy governor at the Bank, said that it was hard to disentangle the impact that a post-Brexit labour shortage has had on inflation, given that data suggests the European Union and the US are both dealing with similar price surges and many countries are suffering more than the UK. Mr. Bailey added that he still believes Brexit will have a negative impact on trade over the longer term.
Meanwhile, the Confederation of British Industry called on the Chancellor to step in with extra help for poor households and for struggling companies.
Tony Danker, the business group’s director-general said it is crucial “to help people facing real hardship now; it’s the moral underpinning of our economy and society”.
“Putting pounds in the pockets of people struggling the most should not be delayed,” he said, adding that it is also vital to “start stimulating business investment now”, potentially by extending the Recovery Loan Scheme to help businesses get back on track after the pandemic and now the energy price shock. [Telegraph]
A very alarming global food shortage has already begun, and it is only going to get worse in the months ahead.
I realize that this is not good news, but I would encourage you to share the information in this article with everyone that you can. People deserve to understand what is happening, and they deserve an opportunity to get prepared. The pace at which things are changing around the globe right now is absolutely breathtaking, but most people assume that life will just continue to carry on as it normally does. Unfortunately, the truth is that a very real planetary emergency is developing right in front of our eyes.
The following are 20 facts about the emerging global food shortage that should chill you to the core…
#1 One of France’s most important government officials is telling us that we should brace ourselves for an “extremely serious” global food crisis…
France’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the EU must get to grips with the prospect that the war in Ukraine could prompt an “extremely serious” global food crisis.
#2 Joe Biden recently admitted that food shortages are “going to be real”, and his administration is now openly using the word “famine” to describe what is coming…
The Biden administration is worried Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will cause famine in parts of the world, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecilia Rouse told CNBC on Friday.
#3 It is being reported that food prices at German supermarkets will soon go up between 20 and 50 percent…
Just days after Germany reported the highest inflation in generation (with February headline CPI soaring at a 7.6% annual pace and blowing away all expectations), giving locals a distinctly unpleasant deja vu feeling even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine broke what few supply chains remained and sent prices even higher into the stratosphere…
… on Monday, Germany will take one step toward a return of the dreaded Weimar hyperinflation, when according to the German Retail Association (HDE), consumers should prepare for another wave of price hikes for everyday goods and groceries with Reuters reporting that prices at German retail chains will explode between 20 and 50%
In Spain, the country started experiencing sporadic shortages of different products like eggs, milk and other dairy products almost immediately following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. In early March, major supermarkets like Mercadona and Makro began rationing sunflower oil.
In Greece, at least four national supermarket chains have started rationing food products like flour and sunflower oil due to critically low supplies caused by the crippled supply chains coming out of Russia and Ukraine.
On Tuesday, BlackRock Inc. President Rob Kapito told an audience in Austin, Texas, hosted by the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, that an entire younger generation is quickly finding out what it means to suffer from shortages, according to Bloomberg.
“For the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want,” Kapito said. “And we have a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice.”
#7 Since this time last year, some fertilizer prices have gone up by as much as 300 percent.
#8 Many farmers in Africa will not be able to afford fertilizer at all this year, and it is being projected that this will reduce agricultural production by an amount capable of feeding “100 million people”…
With prices tripling over the past 18 months, many farmers are considering whether to forgo purchases of fertilizers this year. That leaves a market long touted for its growth potential set to shrink by almost a third, according to Sebastian Nduva, program manager at researcher group AfricaFertilizer.Org.
That could potentially curb cereals output by 30 million tons, enough to feed 100 million people, he said.
Russia is a key global player in natural gas, a major input to fertilizer production. Higher gas prices, and supply cuts, will further drive fertilizer prices higher. Russia is one of the biggest exporters of the three major groups of fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium). Physical supply cuts could further inflate fertilizer prices.
#10 In a typical year, Russia and Ukraine collectively account for approximately 30 percent of all global wheat exports.
Armenia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Eritrea have imported virtually all of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine and must find new sources. But they are competing against much larger buyers, including Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh and Iran, which have obtained more than 60 percent of their wheat from the two warring countries.
#13 One Russian official is warning that his nation may soon only export food to “friendly nations”…
A Russian government official has threatened that Russia will limit its vital food exports to only nations it considers “friendly”.
Dmitry Medvedev, a senior Russian security official who previously served as the nation’s president, has threatened that Russia may soon cut off the West from food exports.
#15 The death toll from the bird flu in Iowa alone will be pushed beyond 13 million as a result of this latest incident.
#16 Overall, this is what the total national death toll from the bird flu currently looks like: “22 million egg-laying chickens, 1.8 million broiler chickens, 1.9 million pullet and other commercial chickens, and 1.9 million turkeys”.
#17 China’s agricultural minister has announced that the winter wheat harvest in China could be “the worst in history”.
#18 We are being warned that the winter wheat harvest in the United States will be “disastrous” due to severe drought.
#20 The head of the UN World Food program says that what the planet is now facing is unlike anything that we have seen since World War II…
“Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe,” said David M. Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that feeds 125 million people a day. “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.”
Like I said at the beginning of this article, I hope that you will share this information with as many people as possible because this crisis really is going to affect every man, woman, and child on the entire planet.
In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day.
A truly nightmarish global food crisis really is upon us, and hundreds of millions of innocent people are going to deeply suffer as a result.
Fast food and takeout are anathema to the ‘clean eating’ lifestyle trend that has swept the US – and much of the developed world – over the past 10 years. But while spending on gym memberships and boutique fitness classes has risen significantly over the past ten years, recent studies show that over-spending on takeout was the biggest financial mistake made by younger Americans in 2018, according to a MarketWatch report that cited data from a recent study published by Principal.
According to the data, nearly one in three Americans – 29%, up from 26% in 2018 – said dining out was this year’s top budget buster for them, followed closely by spending on groceries (which is ironic given the proliferation of low-cost grocers like Aldi that have sprouted up in recent years).
But that’s not all: In a separate study, Fidelity found that the No. 1 small financial mistake that most Americans admit to is dining out too much, something that 36% of respondents said they’d done in the past year.
Americans spent roughly $3,500 a year on dining out in 2018, according to government data. That’s a new record high, and a 2.8% improvement from the prior year. Sales are projected to hit a record high of $863 billion this year, according to the National Restaurant Association.
Since February 2010, there have been just 5 months out of 117 where the number of waiters and bartenders in the US has posted a monthly decline. November was no different.
What’s worse: The cost of getting takeout or going out to eat is rising much more quickly than the price of buying groceries, but that hasn’t had much of an impact on the spending habits of young people. And if the latest Gallup poll (a different poll than the ones cited above) shows, Americans eat out often: Six in 10 ate out at least once in the past week. And 16%
“Dining rooms and kitchens across the U.S. are getting a little less use than they used to,” said research firm Nielsen in a recent report. “That’s because Americans have embraced the experience of eating out.”
Eating out is hammering Americans’ savings, but that’s not the only impact it’s having on their general sense of well-being: It’s also probably the biggest contributor to the expanding waistlines of millions of Americans. When Americans eat out, they chow down on an extra 200 calories more than on a normal day.
Furthermore, government research has shown that “when eating out, people either eat more or eat higher calorie foods – or both – and that this tendency appears to be increasing.”
Meanwhile, a staggering 75% of Americans are either overweight or obese, according to the CBC. And over time, the costs in the form of deteriorating health associated with obesity will will continue to climb. According to the CDC, obese patients often shoulder costs that are $1,429 higher on average than patients of a normal weight.
The free market economy has pushed the American population to the brink.
A man found unconscious after overdosing on opioids puts his hands over his head in the back of an ambulance in the Boston suburb of Malden, Massachusetts, December 2, 2017 [Brian Snyder/Reuters]
There’s no foreign invasion. No war within its borders. No one to blame but ourselves. How then, is America killing Americans?
Most reports point to three things: drugs and alcohol, guns, and despair.
There is also fat. Statistically, it is more important, but oddly, it is not often included in discussions about the decline in life expectancy.
This last decline is from 78.7 years of life to 78.6. That does not sound terribly frightening. One-tenth of a year. One month and one week less to live. However, it has gone down for three years in a row, which has not happened in more than 100 years. The last time life expectancy went down was during World War I, when apart from deaths at the front, the US suffered an influenza epidemic that killed 675,000 people.
Is it just the US?
An article published on BMJ (previously the British Medical Journal) looked at 18 high-income countries: Japan, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, Italy, Norway, Sweden, France, Canada, Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Portugal, the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the US.
Over the last quarter of a century, the lifespans in all of those countries have gone up. People are living four to five years longer, except in the US, where it has only increased by 3.7 years. Actually, the US fell into last place in life expectancy in 2001 and the gap has been growing since. The Germans, the next lowest on the list, get to live almost two years longer than the Americans. The Japanese make it to 84 – or almost six more years.
Guns killed nearly 40,000 Americans in 2017, according to official statistics, which only counts cases if guns were “the principal cause” of death but not if they only “contributed” to it; that is 4.43 deaths per 100,000. By contrast, the death rate from gun violence in Japan and the United Kingdom is 0.04 and 0.06 respectively.
About two-thirds of all gun deaths in the US are suicides. This tells us there is plenty of despair. It has gone up by 33 percent in the last two decades while the global suicide rate has declined by 30 percent in roughly the same period.
Then there is fat.
The US is one of the most obese nations in the world, second only to island nations and Kuwait. It is listed as having an obesity rate of 36.2 percent. Most of the Western European countries have a rate of 20 to 25 percent.
Obesity is a relatively new problem and studies of it are even newer. The statistics are rapidly changing and becoming more dire. It started with saying that only severe obesity mattered and that it could shorten a lifespan by about 10 years. Moderate obesity was supposed to be OK, probably, but newer studies have said that it can take up to three years on average from someone’s life.
Do these four elements have anything in common?
Yes. Free market theology is at the root of it all.
America has a profit-driven health care system. Not only is it more expensive than any other system in the world, but it creates special inefficiencies and distortions. Its goal is always to sell an item, usually a drug or a service. How, then, can it address the obvious causes of the obesity epidemic – bad diet, lack of exercise, and a sedentary lifestyle? For the most part, it cannot and it does not.
The more insidious contributor to the American wideness and wallow is the food industry which uses excessive levels of sugar, fat and salt to ensure food is addictive.
The pharmaceutical industry also plays a major role in this. Its protected status allows it to spread addiction to various medications, causing more damage than the Mafia, the Colombian cartels and the Mexicans that Donald Trump accuses of bringing drugs over the border, combined.
Meanwhile, money from the gun industry and the NRA – a profit-seeking enterprise – keep Americans shooting themselves and each other.
Maps of suicide and addiction rates are maps of despair. They largely match the disappearance of American manufacturing. We can date that decline to President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies of the 1980s. They gutted the industrial midlands, destroyed the unions, leaving the traditional working-class poor and powerless. A certain portion of them turned to alcoholism, addiction and suicide.
There are other things that the American health care system cannot address, and that free market theology considers non-existent: self-esteem, supportive communities, positive expectation for the future, especially for children, which clearly affect healthy lifestyles and life expectancy.
Free market theology insists that what we pay for things is the best and only true measure of their value. The higher inequality rises, the more we have the feeling that this must be true.
Teaching was once a highly regarded, even revered profession. Teachers were doing a public service. They had college and advanced degrees. But now their pay has become closer to the poverty line than to the middle class. How valuable can they be?
As the 1 percent continue to amass wealth, we are getting to the point where they are literally sucking the life out of the 99 percent.
That is how America kills Americans.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Pork prices have been surging in China as African swine fever ravaged supply, while India has been struggling with eye-watering onion prices due to extended monsoons [File: Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg]
Food prices are climbing fast in the world’s biggest emerging markets, posing a possible inflation threat after months of dormant pressures.
Asia’s two largest developing economies face a price surge for staple products — pork in China and onions in India — that are central to consumers’ diets. In Turkey and Nigeria, supply problems are driving up costs, while United Nations data show global food prices rose at the fastest pace in October in more than two years.
While the spike is painful for poorer consumers, it hasn’t reached a level to convince central banks to pull the brake on policy easing, as they remain focused on boosting economic growth amid a global slowdown. Average inflation across emerging markets is still at an all-time low, according to a Bloomberg gauge of consumer price indexes.
“We think it’s likely they would look through food inflation that is concentrated on a handful of products and driven by idiosyncratic factors,” said Taimur Baig, managing director and chief economist at DBS Bank Ltd. in Singapore. “Bias toward further monetary and fiscal easing will remain in 2020, in our view.”
Price Shock
Nevertheless, the threat of a price shock is real. Nomura Holdings Inc. economists recently warned of three potential triggers of higher food costs — weather-related shocks, higher oil prices and a sharp depreciation in the dollar — saying emerging and frontier markets are most at risk since food costs make up a larger portion of their consumers’ income.
The key will be whether the increases begin to feed into consumers’ longer-term inflation expectations, which could drive up wages and core inflation in a spiral, said Sonal Varma, Nomura’s chief economist for India and Asia ex-Japan.
“This is a big policy dilemma for central banks, to have supply-side driven higher food inflation while growth is weakening,” Varma said. “The question is: Do central banks believe that this is durable or that it’s transitory?”
Here’s how the phenomenon is playing out in key emerging markets:
China
Pork prices doubled in October following massive livestock culls to protect against swine fever, pushing up consumer inflation to 3.8%, the highest level since January 2012. Though pork prices have since come off their recent highs, economists expect inflation to peak at 5% or 6% in January. Inflation at that level could impede central bank efforts to ease monetary policy and boost an economy amid an ongoing trade war and weak domestic demand.
In the meantime, swine fever is jumping borders, with neighboring Vietnam culling almost 6 million pigs to prevent the spread of the disease. It hasn’t showed up yet in Vietnam’s CPI — partly because high food prices a year ago have skewed the statistical base — but the impact likely will be reflected in coming months, said Alex Holmes, an Asia economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in Singapore. Live pig prices in November are up almost 30% from a year earlier, according to an industry group.
India
In India, where spikes in the cost of onions have sparked social unrest in years past, a 26% year-on-year rise in vegetable prices pushed October headline inflation above the Reserve Bank’s threshold of 4% for the first time in 15 months.
That runs up against a central bank intent on easing policy to spur growth. Data due Friday is likely to show India’s gross domestic product grew 4.5% in the July-September quarter, its slowest pace since early 2013, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.
The latest Bloomberg survey shows consumer price inflation expected to peak at 4.8% in the October-December period, before tapering off.
Turkey
Food inflation hovered near 30% in the first quarter and has remained above 15% for much of the year, due to a currency crisis in August 2018 coupled with supply-chain issues and a heavy reliance on natural irrigation. The government has taken to buying produce directly from farmers and selling it in cities, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denouncing alleged price-gougers as traitors and terrorists. Recent droughts in grain-producing provinces raise concerns about possible supply constraints next year, with the central bank expecting food inflation at 11% by the end of 2020.
Africa
A regional drought has curbed food output in some southern African countries. Driven by increases in the cost of corn products, food-price growth has pushed Zambian inflation to a three-year high, and monthly food inflation in Zimbabwe has reached almost 50% as supplies dwindle. In Nigeria, the price of imported rice has surged 7.3% since August after President Muhammadu Buhari ordered border closures, partly to counter widespread food smuggling.
“Dr Mark Skidmore found $21 trillion had gone missing from HUD and DOD accounts from 1998 to 2015. He has screen captures from US government websites to prove this. He told this funny story of the US Army, which had a $122 billion annual budget. The Army had so much Missing Money that the Treasury Dept sent the Generals a check for $800 billion. Would you believe that the $800 billion went missing too?”
Suppose people are talking about Medicare for All which some call Single Payer and you want a short but powerful counter-argument. Try this:
If you take five annual flu shots, your chances of getting Early Onset Alzheimer’s just went up 1,000 %.
Let the Democrat candidates prove to us that Medicare for all or Single Payer or NHS will improve our health. Let them first pass a law letting students in grade schools and employees at hospitals opt out of required annual flu shots.
MSG in ten different foods a day tricks us into believing we did not get enough to eat. Why not pass a law requiring MSG food labeling? Reducing weight will lower the cost of healthcare no matter what system of payment we use. And how about passing a law to take Bisphenol out of the lining in canned food? It is known to cause cancer? Passing a law to save millions of Americans from getting cancer will reduce healthcare costs.
But politicians could care less about your health.
Recently a 13 year-old New York actress died from what I believe to be vaccine induced asthma. RIP Laurel Griggs.
Or suppose people have been talking about runaway government spending threatening to bankrupt us all destroying the value of our wages and pensions. Point out that we are currently spending $12 billion a week in interest on government debt. But, if we still had President Lincoln’s Greenbacks, we would not have a $23 trillion national debt. Why won’t any candidate for any public office mention the $12 billion a week we throw out the window just to subsidize Billionaire Bankers?
When the Rothschilds, Rockefefllers, Warburgs and J P Morgan friends got together to create the Federal Reserve, Bankers gave themselves the right to charge us interest on money they create out of nothing. This transfers wealth from those of us who work and gives it to parasites who create money by expanding checking accounts every time we take out a loan.
Since November of 2009, we added $11 trillion to the national debt. That is a growth of 91.6%. If our national debt grew at that rate for the next 10 years, our debt would be $44.6 trillion. A $4 trillion interest rate bill would require that we cancel Food Stamps, national parks, healthcare, Social Security, federal pensions, education, eliminate national defense and release all federal prisoners. Put simply: we will soon hit a brick wall at 120 mph.
Why not change our banking system now before the coming crash?
Suppose people are taking sides on the issue of Fake News.
Tell them that Dr Mark Skidmore found $21 trillion had gone missing from HUD and DOD accounts from 1998 to 2015. He has screen captures from US government websites to prove this. He told this funny story of the US Army, which had a $122 billion annual budget. The Army had so much Missing Money that the Treasury Dept sent the Generals a check for $800 billion. Would you believe that the $800 billion went missing too?
Now let’s discuss Fake News. Choose. Will you believe the Corporate Media who covered up the theft of tens of trillions of dollars , covered up the Epstein pedophile case and lied to you about every major event since 911 or the people unafraid to speak the truth?
Or suppose people have been talking about foreign wars.
911 is used to justify $6 trillion in war spending and the deaths of thousands of young Americans in foreign lands. You could ask them how World Trade Center Tower 7, a 47 story building, fell down in 6.5 seconds. It was never hit by a plane. There were no active fires. So the question is: was it taken down by explosives planted inside the Tower?
You might want to glance at the second article below if you want to look again at 911.
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Video: GMO Ticking Time Bomb, The Bankers Want You Sterilized And Then Dead
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
![A man found unconscious after overdosing on opioids puts his hands over his head in the back of an ambulance in the Boston suburb of Malden, Massachusetts, December 2, 2017 [Brian Snyder/Reuters]](https://talesfromtheloublog.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/cde83d535747423a804693e61441a15b_18.jpg "Drugs, guns, and despair: How America is killing Americans")
![Pork prices have been surging in China as African swine fever ravaged supply, while India has been struggling with eye-watering onion prices due to extended monsoons [File: Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg]](https://talesfromtheloublog.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/83f71383d7874061a77ee37e4f87fb26_18.jpg "Food prices are skyrocketing, and economists are worried")
Tales from the Conspiratum 
