It’s time to start taking food stockpiling more seriously because a series of new reports are alerting us about systemic failures in the food system. Right now, U.S. farmers are losing large chunks of their produce, and that is leaving retailers increasingly reliant on exports to restock store shelves. However, global food supplies are shrinking, and hunger is already hitting extreme levels in many nations. As economists repeatedly warned in the past, the primary way a food crisis starts to materialize in a wealthy country is through higher food prices, and that’s precisely what we are witnessing. Even dollar stores are now changing their prices to $3, $4, $5, and even the most basic of staples are getting insanely overpriced. The harsh reality we’re all facing is that food prices are not going back down to where they once were. Crazy-high grocery prices are here to stay, and everyone is going to suffer as a result.
Something most people don’t realize is that this situation is worsening all over the planet. And at some point, there will be too few producers to meet the entire global demand. Researcher and columnist at The Guardian, Geoge Monbiot, explains that we’re on the verge of experiencing a food shortage and famine of planetary proportions.
With extreme weather events impacting several important food producers in the north hemisphere, such as The United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, India, and East Asia, all at the same time, and millions of farmers losing their harvests simultaneously, global food supplies are in serious danger. Now that crop losses are happening at various places all at once, we’re exposed to what the researcher calls “systemic risk”.
In recent months, U.S. farmers have seen their crops being absolutely devastated by natural disasters and bizarre weather patterns. For instance, in many areas of Vermont, flooding caused hundreds of family farms to lose their entire crops. In the middle of the country, a crippling drought has hit grain crops the hardest this summer. From June until August, record-breaking heat and drought have baked much of the farmland across the U.S. Even more concerning, breadbasket states in the Midwest are still struggling to manage a drought that’s affecting key areas for a second year in a row.
At the same time, the outlook for exports isn’t any better. Some of our biggest trade partners are facing the same issues. In India, widespread tomato crop failures pushed tomato prices up by 400 percent in a single week. In central Canada, some farmers are saying that they haven’t had a single good crop in almost seven years due to a seemingly endless drought that has plagued Saskatchewan. Conditions are going to get even more difficult for farmers around the globe in the years ahead. And that is going to be reflected on store shelves sooner than most people think. That’s why we encourage you to stock up while you still can.
The food system is falling apart in plain sight. A “return to normal” is simply not in the cards. We are extremely close to a major tipping point, and from this moment forward we really are going to see things that would be normally considered unimaginable happening all over the globe.
Jag utgår ifrån att svensken inte får kännedom om saken
Enligt LRF:s statistik är drygt hälften av all mat vi äter i Sverige importerad – men försörjningsgraden är ännu lägre eftersom vi också importerar insatsvaror.
Det är de varor som behövs för att produktionen ska fungera, till exempel bränsle, energi och växtskyddsmedel. Därför tycker LRF att man bör prata om försörjningsförmåga i stället för självförsörjning. Läs mer
Det handlar nog främst om att klara sin egen befolkning
Våra grönsaker är halverade i storlek pga solar minimum, och delar av Grekland är utslaget, som ett exempel.
Det är nog dags att tänka.
