Food Shocks Coming

You have to wonder… how much longer can the world afford to give aid to the devastated (and starving) regions?

Two horrific cyclones have struck impacting millions (badly). And now I read this: Infested Yemen food aid needs fumigation to feed millions.

51,000 tons was enough for 3.7 million people for a month (that’s 27.5 lbs per month per person – do you have that much on hand or anything close to it?).

They don’t have to replace it all (this time, but Nebraska will have to), but where will the replacement grain come from? The American grain belt was just dealt a devastating blow, and the predictions for what would be planting season is abnormally wet (so no or late planting). We’re about to experience some food shocks right here in America.

What say you? Is there sufficient world-wide resource resiliency? And when that runs out? What happens if we miss a single planting season? What happens if that occurs world wide?

That possibility exists at some time in the future and here’s why:

Atmospheric water vapor and heat energy are rising (worldwide) which is part of the global energy imbalance. That vapor WILL come down somewhere, sometime in some way – including extreme weather events. Some regions will get too much, others too little (or none at all). Contributing to this is the erratic and even stalled Jet Stream, which is causing a lot of the weather whiplash in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Welcome to the new “normal” where the only thing you can count on is for things to get worse.

The odds of global food shocks are going up daily now. For the northern hemisphere, spring is almost here, time to plant. Time to prepare for the next season’s harvest. But what if the world can’t plant enough? That’s a real concern now.

Food prices are probably going to take a hike. How big, I do not know. Availability of food products may take a hit too. But what really concerns me is how the world plans on “enduring” these events as they increase in severity (and possibly frequency). See my Spring Planting post for my comments on not feeding your friends.

At some point, if the world reaches the food crisis that I predict will happen, it’s going to be difficult enough to even feed yourself.