Director, Safetyissues.com

I must admit that I was quite alarmed when I scanned the internet this past week and read the news concerning how the recent cascade of natural disasters was affecting our global food supply and its distribution. In fact, Mr. Robert Zoellick, President of The World Bank, had earlier warned that a global famine makes us just “one poor harvest away from chaos”. The World Bank issued a statement this past week that rising food prices are “a threat to global growth and social stability.” It seems that our world, for the first time in living memory, has been put on notice that a widespread global famine of vast proportions is a definite possibility. The United Nations proclaimed this past Friday, January 21, 2011, that it is important to warn the populations of all nations concerning the dire state of our current level of global food production. Due to mounting world wide natural disasters, the leading wheat growing nations have suffered unprecedented crop catastrophes this past year. In descending order of severity, they are: China, India, United States, Russia, France, Canada, Germany, Ukraine, Australia and Pakistan. These looming shortages inevitably mean higher prices for all essential food groups and commodities. The widespread drought of the past year has been judged as the worst in over a century, and it now affects South Western China. In Northern China, there have been earthquakes and flooding which have destroyed commercial farmlands. In India a record heat wave and growing water crisis are forcing politicians to consider implementing user fees and other measures to conserve water. Now brutal winter weather in India has killed nearly 130 people, and no one has been able to tally the crop damage from floods and excessive winter rains. Also contributing to rising world food prices, South Korea, one of the most important meat exporters in Asia, just this past week had to destroy millions of farm animals after an outbreak of dreaded foot-and-mouth disease was discovered in a herd of cattle. During this past month, the United States reported that nearly all of their honey bee and bumblebee populations have died out. When coupled with the “mysterious” die-off of over 80% of the bat population in America, these twin tragedies strongly indicate that the two main pollinators of fruit and vegetable plants will no longer be able to do their essential task of crop pollination, leading to crop losses that will be of “biblical and catastrophic” proportions, a Department of the Interior report prophetically warns.
Adding to this scenario of impending food shortages, the United States has not only suffered the worst oil spill in it’s history, threatening to obliterate Gulf Coast seafood industry for decades; it has also been hit by a series of catastrophic Winter storms that has engulfed 49 of the 50 States with unprecedented amounts of snow causing untold damage to citrus crops in Florida due to freezing weather. Record setting rains have also destroyed a massive amount of crops in the most important growing region of California. Yet more snow is expected to strike North America, and we’re not even into the first full month 2011!
Russia is one of the largest grain producers and exporters in the world, normally producing around 100 million tons of wheat a year, or 10 percent of total global output. It exports 20 percent of this total to markets in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Although the raging fires that have appeared throughout Russian peat bogs appear to be finally coming under control thru a program of flooding the bogs to  reduce their flammability, the smoke from the peat bog fires has kept Moscow nearly shut down for a week. The larger concern is from the effect of the fires, and the continued heat and drought they have produced, which has created a state of emergency across 27 regions during Russia’s ordinarily massive grain harvest and export activity.
The Ukraine, the world’s top producer of barley and sixth largest producer of wheat has been hit as hard as Russia by these fires and drought, to the point that the Ukraine has halted all their grain exports for 2011.The world has also been deluged recently with news of floods destroying massive tracts of farmland in Australia and Brazil for perhaps the next decade. It is reported that a new cyclone is preparing to hit Australia. Brazil, the largest nation in South America, has been hit with catastrophic floods that have killed nearly 400 people in the past few days alone. Not only have the vast majority of our world’s top wheat producers been affected, but also one of the main grain producing regions on the planet, South America, has been hit by disasters as an historic drought has crippled Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia.
Most of Europe, like U.S., has been plagued with severe cold weather as well as severe heat and drought this past summer. In France, the French government lowered their wheat crop forecast by 2.7% over last year due to drought and freezing weather.
President Sarkozy, as head of the G-20 group of developed Nations, called for and received an emergency meeting with President Obama this past Monday at the White House where he expressed his concerns that people are not being prepared for the sharp rise in food prices which must occur due to the unprecedented series of natural disasters which is currently threatening the stability of the entire world. According to this report, Sarkozy warned his American counterpart that the shock of a rise in food prices due to an unprecedented series of disasters could lead to the outbreak of Total Global War.
It is being reported in the European Union Times newspapers that Presidents Obama and Sarkozy have “agreed in principal” to create a joint US-European military force to deal exclusively with a global uprising expected this spring as our world runs out of food.
Just last week, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon underlined that one of France’s top G-20 priorities was to find a collective response to “excessive volatility” in food prices which are now occurring. Philippe Chalmin, a top economic adviser to the French government, warned that the World may face social unrest including food riots this summer as grain, gas and over-all food prices increase to unprecedented levels.
The fears of the French government over growing global instability have been realized this past week after food riots erupted in Algeria and Tunisia and left over 50 dead. So dire has the situation become in Tunisia that their government rushed in massive amounts of troops and tanks to their capital city, Tunis, and instituted a nationwide curfew in order to quell the growing violence. Now Egypt has erupted in street riots, and many social and economic analysts around the world are candidly discussing the domino affect of social unrest due to the current state of global food shortages. I bring this chronology of events to you now, not to scare you but to help you plan for the sharp spike in food prices and food shortages which are sure to come to our shores. Yes, you should be taking advantage of canned goods and food sales as you find them over the next few months and it would be prudent to buy a freezer to stock up on and store food items you can freeze. Yes, plan now to prepare to store your food for a year as well as the means to prepare it– perhaps without gas, electricity or running water. As our world endures an unprecedented series of fires, floods, droughts, winter storms, pollinator die-offs and weather catastrophes which have negatively impacted our globe’s ability to feed its people, it would only be prudent to reduce our waste of any food to a minimum and perhaps permanently put to rest our normal laissez-faire attitude towards food. The accepted American “norm” — that there will always be food at our grocery stores — may no longer be a part of the new American normal. Food shortages of every sort, from meats, grains, fruits and vegetables may be soon becoming a part of most American’s daily lives.
At the same time, due to an almost demoniac series of apparent natural disasters, the looming threat of actual famine and starvation casts its deadly shadow across our once prosperous and blessed land. For safety’s sake, make prudent food acquisition and storage, a major part of your planning and preparations for this new year.

~ Michelle Markey
Director, Safetyissues.com

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