Tag Archives: Global Crisis

What Will You Say When Millions Of People Starve To Death?

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By Michael Snyder

Source: End of the American Dream

For a long time, those of us that were claiming that a global famine was coming were widely mocked.  The skeptics could see the exact same trends that everyone else could see, but they just assumed that we would find a way to muddle through somehow.  So they didn’t want to listen to common sense, and they weren’t interested in warnings from “gloom and doomers” such as myself.  But I don’t consider myself to be a “doom and gloomer” because I am actually a very optimistic person.  I am so excited to be living during this time in human history, but I also know that very difficult times are ahead of us.  One of the major trends that I keep writing about over and over is famine, because the truth is that there simply is not going to be enough food for everyone on the planet in 2023 and beyond.  Of course the mainstream media is also starting to issue similar warnings.  For example, the following comes from a Yahoo News article entitled “Millions in East Africa face starvation due to drought”…

The World Health Organization warned on Wednesday that millions of people in East Africa face the threat of starvation. Speaking at a media briefing in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that drought, climate change, rising prices and an ongoing civil war in northern Ethiopia are all contributing to worsening food insecurity.

Over 50 million people in East Africa will face acute food insecurity this year, a study from late July by the World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization found. Roughly 7 million children are suffering from malnourishment and, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, hundreds of thousands are leaving their homes in search of food or livelihoods. Affected countries include Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.

In Somalia, authorities are projecting that vegetable and grain production will “drop by about 80% this year” due to the endless drought that they are currently experiencing.

Millions of precious people in Africa are facing imminent starvation.  But most of us in the western world don’t care, because our grocery stores are still full of food.

If you are one of those people that are choosing to ignore what is happening on the other side of the planet, you can afford to be cocky for now.

But conditions are starting to change here too.

Earlier today, I came across an excellent article about how the multi-year megadrought in the western half of the country is absolutely devastating the ranching industry…

The megadrought in the Western U.S., the region’s worst in 1,200 years, is threatening America’s cattle heartland: withering pastures, wrecking feed harvests and endangering a quintessential way of life.

The drought is forcing ranchers here in Texas and across the Southern plains to make an agonizing decision: Sell early now for less money than they planned on — or hold on, pray for rain and risk losing everything.

Sadly, more ranchers are deciding to sell off cattle with each passing day.

If you can believe it, the rate at which cattle are being sold is now 120 percent above last year’s level…

Over the last two weeks of July, the national cattle sale rate also jumped to 120 percent above 2021 levels — an average that reporting by The Hill and KAMR suggested conceals even higher frenzies of sales in some markets.

What this means is that lots of beef is coming on to the market.

Beef prices had been soaring, but in the short-term all of the cattle that are being slaughtered will help to moderate prices.

However, the outlook for 2023 is grim.  The national cattle herd just keeps getting smaller and smaller, and some beef producers in Oklahoma are now predicting that ground beef “could eventually top $50 per pound”…

Thanks to the unending economic symptoms of the pandemic and 2022’s inflation double-punch, average beef prices are currently about twice what they were in 2019. Add in the deepening widespread drought, a shortage of hay and feed, skyrocketing prices, transport costs, and various other metrics, some Southwest Oklahoma beef producers suggest cheap ground beef could eventually top $50 per pound.

If the price of ground beef does reach 50 dollars a pound, what do you think our country will look like?

Needless to say, at that point there will be absolutely no debate about whether we are in a global food crisis or not.

And we are also being told that we could soon be facing shortages of potatoes and tomatoes.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

Days ago, we said the next food insecurity problem that may impact Americans’ eating habits could be an emerging potato shortage. Now there appears to be another issue: Tomatoes are getting squeezed, and risks of a ketchup shortage rise as a severe drought batter California’s farmland.

California accounts for a quarter of the world’s tomato output. The worst drought in 1,200 years has forced farmers to abandon fields as crops turn to dust amid a water crisis.

I recently wrote an entire article about the coming tomato shortage that you can find right here.  Unless some rain comes along, the tomato crop in California this year is going to be absolutely disastrous.

So are you ready to eat less pizza because there isn’t enough pizza sauce to go around?

And are you ready to pay twice as much for spaghetti sauce at the grocery store?

On top of everything else, we are also potentially facing an extremely painful shortage of cotton…

Intense drought has forced cotton farmers to abandon millions of acres that have produced so little cotton that they are no longer worth harvesting, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Farmers will harvest an estimated 7.13 million acres, abandoning approximately 5.35 million acres due to an ongoing drought hammering southern U.S. states, representing an estimated abandonment rate of 42.87%, according to the National Cotton Council of America, who based their analysis on U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data. This represents the smallest harvest by area since 1868, The Wall Street Journal reported.

What I have touched on in this article is just the tip of the iceberg.

Agricultural production is going to be way down all over the planet this year.

But we will surely find a way to “muddle through” somehow, right?

If you have been a skeptic of reports of shortages and famine, it is time to wake up.

We really are staring an unprecedented global crisis right in the face, and the months ahead are going to be filled with pain.

America’s Fatal Synergies

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

America’s financial system and state are themselves the problems, yet neither system is capable of recognizing this or unwinding their fatal synergies.

why do some systems/states emerge from crises stronger while similar systems/states collapse? Put another way: take two very similar political-social-economic systems/nation-states and two very similar crises, and why does one system not just survive but emerge better adapted while the other system/state fails?

The answer lies in what author Geoffrey Parker termed Fatal Synergies and Benign Synergies in his book Global Crisis: War, Climate Change, & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. Synergy results from “interactions that produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.” In other words, 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8 is linear, while synergy is 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 = 16.

Given that the core function of states is the distribution of resources, capital and agency, we can distill the difference between Fatal Synergies and Benign Synergies into two questions:

1. What problems cannot be resolved by the financial system/state, no matter how many reforms are thrown at them?

2. Which groups have a meaningful voice in decision-making / governance and which groups are effectively voiceless / powerless?

The first question identifies the structural weak points in the system. These weak points could have any number of sources: they could be perverse incentives embedded in the system, elites caught up in their own enrichment, or even a willful blindness to the nature of the crisis threatening the system.

Here’s an example in the U.S. system: corporations reap $2.4 trillion in profits annually, roughly 15% of the nation’s entire output. Politicians need millions of dollars in campaign contributions to win elections. Those seeking political influence have not just billions but tens of billions. Those needing to distribute political favors will do so for mere millions.

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens:

“I’d say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests.”

This asymmetry cannot be overcome. Indeed, the past 40 years have witnessed an increasing concentration of wealth and power in corporations and their lobbyists and a decline of political influence of the masses to near-zero. Every reform has failed to slow this momentum, which is constructed of incentives to maximize profits, gain political favors and win elections.

In a similar fashion, the Imperial Presidency has gained power at the expense of Congress for decades–a reality that scholars bemoan but the reforms allowed by the system are unable to stop. So we have endless wars of choice without a declaration of war by Congress, one of the core powers of the elected body.

An analogy to these systemic weak points is the synergies of an organism’s essential organs: if any one organ fails, the organism dies even though the other organs are working just fine. In other words, any system is only as robust as its weakest essential component/process.

Whatever problems the system is incapable of resolving have the potential to bring down the system once they interact synergistically.

The second question identifies how many groups have been suppressed, silenced or ignored by those at the top of the heap. If these groups have an essential role in the system as producers, consumers and taxpayers, their demand to have a say in decisions that directly affect them is natural.

Another group with understandable frustrations at being left out of the decision-making are those in the educated upper classes whose expectations of roles in the top tier were encouraged by their families, society and training. When these expectations are not met because there are no longer enough slots in the top tier for the rapidly proliferating upper classes, the group left out in the cold has the time, education and motivation to demand a voice.

In other words, those denied access to resources, capital and agency who felt entitled to this access will not be as easily silenced as those who accept their low status and restricted access to resources, capital and agency as “the natural order of things.”

All the groups that are denied a voice and access to resources, capital and agency are in effect a sealed pressure cooker atop a flame. The pressure builds and builds without any apparent consequence until it explodes.

The more that power is concentrated in the hands of the few, the greater the desperation of the groups who are locked out of power. As their desperation rises, some of these groups are willing to go to whatever lengths are necessary to effect change.

The process of explosive demands for change erupting is difficult to manage once released. The system’s essential subsystems may be destabilized–the equivalent of organ failure–and once destabilized, it’s often no longer possible to restore the previous stability.

In this environment, the common good falls by the wayside and the system collapses.

In the context I’ve laid out, Fatal Synergies arise when access to resources, capital and agency are limited by elite hoarding or massive declines in available resources and capital.

Beneficial Synergies arise when whatever resources and capital are available are shared, if not equitably, at least in a process in which every group affected by the distribution has a voice in public decision-making.

Fatal Synergies arise when the identity of each group is based not on shared values and cooperation but on unyielding resistance to competing claims on the nation’s wealth and income.

Beneficial Synergies arise when all groups have a voice and a say in the process of distribution, even if it is limited.

Crises reveal the problems the system is incapable of resolving. How we respond to those constraints and weak points is the difference between Fatal Synergies and collapse and Beneficial Synergies that generate successful evolutionary responses to pressing selective pressures: simply put, “adapt or die.”

America’s financial system and state are themselves the problems, yet neither system is capable of recognizing this or unwinding their fatal synergies.