Today, we’re talking about global food shortages.
Now, I’m not one to get on the mic and start scaring people. I think that’s irresponsible. What I do want to bring to light in this episode is what the reality of what’s happening around the world is and what we should be thinking about moving forward.
Because if you’re concerned about who is president, but there’s no food on your plate…then what?
There are a variety of reasons why we should be more concerned about this single most important issue, than some of the other irrelevant stuff we are being distracted by. Countries are hoarding food, the shortening of growing days and extreme weather events have already impacted farmers yields with rice, wheat and corn crops, and lockdowns are expected again this winter.
So what will that mean for us?
Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about in this episode, so let’s dive into it.
First, let me just acknowledge a few folks. We’re at the end of Season Three, and I’m so grateful for all of you listening in each week. I’ll be taking a much needed break and the premiere of Season Four will be on November 13th.
Also, I want to make sure to thank one of my Instagram followers, my sister in nomenclature, Michele (also spelled with one L), who DM’d me about the influence of the Government on our food and grocery industry. Additionally, thanks to the Ice Age Farmer – who did a couple of really interesting videos on some of what we’re going to get into today – so if you’re listening, thanks!
Ok…so let’s talk about this…
First, let’s talk about the countries that are hoarding food.
We’re talking about China, Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt. These are just some of the countries that are stocking up because we all know what this year was like with the food supply chain breaking down.
For example, Kazakhstan, one of the worlds largest exporters of wheat flour has banned exports, as well as other commodities including carrots, sugar and potatoes. Serbia has banned exports of sunflower oil. And it isn’t stopping there.
Countries are stocking up due to fears of running out of supply again with the threat of lockdowns.
To boot, bad harvests in Turkey and Morocco boosted the need for increased imports. The impact that is having on the global economy is this…, agricultural food futures have been rising in price since July. That means, at some point to make up for the increase in costs, that difference will likely be passed onto us, consumers.
We can’t ignore the facts, we’re not out of the weeds yet.
Food prices are up overall in the past 12 months. That means we, as consumers, paid 7% more for meat, poultry, fish and eggs, 3% more for fruits and vegetables and 6% more for milk, cheese, and other dairy products in the past 12 months.
But what’s really concerning that isn’t making the news in the US, is what’s happening in Australia. They are running out of foods like rice (a food staple) and sadly, in addition to running out of rice, their police are forcibly removing people from open air farmer’s markets.
What we’re witnessing in real time is a lack of resilience because so much of our food supply is reliant on the food supply chain, that is owned and operated in large part by big corporate monopolies, big multinational agricultural trade and government intervention and subsidies. We’ve moved away from local sources of food.
And with anticipated additional lockdowns on the horizon, and imports of food or lack of imports, we’re facing quite a conundrum.
Food monopolies not only affect food pricing all along the food supply chain (which has a deep impact on small farmers and low income communities). Food monopolies also decrease competition so smaller, local producers can’t compete. For example…I found this quote…
“Monopolies decrease competition, which allows companies to raise prices without worrying about losing business. For example, let’s say you want to buy some milk, and your local store only sells these brands: Silk, Horizon Organic, and the Organic Cow. These brands don’t have to compete for the lowest price because they are all owned by a company called WhiteWave. Among monopolies, you are a captive customer. No matter how high the prices are, you have to buy high because you don’t have any other options.“
This problem exists on both sides of the political aisle as both parties are receiving money from the agricultural sector. There’s little oversight and it’s rampant.
But let’s move onto food staples…like rice, wheat and corn.
First, rice. Last week I talked to Che Axum, an agronomist (listen to that episode) and some of his recent research and testing has been on rice crops. Very interesting work he’s doing in Washington DC…but aside from that, Australia is currently experiencing a rice rationing and a potential rice shortage by year’s end. The main reasons for the shortage are – drought, low crop yield and lack of imports.
Australia is one of those places in the world that hasn’t really experienced food shortages but now, shit is real. There are farmers out there (shout out to Australian rice farmers) who really want to grow rice…and do. Some of them could have easily just sold water in lieu of growing rice – as the price of water out there due to the drought has skyrocketed to $600/megaliter (which is 264,000 US gallons)…which doesn’t seem like that is very expensive compared to say, California farmers, who pay $70 per gallon-foot per acre to irrigate crops.
As a result of crop reduction, there have been government food rations at the retail level which impacts rural families the hardest. Some of the foods that have been rationed to date are :
- Of course, rice
- Flour
- Eggs
- Sugar
- Pasta
- Long-life milk
- Canned tomatoes
Like, these are all staple foods and rural folks just don’t get to the store that often and tend to buy more during one shopping trip than say, someone who lives in the city.
Here’s the thing with rationing food…
There’s an economic problem here. There’s a risk of price increase and possibly price gouging. It’s a classic supply and demand problem. There’s little supply, but a lot of demand. Companies can capitalize on that opportunity – we saw that with hand sanitizer back in March when you could find little bottles of Purell online for 10x what they normally cost. Ridiculous.
But…here’s where I want to shift the focus to other commodities and our farmers. The real impact that COVID-19 has had on farmers has been largely ignored here. Yes, there was the “farm bill” this year that allocated $1.8 billion dollars to farm programs. And if we’re being intellectually honest here, part of the taxpayer payout to farmers was due to some of the trade war tariffs which really hurt many American farmers and ranchers….but that’s another episode.
I want to bring light so this report on the USDA website which states, and I quote :
“The disruptive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. agricultural system have been broad and varied. And they follow several years of trying production and market conditions for U.S. farmers. In 2017 and 2018, several hurricanes pummeled U.S. farms; 2019 brought historically poor planting conditions and retaliatory tariffs cut potential for our agricultural exports compared to 2017.
This year, farmers and consumers have been planning production and managing household budgets at a time when markets — food, commodity, labor, energy — are being jolted by global, national and regional shutdowns, slowdowns, and overall uncertainty. Those shocks to the U.S. and global economies have affected both the supply and demand for food in the U.S. and the rest of the world, leading to short-term, localized shortages in the U.S., particularly in livestock products like meat, while farmers had to deal with, for example, excess milk supplies in other areas.
In general, U.S. food prices have risen since January while prices received by U.S. producers have fallen. But while rising wholesale and retail food prices and some temporarily empty shelves drew a lot of public attention and stoked fears over availability and affordability of our food, the severe impacts of the crisis on U.S. farmers have been much less visible.”
Even Congressman David Scott, US House Rep from Georgia’s 13th district since 2003 said this:
“Food shortages are coming…”
That says a lot, right?
So, let’s talk about corn. There are a lot of stories circulating around about how the “Coronavirus has robbed us of canned corn”. At the beginning of the coronavirus hoarding, they say people bought up all the canned corn and a report out of Fox is saying “big canning companies tried to get farmers to plant more corn, but growers had already made their plans for the year.”
If you’re familiar with farming crops like corn, you know that it takes a lot of space, and there is a lot of planning that goes into every season. However, this claim that the coronavirus is to blame for our corn shortage is disingenuous at best.
Let’s look at some of the facts.
First, there’s a thing called “prevent crops”, which basically means that there is a failure to plant insured crops by a certain date. So, in 2019, 11.4 million acres were prevented from being planted – most notably in South Dakota (the leader in US prevent corn crops) with 2.9 million acres NOT planted, followed by Illinois and Minnesota at 1 million acres NOT planted each.
A farmer in North Dakota was faced with 50% prevent planting due to weather conditions…meaning the spring was too wet or too cold to get the corn in the ground to have enough warmth and sun to get a good crop.
But even with these factors – food hoarding, prevent crops and unfavorable planting conditions for farmers…there’s something else that is curious here. And it’s not making mainstream news. It was a paper released this year, put together and researched by three scientists who studied the Canadian prairie agriculture and the detriment of diminishing solar activity. I’ll leave the link to the study on my foodslain.com website blog post…but here’s just an excerpt from that paper.
“During the grain growing months of May-July, the mean temperature on the Canadian prairies has cooled down by 2ºC in the last 30 years. The cooling appears to be most certainly linked to diminishing solar activity as the Sun approaches a Grand Solar Minimum in the next decade or so. This cooling has led to a reduction in Growing Degree Days (GDDs) and has also impacted the precipitation pattern. The GDDs in conjunction with mean temperature and precipitation are important parameters for the growth of various grains (wheat, barley, canola etc.) on the prairies. In this study, we investigate the impact of declining GDDs and associated temperature and precipitation patterns on Prairie grain yields and quality. Our analysis shows that there has been a loss of about 100 GDDs over the time frame of 1985-2019. The loss in GDDs is also linked to some of the large-scale Atmosphere-Ocean parameters like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), North Pacific Index (NPI) and Arctic Oscillation (AO). Our analysis suggests grain yield and quality could be significantly impacted in the coming years as solar activity continues to diminish.”
Valentina Zharkova, another scientist published a report this year on the grand solar minimum and how that WILL impact our ability to access food – worldwide. She says, and I quote :
“this is only the start of the Grand Solar Minimum” and turbulent weather conditions are expected to persist for the next 33 years.
The last GSM to hit the Earth was called ‘The Maunder Minimum’, which lasted between 1645-1715; with it came duller sunshine and a global drop in temperature.”
So….let’s recap.
Because we’re talking about our food supply here. Our greatest dependency.
The thing that we need multiple times per day. One of three things that we can’t do without for very long. I’m not even really sure why this isn’t as big of a talking point as any other crisis we’re facing right now. It seems curious to me that we’d put so much emphasis on things that really don’t matter as much as FOOD…but I digress.
We are facing food shortages. That’s just a fact because we’re seeing it happening right before our eyes in real time. We’re seeing it in Australia. We’re seeing countries around the world stockpiling grain, wheat, rice and sugar due to fears that they won’t be able to feed the population. We’re seeing rising prices of food in the last 12 months. We’re experiencing food hoarding with the continued lockdowns. We’re also facing environmental factors like drought, shorter growing days and other extreme weather events that impact farmers. And finally, we are facing fewer days of sun Growing Degree Days (GDD)…and this is just the beginning. Many scientists say it’s supposed to last for at least another 15 years at least.
So….that’s where I’m going to leave this one. I have a lot of questions here. I hope you do too, and I encourage you to dig into the research. Moreover, I encourage you to think about your long term food plan. Sure, there may be some of you out there that don’t need canned corn. But consider the real impact here. Corn isn’t just a crop that gets cooked and canned. Corn (as you might know from listening to my episode on Corn in Season Two) is in everything.
Not only that, corn is used to feed our livestock – think no big turkeys or cornbread for thanksgiving. Think no pork ribs or hamburgers at the 4th of July barbecue. Corn is used to make sweeteners and so many other by products. Corn is used to make fuel – so think limited availability of gasoline, beer, wine and cleaning solvents. If farmers are prevented from growing corn, and the temperatures and growing conditions are failing them, there will be a huge impact…and it won’t just be corn. Grains, fruit and vegetable crops need the sun too…
