As the drumbeat of WWIII grows louder; nationally we remain distracted from the looming domestic nightmare scenario flying under the radar; a food crisis of disastrous proportions. And coming The Great Depression, 2.0. (Note: I discussed this in another separate post.)
Now, I know if you’ve been to the supermarket lately you’re saying to yourself – wait, that food shortage is already here!
Right?
Wrong.
What food shortages you’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. Now, the information I am about to share with you is confidential and extremely alarming. Mind you, I’ve brought some context to it and disseminated it into layman’s terms, for purposes of confidentiality. But it should scare the hell out of you.
Firstly, let me say that right now the food shortages of items in grocery stores we see across the United States are not just evident right here – basic supplies have become very tight all over the globe and there are food shortages everywhere across the world. But you won’t hear this in the mainstream press, because it’s universally agreed; nobody wants any more riots or global panic.
Globally, we’re facing a catastrophic shortage of food – based on one of the food pillars of our modern society: corn.
The last time we had this type of catastrophic scenario arise, it became one of the factors leading to the Great Depression, where crop yields caused an economic collapse. But this time, we’re experiencing systemic collapse, “crop failure”, because farmers can’t afford to buy the fertilizer needed to grow the corn to produce our shelf stable products - which is ironic, because the introduction of fertilizer during the Great Depression is exactly what the Government pushed to reseed the earth and help increase crop yields, to help bring us out of the Great Depression.
Go to the grocery store and read through the ingredients of shelved products and you’ll discover corn is in just about everything.
So what’s it going to look like if a severe corn shortage happens? It’ll be apocalyptic. Corn helps make your medicine, your vitamin & antibiotic capsules, your wall board, your glue, dynamite, alcohol, fireworks, baby formula, pet food, soy products, juices, flavored drinks, cereals, breads, your sugary drinks and candies and almost every shelf stable product in the grocery store; it also feeds all the farm animals we buy at the grocery store: beef, chicken, pork, lamb, farm raised fish and any other meats. It’s even in our gas: ethanol. Without it, we can’t commute to work as cheaply. And everyday goods can’t be transported by truck across the country as cheaply as they are now. And so as you see, corn is in almost every aspect of our lives. And the impact of the loss of it will just be catastrophic: sheer Economic Misery for the working class.
But just don’t take my word on how far we’ve integrated corn into our everyday lives; read “Omnivores dilemma” and discover it for yourself. Below is a graph of how corn is used in our everyday products, credit; “Omnivores Dilemma”.
Credit: a graph from "Omnivores Dilemma" with that illustrates our societal reliance on corn
So, what will happen if we can’t get basic items because we run short of corn? I don’t want to get too far afield here, but at first, it’ll mean a massive upward price shift on all corn related items in supply chains and stores. Then, as affordability collapses quickly; a dramatic shift to production reliance on other remaining affordable crops, like wheat, grains, beet sugar, cane sugar, and other stable commodities to produce our food products will occur - which in turn will bring prophetic price increases across the board on every single commodity we consume. And then a nightmare scenario occurs; food affordability collapses and our society won’t’ be able to buy most of the products we purchase with relative ease now.
But this isn’t the concern of farmers. Farmers barely get by now on what they make – and are rightly concerned about keeping food on their own family tables. So concerns over the price of corn seed and fertilizer is a legitimate worry for the average family farm. Because the cost of seed and fertilizer coupled with the expected yield of corn, will not equal the price at market. And with seed and fertilizer costs up 500% this year, corn is suddenly unaffordable to produce.
This is a first in our world’s history. And if something isn’t done quickly to correct the situation, both on a national and global level, farmers are planning to decrease their corn plantings. They’ll substitute a different crop for their next harvest, one which both reduces costs and replenishes farmland naturally with nutrients and minerals, so as to avoid purchase of fertilizers for the forthcoming season.
So what crop are they planting instead?
Soy beans.
Soy beans; the savior crop of the Great Depression. The crop that brought the dust bowl to a grinding halt and replenished the land. Farmers know from experience that planting soy beans replenishes the land with nutrients needed to grow other crops in lieu of purchasing expensive fertilizer. Planting soy beans stabilized the farmlands and ended the misery of the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. But soy beans don’t feed any of our livestock, or make 90% of the products we consume daily.
When the sky went black at high noon; the Depression Era Dust Bowl crisis.
And that’s the major difference between our two eras, the 1920’s and the 2020’s: our reliance on corn. Although we used corn to feed our livestock in the 1920’s and hence, produce meat for market, it wasn’t used in every other product we consumed, unlike now. But still, even in the 1920’s our farm-economy collapsed. And milk and meat prices eventually went thru the roof, because without corn, animals couldn’t fatten quickly for slaughter or milk cows couldn’t produce milk. If you could find milk or meat, odds were, you couldn’t afford to buy it.
So what’ll happen when our farms exchange corn for soybeans?
With a glut of soy in the market; soy prices will collapse – and short of some form of government intervention, family farm income catastrophically collapses along with it. Although our reliance on soy is minimal and it won’t matter to the end consumer, it’ll matter to the small family farms that made the choice to plant soy instead of corn in order to survive - and they’ll fold under severe financial strain. Post-farm-bankruptcy, we can predict massive and cheap farm land sales, mass purchase of land by bankers – just like what happened during the Great Depression. In short, economic misery for the average consumer. Just like the Great Depression.
Planting crops of soy bean helped end the misery of the Dust bowl and reseeded the earth
In the meantime, prices of meat and other corn-related items will skyrocket, leaving us in the same nightmare scenario of the 1930’s: an inverse economic relationship – scarcity of commodities further increases because of collapse of product yields; which in turn leads to dramatic price increases that lead to a further collapse in demand, which in turn leads to further decreases in production, which leads to great price increases in remaining supplies.
Which brings us right into the economic gates of hell: Great Depression 2.0.
Hell on earth: Great Depression, 1930's. Hoovervilles in Central Park, NY.
Soon, we’ll reach a point where if you can find what you need, you can’t to afford to buy it. The average consumer will be bewildered at first; unprepared for what just happened to grocery prices in their local stores. But as time goes on, and prices keep trending upwards, reality will set in, and consumers will restrict spending to absolute minimal purchases. Then we’ll enter an nightmare spiral scenario of rising prices, decreasing affordability and a fast collapse in consumer demand, leading to a collapse in production; creating a catastrophic workforce collapse and mass unemployment. But you don’t have to rely on me to understand how our history is repeating itself - just open a history textbook. Or watch the Grapes of Wrath and you’ll see where our economy is heading within the next 2 years.
In the Great Depression, both Democracies and Dictators tried to decrease production to stabilize their economies; but it all failed miserably.
Now, to expand on fertilizer prices globally, let me say that fertilizer prices aren’t just changing the farm game here at home. For example, in South America high fertilizer prices are dramatically affecting coffee production. Yields are down; prices are up, because coffee is fast becoming scarce. And coffee prices will skyrocket further really soon. In Africa, rising fertilizer prices will result in “50-60 million tons” less food next year. Because lower levels of fertilizer use inevitably weighs on food production & quality, so it affects food availability. But its’ not limited to those two scenarios. It’s worldwide; it’s gone global. The situation is beyond serious.
The stage is being set for a historic global food crisis and global economic depression. As of now, there are widespread shortages all over our own nation, and to note, the Wall Street Journal just published a major article entitled “U.S. Food Supply Is under Pressure, From Plants To Store Shelves”. In fact, in some outlying areas, residents are quietly instructed to “just buy what you need and leave some for others” – a scenario unimaginable just a few years ago. And we’re fast approaching a tipping point where we aren’t going to be able to support the food needs of our national population - or for that matter, the world population – because we won’t have the food reserves to feed hundreds of millions of hungry people.
grocery store shortages
Of course, it isn’t our food supply that’s just under threat. As Victor Hansen aptly noted, our country is in the process of undergoing a “systemic collapse”.
I’m reminded historically of another great empire; ancient Rome, which once suffered this fate; systemic collapse describes the sudden inability of once-prosperous populations to continue with what had ensured the good life as they knew it. Abruptly, the population cannot buy or even find once plentiful necessities. And gradually, they begin to feel the trickle-down effects on everyday life. People begin to take notice that their own city streets are becoming unsafe. And then laws start to go unenforced or are enforced inequitably by class structure. And then gradually, every day things just stop working, while government turns from reliable to hostile.
Massive protest & civil unrest over government hostility, occurring worldwide
Does this scenario seem familiar to you? If it doesn’t, it should. Because it’s happening right now. Just look around you. And the pace of change is going to quicken in a way I can’t even begin to describe. Frankly, a lot of folks are going to be caught off guard by the sudden shift in economic and political dynamics. Things are shifting so rapidly now that it’s really hard to keep up - unless you’re paying very close to a lot of different metrics simultaneously.
And now for the Great Looming Question - what do you do when you’re facing a food crisis of epic proportions and an economic depression the world hasn’t seen in a hundred years? What do you do when you’ve got hundreds of millions of people you need to feed, but there’s no food left for them to eat? What do you do to quell the rising tide of civil unrest and divert your nation’s attention away from the deteriorating food crisis?
What I suspect we may well do now is exactly what history also teaches us worked twice before to take our country - and for that matter, the world - out of a massive economic collapse & usher in a period of untold economic prosperity unlike any the world had even seen.
And what’s that solution you ask?
A World War.
