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Most Americans are so accustomed to supermarkets that are absolutely packed to the gills with massive amounts of really inexpensive food that they cannot even imagine that life could be any other way. Unfortunately, that era is ending.
There are all kinds of indications that we are now entering a time when there will not be nearly enough food for everyone in the world. As competition for food supplies increases, food prices are going to go up. In fact, at some point they are going to go way up.
Let's look at some of the key reasons why an increasing number of people believe that a massive food crisis is on the horizon.
The following are 20 signs that a horrific global food crisis is coming....
#1 According to the World Bank, 44 million people around the globe have been pushed into extreme poverty since last June because of rising food prices.
#2 The world is losing topsoil at an astounding rate. In fact, according to Lester Brown, "one third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through natural processes".
#3 Due to U.S. ethanol subsidies, almost a third of all corn grown in the United States is now used for fuel. This is putting a lot of stress on the price of corn.
#4 Due to a lack of water, some countries in the Middle East find themselves forced to almost totally rely on other nations for basic food staples. For example, it is being projected that there will be no more wheat production in Saudi Arabia by the year 2012.
#5 Water tables all over the globe are being depleted at an alarming rate due to "overpumping". According to the World Bank, there are 130 million people in China and 175 million people in India that are being fed with grain with water that is being pumped out of aquifers faster than it can be replaced. So what happens once all of that water is gone?
#6 In the United States, the systematic depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer could eventually turn "America's Breadbasket" back into the "Dust Bowl".
#7 Diseases such as UG99 wheat rust are wiping out increasingly large segments of the world food supply.
#8 The tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis in Japan have rendered vast agricultural areas in that nation unusable. In fact, there are many that believe that eventually a significant portion of northern Japan will be considered to be uninhabitable. Not only that, many are now convinced that the Japanese economy, the third largest economy in the world, is likely to totally collapse as a result of all this.
More Here..
There are all kinds of indications that we are now entering a time when there will not be nearly enough food for everyone in the world. As competition for food supplies increases, food prices are going to go up. In fact, at some point they are going to go way up.
Let's look at some of the key reasons why an increasing number of people believe that a massive food crisis is on the horizon.
The following are 20 signs that a horrific global food crisis is coming....
#1 According to the World Bank, 44 million people around the globe have been pushed into extreme poverty since last June because of rising food prices.
#2 The world is losing topsoil at an astounding rate. In fact, according to Lester Brown, "one third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through natural processes".
#3 Due to U.S. ethanol subsidies, almost a third of all corn grown in the United States is now used for fuel. This is putting a lot of stress on the price of corn.
#4 Due to a lack of water, some countries in the Middle East find themselves forced to almost totally rely on other nations for basic food staples. For example, it is being projected that there will be no more wheat production in Saudi Arabia by the year 2012.
#5 Water tables all over the globe are being depleted at an alarming rate due to "overpumping". According to the World Bank, there are 130 million people in China and 175 million people in India that are being fed with grain with water that is being pumped out of aquifers faster than it can be replaced. So what happens once all of that water is gone?
#6 In the United States, the systematic depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer could eventually turn "America's Breadbasket" back into the "Dust Bowl".
#7 Diseases such as UG99 wheat rust are wiping out increasingly large segments of the world food supply.
#8 The tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis in Japan have rendered vast agricultural areas in that nation unusable. In fact, there are many that believe that eventually a significant portion of northern Japan will be considered to be uninhabitable. Not only that, many are now convinced that the Japanese economy, the third largest economy in the world, is likely to totally collapse as a result of all this.
More Here..
William Kotke published all of this information twenty years ago in his book, The Final Empire. When it first appeared he was attacked by all the usual suspects in the usual manner: A terminal paranoid, the classic doom and gloomer..., but his book is brilliant because he offers us workable solutions in the second half. It is still a pertinent read and should be a part of any and every school curriculum. Highly recommended.
ReplyDeleteBlah, blah, blah. Same doom and gloom regurgitated and recycled over and over. Overpopulation is a myth and like the other commentor states others have been crying the same old story for decades now and yet we are producing more food than ever before.
ReplyDelete8:26 a GOVERNMENT SHILL or just a dumb mindless poster
ReplyDeleteHey, 8:26, Why don't you take your vacation this year in Japan. It's a lot warmer now and the northern part of the country is very beautiful - just like the Pacific Northwest. Relax, kickback and enjoy the local produce and don't forget to drink lots of the local milk and eat the local cheese. Heard it had special nutrients in it which are particular to that section of the country. ENJOY!
ReplyDelete8:26 the article states facts...What do you offer?
ReplyDeleteAre we using less water?...Are the crops safer and giving larger crops...Are these new crop diseases being beat?...Is there some magical land where we are not either experiencing droughts, crop failures or breakdown of agricultural top soil due to so much dependence on petro fertilizers?
Just because we've pulled it this far doesn't mean the rubber band effect won't be worse.
know someone living in desert SW where they pump the underground aqua and by measurements the whole valley floor is dropping. anyway eventually yeah, day's work for a loaf of bread whatever the reasons. all tied together adds to many many reasons not a single cause to isolate and fix
ReplyDeleteAll species follow the same patterns while nutrients are plentiful the population expands. As the population reaches the carrying capacity some members of the population become nutrient deficient. As the population continues to expand it exceeds the available nutrients to maintain it. This leads to a population crash and more than half of the population is lost. And then population levels are below the carrying capacity. The next step is of course to start expanding the population again.
ReplyDeleteSince agriculture led to modern society and increased production the answer to the population problem was found..Monsanto. If you cannot save your seeds and cannot get them elsewhere how do you recover form a crash in food production. You don't. And the population expansion step is eliminated. Do you see the logic yet? Or do you need a drawing in a toilet stall to explain it?
Scientists now realize that climate is having an adverse effect on our tectonic plates. Yup, global warming is causing more earthquakes. Who woulda thunk it?
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile the GOP is working to make the elderly and poor die off much quicker. Maybe that means more food for the conservatives, who by then will be living in walled-off enclaves guarded by Blackwater.
I am positive that doom is approaching faster than the average idiot American will admit. I estimate that more than half of my friends are going broke. My new governor wants to cut the education budget in half--don't know how many teachers will lose their jobs. But the result will be more foreclosures, more bankruptcies, less consumer spending, and less revenue paid in taxes. Less revenue means even more austerity and more lost jobs. Okay, instead of gloom and doom, let's just call it a circle jerk without the fun.
If prices get high enough and stay there then more crops will get planted. More folks will become farmers.
ReplyDeleteHere in Texas there is all kinds of unused , former "farm land". Millions of acres. You just can't make money farming it. Unless.....prices go up :)
All progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only Of robbing the laborer, but of robbing the soil. - Karl Marx ...
ReplyDeleteParticularly in the colonised world starting with Ireland and on to the Americas as the topsoil is depleted ?
"Following Liebig and other analysts of the nineteenth-century soil crisis, Marx argued that soil nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) were sent in the form of food and fiber sometimes hundreds and thousands of miles to the cities, where, instead of being recycled back to the land, these nutrients ended up polluting the urban centers, with disastrous results for human health. Meanwhile, faced with an increasingly impoverished soil, Britain, as Liebig pointed out, imported bones from Napoleonic battlefields and from Roman catacombs together with guano from Peru in a desperate attempt to restore nutrients to the fields. (Later on the invention of synthetic fertilizers was to help close the nutrient gap, but this was to lead to additional environmental problems, such as nitrogen runoff.)
In addressing these environmental issues Marx took over the concept of Stoffwechsel or metabolism from Liebig,2 describing the ecological contradiction between nature and capitalist society as "an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism." Indeed, "capitalist production," Marx explained, "only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth -- the soil and the worker." This rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature could only be overcome, he argued, through the systematic "restoration" of the metabolism between humanity and nature "as a regulative law of social organization." But this required the rational regulation of the labor process (itself defined as the metabolic relation of human beings to nature) by the associated producers in line with the needs of future generations. "Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together," Marx stated, "are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household]."
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2007/foster281107.html
Almost 7 billion of us walking around and all these gems of wisdom from marx while revelant in some form; can be thrown out the window because the real question is going to be - which billion wil starve first
ReplyDeleteYou?
It's a helluva way to die & for those who have never gone hungry; simply try fasting for 48 hours - it's the hardest thing you'll ever do
sharonsj, instead of complaining about the GOP, offer some solutions besides tax the wealthy. No matter how much they’re taxed – it won’t be enough.
ReplyDeleteJust wondering if you have any skin in the game of paying federal taxes or are you one of the 47% who don’t.
Keep in mind, D.C. is borrowing 40¢ for every dollar spent. The babble coming out of D.C on raising the debt limit hasn’t included the monetary amount or when the debt limit will be raised again.
Cease on the avocation of having the future generation pay for today.
sharonsj: Meanwhile the GOP is working to make the elderly and poor die off much quicker.
ReplyDeleteI hear you're first on the list!
Onlysane1here said...
ReplyDeleteU r ok in the USA, yanks are pretty resilient, down here in Africa they slaughter each other as hobby, can u imagine 250mil macheting there way towards the last crumbs available. I guess media will be out of action so u guys won't get to watch.
Why are sheeple sheeple, I have given up trying to tell folk, ignorance is bliss and all that.
Here is a question I would like answered if possible;
3 biggest economies on earth, 1. military industrial complex 2. Oil 3. The "illegal drugs" trade.
No3.... Has been estimated to be worth at least $2trillion pa, ok, so if at a whim the banksters can find and freeze countless dictators etc assets/money when told to...why can the trillions banked by supposed drug barons not be seized/frozen etc...could be the the elite control the trade? the illegalisation is an attempt to eliminate the competition?
Under Taliban control Afghanistan's heroin production stopped, period, now under "UN...Rothschild" control it produces 84% of the worlds heroin!!!
There's nearly 7bil of us out there, how many understand how we are having a enema unknowingly?
Onlysaneone
Anyone remember Clinton pardoning his brother when he was caught with a planeload of cocaine?
I am one of "those tin foil hat guys" that believes solar energy can work on the long scale.
ReplyDeleteI lived in the Coachella Valley AKA Palm Springs, California, for 11 years. The wind farm outside of Palm Springs was active 98% of the time. If you place a wind mill in a spot where the wind never stops, you'll get a reliable source of free electricity.
I have a small solar array on my roof, that solar array powers the solar powered (how's that for redundant) LED grow lights that are growing my indoor garden currently consisting of:
Tomatos
Cucumbers
Basil
Green onions
Red Bell peppers
Radish
Did you know Radish is the fasted growing vegetable in the world, going from seedling to harvest in about a month? Perhaps smart people can figure out how to make others grow this fast.
You can drive 100 miles through the California desert and see nothing but desert. If I had the cash to literally farm underground, where the average temp is 68 degrees year round and power my farm by top side solar power for the LED (as in very low power consumption and no heat) grow lamps,where I could buy land for pennies an acre...