Food shortages

[Mortblanc]

Aside from what is happening at the shop down the street, there is a problem and it is coming to a place near you very soon!

The government of Sir Lanka has ceased to exist in the face of food riots in the past two weeks.

There is not a shortage of food. There quite simply is no food! They can not just replace bread with cake or have green olives rather than black olives for lunch.

Two years ago they went green and banned the use of chemical fertilizers and the food production dropped to 25% of the previous year and it would take years for their agriculture to rebound. They have been feeding their population with imported food for the past two years. Now they can not import/buy food since their currency is worthless on the world market.

(Imagine that, a tiny island that can not feed itself, trying to fertilize it fields with manure. Where have I heard that before?)

The entire cabinet has resigned and one of the MPs was beaten to death by a mob today.

As of this afternoon the nation had enough petrol to supply the country for ONE DAY with no hope of getting more. No one will ship what can not be paid for. No petrol lines winding around the block for them, there is no petrol! It's not just short, or tied up in distribution, they are out!

Implications? Well they owe China for the construction of a large port on their coast and have surrendered the area to China since they are now completely insolvent and have defaulted on all loans.

I wonder how India feels about having a Chinese naval base 100 miles off their coast?

Iran is also at the point of collapse. 50% of their population spends 90%-100% of their income on food, mostly a wheat based diet of noodles, bread and cous-cous, and the price of wheat has gone up 300% in the past two weeks. The government subsidies that were feeding half the population have been stopped due to the increase in wheat prices. So what the population could not afford to buy two weeks ago they can now buy 1/3 less of.

Food is scarce and what is available they can not afford to buy. They have survived on government benefits for decades and now the benefits are gone! The government can not afford to feed its people. (where have I heard that one before?)

There is widespread rioting and troops have opened fire on the protesters several times this week. Of course that makes total sense due to part of the reason for their financial state is being the UN sanctions based on human rights violations.

Implications? I believe they share a border with a NATO country that has food. I doubt that Turkey can feed the Golden Horde!

That is two, that we know of. Not next door to you I know, or across the street, or channel. But we have a saying over here, "$h!t flows down hill".

It may well be that a human induced famine is going to climb uphill, from the weakest societies and governments to the healthier, with the base eroding and taking the top of the hill down as it dissolves.

Even if we could afford to feed 60% of the world population, which we can't, we are now faced with the situation where there is not enough production to supply them.

How will our own populations feel about sending free food to 2/3 of the world while our own families have lower quality food, less food, or no food? (You do realize that our own governments will play the political game until our own children are dying of malnutrition?)

The Ukraine War has only been going on for two months folks! This is just the start. Want to make bets on what governments collapse after the world wheat supply has been cut by 60% at 6 months, a year, 2 years?.

This years' food production is already gone. It ain't coming back folks, it's gone.

As the food base tightens, little by little, the cost of that food is going to go through the roof in huge leaps! What you could find in a previous week will not be available and if it is on the shelf you won't have enough money in your pocket to buy it.