Record Low Temps Up To 50 Degrees Below Normal Threaten To Absolutely Wreck The Rest Of The Harvest Season

It isn’t supposed to be this cold in October.  The official start of winter is still almost two months away, and yet the weather in much of the western half of the country right now resembles what we might expect in mid-January.  All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week.  Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested.  Due to unprecedented rainfall and extreme flooding early in the year, many farmers faced extraordinary delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were hoping that good weather at the end of the season would provide time for the crops to fully mature and be harvested.  Unfortunately, a nightmare scenario has materialized instead.  A couple of monster snow storms have already roared through the Midwest, and now record low temperatures threaten to absolutely wreck the rest of the harvest season. (Read More...)

China Is “Turning To Dog Meat” As The Massive Global Pork Shortage Rapidly Intensifies

If other forms of meat suddenly became too expensive, would you feed dog meat to your family instead?  Sadly, this is a dilemma that many families in China are facing right now.  As I reported a few days ago, one-fourth of all the pigs in the entire world have already been wiped out by African Swine Fever.  The epicenter of this crisis is in China, and as you will see below, their hog population has fallen by more than 40 percent so far.  This has caused a dramatic spike in the price of pork, and as a result many Chinese citizens are now seeking out less expensive alternatives. (Read More...)

Shock Survey: 12% Of U.S. Corn Farmers Didn’t Get Their Crops Planted, 48% Expect “Below-Average Yields This Harvest”

Crops all over America are failing, and the true extent of this crisis is starting to become clearer.  Months of endless rain and nightmarish flooding prevented many farmers in the middle of the country from getting their crops planted on time, and millions of acres didn’t get planted at all.  And if all that wasn’t enough, this month record high temperatures have been absolutely brutal for vulnerable young crops across the Midwest.  We shall see how the rest of the summer goes, but at this point it appears that yields are going to be way, way below expectations, and that has very serious implications for all of us. (Read More...)

Food Shortage Warnings Are Already Starting To Appear, And Now Tropical Storm Barry Is Going To Rip Through America’s Heartland

The middle of the country has been relentlessly hammered by endless rain and unprecedented flooding for months, and now it is about to be absolutely pummeled by Tropical Storm Barry.  Needless to say, this is going to cause even more headaches for Midwestern farmers.  At this point, millions of acres of prime farmland are not going to be planted at all this year, and there are tens of millions of other acres where crops are really, really struggling.  Those farms desperately need some warm, sunny weather for a while, but instead they are about to get hit by another enormous storm.  In the end, this could potentially turn out to be the worst growing season in modern history, and it comes at a time when crops are literally failing all over the planet.  Sadly, we really struggle to feed everyone on the globe even during the best years, and so what will things look like if worldwide harvests are catastrophic during the second half of 2019? (Read More...)

Food Crisis 2011? 14 Disturbing Facts That Make You Wonder If The Coming Global Food Shortage Has Already Begun

Will 2011 be the year that we point to as the beginning of the great global food crisis?  Food prices are soaring, supplies are very tight and already we have seen some very intense food protests flare up around the globe this year.  When people don’t have enough to eat, they tend to become very desperate, and unfortunately it looks like the global food situation is not going to improve much any time soon.  Right now the world is really struggling to feed itself, and with each passing day there are even more mouths to feed.  It is being projected that the population of the world will reach 9 billion people by the year 2050.  There are already way too many people starving to death around the globe, and unfortunately starvation is only going to become more rampant as food supplies get even tighter.  Some of the key food producing provinces in China are facing their worst drought in 200 years.  Flooding has absolutely devastated agricultural production in Australia and Brazil this winter.  Russia is still trying to recover from the horrific drought of last summer.  Global weather patterns have gone haywire over the past 12 months, and this is putting immense pressure on a global food system that was already on the verge of a major breakdown. (Read More...)

Will The Bizarre Weather Of 2010 Set The Stage For A Major Global Food Shortage In 2011?

Record-shattering heatwaves all over the world, massive wildfires in Russia, truly historic flooding in Pakistan and China and devastating droughts in many other areas are playing havoc with harvests all over the globe.  This is leading many analysts to predict a sharp rise in food prices for the rest of 2010, and there are even whispers that 2011 could see the outbreak of global food riots that are even worse than what we witnessed back in 2008.  The truth is that things are starting to get more than a bit frightening out there.  One quarter of Russia’s grain crops have already been wiped out by the unprecedented heatwave and the massive wildfires that have been ravaging that nation.  In fact, the Russian government has announced that they have banned all grain exports for the rest of this year.  This has caused a dramatic surge in the price of wheat on world markets.  Unfortunately, Russia is far from alone in dealing with bad harvests this year.  So what happens when global food prices go so high that the hundreds of millions of people existing on the edge of poverty around the world can’t afford to buy food any longer? (Read More...)