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Will Famine Emerge by Year End? Yes.

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The inflation riots have begun. Peru and Sri Lanka both are experiencing violence as inflation spirals the prices of basic necessities higher and higher.

We’ve been here before, and recently. The Arab Spring was a period of social unrest and riots in 2010 and 2011 that was triggered, in part, by spiking food costs.

As Alfred Henry Lewis said in 1906, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.”

But before pure anarchy comes, society experiences increasing unrest and the erosion of social bonds and niceties. That’s where we are now.

Food prices today are higher than they were in 2010, so the protests are not at all surprising. We can and should expect more of them.

Worse than that, however, is the prospect of actual famine and food shortages. I expect true famine to emerge by the end of this year, after the northern harvest fails to cover the basic needs of 8+ billion people.

This is yet another reason why you should plant a garden. As if you needed one more, right?

The reason for the glum outlook is not just the loss of Ukraine exports, and probable loss of the planting season for quite a large portion of the Ukraine, but because of the desperate global shortages of fertilizers which have become utterly essential to today’s crop yields.

In this lesson, we learn that converting biologically active and supportive soil into barren dirt was a terrible idea.

By 2030, it is projected that phosphate will reach peak output and then begin its long slow decline. What’s the world plan for this? There isn’t one. Again, this is why local, regenerative farming is so critical to undertake at this time.

Links:

Peru Violent Inflation Protests

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-05/peru-declares-curfew-in-lima-due-to-inflation-protests

FAO – Real food prices higher than in 2010

https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex

Phosphate mining unsustainable

https://news.usask.ca/articles/research/2019/research-scientists-work-to-solve-phosphate-shortage–the-dwindling-resource-required-to-grow-food-.php

Veritasium Youtube special on Potash

https://youtu.be/YMDJA4UvXLA

US Farming addicted to nitrogen and potassium (USGS historical charts)

https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2020/1153/ofr20201153.pdf

Global grain trade stressed by Ukraine lack of exports

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-05/will-russia-s-war-in-ukraine-cause-wheat-shortages-raise-food-prices-more

Written by Peak Prosperity

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  1. years & years ago they said bio fuel crops being more profitable than food crops in effect links food prices to fuel prices and will cause mass starvation as the poor will be priced out of food.

  2. We in the UK also have Brexit to contend with that has mainly affected food, farming and fishing. Unfortunately like the US we don’t have a competent government.

  3. Biologist Guy McPherson has for years been predicting starvation from climate disruption. If we're also losing the ability to make fertilizer, then we are truly in collapse. Thank you for the details, Chris.

  4. Problem is my garden is tiny and will never be able to grow enough food for me. I also live in the UK, so the weather is crap. Hardly any sunshine. My answer, have every penny in oil commodities. I should own natural gas commodities as well, but I don't. Chris is a communist, and he knows that there is global plan of the ruling class to kill a lot of us plebs off with a famine. To be fair, it is the only way forward for humanity at this stage. Capitalism is finished.

  5. Chris, there is no future for most of us.
    Where you been ?
    The NWO and reset is almost complete.
    Wow, i won't even begin to explain.
    If you and your listeners don't know, theres no hope for you.

  6. Growing without soil. Those plants must use a lot of fertiliser. I wonder if someone is directing the important stuff to those vegge plantations. Is it part of a plan???

  7. The best part is western politicians are competing with each other to show who's more willing to crush their own citizens' quality of life as a sign of how tough they are on Putin.

  8. Basically you are saying we should do traditional farming; nowadays called 'biological', which is a bad name. 'recycle farming would be a beter name.
    And we can do that in NL, but our population declined to 1.5 – 1.7 birthrate from the early 70ies, so unfortunately our govs in their infinite wisdom decided to flood the country with immigrants. So we went from 12.3 million in 1970, to 17,5 million now, while our population without immigration would have been <9 million. Which would be sustainable for durable agriculture, considering we have great farmers.
    I was hoping the bulk of these immigrants would leave as conditions here deteriorate, but of course the conditions in their homelands will also deteriorate, so it depends. If we get to an actual war with Russia, then they will leave, bc these ppl came her for freedom, which is gone, for wealth, which is gone and sure not to fight our wars. Will be interesting to see what happens.

    I guess pretty soon ill go again to a local farmer my granddad once worked for his grandfather and talk things over. He may use some insight from me as to what is going to happen and why.

    For my own little place in a medium size city of 30k, i already made plans. I can collect rainwater, so dont need that from the company selling it, if need be.I dont need heating for the next 2 years as i stacked good on wood and will live in just one room and sleep there, to save energy. Dont need electricity, bc that is luxury (unless for tools and so), so i may throw in some solar panels with a battery system (is about 1000+ USD for what i need) and sewage illhave to look into; how to reuse human excrement. So not to long from now i dont need any utilities anymore. Saves a load of money. Also have been planting some veggies and stuff in the small garden (more and more terrace makes way for soil) and i think ill make a henhouse and throw in some 8 chickens. Maybe more even.
    And i bought a years worth of durable; glas/tin veggies and pasta;s, mashed potatoes, rice and so on. All durable foods with high nutritional values. It cost an arm and a leg, but it should last me more than a year. If i rational myself and get some foods of the garden; 2 years. Meat is a problem though, but ive been thinking to maybe keep a piggy then. I have no experience with that at all, but cant be that hard as they everything. Space will then be a problem though.
    Either way, i can survive for a year, without any outside connection. Anyone can do that (still), costs a couple of 1000 USD.

    Farmers here have all sown and planted; dutch are hard to stop. And so they will harvest too (they already use fertilzer from intensive cattle industry here, so i expect little problems with local foods till next year. Although prices will go up of course. At least we still have great farmers, bc our gov wanted to destroy them too. Sinds pretty much all are native and so am i, i can prolly make some deals there.
    I wish i was 20 years younger though, or 30, bc im not that healthy anymore and doing manual labor gives me increasingly more pain. But i will have to ignore that and go on.

    Im going to keep my paprikas in the window sill btw, bc last time i had those outside (2 ears ago) the snails ate most of them. And you can hardly see that, as they make a little hole as they are small, and eat from the inside out. Kinda like snowwhite butterflies on coalsorts. So you may think you have some nice big ones, untill you pluck them and then you see…

    *Tip: not all things like to grow where you want them to be. Often even parish. So first year just plant stuff all over the place, randomly. What does great, keep it there. What withers, look for another place for it
    *COMPOST everything.
    *Fruittrees are very rewarding with little effort. I get a wheelbarrel of kiwi's every year and the hardly need any care. No fertilizer, hardly any water. You do need to cit them back once a year. Small apples trees on pot can also yield nice harvest with little care, aswell as plumbs, pears, and so on.

    Im afraid we are going to see some years (at least) of 'survival of the fittest).
    * Set up local trading systems! We are going to need such, bc for my instance that kiwi gives much more then i need. Same for plumbs and they all ripe pretty much at the same time.
    * Most fruits can be kept for some time in a cool, dark place (not in the fridge!)
    * you can make jams from them pretty easy. Can use skill from most for pectine or use berries for pectine. Can also trade those!
    * buy a big cooking pot with lid, or a real canner and can whatever you like. (is a bit of a learning curve.
    * use as little as possible chemicals against insects and so. If there is an abundace, try looking for which plants repel those particular bugs.
    * Keep unused seeds inthe fridge (at the highest temp location in the fridge in litte closed containers, or plastic bags. It will prolong their lifetime.
    * if there is some hobbyist pony/horse breeder in the vicinity, try to score some manure from them. Is great fertilizer.
    * Collect as much rainwater as you can. Handy for your garden and if you need drinking water: add 3 drops of NaOCl/liter (sodium hypochlorite = used as toilet cleaner, with no other chemicals added of course and leave for 30 minutes. It will kill all parasites and bacteria and is good enough to drink.
    * Rotate crops, as many get sick if you plant same crops every year in the same spot. Als add nitrogen catching plants and rotate them in for a season (lupine, clover and so)
    * if you see nettles somewhere, which most people find an annoyance bc they sting, if its allowed, harvest them. Throw in a barrel with water (after cutting up, but not really necessary) and let it rot for some weeks. = great N fertilizer) It does need a little stir every other day.
    * find a way to use your own (family) excrement so use as fertilizer. There is a risk there if it is not decaded well enough, you might x contaminte your veggies and so, or if not done well, carry on a pathogen. I still have to look into that on how to do it safely. Its what people did prior to artificial fertilizer.

  9. There are two kinds of inflation. The first kind is what you all think about is demand grow inflation. There the government prints money to grow their share of the available resources and labour. Printing money is not enough to get inflation. You must really increase your share of something of the real world and that must be something which someone other really wants. So employ more worker which were unemployed before is not enough. Similar with resources.

    The second kind is supply shrinking inflation. Here the supply of something important is greatly reduced by some disaster or some public action. The prices needs to rise to get some share of the demand to shrink as well.The central banks can't do much about this kind of inflation. With rising interest rates the central banks can reduce the investment. But to reduce the demand of ordinary people this is not enough. Each person who has some savings can try to use this savings to get some share of the scarcer thing.

    The western world don't want to trade with russia. But it still needs the resources from russia. In term of ressources and labour the western world gets more from russia than russia from the western world. Because of that I see this situation now as a supply shrinking inflation.

  10. Hello Chris, you mentioned "cereals inflation". Here in Europe, box of cereals used to be 50g or half a kilo. That changed to 375g, but price stayed the same. This was never accounted in statistics (in Slovenia) as inflation, because price did not change. Smae goes for the popsicles. Few years ago I bought a box of 4 popsicles and the price on the fridge was 4 Euros for 4x150g popsicles. But the box said 4x125g. Label on the fridge was from last year, packaging changed, but the price stayed the same. I called out statistical bureau and they said if price did not change, they won't count that in inflation calculations.

  11. "We don't need any more war, wars are destructive"
    Ukraine agrees. Doesnt mean we shouldnt send them weapons though. People > stuff…. happy to fund permaculture as well. Can do both.

  12. Look at the change from the lira to the euro in Italy when pasta prices went up 40%. Food prices are still 'good' in Italy – if you come across the border to buy in Italy…
    Use of antibiotics as herbicides has screwed microbes in the soil – which drives fertilizer sales. This doesn't replace the 3 amino acids produced by microbes in the soil which are absorbed by plants with the trade of sugars…

  13. 30% of the world's wheat is grown in Ukraine. The fertilizer urea used to grow wheat is manufactured from oil and gas. Russia is supply Germany with most of its gas d'oh.

  14. Americans eat too much anyways. Much of the corn grown in the US goes into making high fructose corn syrup for junk food and other unhealthy foods. Even in Canada, good agricultural land is being used to grow wine grapes or to raise cattle.

  15. No, rising prices are NOT due to "money printing." There is no evidence at all of money printing, and indirect effects of QE (which is NOT money printing) are very modest based on multiple studies during the last 20 years of QE experiments (that started in Japan in 2001). The spike in M2 in late 2020 was not from money printing either. It was from money BORROWING (debt) and redistribution which turns already extant non – M2 money into M2 money. (Yes, M2 can increase without money printing.) It is true that Milton Friedman hypothesized back in the seventies that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon," but even if we ignore the fact that Friedman walked back that idea in his later years, it would only mean, if taken at face value, that the current increase in prices is not really inflation. The biggest contributor to inflation: SUPPLY CONSTRAINTS, partly due to increased US demand, but also due to other factors related to covid and more recently war (which I hope will end shortly in spite of the best efforts of NATO countries to drag it out as long as possible to "bleed" Russia even though they know full well that it is unwinnable by Ukraine) and the decision of the US and its allies to initiate the biggest trade war in history.

  16. I feel a perfect time to fund crypto. High interest rates, high inflation and low wages increases. No amount of flag fondling is going to hide the outcome of that.The sad things is a lot of people will still vote for the incompetent narcissist out of faux patriotism.

  17. It's sad and really tragic that so much of this NPK is going to grow soybeans and corn as well as other GMO crops to make junk food for mass consumption, which is ruining our health as well as the health of the planet. But all you hear about from media and government is carbon, which is causing jack environmentally and actually is a fertilizer.

  18. I would be interested in seeing the data on what percentage of people’s income goes towards feeding themselves, what the differences are currently between countries around the world, and how the amounts have changed over time. I think we Americans are so used to taking the easy availability of a huge variety of food at relatively low cost for granted. People are losing their minds over one or two of the usual twenty options being unavailable.

  19. Air bnb is discriminating against potential customers just because of their nationality? I thought that was illegal in the United States and I assumed western Europe since we tend to copy one another's repressive policies. Is this grounds for a slew of civil suits or a class action suit against Air BnB for civil rights violations? Does anyone know?

  20. ABOLISH THE FEDERAL RESERVE👀 PRIVATE CENTRAL BANK👀‼️:
    ⬇️⬇️
    They cloak their deadly economic mischief against WeThePeople with
    fake math and
    fake charts and
    fake analysis and
    fake solutions and
    one-sided rules and
    dogma.
    They are slowly boiling WeThePeople like frogs.

    When the wicked rule, THE PEOPLE MOURN. And more and more WeThePeople are rapidly owning less and less, because of Tge Federal Reserve banks and their cohorts. Approaching owning nothing, making the rich even wealthier and happier.

    It’s one sided. A great growing divide.
    ⬇️⬇️⬇️
    Until the Fed and friends finally make an abrupt conquering strike against WeThePeople and
    take all from us and swallow the keys.

  21. The new form of farming will have to be closed loop. Nutrients from biological sources such as wood ashes, urine and feces, etc., is just a form of recycling. Furthermore, biological sources cannot scale up enough to replace the amount of added fertilizer that modern ag ads every year. We need smaller, more labor intensive farms, closer to the towns and small cities (no more mega cities), and all human and animal waste needs to be recycled. But that will require a radically different social and economic order from the one with which we are familiar, and a huge number of city people will have to be retrained, and rural land redistributed in smaller plots. The odds that any of this is going to happen in an orderly and humane manner is infintesimal, and land redistribution is unlikely to happen at all. Urban voters will demand public charity ("redistributive justice" they have been taught to call it) rather than retraining as rural peasants, and local Chambers of Commerce will fight the downsizing of their cities all the way to the bottom. Closed loop farming will only be adopted after resources are irremediably depleted, forcing prices much higher. Outcomes will be suboptimal.

  22. We have been making our own nitrogen at home for many years. Simply pee in a container, let it sit for at least 2 weeks and what you have is pure ammonia or nitrogen. Dilute 30-40:1 and apply. This is being done in very poor countries as I type. For good reason, only collect urine from family members who are not taking pharmaceutical drugs.

  23. We have been making our own nitrogen at home for many years. Simply pee in a container, let it sit for at least 2 weeks and what you have is pure ammonia or nitrogen. Dilute 30-40:1 and apply. This is being done in very poor countries as I type. For good reason, only collect urine from family members who are not taking pharmaceutical drugs.

  24. Now that you're talking about soils and preserving them, I highly recommend the Netflix show "Kiss the ground". I really enjoyed the way they provided insight in how our current way of farming is highly destructive and also show a sustainable and obtainable solution to the issue. Highly recommend it!

  25. You can use grass clippings with veg and fruit waste with composting worms to make a good soil supplement… worms provide 60+ compounds for plants

  26. Look at Anaerobic Digestion Chris.
    Not only does it take bio waste and make bio gas – but the 'digestate' left over is rich in NPK.
    Then have a look at Aquaponics – growing fish and circulating the waste water through a grow bed – and back to the fish.
    Both these can mitigate the issues coming.

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