“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
It was a spooky time to be out at sea off the US East Coast on Halloween in 1991. A strong storm system over the maritime provinces in Canada merged with the remnants of Hurricane Grace, forming a new, epic, and dangerous Nor’easter. The winds of this new storm breached 70 miles per hour and a wave as high as 100 feet was measured off the coast of Nova Scotia, but the storm was not renamed as either a tropical storm or a hurricane – instead, it is known only colloquially as simply the Perfect Storm. Six fishermen from Massachusetts perished when their vessel Andrea Gail sunk in open waters, and the story of the storm and of that tragedy became the subject of a best-selling book and a blockbuster feature film.
While the concept of a perfect storm is often too casually assigned in popular culture, it is difficult to find a more apt description of what has been unfolding in the global agriculture markets over these past several months. The tempest caused by the European energy disaster has merged with the hurricane of consequences flowing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, forming the genesis of a generational crisis in food that will leave few unaffected.
While we’ve been warning about just such a scenario for some time, after spending the past two weeks traveling across the US Midwest and conferring with our contacts in the agricultural sector, even we are a little spooked by what we’ve learned. In a financial crash, the correlation between all asset classes converges to one. The coming crash in global food supply will be driven by a similar phenomenon across virtually every input into farming – they are all spiking to historic highs simultaneously, supply availability is diminishing across the spectrum, and the time to reverse the worst of the upcoming consequences is rapidly running short.
Other than that, things are great.
We begin with the price of fertilizer, which has been soaring to record highs across the globe. Key sources of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous – important inputs into soil fertility, crop yield, and plant maintenance – have all gone vertical. Ammonia is derived directly from natural gas, and the price of natural gas outside of the US has gone vertical. It’s no surprise that the price of ammonia has tripled over the past twelve months.
Belarus is the third-largest supplier of potash in the world and its state-owned miner, Belaruskali, declared force majeure after sanctions were imposed by the US and Europe. The number two supplier of potash globally? Russia. Perhaps front-running the Russian move on Ukraine, China halted phosphate exports last fall in an effort to ensure adequate domestic supply. The combined impact of these events can be seen in the Green Markets North American Fertilize Index, which tracks a blend of fertilizer prices globally:
Weed control is an important element of farming, and herbicides are an irreplaceable tool in the farmer’s repertoire. The most heavily used herbicide in the world is the controversial molecule glyphosate, known widely by its retail brand name Roundup. Invented by Monsanto (which is now owned by Bayer) in the 1970s, glyphosate has been linked to certain blood cancers and is targeted for elimination by many environmental groups. Despite these concerns, glyphosate remains a systemically important molecule – many seeds have been genetically modified to be resistant to it, allowing for its widespread use while minimizing damage to crops, and generics have expanded the market as it came off Monsanto’s patent.
Glyphosate is effectively little more than an elegantly modified fertilizer, containing both phosphorous and nitrogen. It is derived from similar starting materials – including ammonia – and, as such, its price has soared amid chronic supply shortages. This has caused the price of other herbicides to rise as farmers desperately seek substitutes, as described by this article in The Western Producer (emphasis added throughout):
“The much-ballyhooed glyphosate shortage is just the first domino to fall, according to a leading crop protection company.
‘The knock-on effect on basically every other herbicide molecule is starting to manifest itself,’ said Cornie Thiessen, general manager of ADAMA Canada. ‘We are seeing quite a domino effect in the market because of the glyphosate challenges.’
Bayer was already warning customers in late 2021 about a potential glyphosate shortage.”
If farmers skimp on herbicides to get by this season, it only makes dealing with weeds more challenging in the future. As one expert warned us, it only takes one year of negligence to do several years of damage to a field.
Diesel is another significant input into farming, and it too is facing a global supply crunch. Javier Blas, an energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg whose Twitter account is an absolute must-follow, recently published an editorial sounding the alarm:
“The dire diesel supply situation predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While global oil demand hasn’t yet reached its pre-pandemic level, global diesel consumption surged to a fresh all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2021. The boom reflects the lopsided Covid economic recovery, with transportation demand spiking to ease supply-chain messes.
European refineries have struggled to match this revival in demand. One key reason is pricey natural gas. Refineries use gas to produce hydrogen, which they then use to remove sulphur from diesel. The spike in gas prices in late 2021 made that process prohibitively expensive, cutting diesel output.”
Once again, we discover the vital role natural gas plays in many downstream verticals, a key theme of many Doomberg pieces. With inventories at record lows and supplies constrained, the retail price of diesel in the US smashed previous record highs. In Europe, which depends heavily on Russian imports for both diesel and its semi-processed oil precursor, the wholesale market is on the verge of breaking. Here’s an updated version of the chart in Blas’ editorial:
As expensive as it is to fuel the field equipment needed to farm, keeping them operational at all is becoming an ever-growing challenge. The same chip shortage constraining automobile production has struck the farming equipment industry, making new equipment and spare parts harder to come by. Farmers in Iowa recently vented their frustration at a Republican forum on agriculture:
“…they bemoaned the hit-and-miss availability of parts to fix their equipment — the result of pandemic disruptions in the production of those parts. Iowa Rep. Ross Paustian, R-Walcott, is a farmer who said his neighbor was forced to buy a hydraulic pump for his tractor from a Nebraska dealership because it was the only place in the country that had it stocked.
Jim Boyer, an Emmet County farmer, had a similar, personal anecdote. He’s awaiting a $40 emissions-related sensor for his tractor, and he’s not sure if it will arrive anytime soon.
‘I cannot drive that tractor — a quarter-million-dollar piece of equipment — because I cannot get that sensor,’ he said.”
Compounding these challenges with machinery is a burgeoning labor shortage that is rapidly adding pressure to this brewing catastrophe. Although the labor issues in the US span well beyond agriculture, there are aspects that exacerbate the impact on farmers, including the physical labor intensity and seasonality of many roles, as well as the reliance on foreign laborers to fill key positions US citizens have historically shunned. This is especially challenging in light of vaccine mandates at border crossings. Here’s a recent report from Wisconsin Public Radio which describes the challenges well:
“While some farms employ workers all year round, Strader said many jobs are seasonal, starting in March and April and going until late fall when harvest ends.
With producers on edge about hiring for this year, Strader said many farms started recruiting earlier than usual and developed a contingency plan for how to make it through the season without employees. That could mean discontinuing certain markets or scaling back the variety of produce that they’re growing.”
Farmers are also competing with other sectors for a limited pool of labor. The gap between job openings and unemployed but willing workers across the entire US continues to widen:
Even generously assuming farmers can cobble together enough fertilizer, herbicide, machinery, and labor to produce a good harvest this fall, they may be left to deal with yet another crisis of supply that few off the field have on their radar: propane. As Tracy Schuchart – yet another absolute must-follow on Twitter – has been flagging for several months, the US exits the winter of 2021-2022 with concerningly low levels of propane inventory, well-below typical averages for this time of year:
Here is the supply situation in chart form, with the shaded region signifying the high- and low-inventory levels over the past seven years:
What does propane supply have to do with farming? Grain drying. Here’s a primer on the importance of drying, from Wikipedia:
“Hundreds of millions of tonnes of wheat, corn, soybean, rice and other grains as sorghum, sunflower seeds, rapeseed/canola, barley, oats, etc., are dried in grain dryers. In the main agricultural countries, drying comprises the reduction of moisture from about 17-30% w/w to values between 8 and 15% w/w, depending on the grain. The final moisture content for drying must be adequate for storage.”
Many farms are located in rural areas without ready access to natural gas, and thus some 80% of grain dryers in the US, for example, rely on propane as a fuel. In a piece we wrote in December called An Urgent Call on Line 5, we chronicled how progressive politicians and environmental groups were targeting an important pipeline artery that runs from Canada, under the Straits of Mackinac, and across the State of Michigan. Line 5 is crucial to the stability of the US supply of propane, and yet – despite the catastrophic energy crisis we find ourselves in – the Attorney General of Michigan was recently captured on video spouting unserious nonsense:
“Acknowledging the legal battle she’s waging against Line 5 is an uphill and unpopular battle, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel blamed ‘propaganda’ from the pipeline’s proprietor, which she said has ‘really changed public perception and opinion.’
Nessel vowed to continue the fight against Line 5 and defended the attempts by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration to shut down the nearly 70-year-old pipeline during a recorded video chat with the Royal Oak Area Democratic Club. The conservative group Michigan Rising Action shared the video with Breitbart.”
We believe we are at the onset of a global famine of historic proportions. In a staggering defiance of logic, many US politicians are still attacking the lifeblood of our own energy production infrastructure, looking to score political points against “the other team,” blaming price-taking producers of global commodities for gouging, threatening producers of energy with windfall profits taxes, resisting calls to remove bureaucratic hurdles to new production, and refusing to open an introductory physics textbook to help guide them through the suite of policy choices that require true leadership to get right. They remain stuck in an endless loop of platitudes, blamestorming, corruption, and ignorance.
As Eisenhower aptly identifies in our opening quote, distance has an anesthetizing effect on the observer of any occurrence. One wonders how many people will starve before our politicians get serious. The populations most at risk of falling off the edge are half a world away and we worry that that number is uncomfortably high.
At Doomberg, we pride ourselves on seeing patterns early and being months ahead of the news flow. We are consistently human-centric. Never have we been more certain in our beliefs while fervently wishing that we are wrong. A global famine is no joke, and correctly forecasting one would bring no joy.
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That modern agriculture requres so many external inputs is a recipe for disaster that has been reinforced over the past 50 years or so, and now large farms are unable to function without these inputs. Add diesel shortages to that, as soil cannot be prepared, crops cannot be planted or harvested, without the giant machines that do this work. Add supply chain issues. Add weather abnormalities, where crops are either decimated by drought or by hail and flooding.
All the above are adding fiscal pressure when most farms are already running razor thin profit margins. If they fail, people like BIll Gates are more than happy to buy their land at a discount, and then they get to decide whether the land will be used for farming or just left fallow, while people around the world are already food insecure. Given Gates’ prior statements on population control, do you think he really aims to use all of the farm land he’s bought recently to ensure our food supply, or to further his agenda to reduce population?
Farmers should look at what Gabe Brown and others have done to increase yields without external inputs, before it’s too late.
https://www.futureforage.com/2021/08/masanobu-fukuokas-natural-farming.html
Gates and his ilk will take a page from the Pol Poi playbook. Order the starving snowflakes in the cities onto the land they stole from the now unhomed farmers and tell them to grow their own food. We know the intended result of that. Search “Killing Fields”.
Robert (QSLV)
Gates has said he will be using the land for biofuel not food.
It’s Official! Russia Central bank Announces Ruble Bound to Gold! 5000 Rubles per Gram
WORLD
HAL TURNER
27 MARCH 2022
HITS: 258
The Central Bank of Russia has officially announced that, as of March 28, 2022, the Russian Ruble currency is BIOUND to Gold. The rate is 5,000 Rubles per gram of gold bullion.
There are 28 grams in each ounce. 28 grams times 5,000 rubles per Gram is 140,000 Rubles. Ya with me so far?
The conversion rate of Rubles to U.S. Dollars is 100 Rubles, 90 Kopecs, to each US Dollar.
If Rubles are bound to Gold at 5000 Rubles per gram, and there are 28 grams per ounce, meaning one ounce of gold would cost 140,000 Rubles, then converting that to US Dollars means Gold is $1400 per ounce when using Rubles, instead of $1,928 per ounce using Dollars.
Russia just wiped out about thirty percent (30%) of the value of the US Dollar, worldwide, when it comes to Gold Bullion.
People around the world will be literally THROWING their money at the Ruble and DUMPING Dollars and EUROS to do it.
What Russia just did is the financial equivalent of detonating a nuclear bomb.
FWIW, the last guy on this planet who tried to back a currency with Gold, was Muammar Quadaffi of Libya.
NATO went into Libya, bombed the shit out of it, until the people of Libya grabbed Quadaffi on the street, beat him bloody, and put a bullet in his head.
As of this hour, 10:39 PM EDT, I suspect Bankers all over the world are on the phones with each other and with heads of state, instructing them that what Russia has done will totally smash both the US Dollar and the EURO, and those Bankers will be telling the heads of State that World War 3 must commence immediately.
As I understand it, they put a bayonet in his ass, not a bullet in his head.
Regardless, this is the first post, article, anything I’ve come across in the last couple of days that seems to understand what the events of the last few days portend. 3 days ago Putin said that “unfriendly nations” could trade with Russia in gold. The day before, it was rubles (available from the central bank of Russia in exchange for…gold).
What many of us have been waiting for over a decade just happened. Things are moving fast. Biden said what he said about the 82nd Airborne seeing action in Ukraine after the above announcements. I don’t believe it was a slip of the tongue, or brain, he said exactly what he was told to say.
WWIII is upon us.
Do you know the difference between Ounces and Troy Ounces? To be exact, one regular ounce is 28.35 grams, while a troy ounce is 31.1 grams. An ounce of gold is 31.1 grams.
One of those inputs that you forgot is the packaging. It doesn’t matter what the farmer grows if we have no means to package it for distribution in the mega-cities.
People used to use buckets.
Bigger problem is the actual processing. Takes water, energy, machinery.
I can grow some beans, but unless there is someway to process them they are only edible for a couple of days before decomposing occurs since the beans were living things. This is how the system now under can be disrupted by just one factor such as unavailability of just one thing, something maybe as small as a canning jar lid.
If we could reverse it we would, but at this point it’s too late.
Humans are so trapped by their biology that it’s going to play out like it has so many times before and all anyone who knows history can do is sit and watch.
Men go and come, but earth abides.
I AM abides.
You do know that quote is Ecclesiastes?
Sorry but it’s not Biology (Chemistry, etc) per se but rather SNAFU human organizations (Socialism, bad Ideology & Psychology, Bad Government & Bureauocracy etc) causing todays big problems.
So you’re of the “nurture, not nature” school of thought?
Maybe average human behavior is 50:50 but this conflagration of problems (supply chain clogs, natural gas/diesel and fertilizer shortage, financial sanctions that will backfire, grain and edible oil shortage, rare earth shortage, war in Ukraine, etc) are political (I doubt Trump would have fallen into so much shit) , and I don’t think we should blame our genes for this one (unless letting communist steal elections is genetic).
It is incredible that it is so obvious there will soon be a food crisis and yet it is being ignored on such a wide scale. This attitude will cause a reaction which will make the scarcity of food even worse when it occurs.
I ran across this article which basically relates that question to “the boy that cried wolf”….
Food, famine, fear: Beware the great agricultural reset
Back to the fear factor. Americans dizzy with fear-spinning from 911 and the “War on Terror” to date are so conditioned to fake “red lights” and “orange lights” to gaslight them into terror, that they are blind to the very real threat of food system collapse. For years now the rabid Left has ideologically pummeled Americans with false fears – a nonexistent “systemic racism,” active shooter drills and warped reporting on gun violence, hand-wringing and child-torturing over the End Times Climate Catastrophe.
But the real threat is corporate-dominated food production, enabled by bipartisan legislators for decades. Americans will soon see this growing threat is much more real than yellowcake uranium from Niger. And the AOC-Biden crew have already revealed their plan to “rescue” Americans by building corporate domination back better – totalitarianism is not complete without controlling food supplies.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/food_famine_fear_beware_the_great_agricultural_reset.html
They will control what they do not have?
They will magically appear seed, fuel, fertilizer,spray, equipment?
The systems that provide all that are international, intracate, and inflexible.
Own the land and maybe control the people, then what, everyone can sit around and watch the weeds grow?
That always works well.
People, the other other white meat.
Soylent Green.
It’s people
It’s called Long-pork.
They will be fine. It’s You that won’t be.
Wrong.
Let them keep thinking that.
Me and mine will be fine.
They will be dangling from lamp posts.
Watch.
The systems you speak of are inflexible because of government actions interfering with markets.
Free markets are inherently flexible, but alas, free markets are evil in the minds of collectivists and of those who would be oligarchs… and that’s the type of people who have seized power across the world.
Always been that way.
They won’t control it because of their production–They will only control it to the extent that they will ration and regulate what little food gets produced IN SPITE OF our overlords depopulation schemes.
At least Potatus mentioned it just yesterday. It’s coming head-on and all we can do is watch.
You better get some dirt and make you a garden, the farther from a Blue city the better.
Not “Ignored”
Scrupulously and intentionally hidden.
Just like the CCP virus hoax.
All lies all the time by our fully corrupt
government, and their obedient bootlicking American Pravda.
Ammo up, hungry people are desperate people.
FJB is spending billions on EV cars but zero on fertilizer manufacturing plants.
Maybe they’re doing Moar than zero…
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/explosion-fears-remain-carolina-fertilizer-plant-burns-82624169
er, that’s regression or less than zero…ie, TPTB are doing negatives.
Control the food… control the people…
When farmers started relying on the banks to buy newer equipment with all the latest gizmo’s and bells, relying on chemical companies to keep bleaching their fields and not holding back seed for next years planting but buying seed, was the beginning of the end to farming.
We’ll eat the bugs and live in the pods.
Try to find a seed cleaner near you…
And then call about the red tape you will need to get through.
https://www.manta.com/mb_45_C02D37N2_26/seed_cleaning/missouri
When people stopped farming to move into cities and sit on their butts making a fantastic salary or living on Welfare and voting Democrat against Farmers and Ranchers, that was the beginning of them setting themselves up for Starvation.
People control, especially the modern kind, has always been a four-pronged pitchfork. Very simply it’s about food, fuel, money and medicine.
That the food crisis coming is not debatable.
It is coming, and it is going to be catastrophic based on the current figures. It will change the world as we know it. Western countries accustom to spending their incomes on luxuries and leisure will need to radically downshift their lifestyles to focus on food and shelter.
Poorer countries already struggling to survive will face starvation, and the result of hunger is always revolution and war.
In the US and Europe, as much of peoples income in the past has been spent on luxuries and lifestyle such as restaurants, vacations, new vehicles, and expensive houses purchased on credit. When people must curtail the purchase of these things to focus on higher costs of food, gas, and utilities, many of these businesses will cut back or fail all together driving unemployment.
In short, the food crisis will morph into a world wide depression as prices rise. Wealth and money destruction will happen on a mass scale, as the excesses of the past can not coexist with the reality of the present.
Camp of the Saints is already on our southern border.
And on Europe’s southern border.
People are spoiled and badly behaved for sure, but don’t forgetwhat is happening is fake. Also we are not overpopulated.
To top it off I don’t think there’s an oil shortage either.
To say we are not overpopulated shows a lack of knowledge about the subject. The US population has grown by 1/3 since the 1970’s. We lose millions of acres of farmland every year to build housing tracks. Our lakes and reservoirs lower in volume a little more every year, and water is quickly becoming a scarce resource. Natural habitats like the Amazon are disappearing as they are being converted to farm land to replace the farm land that is being converted to housing. The seas are being over fished to the point where it is becoming financially unfeasible for fishermen due to small and sporadic hauls. Shortages of everything are becoming a fact of life.
The problem is people like you form opinions without doing any research or having any practical knowledge of the issue. When you are paying $20 lb. for meat and $6 for a loaf of bread because of shortages, just keep lying to yourself that it has nothing to do with overpopulation.
Are you kidding me? This has been discussed, studied, debunked since the 70’s (for me any way). When it started coming up strongly again I’m like NOT AGAIN.
(Mismanaged not over populated etc )
NGOs have screwed “Poorer countries” forever . Good older books IMO, CONFESSIONS of an ECONOMIC HIT MAN and THE SECRET HISTORY of the AMERICAN EMPIRE by John Perkins. Another , INSIDE THE MIRAGE America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia by Thomas W. Lippman.
Perkins, economic hit men and jackals ( persons who perform dishonest or base deeds as the follower or accomplice of another). Lippman, accounts beginning in 1933 with Krug Henry and Bert Miller, the first geologists sent to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by Standard Oil Company of California and of western oil in Saudi Arabia through 911.
Fertilizer is the main concern here. Skimped on it last year, yields went way down. Hobby planter here.
Funny how many neighbors, acquaintances have offered to help, neighbors even want to plant on my lot.
And the poo has not even hit the rotating blades yet, go figure.
“And the poo has not even hit the rotating blades yet”. And when it does watch the desperation grow. Cannibalism anyone?
Average age of the American farmer is 58 years old. ………………
Innovative people will find a way to fertilize. There is more than one way to farm and fertilize. Overlooked are all the fertilizers are not rare earth metals. They are common and abundant on earth. We just need to start the mining and processing of them.
No doubt, it’s just that the enormous yields that we have grown accustomed to will no longer exist, and as they go, so too must all the extra people they support.
The hard part will be the non-GMO seed getting into the non-sterilized soil with the right knowledge at the right time with all the attendent weather cooperating. Very few pockets of that anymore.
Would be fine if we could figure out how to eat kosha, kudzu or cheat grass.
Thats why soylent green was people.
Kudzu can be eaten – “Eat chopped kudzu leaves raw in salad or cook them like spinach leaves. Saute kudzu leaves, bake them into quiches or deep-fry them. Cook kudzu roots like potatoes, or dry them and grind them into powder. Use kudzu root powder as a breading for fried foods or a thickener for sauces. Fry or steam kudzu shoots like snow peas. Incorporate kudzu blossoms into jelly, candy and wine. Make kudzu tea with kudzu leaves, mint and honey.” https://www.livestrong.com/article/474310-how-to-cook-eat-kudzu/
Also – https://facty.com/food/nutrition/the-surprising-health-benefits-of-the-kudzu-vine/
Interesting. Got plenty of that down here in SW Virginia.
As can Honey locust pods. I think the description of the result was “insipid”.
I recall at least one of my high school instructors , probably AP Biology, stating if science could insert the gene(s) that allow termites to digest cellulose, which is a poly saccharide, into humans, world hunger would be solved forever.
Not that I want to eat wood, but think of how that would enhance nutritive value of almost any plants we already consume.
In the downside, I shudder to think what would happen digestively, when all fiber is digestible.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools
Or I could become a Termite Rancher.
I am a biochemist. Your AP instructor had astonishing ignorance of biology, to make such an absurd claim.
The point is that current crop yields are dependent upon fertilization at current levels. Industrial farming is highly dependent upon chemical fertilizer to replace the nutrients in badly depleted by industrial farming methods. A 25% drop in fertilization, will result in a 50% drop in yield. Add to that the mass shortage in pesticides and there will be additional crop losses to insects.
The world is not fed by small time farmers who can compost or grow organically. The overwhelming majority of people are fed by industrialized farms that are totally dependent upon chemical fertilizer and pesticides most of which come from Ukraine and Russia.
Letting communist steal elections has bad consequences. PS: When the the Russian communist finally let people grow food on one acre and sell it, their food shortage ended; small farmers can produce 70% of the big farms if the government red tape that supports Big Ag/Retail ever gets cut.
This just circles back to how commercial agriculture is fundamental unsustainable from any perspective.
I have developed an inexpensive alternative system to synthetic fertilizers, and farmers and ranchers in my area are ringing my phone off the hook.
“Biden said that the US and Canada will seek to boost wheat production to offset the drop in supplies — as Russia already curtails wheat shipments to friendly former Soviet republics in Central Asia.”
Biden said this the other day along with the remark about food shortages in the us.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/24/biden-warns-of-global-food-shortages-from-ukraine-war/
So he is saying America along with Canada will increase production, but of course he is a prophet or something.
Some people might not know but the “dustbowl” of the thirties was caused by planting wheat on ground that was not suitable by people thinking the price of wheat was going to be at a high price such as was made due to WW1.
A side-note: Maybe the Gates bought all this land knowing that wheat was going to be needed due to a war.
”You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
Rahm Emanuel
Bidet is talking out his ass as usual. Wheat is grown mostly without irrigation depending upon rainfall for crop production. There is currently a drought across most of the farmland in middle America effecting both the US and Canada. Unless that changes, and farmers can get ahold of non existent fertilizer at a cheap price the current years wheat production is going to be much lower than normal years. With fertilizer prices at current levels, many farmers are simply going to sit this year out because they would take a financial loss by planting.
Biden is saying what he is told to say, he has no clue even to what he is saying.
He is being used to drive any so called “allies” away from the usa. Everything about him is false.
There is a big pile of hurt coming.
Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado is very arid and relies extensively on artificial irrigation which is draining the ancient aquifers much more quickly than they are replenished. So we’ll go from not enough food to not enough water.
Which is going to screw parts of OK which don’t take more than gets put back in wet years, but will be completely collapsed just the same, if that aquifer fails.
The land is not a machine. Exceeding natural carrying capacity entails dependence on complex and vulnerable systems, which break under stress. City populations depend on this artificial excess. Chaos will result and persist until populations recede to the natural carrying capacity of the land.
What he said.
Plus, soil is not just dirt. It is a microcosm, a living thing. I think one of my next purchases should be a scythe.
https://scythesupply.com/
Great company to buy a scythe from.
Highly recommended.
Do they also carry pitchforks and torches? Asking for a friend.
I was thinking that it might look cool if I wear a black cloak and carry my new scythe when we go arrest the towns’ schoolboard, hospital CEOs and the like.
For years, I have been buying old scythes, pitchforks, and cob forks in online farm sales. Wasn’t sure why I was doing that, but I felt the strong urge to do so.
This is the #1 truth for why commercial agriculture can not be sustained long term. Some shortcuts are just too expensive.
Grow your own. It is not too late to plant. Even a small garden will give you food security.
Good luck with that.. Most people have no experience growing anything and their yield with be pathetic. What most small gardens will produce is a drop in the bucket for what a family consumes over a year. It is a supplement, and may help with what will be unavailable at all, but saying it will be food security is a stretch. Your food supply should be diversified, a garden, a 6 mos. stock of food in house, and what you will be able to purchase locally.
I have always viewed our participation in a local farm share as a method of diversification of our food supply. If the squash borer kills all of our own plants, at least I might get some squash from the CSA. Last year, they had trouble with lettuce and kale, while I had plenty in our garden. It evens out and makes for abundance so I can give part of it away to friends.
Just don’t let fear of perfection get in the way of starting at all. Even a small garden makes a difference and lets you experience the joys of growing your own. Drop in a bucket, maybe, but every ocean is made out of drops.
Yes, farm shares are great. I just made friends with a local farmer and joined his cow share. Grass fed, no chemical fertilizers.
How did you find yours? This is how I would rather sell my beef.
More like 2 years.
6 months won’t cut it in the North.
People need to grow more root crops and less greens.
You do not know what you are talking about. A hundred square yards of beds will literally produce thousands of pounds of food. Literally.
“One of the ways to simplify maintaining a garden is to create raised beds for your vegetables and fruits. The quantity of vegetables that can be grown in 40 square feet – a bed 4 feet wide by 10 feet long – will provide salads, greens and tomatoes for an entire season. Five beds of this size can yield 300 pounds of vegetables and soft fruits in a 4 – 6 month growing season, which is about what the average person in the U.S. consumes annually.”
5 beds per the above is only about 20 square yards. I have over 100 square yards, and if fully planted the yields are enormous. Anyone with their own home can find room for 100 square yards.
Just wait until you have to watch it day and night.
Hope it’s close to your homes.
I like the name, Easy Co. (big fan of BofB), but you must be new here.
Llpoh has what he needs to be vigilant over his gardens.
Any critter looking to scavenge his garden beds, whether 2 legged or 4 legged, just might become food for his hounds.
Go ahead, Loop. Put up a picture of your guard dogs, for shits & giggles.
200 pounds of attitude for strangers.
30X30 feet is doable most places.
Your expectation is completely unrealistic LLPOH. It’s actually ridiculous to even think that a few percent could do what you suggest at this point. They would be better off spending the money and time on inventorying ready made food.
Also, most people do not have a 6 month growing season. 4 months and one harvest for most.
Let’s do some math.
100 Square yds is about 14 8’x8′ raised beds (about 900 square feet). That is A LOT of work ever year. If you aren’t growing sweet corn in every one, it also requires a lot of varying know-how, even in a raised bed. Insects WILL attack – you fail to say anything about that or the cost. Why? Will you only utilize soap spray to keep bugs off? Be prepared to spary every few days – on everything. Maybe you want to set up row hoops. More work, more cost, more storage in the off season and prep in the pre season.
Seeds cost money – at least in year one. Watering costs money. Raised beds require constant fertilization – it’s really just a form of what I call “outdoor-inground-hydryo”.
You have devalued, growing, harvesting, curing and storing things Bloomberg style!
This year, if you wanted to make the 8×8 raised beds, you are looking at 20 bucks a side in wood alone. Times 14 is about 1120 dollars plus tax. Plus screws and time.
On top of that, soil, manure, compost, etc. must be purchased or taken from somewhere. There is a real value/cost. There is also a shit load of time for the average person that does not have access to mechanicals, let alone know how to use them. A bobcat would be a godsend – how many have a 20K dollar piece of equipment and the land?
14 8×8’s! You make it sound like it just grows itself!
The value you place on experience and know how is amost zero. That is a giant and unwarranted devaluation. Most people will make all kinds of mistake in year one, two, three…Your devaluation of what it takes to actually make a lot of good produce (or maple syrup from HSF, or garlic I grow commerically) is far from reality for all but the most gifted and experienced green thumb.
It almost does grow itself. It takes about 30 hours a year to maintain. There are high dollar options to get started, and lower dollar options.
I love it when morons spout off about stuff they know nothing about without doing even a modicum of research. It’s too hard! It’s too hard!
I have done it. I know how hard it is, or isn’t. If I can do it, anyone can. And I didn’t make mistakes year one two, three. And anyone can grow a fucking potato. And the potato yield in a raised bed is huge.
Get .a fucking clue and quit lying to people.
I am growing commercially.
Are You? Ya Bullshit Artist?
You devalue everything.
1200 dollars just for wood! Then actually build the 14 8×8’s and fill them and maintain them.
You assume people have the money,land, know-how and time. YOU are the one that needs to get a fucking clue and just shut the fuck up.
You saying it and reality are two different things.
Dispute my math…tell us more about how easy it is and how all the parts and pieces just magically appear and cost nothing! Maintenance costs nothing! Experience value? Zero in LLPOH LA-LA World!
It proves you don’t know what you are talking about beyond your own expereince, tool availability, land availability, time, micro-climate, varieties, etc.. Just because you can do it you assume everyone can. That is 100% wrong and just plain stupid.
I call bullshit on everything you just posted. ESP. The part about you being a commercial grower. Fat chance. Or you wouldn’t be such an imbecile. Anyone can make a raised bed. Used bricks, used timber, old tires for taters, etc as the foundations. Scavenge used building materials. Soil will be a bit more problematic, but is also doable. Quit lying to people. The average home lot size in the US is around 1000 square yards, with the average home size say 250 square yards. That leaves ample space for 100 square yards of beds.
As I said, if I can do it, anyone can. I had no skill in gardening, and was successful from the first drop to the last. You can do your own research on raised beds. There are cheap options out there. Pretty? No. Effective? Yes.
There ya go…sing it. A hundred or even 75 years ago, most Americans had some sort of garden to at least supplement their diets, in a society that was by all measures much less affluent. Here in rural WNC, it is still common to observe individual plots of home owner veggy gardens. After the collapse of the USSR, citizens were strongly encouraged to plant gardens anywhere ground was available to forestall starvation. They did and they didn’t starve.
FF – but now everyone says it is too hard! People have always grown their own food. But in last 50 years it has suddenly become too hard, too expensive, and akin to rocket science.
Juniper makes it all sound impossibly hard. What bull.
I think the only argument was your raised bed method. You don’t need to do that, it is not too difficult, as you say. It is just labor. But some find it rewarding. Raised beds are expensive, even if you cut down your own trees to make them, you are still investing some significant resources for the convenience. I would have miles of them if I could, though.
Raised beds for the lazy.
We’ve had great success with this method, not as organized in appearance, but it works.
Depends on where you live. East coast is much more conducive to gardening than the west, and especially the southwest. When we lived of So. Cal. the water was so expensive, and the summers so hot and dry, I know I spent more money on water than the value of the vegetables I used to grow. In Ca. $200 / $300 a month summer water bills are the norm.
Where I live now we have irrig. water and it is dirt cheap. I know people who live in AZ and NM who are in water haul areas and pay through the nose also.
Sure thing Mr. Bloomberg!
Ya just put it in the ground and anyone that says otherwise is dumb and lazy! Everyone has all the materials and hundreds of cubic feet of good soil and compost laying around to make 14 8×8’s! Anyone that doesn’t and cant build all that and maintain it is wrong because you say so Mr. Bloomberg! People never get low yields Mr. Bloomberg. Anyone that says other wise is a liar Mr. Bloomberg. It’s no work at all Mr. Bloomberg. Everyone, and I mean Everyone Mr. Bloomberg, Has the time and everything else avaialable to them at the snap of their fingers. Anyone that says they don’t is a liar.
Yes sir Mr. Bloomberg! Yes sir – you are always right and anyone that says there is a giant cost is just plain wrong and a liar! Crops and inputs are free Mr. Bloomberg! Yes sir Mr. Bloomberg! Anyone can do it!
No one should discourage gardens in any way. They are a important part of food security, along with building food stores and local accessing.
The point is that you should never be solely dependent on any one single source. When it comes to prepping, 3 is 2, 2 is 1, and 1 is none.
A look up planting taters with a garden tractor… Raised beds 😂
You can set up a system like this for under 500.00 US.
Is it going to feed whole family? No
Is it going to supplement the whole family? Yes
Wonder the cost of the green house? I’d like one. No hay suficientes pesos.
How economical is it to make the beds?
Are they even necessary or just ostentatious? The ones I built out of curiosity would never pay for themselves.
It depends on how industrious you are. Lumber has gotten expensive, so if you can find it used or free on craigslist or scrounging it helps. 1×4 cedar fence boards are still fairly inexpensive at most home improvement stores. Whether raised beds are necessary or not depends a lot on where you live. Some places have poor soil, or problems with rodents.
You do not want to put the time and effort into a garden just to feed the gophers.
I believe you’re correct LLPOH. Read about Square Foot Gardening…the yield you suggest is possible. The backyard gardener can’t approach growing food like a farmer who grows potatoes for McDonalds.
Fuckofg. My first year was good enough and it sparked a passion
I can’t even grow carrots. There’s almost no calories in most vegetables.
Yep. Gardens are great but you’ll starve without protein, fat and carbs.
If one is starting prepping now I’d concentrate there especially.
And to think a few decades ago the US was the leading agricultural producer.
This crisis is all brought to by the Khazarian Mafia: the Ashkenazim Jew, the people of the lie, the worshipers of the serpent.
Dont forget our own apathy. It was easier to go along to get along, than buck the system….until it wasnt.
A few decades ago we had 100 million less mouths to feed.
I have an inkling that a reduction of glyphosate in the world is a good thing.
I was also thinking:
Is the article trying to tell us large-scale farming without use of glyphosate is close to impossible these days? I’m not a farmer, but that sounds like bullschiff to me.
Glyphosate is used as a desiccant as well as an herbicide. In order to dry our crops for harvesting combines, industrial farmers schedule the spraying of Roundup several days ahead. so the harvested crops are saturated with it.
My belief is that these grains (and their products like oils and sugars) are the root of the obesity problem.
Okay.
But what would happen [to industrial farming] without Glyphosate?
Would the fields be completely overgrown with weeds, and the remaining harvest in great danger of getting moldy, etc.?
Yeilds go down enourmously.
Modern commercial soil is no longer a biotic growth medium. The only things that seem to grow well there are of no commercial value and would out compete the commercial crop.
Problems with glyphosate resistant weeds are already starting to affect crops. Farmers repond by using other chemicals.
That is a good question, and not only for industrial size farming.
The weeds interfere with the harvesting equipment and food safety rules.
They also take up some of the water and nutrients from the soil, are sites for damaging insects and diseases to some degree, but really not that much. They used to be controlled by a hoe.
The volume of any herbicide/pesticide use is incredible, it is a big money maker. TV stations down my way used to advertise all the many chemicals for farmers. The farm supply warehouses would be filled with five gallon cans of multiple brands for different uses, and it is not cheap.
If the average person saw the amount of these chemicals used per acre and knew it was getting into their bodies they would be horrified. There is no safe chemical used no matter what one is told.
Fungicides are the worst, it takes a special license to even apply them on a farm but they can be bought at any lowes.
I have often wondered about the root causes of obesity in the west. If all health is in the gut, then un-health is there too. Three things fit the timeline:
1) Glyphosate and other chemicals applied to crops.
2) Processed foods and preservatives.
3) An under-looked possibility: microwave ovens.
Glyphosate kills microbes in the gut. This is a fact. Some GMO’s engineered to resist chemicals have novel proteins that are potentially dangerous, because any novel protein is a potential bioweapon.
Novel proteins should be illegal, but somehow the controlled opposition gatekeepers kept that conversation from happening. Thanks Rush Limbought and CNN.
I am only mildly humored by the farmer claiming that he cannot drive his tractor for want of a sensor. A sensor is simply an on off switch. Hot wire the f8888ing tractor by inserting a jumper past the sensor and quite making excuses.
Til the software doesnt get the feedback it needs from the sensor and……..
These “switches” have chips embedded to identify that they are an authentic part and it is not just a contact closure.
Hell, my iPhone will reject a cheap ass charging cable and say it is “not recognized”. And that’s just some wire.
I’ve worked as a Diesel mechanic for over 30 years, and I can assure you that engine sensors are NOT simple on-off switches. Computer controlled engines rely on different types of pressure, position and temp sensors, some of which are critical to engine operation. An engine will run in a default mode without a coolant temp sensor, but you lose a crank position sensor you’re not going anywhere. Put a ‘jumper wire’ in the wrong place and you can permanently damage the engine’s computer. These electronic control systems and their components are surprisingly delicate and don’t take kindly to ham-handed attempts to ‘bypass’ things. I see the results of these attempts daily at work.
If you want an engine that will run no matter what get a mechanical fuel injection Diesel, give it a modicum of care and enjoy it’s good performance for decades.
Simply jump starting a 2013 diesel dodge made into a fire dept brush truck 3 times turns off the pcm permanently.
Some sensors are on off, but most are 0 to 5vdc, 0 to 10vdc, a variable resistance or 4 to 20 ma.
Good, burn it all to the ground. The entire article never mentioned farming, all it talked about was industrial agriculture.
Industrializing a natural process was an experiment and it failed in virtually every aspect with the exception of production. It ruined soils, pollute watersheds, depleted aquifers, poisoned the environment with herbicides and pesticides, disrupted wildlife corridors, drove families off the land, turned rural areas into ghost towns, ruined the health of consumers, and erased countless centuries worth of wisdom and knowledge of the practices that allowed civilization to exist in the first place.
And all of it because of cheap oil and greed.
Revelation 8:7: ” The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.”
There you go right there.
Revelation Chapter 16 covers the water.
Well said and thanks for pointing it out.
G.R.E.E.D.
The most destructive force on earth.
I have been waiting to read what your respond to this info was going to be. Give us some more insight. You must be worried about what you can get or use to produce. Are you totally self-sufficient. If the world of people that cannot live on mass produced items are you not worried that your farm will be raped by the masses of desperate people. How do we idiots survive? While I agree with your post the answer is not why the shit is hitting but how do we get away from the fan?
I always start from the premise that our time on Earth is predetermined.
“Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”
-Stonewall Jackson
What is going to happen is already written in the book of fate, we are going along for the ride no matter how we feel about so the only real choice we have is how we are going to frame it and what role we are going to take in that particular trip through time.
The idea that every single human will either be eliminated or turned into a slave is not predicated upon reality, human nature or the historical record. Plenty of folks are going to emerge on the other side of this particular epoch, and some of them are going to be people like us, even if we aren’t there with them. Teaching people the most important lessons of self-sufficiency, husbandry, land use, practical skills and traditional methods should be our focus at this stage. Just like a sailor battens down the hatches and secures his cargo in the face of an approaching storm, anyone with the ability and the resources to do the same ought to be about their business right now. That means being open, honest, direct and unwavering regardless of what things look like through the filter of current events. No matter what happened during the flu hoax or now in the inexorable march towards a great reset, people have to eat. That is never going to change so by focusing on that small area of knowledge we provide for our own future regardless of how things unfold.
I am not especially brave, intelligent or gifted, but I understand what my role in life is and I give it 100%. That makes me effective regardless of my limitations. I wish I had been aware of that when I was younger, but at least I am able to make up for the lost time by encouraging others not to make the same kinds of mistakes and by offering encouragement, inspiration and knowledge to anyone who asks. What we’ve been able to do, you are able to do, so is almost any sentient being with the proper mindset. None of this is especially complicated, in fact Nature has handed us a blueprint to copy at our leisure if we just pay attention.
No, we don’t use inputs, we run what is currently called permaculture or regenerative practices. These are based upon mimicking the natural processes of growth and decay and maximizing the benefits of fertility through intensive management of livestock, soils and forests. All we extract is the excess while leaving the rest of the benefits where they belong, in the environment. I don’t know how things will go once fuel is gone- and I assume that is in the pipeline for most Americans if not the entire West, so we are learning how to make fuel on the farm and are currently replacing most of the things that depend on tractors with animal/human powered practices. I can tell you this much, a well run family farm produces a huge amount of surplus and even if we cannot- more like do not- focus on monocultured crops, the totality of our productions offers a huge variety of foods and fuels that provide sustenance for not only our family, but a fair number of other people. The idea that our type of farming cannot feed the world is a myth. What it cannot feed is a population where 97% of the people choose not to participate in their own sustenance, but if even half of the people returned to some form of self-reliance we could come close. That isn’t the result of the dictates of government, but of the deliberate choice people make every day to remain dependent on others to feed them. That has to change if we are going to continue with anything remotely resembling civilization. We made a huge mistake in thinking that specialization and industrialization were sine qua non. It’s time we made that right by retracing our steps back to the point of departure and trying to find a better way to head into the future.
Thanks for asking.
Where and when was the point of departure, Marc?
Perhaps this entire comment could be elevated to Post with that question posed as its title?
I think LBJ’s administration has merit as being as dirty as they come, but that military industrial complex had already gotten its tentacles into the moneymakers’ pockets by the time Truman dragged that trash in from Kansas City and discovered he had a nasty weapon that could possibly destroy the whole world, at least in theory.
But, really, where would that point of departure be located?
When did we pass through the point of no return?
The Industrial Revolution seems to be the nexus of a vast number of departures. Removing man from the land, divorcing the extended family from generational knowledge transfers, turning everything into an economic unit, from commodities and goods to human labor.
Not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with industry or machines, but by making the assumption that what could be done to a process could be applied to everything. Man is not a widget, agriculture is not a factory.
It is a question worth exploring in more depth, I think. Because, if any of us gets the chance to go back and put us on a better trajectory, I want that person to have a good idea of where it all went so badly.
Asking for a friend.
And, while I agree with you in general terms, I think there is room for the argument that small communities where the butcher, barber and baker all trade with the candlestick maker and their children play in the streets can sustain large numbers of people as well.
And then, something happens that tips the scales. Somebody got more than someone and nobody is very happy about it.
Why did Cain kill Abel?
Whenever it was exactly, the point of departure was not THAT long ago. If we hurry, we can retrace some of the steps because some of the older generation are still alive. My 82 year old father still tells me of stories when he had to pull the plow while my grandfather steered. They had about 2 acres total to “farm”, but nobody would have called it farming. It was just what everybody did, and that little amount of space produced more than enough produce to feed a family of 8, to support one milk cow, two pigs and a dozen chickens, as long as you grew the feed yourself. It did mean 14 hour days, but they never ever bought food in the the store. No tractors or other oil dependend machines either, everything was done by hand, tilling weeding, harvesting, feeding, butchering.
Of course they bought food in the store. There is no such thing as a small self sufficient farm. Do you think they produced their own sugar and salt?
Did they mill their own flour and corn meal? Did they grow their own coffee and make their own vinegar?
Diversification of talents are not the same thing as specialization at the price of self-reliance.
Civilization has been working on and off for a large part of human history not because people were dependent but because they retained that spirit of individual responsibility. Yes the butcher specializes in an area that allows him to perfect his craft, but he was also likely to build his own home, teach his grandchildren at his knee, put up firewood to heat his family in the Winter, etc.
A tech worker in Silicon Valley or an insurance adjuster from Albany are as likely as not to know very little outside of their particular area of expertise and hire out everything else except for recreation and leisure activities. I encounter people all the time, adults for the most part who are completely baffled by basic hand tools, the names of the parts of the houses they live in, even how to unstop a clogged drain. There is simply no interest as long as the paychecks and benefits keep flowing. This lies at the root of our problem, laid bare during the so-called pandemic, where people understood that they would have to comply with ridiculous mandates and demands simply to keep their jobs. It is impossible for me to imagine being so dependent on having someone else teach my children that I’d compel them to walk around like a POW and submit to experimental medical procedures just so they could attend school.
I don’t know, maybe I’ve just outlived my time and this is all some kind of nostalgic pipedream, but I cannot see how something as broken and inhumane can continue to operate indefinitely.
It never could.
It never does.
Because, people.
As I said in the beginning, our own biology works against us.
We built this while flawed from the beginning.
As the Tower of Babel allegorically explained, at a certain point in development of our society, we fracture, and never know why.
It was only a couple generations ago when most men were “do it your selfer’s” Most knew how to do basic framing, electrical, plumbing, concrete, mechanics, fish, hunt, weld, and operate most machinery.
It cannot. Things that are inherently unsustainable must end.
Collapse is baked into the cake. As it always has been. Growth and decay cycles are the same for Empires as for gardens as for the lives of fruit flies. Speaking of when exactly it began is in some ways silly. Where does a circle begin?
Of course, this thing has gone on longer and gotten stranger than many of us could have imagined, and of course that casts doubt on all of us.
And there are still pockets of reason. My daughter is in kindergarten and her school is excellent. Classic education. Not a mask in sight, even when the county was still mandating them. She recites poems of the sort I wasn’t exposed to until middle school. She is flourishing.
I wonder if the ‘point of departure’ was the acceptance of the Social Security Act by the people at large in the States to be a substitute for the personal responsibility attitude that was previously required?
Being a life long hunter and fisherman, and always having a backyard
vegetable garden and a few fruit trees, I was sunned how
much meat was needed daily to feed the Lewis & Clark expedition.
Reading “Undaunted Courage” was eye opening.
They nearly starved more than once when the expedition
hunters failed to kill enough game. An elk renders out about
175-200 lbs. of meat if carefully butchered (including offal). My family would
go through that in 4 months. A deer in 2, and we’d eat 3 pheasants
in one dinner. (6 of us.) I hunt for enjoyment, but there is a real
financial benefit to gathering your own food in the wild. Without refrigeration,
all of this meat and fish would have to be dried or salted for the summer months.
Where I live, an ice cellar would work fine over the fall-spring. If times
Only a relative handful of people in the US could survive in the wild for long.
The basic skills of outdoor survival is lost knowledge to most. Advanced skills
are almost gone.
How many even here could start a fire with nothing but a knife?
How about building a real shelter that would allow you to survive for
months of cold? Hunt or trap your wild food with just that knife? What plants
are edible and nutritious and where to look for them?
And most importantly, where to find or obtain clean water?
When the modern world falls apart, hundreds of millions here are going
to die very quickly. In a few weeks in winter.
Undaunted Courage is one of the best books I have ever read. Talk about fearless. I can’t even begin to grasp what they did- considering the fact that it was all uncharted territory through hostile land with no knowledge of the terrain, game, seasons, etc.
You are right, virtually no one would be able to do that in order to survive today.
Hey Marc,
Richard and I ( Candis) were just talking about Undaunted Courage and said the exact same thing as you wrote. We also thought that the strength and endurance they had must be in part attributed to the food they gathered – for sure had an abundant of nutrients compared to industrial food ( and also their indomitable spirits.) On another note, I also have seen my students eager to learn about the many medicinal plants in the mountains here and even in the city along the river but,also, I have seen them not know how to use a shovel or other common gardening tools. I usually have to start teaching the baby steps – basics. Many also don’t understand the “seasons” and how things grow in the cycle of the year. Baby steps all the time.
Indeed HS, they had NO idea what they would encounter,
except it would be bad and dangerous.
Heed them. We are on that expedition now.
The Lewis and Clark expedition is a real piece of forgotten history that we are not allowed to know about.
The idea that any white person on this continent did anything other than whip their slaves and cheat the Native Americans out of all their possessions is treason.
I am 60 years old and I could actually do most of that stuff* but I sure as hell don’t want to.
That’s why we bugged out over ten years ago and figured out the lay of the land and listened to the locals.
*I do not think I could start a fire with a knife, but I do have some good flint in storage and a big ball of dryer lint. Good God! Sometimes I look at the things I put into storage a decade ago and laugh because I STILL have several packages of single-ply toilet paper I brought with me on the UHAUL to cushion breakables/scratchables.
Sometimes, I cry. I have a big package of old-fashioned baby diapers down there.
I still have a Boy Scout manual but never patient enough to rub sticks. If I had to I suppose I would have no choice. Rather than that possibility, I stocked up on striking steels at Harbor Freight some ten years ago during Obama’s last term. At a buck each including a striker over a short period of time I purchased 20 of them. I have them in my vehicles, camping gear etc. They work very well .
Hear hear and Amen. Those are quotes worth saving.
This will not be the first time mankind has developed civilization and then destroyed it, only to start all over again. The Roman’s developed cities with municipal water and sewage systems, concrete, advanced mathematics, and even early machinery. It took several centuries to rediscover much of that knowledge, and some of it we have probably lost forever.
It is an apparently endless cycle. Modern man, with the same brain we have, has been walking the earth for half a million years and yet we can only account for a few thousand years of our history.
Nailed it, and may I add monoculture SUCKS!
The fields along Hwy 82 in the Red River Valley that I drive through every week have turned a funky dark orange over the years from chemical farming. A 15 mile stretch which used to have 15 to 25 hawks roosting on the powerlines now never has more than 4 roosting, with 0 the last two weeks. Apparently not enough field mice or anything else to hunt.
What stretch of Hwy 82? Very familiar with much of that route that certainly has changed from the 60’s.
Canadian Railworkers for the lines carrying potash from the mines to USA are also on strike. None of this is a coincidence.
These times remind me of the story of my family. The last generation to come over on a boat worked in the coal mines. There were 12 brothers working there. One, my 2x great grandfather, saved his money to buy a farm while he worked in the mines. He farmed and mined at the same time. This was before 5 day work weeks of 40 hours. His machinery was mine mules that were discarded as trash by the mines, not worth the expense to dispose of.
He did all this while his brothers were dedicated drunkards and gamblers.
Then the mine strikes came and nobody was working. There was nothing but charity and the local churches quickly ran out of provision. His brothers expected him to feed them and their families out of goodwill. He told them to pound sand and they fled the area to other places never to return.
When my own family of Vaxx Nazi-Biden Voting-Socialists looks to me for help I will be hard pressed to not do the same. I have been living frugal doing without, not gathering debt, saving, and gardening while they drive new cars, have new phones, and take vacation cruises.
The menu will look like this: Skinny or fatty? “And how would you like it cooked”
A real solution we can do now…every homeowner could plant food that they will donate to their city. Every tree lawn could grow corn or something. Seeds could be had for the price of the vegetable at the store. That’s how they did it in the 1930s. You don’t need diesel if you are talking about millions of people all pitching in. It may sound unthinkable but that’s only because the masses will not be properly warned by their “trusted sources” until it is mid summer. So plant extra now and suggest to family tondonthos. Male it a meme. The controllers won’t keep it up for long because Americans will get thinner, less health problems, more good food = healthier population = the unintended consequences of healthier people.
When the people in the city, via government, take 25-30 percent of every paycheck why do I need to work more to send them food from my garden?
A meme I would suggest to be aired on TV is honest advice by the givernment: “Use your EBT money to buy seeds and grow more food than you can eat!” Is that happening yet? Didn’t think so.
I didn’t need the govt to tell me that.
Used my EBT to buy seeds & fruit trees & berry bushes.
My, but you are an optimist!
Perhaps they have something like this envisioned but it’ll be at the point of a gun and driven by a whip.
Just as the seeds are different from the 1930’s, so are the people.
There will be a thinner Americans in the future though.
Right on. Socialism worked very well for the Pilgrims.
And for the first Christian communities and the Russian communist and is working just great for US.
Actually most of them starved.
Dream on. This country is now made up of worthless black and mass South American entry people with nothing but the government to keep them alive. Another half of the population live in cities where they never go to or have even seen a farm. They never planted, turned soil or even know what to do. You better buy a gun and a lot of ammo as they will be at your door and back yard garden to rape, steal, and kill everything in site.
I disagree with you on this one. The people in the mega-cities will be trapped in the mega-cities. There will be no getting out for them. Sure, we’ll all see the chaos for a few weeks but, as Napoleon said, “a starving army is worse than none”.
As someone that knows history very well, most of humanity lived their lives never having traveled more than 7 miles from their home. The world is about to get a lot smaller.
The Welfare Maggots will be like rats trying to flee a burning dump with us kids picking them off easy peasy.
The virtue-signaling SJW’s that went to Ukraine to fight (8-16,000) thought that it was a game. They thought they were gonna go hunting some Russians – some Trump lovin’ Russians and it would now be payback time for the 2016 steal and they’d also get to post selfies on Instagram and make TikTok videos. Idiots without any training or proper equipment found themselves thrown into brutal urban warfare against well equipped, prepped and trained soldiers and most made it less than a day.
Once word gets back to the city that the people fleeing are being thrown alive into woodchippers, they’ll immediately stop venturing out past the suburbs. Finally, most city dwellers do not have scoped hunting rifles. Sure, semi-auto handguns and the occasional AK are nice, especially in an urban environment but that guy with the scope is going to engage you long before you can get within effective range.
This is the kind of article that it feels wrong to say, thanks for. It feels glib or cavalier. Yet, it is a helpful, well reasoned synopsis. Perfect Storm indeed!
Distance does make the policy maker an expert in their own mind. It is the blind hubris of central planners from all time. In the past it was killing sparrows to save crops. The crops failed. Now it is killing fossil fuel to save the planet. The crops will fail.
Distance also makes the consumer gullible. On a previously unseen level in all of human history the majority of “eaters” have no idea how food is grown and raised. The eaters have no idea how food really get to the stores. They can’t do it. They don’t understand it. They don’t know when it is threatened. At least, not yet.
For years now, I’ve worked with young adults from high school and college. A number of times I’ve heard, something like, “Why do people hunt? Why don’t they just get their meat from the store instead of killing an animal?” This is anecdotal but is is a concept that is surprisingly common. It is one of many proofs the education system failed long ago. Regardless, they buy bread or doughnuts or cereal or meat substitute, and have no idea what goes into it.
If people understood where food comes from, they would not be deaf to the babbling central planners. Anyway, we are looking at hard times. Distance from reality is going to hurt us all. Reality has away of closing the distance and slapping everyone in the face.
Really. Not everyone realizes food comes from Costco®. Delivered free right to the door. Especially the frozen Stuff. Multi-layer aluminized mylar bubble wrap custom cut and formed to the box all sides. Constantly recycling “For The Children”, Great hot seat for the porch chairs as well. Easy spot to keep an eye on the livestock too…Deer,Turkeys,Ducks and Geese, Squirrels,etc. Frozen water packs (enriched with ‘electrolytes’,LOL to be used as plant fertilizer) And a few chunks of Dry Ice wrapped in plastic to prevent burns. Still not quite dumb enough to touch those when doing my part ‘liberating’ the CO2 to save the Environment from CDS = Climate Derangement Syndrome
This is why the problem goes so much deeper. There is no time for all the learning that needs to take place to happen.
What HSF knows and does takes time to learn(permaculture). Sure you can grab a book and watch some Utube(for now) but nothing can prepare you like years of actual hands on.
Practice makes competent before it makes perfect, and you want to be at least that when dealing with long term skill sets affecting your life. The mindset to get there only comes from powerful drivers, and they havent shown up yet.
I think about a story where Fredrick the Great of Prussia “aquired” some new territory in the east. On inspection it turned out this poor region had agriculture, but not the means to utilize it. People grew cereal crops but ate it as gruel for lack of knowing how to make bread. That was the 1700’s. I would say that was an impressive level of ignorance but when I look around me today………
Not to add any more joy to the discussion but look up soil acidification. Our current style of farming has been slowly changing the ph of the soil, resulting in lowering yields.
Slowly, then all at once.
Lime, anyone?
Best to do soil tests. Ultimately..https://www.concreteconstruction.net/how-to/lime-stabilizes-poor-soils_o
We have a bit too many, ah, “big-boned” boys and girls, men and women in this country. Very much wasted food, too.
I daresay, from a caloric input versus productive output point-of-view that, as a people, we could probably make do with half of what we currently “consume”. Eisenhower’s agri-industrial complex has produced quite enough cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc. for us all, thanks.
Hast seen the White Whale?
Is there anything lovelier than a well tended garden?
Yes a pile of weapons and ammo to defend it from the desperate masses.
You keep your shootin’ irons in a pile?
TERRIBLE!!!
Note the bat!
My aunt, the calligrapher, would end the author unknown poem with her own happy ending… “And with great joy on every birthday, count your life in friends and not years!”
It was hot in the summer of 1976, but my aunt wore the costume well because she also wore the spirit of 1776 quite well.
I’ve found raised beds are the way to go.
They defiantly are easier on the back.
clearly don’t live in a state where a SWAT team would show up to arrest you for doing something ‘sick-bird’.
What a pathetic example of a man.
I feel only pity for him.
I have strong, dark feelings for that revolting POS, but pity is not one of them.
He has man titties, so disgust is just one of many he earns, just like Klaus, Little Tony, wimpy young Castro, and the reincarnation of a bug-eyed Andy Kaufman, just to name a few others. Schiff for brains.
Quick…somebody get that ‘guy’ a manssiere.
Looks like farmers are going organic whether they like it or not.
The US produces over 400 million metric tonnes of grain a year. That is about 2500 pounds per person, or around 6 pounds per day. One pound will supply enough calories per day for an average person.
The allocation of the grain may need to change. A great deal of it goes into animal feed. A lot is exported. Don’t feed it to cows, and don’t export it.
The only way that the US can starve is if the supply lines shut down, as enough food can and will be grown. Distribution is the risk.
Just set out a hundred or two hundred or three hundred square yards of beds. I grew about 10 square yards of potato beds last year and got more potatoes than we could eat. We ended up giving most of them away. We had hundreds of pounds of potatoes.
Thanks for providing a voice of reason. Seriously.
The constant onslaught of doom porn is getting old.
That and some whole milk and we can live as well as the Irish before the famine. 🙂
Distribution works both ways. Those yields you mention only happen when imputs arrive at the field. That’s the difference this time.
In the US, the issue will not be starvation, as much as inflated food costs. Food cost in turn will effect the standard of living. Other places in the world will face starvation, and that will cause war.
It is a cycle that has played out many times in the past.
Create your own fertilizer.
https://www.questoutdoors.com/liberty-mountain-luggable-loo-portable-toilet.html?id=56758954&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-Yf6lMPm9gIVgRh9Ch248AB5EAQYAiABEgJauvD_BwE
Remember where to get your bread.
One-hundred-one is indeed the new one hundred.
Those 70 IQs really smart when they bite their owners on their fat ugly asses. Besides, there are about 1 million GIs and 30 million gun owners.
LJB… that would have been a GREAT 100th comment.
I do really miss EC and Mr. Thistle is busy getting ready for spring planting.
Which is what I’m doing as soon as I finish this comment.
I do not know what farmers in the region are doing differently this year, and I will neither ask nor guess.
For more than a year, for several reasons, I’ve completely avoided the flatland farm region of my birth and upbringing, because it is no longer there. I grasped something my last trip down there that whatever remains of the “farming” I remember from my youth has been changed so drastically by technology it looks like equipment Luke Skywalker might have dreamed of using before he discovered the Force.
My father absolutely loathed government subsidies and refused to sign on for any of them until forced by age and inability to rent the land to a local farmer who insisted upon using the program for all the benefits involved. Until he died, he deposited what he called “that subsidy money” into its own account and until he decided I was part of the problem in his Alzheimer-ridden years* and began to suspect I might actually be working FOR the government trying to get him enslaved with those subsidies. And, many people did become enslaved to them, which enabled a lot of really bad things to happen to the farmland and the farms.
*To his defense, I did spend a LONG time in the military industrial complex, even after I knew it was corrupt, with the good intention of earn money to escape the military industrial complex. To him, born in the 1920s and raised to believe an honest day’s work was honest, my rationalization rang hollow (to him I suppose). I really felt like nobody in their right mind would pay me to do what I did (in financial analysis for program management) except idiots in federal government who didn’t care that they were always over budget and in a time-crunch. It was just next year’s money and they would be in a different job.
So, since they were going to pay someone to do it, it might as well be me.
Dad didn’t see it that way.
The federal government will subsidize their fuel costs, probably from the strategic reserve.
That is what she would like to see happen but it won’t go down that way. If things are ever so bad that someone like me is begging for bread then I can assure you that anything resembling government is but a distant memory and the bones of her and her supporters have long since been bleached by the Sun.
All you parasitic DHS who stood by and watched the election get stolen, I hope you burn in hell.
I used to farm I went broke in the eighties can not imagine how this will affect farmers the price of fuel alone will break some of these guys can not even think about what fertilizer price will do if you can even get it and the price of seed corn was out of control when I quit and the land taxes when I got out the taxes were worse than the land payment.The
American farmers and ranchers have always seemed to getter done but there will come a time when even the big boys will go under leaving just corporations in control when that happens this country will starve let alone the rest of the world.Old senile traitor fool Joe Biteme is to blame the bastard is to blame for all this just by shutting down our oil industry that alone caused all this bull shit
If you have been listening (reading) HSF for any amount of time….this food shortage is the best news I’ve read in a long time….
Industrial “Farming” to Regenerative farming is like similac to breast feeding.
Support your Farmer Friends.
Just dont forget all the babies that starve to death during the transition.
This. I get it about industrial farming for sure and the so called silver lining however thinking starvation is ok is like THEM. Time for those ‘let them all die’ folks (or bots) to be ignored.
I get some was frustration with the injection but what a bunch of freaks (just like them).
I get who will be the ones over running etc. if it gets real, there are worst things to become. THEM.
A little late to the thread, but Phil over at Bustedknuckles put this up recently.
It’s relevant to this BP conversation and post.
WRSA carried it earlier.
Save to file & Print was advised.
Typical of a lying demonic communist Demoncrap Josef Bitem needs to be TRIED and executed in what seems like a purposefool plan to bring down the dollar, start a WORLD WAR and put our men in harm’s way (on purpose), disrupt the food supply, create rampant inflation, destroy the courts in what seems like a playbook right of Hunted (soon to be) Bite’m’s LAPTOP!
This will simplify things a lot. A hungry man has only one problem.
A Mad Max world in the making!
Agribusiness has destroyed the soil. It is a no longer viable mode of food production. What we do need is to make food production more local. The more local the better. We will need to encourage the regeneration of the soil through small scale, organic or biodynamic farming.
Ok I just have to say here that if anyone needs cherries the end of July we’ll be mailing them.
I like cherries… How much and how far?
Great!
Prices haven’t been set yet this year and I’m going to take a chance, at the end of this article (and give a good donation to TBP) and post our website. Made it this year.
https://www.soundtoearthorchard.com/
I can’t wait. I haven’t had fresh-picked tart cherries for decades.
We only have about 5 of these trees @ 160 lbs last year- I’ll remember you when the time comes!
However they do not ship extremely well, so we’ll give it a try- you can be the guinea pig.