Steven Collins
June 8, 2008
According to a report in the Tri-State Observer, a Pennsylvania newspaper, the USA’s wheat reserves are almost gone. The first link below details their story that the USA now only has barely enough wheat reserves to “make 1/2 of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America,” but also that the USA’s food reserves of cheese, butter, dry milk powder, etc. are completely gone. This report likely does not include private corporate stores of food commodities, but given the pervasive corporate practice of “just in time” deliveries and the abandonment of costly warehouse storage facilities, corporate foodstuffs in the normal food chain are surely not enough to meet a severe food crisis situation either.
Readers are no doubt familiar with many reports of food riots around the world, where the masses are protesting either the shortage of foodstuffs or the escalating cost of food staples. The second link below cites a US response which protests an IMF report that the global cost of food has risen 43% in the last year. The IMF report cites biofuel production as a cause of the global food crisis, and in this case, I agree with the US argument that biofuels production is not a major cause of the food price rises. Brazil has made itself energy-independent via biofuels production in recent years and no one complained that Brazil’s actions caused any increase in food costs. US biofuels are mostly corn-based, and Midwest cornfields devoted to biofuels do not cause any shortages in rice-production, fruit-production, vegetable-production, etc. The second link below has many other linked stories about the global food crisis, including one in which Brazil dismisses the food crisis being caused by biofuels. The third and fourth links below document that a drought in California is causing a shortage in the types of crops produced in that state, and Midwest biofuel production is not a factor in the shortage of the foodstuffs coming from California. However, I agree with the IMF that food prices are rising far faster than is reported by the US government’s statistics. A recent blog detailed many media reports that the “official” inflation statistics issued by the US government are severely understating real world inflation due to the use of misleading “hedonic” and “subjective” adjustments to the raw data.
The world has long relied on the USA to be the world’s giver of free food whenever and wherever there is a disaster in the world. The USA is famous for its food aid to many nations. If the USA is almost out of food reserves, who will be the giver of free food when new disasters occur around the world? The answer is no one. Given the information in the first link below, one wonders if the federal government has anything left to bring food aid to the American population in the event another hurricane like Katrina hits the US coast this summer or if “the big one” (a major earthquake) hits California. It appears that the official sources would rather not have the US population think about this problem during an election year.
The growing global food crisis is being exacerbated by the continuing loss of honeybees as pollinators for food crops and the emergence of a lethal wheat virus (Ug99) which has spread from Africa to Asia. Both these stories have been the subjects of previous blogs at this site.
Revelation 6:5-6 prophesies that global food shortages and rising prices for food will be one element in a series of end-time crises which will climax with the return of Jesus Christ (Revelation 6:15-17, 19:11-21). The global food crisis is upon us and it is getting worse. Can you imagine the global problems which will result when nations literally start running out of food? This global food crisis is fulfilling one more biblical prophecy about the latter days of our age. Many biblical prophecies about the latter days are being literally fulfilled in modern and recent world events, yet few realize it due to the widespread ignorance about what the Bible actually says and predicts. For a thorough examination of the biblical prophecies which are coming (or have come) to pass, please check out my article “Are We Living in the Biblical Latter Days?” which is available at the Articles link at this website. You owe it to yourself to see the evidence that the Bible’s prophecies are very precisely coming to pass in world events, confirming that the very real Creator God of the Bible is about to intervene personally in the affairs of mankind in the years ahead of us. If you doubt the Bible is a scientific book, please examine the evidence to the contrary in the featured article at this website: “Is the Earth 6,000 Years Old?”
http://www.tristateobserver.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=10121
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=111&sid=1404239
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4076077.ece
http://www.kmph.com/Global/story.asp?S=8440083&nav=menu612_2_7
