The 2020 declaration of world hunger was not a prediction, but a project. And a successful one at that.
The British Financial Times has warned of the threat of famine in Europe because of rising energy prices.
Members of the farmers’ union Copa-Cogeca, as well as two major food producers associations, FoodDrink Europe and Primary Food Processors, have already begun to wind down their businesses and reduce their production.
“Another increase in energy prices, especially natural gas and electricity, threatens the continuity of agri-food production cycles and therefore the ability to continue supplying essential agricultural commodities, food and feedstuffs,” said a joint statement by European agricultural industry representatives ahead of the EU energy ministers meeting in Prague on 9 September.
Copa-Cogeca Secretary General Pekka Pesonen stressed that European buyers will face even higher prices and shortages of many fruits and vegetables next winter. “This is something we have not seen before…” he said. – Some products will be unavailable or very expensive.” Electricity is used in all stages of food production, from fertiliser application to harvesting and cooling. The dairy and bakery industries have been hit hard by rising pasteurisation costs, Pesonen said, and milk powder production has become unaffordable because of high energy costs.
From the beginning of the year until July the prices of butter in the EU went up by 80%, with milk powder prices going up by more than 50% and beef prices by 28%. Farmers say their production costs are rising even faster.
Fruit and vegetable growers are cutting back on plantings for next season, and some report that the rising cost of running greenhouses already exceeds the profit they will be able to make. Nordic Greens, Sweden’s largest tomato producer, has said it will not plant winter crops. Greenhouses in the Netherlands, the world’s second biggest agricultural exporter after the US, are also gradually shutting down.
The harvest of cucumbers and peppers grown in heated greenhouses in the UK in 2022 will be half of last year’s due to excessive energy costs, the Financial Times reports. And such vegetables will cost twice as much.
The British press blames Russia for the coming famine, although it admits that Russia has cut fuel supplies to the continent because of sanctions.
“Britain will starve because of faulty environmental dogma,” writes the Daily Telegraph. -Economists blame economic adaptation after the pandemic and the armed conflict in Ukraine. But the truth is that we ourselves have let our domestic agricultural base languish… There is a tendency in Britain to give away farmland for solar panel installation and other ‘eco-targets’,” laments the Daily Telegraph article. This year up to half of harvested crops in the UK will be lost due to inability to irrigate, says The Guardian. The reason is not drought at all, but the widespread installation of windmills and solar panels instead of establishing irrigation. It is predicted that up to half of carrots, onions, sugar beet, apples and hops will be lost. Milk production in the UK is also falling due to a shortage of feed for cows.
“There are fears that many farmers will refuse to sow next year’s crop,” reports The Guardian, “leading to dire consequences for the 2023 crop. Cattle and other livestock are expected to be slaughtered earlier at lower weights because farmers are likely to run out of feed in winter. Incidentally, the drought had nothing to do with the feed shortage. The economy has been turned green by force.
In France, up to 35 per cent of the fruit and vegetable harvest is expected to be lost, said Jacques Rouchauss, president of the French national association of vegetable producers Legumes de France.
In Italy the situation is even worse, we are talking about the fact that in some areas of the country could be lost up to 80 percent of the crop. And there is no way to get food from other European countries or America – crops are dying and livestock are being slaughtered everywhere.
In the US, “74% of beef cattle, 50% of dairy production, over 80% of wheat production, 70% of vegetables, fruits and nuts are at risk. 37% of farmers said they are ploughing and destroying existing crops… A staggering number of ranchers in some western states are selling off their cattle. Farmers in the Lone Star State have reported the largest decrease in their livestock by 50%, followed by New Mexico and Oregon at 43% and 41% respectively,” writes renowned American economist Michael Snyder on his website The Economic Collapce. The renowned economist sees the causes of the food crisis that threatens America with famine in the actions of the US government and only in the last place in the drought.
The fact that America is threatened by famine does not help Europeans. She does not conceal that Europe is in danger of a huge famine due to anti-Russian sanctions.
And a world famine seems to have been planned for a long time. The global food crisis was announced to the world in May 2020 by Arif Husain, chief economist of the UN food programme, when there was no drought in 2022 and no Russian special operation in Ukraine. At that time, crop, crop and livestock figures, as well as agricultural prices, were stable and no food shortage was even conceivable. Between 2000 and 2019, according to the UN, the proportion of the world’s population suffering from malnutrition fell from 15% to 8.9%. By 2030, the UN had set a target of zero.
All went to waste in 2019. Against the backdrop of a triggered ‘pandemic’, the positive trend has reversed. In 2020, the number of undernourished rose from 690 million to 811 million, the largest in 15 years. In 2021, world food prices have risen by an average of 30%: sunflower and rapeseed oil prices have risen by over 60%, wheat by 31%, sugar by 30%, dairy products by 17% and meat by 13%.
So the UN expert’s 2020 statement about world hunger was not a prediction, but a project. And a successful one at that. We should speak separately about the authors of the project.
Vladimir Pohvatilov, FGC
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