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Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Famine is one of mankind’s oldest enemies, having existed throughout human history. Regardless of whether the famine was caused by drought or pestilence, the result is usually the same: people suffer and many die… sometimes entire civilizations.
Modern farming techniques have greatly reduced the risk of famine for the countries which can afford the necessary infrastructure to support those farms. But even with the massive infrastructure we have in place, we are still susceptible to drought. Just look at what happened in Southern California a few years ago, when the government decided to give the water in the reservoirs to the Delta Smelt instead of saving it for the farms. Those farms dried up and shut down.
While that affected the cost of food, it was merely seen as a blip in overall food prices. But what if the same thing happened over a larger area? We are currently seeing drought across the United States which has caused our largest reservoirs to be at record-low levels. This is causing some hydroelectric power dams to cease electric power production. In the coming years, California and the Southwest will be scrambling for water.
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In addition, the water levels in some of our largest aquifers are dropping as more water is being drawn out of them than can percolate through the ground to refill them. That wouldn’t be a problem if those areas had sufficient surface water to meet agricultural and other needs, but the aquifers are drying up because there isn’t enough surface water.
Just to make matters worse, we’ve got the supply-chain problems which are causing shortages of just about everything. Not all the food we consume here in the United States is grown here; many things come from overseas, including such widely-diverse products as tea, apple juice, and bananas.
What this means is that we are headed into a nationwide famine. While it might not reach that point all that quickly, we can expect to see ongoing food shortages. The high prices we’ve been seeing are not going to end and in fact will continue to rise. Inflation is just making that worse, as food usually has higher inflation than other consumer goods.
So What Happens When Food Becomes Scarce?
We’ve been seeing food shortages ever since the start of the great toilet paper panic in 2020. Expect those to continue, but not just because of people panic buying. Rather, what we’re going to see is farmers having trouble producing and packagers having trouble getting enough food to package. Augason Farms, one of the biggest producers of “survival” food, has suspended operations for a minimum of 90 days because they can’t get the raw food they need to work with.
Following the law of…