Only if you want it to be.

 

I am amused by your optimism. Good luck with that. Pray. The Lord will provide.

 

From a few months ago, somewhat detailing the US issues in part:

Watch & be aware

 

Might be a good time to stock up on extra dry pasta, flour (or better yet wheat berries), etc.

 

Too late ... I bought it all. Literally every box of pasta on the shelf. All 12 of them.

 

Germanys grain production alone would be able to feed 200 million people, I assume US grain production could feed 1 billion.

The "problem" is, that we do not eat it, but feed it to our lifestock.

there still is an extrem consumption of meat in the western world.

So to compensate for lack of Russian and Ukrainian wheat you just need to eat a little bit less meat.

Famine is for the very poor.

 

Prosperous peoples have excess. Excess which can be traded & or gifted*. When prosperous peoples lack excess, there is little to trade & nothing to give.

Gifted* via taxation (theft), or via individual charity.

 

I was born during the Cuban missile crisis and became an adult at the height of the cold war. War and famine have ALWAYS been in my future. I've lived through rationing, ate food made from dehydrated worms and waited in line for my ration of gas on the correct day. Living in OK during that time I watched our economy, along with oil and beef prices, rise and fall. Living in NYC as a student a few years later, I experienced blackouts, public transit and sanitation strikes.
ALL of this is just one reason to prep. If we adjusted our strategy each time we had been wared "It's coming!!!" or there was a minor crisis, we would be broke by now. We rolled our entertainment budget into the prep budget at the beginning of the pandemic and increased our pantry and garden space by 20%. At the beginning of the pandemic I made good money selling bread and it bartered well too. So yes, I will be buying more flour, I see this as a business opportunity more than anything else.

 

During the food shortages of WW2 the nation (and other nations) planted gardens and we did not starve. And, yes, there are enough gardeners right now to teach their neighbors how to garden.

Of greater concern for me will be the PRICE of what we city folk cannot raise. The greater the cost of fuel, the higher the price the food will be. And, I am not set up to raise my own hamburger. Yes I can (and will) stock up on canned meat, but, then there is milk, apples, etc and I simply do not live in a warehouse!

Starve? I doubt it. But unless something changes soon this coming year will NOT be fun

 

Of greater concern for me will be the PRICE of what we city folk cannot raise. The greater the cost of fuel, the higher the price the food will be. And, I am not set up to raise my own hamburger.

Have you looked around your area for small meat producers? Found a good place to fish? We did both while we had nothing else to do during lockdown but drive around to entertain ourselves. Directly in the city and in several burbs we found alternative sources for eggs, milk and meat and more.

 

I could expect to see the rise of a new Fife system.

If things were to go completely south and all the world powers burned themselves up over this, the wealthy will have the land 9at least to a point) and the poor would in all likelihood fall back under such a system.

The irony is that if this had happened 30 years ago, a Fife system would NOT have occurred because of the higher level of education that existed. Today the average American under the age of 40 has an education level equivalent to that of a 6th grader.

 

I could expect to see the rise of a new Fife system.

If things were to go completely south and all the world powers burned themselves up over this, the wealthy will have the land 9at least to a point) and the poor would in all likelihood fall back under such a system.

The irony is that if this had happened 30 years ago, a Fife system would NOT have occurred because of the higher level of education that existed. Today the average American under the age of 40 has an education level equivalent to that of a 6th grader.

Read The Famine Plot. The British purposely conducted ethnic cleansing and genocide to rid Ireland of its poor in an attempt to make it an obedient and subsurvient province like Wales or Scotland. Totally motivated by greed and anti-Catholic prejudice. The bad blood which was first let by Cromwell and perpetuated by a corrupt British aristocracy over the next 300 years was not diminished by the Good Friday accord of 1998.

Oh yes, I'm very familiar with this. It was decades in the making with a series of "reforms" designed to utterly break apart large family farms. Hence the change in inheritance law that stated all male children must receive an equal share of the farm - splintering the farm every generation.

 

Oh well, I need to lose a few pounds anyway.

 

Last year I started prepping smaller clothes for myself in anticipation of what could occur! Items like underwear, shorts, pants, and shirts are priority. Jackets, coats, hoodies, rain gear are all fine if they are a size or two too big. Nothing is worse than underwear that is too big.

 

The food crisis was already here
...this is just a convienent excuse to use.

The food crisis was already here...this is just a convienent excuse to use.

 

And of course as feeds, fertilizers , farmers culling herds all increase so does the costs and then demand can surpass the supply(ies) Then imagine the time frame to replace the culled stock (especially beef) and it is not "good" in any way for the average US consumer IMO

 

It will take awhile.
"United States cattle inventory down 2%
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2022 – There were 91.9 million head of cattle and calves on U.S. farms as of Jan. 1, 2022, according to the Cattle report published today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)."

and:

"Of the 91.9 million head inventory, all cows and heifers that have calved totaled 39.5 million.
There are 30.1 million beef cows in the United States as of Jan. 1, 2022, down 2% from last year.
The number of milk cows in the United States decreased to 9.38 million.
U.S. calf crop was estimated at 35.1 million head, down 1% from 2020.
All cattle on feed were at 14.7 million head, up slightly from 2021."

United States cattle inventory down 2 percent

USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Information. NASS publications cover a wide range of subjects, from traditional crops, such as corn and wheat, to specialties, such as mushrooms and flowers; from calves born to hogs slaughtered; from agricultural prices to land in farms. The agency...

www.nass.usda.gov

 

I've been putting together a list of things in my preps I want to enhance. Among them are:

• Dried pasta
• Bread Yeast (I have a lot in the freezer, I want more, and fresher)
• Baking Soda
• SPAM (I have a lot, want more, good source of fat plus very barterable) Sam's Club had it at 8 cans for $20.99 last week.
• Flour (possibly, depending on price. I have a LOT of wheat berries stored)
• Salt (I have a lot, want more. Good for barter, good for a lot of things)
• Cooking oil (probably olive oil)

I have all this stuff, but it seems like a reasonable thing to expand my supply.

 

QUOTE: “recreational" drugs.... now that’s where I draw the line! 😂 memtb

 

Luckily I have lots of neighbors, the old ones may be a bit tough and stringy, but they'll be easier to catch...

 

We raise our own hair sheep for meat. Currently, we have seven lambs, which, in the fall, will get us a pound of meat per day for a year. So we never have to buy meat again for the rest of our lives. We also have a half dozen black walnut trees which give us all of the nutmeat we can stand to eat. Plus a small (75 feet x 30 feet) garden for potatoes, carrots, kale, and squash. Lotsa deer and wild turkeys. We may not be able to grow pizzas, but we will never starve to death.

 

Here:

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-synthetic-fertilizer-feed

Predictions of a global food crisis — that the world’s food production would not be able to keep pace with population growth — have a long history. In the 18th century the English cleric Thomas Robert Malthus hypothesized that gains in per capita resources would inevitably be outstripped by population until food supplies finally acted as a barrier to further growth.1

Such predictions have continued well into the 20th and 21st centuries; in his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich argued that global population would continue to grow until the point of mass starvation.2

Both Malthus and Ehrlich should be surprised to see the current state of the world. Today, we can support a global population of around 7.4 billion (and growing), with many consuming far in excess of requirements.3

There are a number of scientific and technological innovations which have allowed for rapid growth in crop productivity, particularly in the second half of the 20th century. None of these had a more dramatic impact than the ability to produce synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

In fact, it’s estimated that nitrogen fertilizer now supports approximately half of the global population. In other words, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch — the pioneers of this technological breakthrough — are estimated to have enabled the lives of several billion people, who otherwise would have died prematurely, or never been born at all.4

It may be the case that the existence of every second person reading this attributes back to their 20th century innovation.

Nitrogen fertilizer is a 19th century construct. Advances in new processes would allow this.

 

One should not be optimistic about unrealized, unknown "advances" when gambling with more than half the world's population's lives.

Besides, no great advances have occurred in many decades. All they've done is reduce (significantly) the amount of energy required. But it's still a ton of energy and several large countries simply stopped making it months ago. There are diminishing returns and I'm not holding my breath for advances. It takes a certain amount of energy to fix the nitrogen from the air. Nothing will ever reduce that to zero.

Also, almost every single thing aside from the transistor or airplane is a 19th century construct. People think it was the 20s-50s that led to our advances, but that was just us finally appreciating and applying the work done in 1860-1900. Everything that we use, from quantum mechanics to chemistry to so many other areas, was first given to us in the 1800s.

 

One should not be optimistic about unrealized, unknown "advances" when gambling with more than half the world's population's lives.

Besides, no great advances have occurred in many decades. All they've done is reduce (significantly) the amount of energy required. But it's still a ton of energy and several large countries simply stopped making it months ago. There are diminishing returns and I'm not holding my breath for advances. It takes a certain amount of energy to fix the nitrogen from the air. Nothing will ever reduce that to zero.

Also, almost every single thing aside from the transistor or airplane is a 19th century construct. People think it was the 20s-50s that led to our advances, but that was just us finally appreciating and applying the work done in 1860-1900. Everything that we use, from quantum mechanics to chemistry to so many other areas, was first given to us in the 1800s.

AND why I keep pointing out that one should have their own garden!

by growing locally and individually, the amount of food alters significantly.

Centralized commercial food production has always been susceptible to similar problems.

Look into roman or even Nat. American stories of such.

 

Impractical to feed the world, but for the home gardener, there are several plants that return/build nitrogen in to the soil! Crop rotation is the answer! memtb

 

I've been putting together a list of things in my preps I want to enhance. Among them are:

• Dried pasta
• Bread Yeast (I have a lot in the freezer, I want more, and fresher)
• Baking Soda
• SPAM (I have a lot, want more, good source of fat plus very barterable) Sam's Club had it at 8 cans for $20.99 last week.
• Flour (possibly, depending on price. I have a LOT of wheat berries stored)
• Salt (I have a lot, want more. Good for barter, good for a lot of things)
• Cooking oil (probably olive oil)

I have all this stuff, but it seems like a reasonable thing to expand my supply.

+++
...but don't eat too much SPAM. Not vey heathy. Better for trading than eating.

 

Everything in moderation. SPAM is one of the relatively few ways to store fat long-term.

And if we get to the point where I'm dipping deep into my preps, being concerned about the relative health benefits of SPAM is likely to be very low on the list of my concerns.

 

As I have been advising for several decades now, on prepping/survival forums.

Rather than trying hoard seven years of food. Find where food is FREE and "Bountiful" (as God intended) and where there are also very-very-very-very few humans. It does exist.

 

Meh, I have a garden, chickens, 5 yrs of preps, ammo, no debt, And money.

Now maybe I can attract women .

 

Meh, I have a garden, chickens, 5 yrs of preps, ammo, no debt, And money.

Now maybe I can attract women .

Wait a few more weeks, and you'll be the sexiest man alive

 

IDK about that- what about underwear that hasn't been washed in a couple years but worn daily????

 

...what about underwear that hasn't been washed in a couple years but worn daily????

Fertilizer, thereya go..

.02
jd

 

I began to think about storage, supplies and preps in 2012.... ten years ago, because the MSM and every dang website on the internet said we would have a catastrophic food situation.... So I began to buy and prep.....

And so the report has been every dang year for 10 years. "Oh my God... no food this year!"

Now, I certainly believe a day will come where our grocery stores have no food..... BUT I KID YOU NOT... My Sam's Club right now is more heavily stocked than any time I can remember. In about 6 locations, they have toilet paper stacked to the ceiling. There are massive, multiple pallets of flour, rice and dry beans, not to mention pallets of canned chicken, tuna, etc..... If the world ended tomorrow and I was the last man on earth, I could probably eat out of that Sam's Club for 20 years and weigh 400 lbs.... with 8 of my best friends.

Is there a chance of food shortages this year? Yeah, a good chance. But I seriously doubt America will see a starvation situation.

I can pop my callous opinion because I have 5 years of food in storage.


..............

 

 

Hmm I have read about this. Oh yeah Matthew 24.

 

When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, "Come." I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not damage the oil and the wine."
— Revelation 6:5–6 NASB[33]

The third Horseman rides a black horse and is popularly understood to be Famine, as the Horseman carries a pair of balances or weighing scales (Greek ζυγὸν, zygon), indicating the way that bread would have been weighed during a famine.[4][27] Other authors interpret the third Horseman as the "Lord as a Law-Giver," holding Scales of Justice.[34] In the passage, it is read that the indicated price of grain is about ten times normal (thus the famine interpretation popularity), with an entire day's wages (a denarius) buying enough wheat for only one person (one choenix, about 1.1 litres), or enough of the less nutritious barley for three, so that workers would struggle to feed their families.[4] In the Gospels, the denarius is repeatedly mentioned as a monetary unit, for example the denarius was the pay of a soldier for one day and the day labor of a seasonal worker in the harvesting of grapes is also valued at 1 denarius (Matthew 20:2). Thus, it is probably a fact that with the approach of the Apocalypse, the most necessary food will rise in price greatly and the wages earned per day will be enough only for the minimum subsistence for the same day and nothing more.
Of the Four Horsemen, the black horse and its rider are the only ones whose appearance is accompanied by a vocalization. John hears a voice, unidentified but coming from among the four living creatures, that speaks of the prices of wheat and barley, also saying "and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine". This suggests that the black horse's famine is to drive up the price of grain but leave oil and wine supplies unaffected (though out of reach of the ordinary worker). One explanation for this is that grain crops would have been more naturally susceptible to famine years or locust plagues than olive trees and grapevines, which root more deeply.[4][27]
The statement might also suggest a continuing abundance of luxuries for the wealthy, while staples, such as bread, are scarce, though not totally depleted;[27] such selective scarcity may result from injustice and the deliberate production of luxury crops for the wealthy over grain, as would have happened during the time Revelation was written.[3][35] Alternatively, the preservation of oil and wine could symbolize the preservation of the Christian faithful, who use oil and wine in their sacraments