(OPINION) Our food prices aren’t just going up because our leaders pumped way too much money into the system. All over the world, crops are failing, and that includes right here in the United States.
Earlier this year, CNN warned that we are in the midst of “the worst food crisis in modern history”, and so we really need this to be an extremely successful year for our farmers. Unfortunately, that just isn’t happening in much of the country. In fact, one wheat farmer in Oklahoma says that his farm is experiencing “the most severe drought I’ve ever seen”…
Looks can be deceiving. Rolling wheat fields may appear green and lively to passing drivers, but the farmers who planted the fields see a different story playing out as their crops die off and blow away.
“We had less than half of a crop last year, and we’re probably going to have half of that this year. It’s terrible,” said 75-year-old Burlington farmer Keith Kisling. “We’re in the most severe drought I’ve ever seen.”
Another Oklahoma farmer, 23-year-old Jacob Webster, is actually comparing current conditions to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s… Jacob Webster, a 23-year-old farmer near Deer Creek in Grant County, spent a recent Sunday evening surveying his wheat fields in north-central Oklahoma. His leather cowboy boots were taller than much of the wheat, some of which is yellowing. He’s never seen a worse crop, he said.
“The good thing is today, we’ve got insurance, but the insurance doesn’t pay as well as a wheat crop could make,” Webster said. “With last year not being a very good wheat crop and this year probably not going to be the best, I would expect some people will probably have to fold up. It’s going to be tough.
“I think we’re to the Dust Bowl, about the same or worse.” We have been warned for a long time that Dust Bowl conditions would return to the center of the nation. Now it has happened.
Of course, farmers in the U.S. are not the only ones that are dealing with extreme drought. In Spain, endless drought has severely damaged “more than 3.5 million hectares of crops”…
Southern Europe’s farmers are facing a crop crisis. Months of drought has interruped this year’s harvests and some Spanish ecologists are warning the country may soon be unable to sustain cereal crops such as wheat and barley.
“Irreversible damage has been done to more than 3.5 million hectares of crops,” the main Spanish farmers’ association COAG warns, sounding the alarm on a trend it says is being observed throughout much of the country.
Crops are failing all over the planet right now, and this comes at a time when global food supplies have just been getting tighter and tighter.
As a result, hunger is on the rise. In fact, last year the number of people facing “acute hunger” increased to more than a quarter of a billion… The Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) for 2023 highlights that the number of people experiencing acute food insecurity and requiring urgent food and livelihood assistance is on the rise.
The report indicates that over a quarter of a billion people are facing acute hunger, with economic shocks and the Ukraine war contributing to the increase. In 2022, around 258 million people across 58 countries and territories faced acute food insecurity at crisis or worse levels (IPC/CH Phase 3-5), up from 193 million people in 53 countries and territories in 2021.