Darrell Castle talks about food and what is causing the supply chain disruptions around the world. He asks if the world's food supply really is approaching crisis conditions.

Transcription / Notes

IS FAMINE IN OUR FUTURE?

Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 22nd day of April in the year of our Lord 2022 and my discussion today will be about something none of us can live long without and that is food. What is causing the supply chain disruptions around the world and is the world’s food supply really approaching crisis conditions.

Governments across the Western World are starting to sound the alarm about a crisis in the supply chain especially in food. They blame the war in Ukraine for most of the problem just as they blamed COVID for the collateral damage that it caused. It is obvious, however, that the real culprit, is not so much the war as it is the reaction to the war. Just as the COVID lockdowns caused the economic devastation, severe economic sanctions placed on Russia are causing much of the supply chain problems the world is facing.

American politicians seem to be incapable of facing the fact that they have overplayed their hand with the sanctions imposed on Russia. Instead of deterring Russia, the sanctions have accelerated Russian and Chinese efforts away from the dollar as reserve currency for the world. For that and other reasons I contend that the U.S. sanctions policy is doing more harm to the U.S. and Europe than it is to Russia.

Russia formerly provided about 10% of the world’s oil supply so now that is effectively removed from the world market. Europe gets, or previously did get, about 40% of its natural gas from Russia. Perhaps even more ominous is that Russia is a very large supplier of wheat, fertilizer, and other components of the world’s food supply. Right now, with the agricultural system that has been in place since chemical fertilizers started to dominate the world, it is extremely difficult to grow enough food without those fertilizers.

A simple fact then, that anyone but an American politician can see, is that it is not possible to destroy Russia, or to cut it off and isolate it from the global economy without causing severe damage to supply chains and food production around the world. In addition, as we all know, the U.S. relies on the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency to maintain its financialized dominance over the world. Much of the world is now frantically working to end that reserve currency status and leave the U.S. financialized economy holding 30 trillion of debt.

Dire conditions already exist in food supply chains for much of the world. The head of the UN World Food Program has warned that this will be the worst food crisis since World War Two. Joe Biden has admitted as well that coming food shortages are real. I suppose the alternative for him would be the Baghdad Bob approach of you are not seeing this. Unfortunately, world events are coming together to accelerate the crisis and make it a lot worse. If the nations of the West were to suddenly reverse course and make an all-out effort perhaps in time it could be reversed, but that does not appear to be happening.

The COVID lockdown policy in China has now spread to so many Chinese cities that an estimated 400 million people are locked down or at least partially locked down. That is more people than the entire population of the United States. That number represents about 40% of the entire domestic production of the world’s second largest economy. Chinese lockdowns are harsher than in the West and who knows what the long-term economic fallout will be.  For one thing, the Chinese economy, supplier to the world, is grinding to a halt and like a giant ship, once stopped, it takes a while to restart and gain momentum.

Chinese lack of production effects even our food supply. We don’t realize it perhaps, but a great deal of our food processing is done in Chi...