Most people that live in the western world don’t realize that global hunger has been absolutely exploding and has now become a major worldwide issue. According to the UN, 2.4 billion people do not have enough food to eat on a consistent basis, and 900 million of them are facing severe food insecurity. Unfortunately, things are about to get a whole lot worse. The deal between Russia and Ukraine that had allowed so much grain to be shipped through the Black Sea has completely broken down, and now both sides are threatening to attack any transport ships that come through the area.
When the war between Russia and Ukraine began, wheat prices quickly soared to the highest level that we have ever seen.
But then a miracle happened. A deal that was agreed to in July 2022 allowed vast amounts of grain to be safely transported through the Black Sea.
Since it was implemented, nearly 34 million tons of grain has been shipped out to the rest of the world.
But now the deal is over. On July 17th, the Russians announced that they were pulling out, and then on Thursday they warned that any ships sailing to Ukrainian ports “will be regarded as potential carriers of military cargo”…
On Thursday, Moscow’s defense ministry declared that “all vessels sailing in the waters of the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports will be regarded as potential carriers of military cargo,” a warning that has sent wheat prices rising.
“Accordingly, the countries of such vessels will be considered to be involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side Kyiv, the defense ministry said in a Wednesday statement. It added that several pockets of international water are “declared temporarily dangerous for navigation,” and vessels have been warned that there are no longer safety guarantees.
Needless to say, the Russians are not bluffing.
They mean it when they say that the shipping of Ukrainian grain is done, and they have already conducted military strikes against key port facilities in southern Ukraine…
Russian forces have launched extensive missile and drone attacks against port and grain infrastructure in southern Ukraine in recent days.
The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank, said Wednesday that it believes the recent attacks were likely to reaffirm Russia’s objections to the renewal of the Black Sea grain deal and hinder Kyiv’s ability to export agricultural commodities.
Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry said Wednesday that recent attacks on Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa and other cities had destroyed 60,000 tons of grain as well as crucial infrastructure.
Ukraine is one of the most important breadbaskets on the entire planet, and normally the Ukrainians export grain to dozens of different nations.
On the other side, the Ukrainians have decided to make similar threats. From now on, any ships that are heading for ports controlled by Russia will be fair game…
Ukraine, however, went on to issue its own measures in response to Moscow’s initial escalation. Kyiv’s defense ministry said that beginning on Friday, any vessels heading to ports in mainland Russia and in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine — like in Crimea or along the Sea of Azov — may likewise be viewed as transporters of military cargo.
Russia normally accounts for more than 20 percent of all global wheat exports.
So this is really bad news.
Exports from both Russia and Ukraine will be substantially reduced from this point forward, and wheat prices are already soaring…
Global inflation is finally coming down, but heightened geopolitical tensions could mean that food is about to get a lot more expensive.
Wheat futures soared by nearly 9% on Wednesday and are on track to hit their highest level in three weeks as tensions in Europe rise following Russia’s surprise decision to pull out of a crucial deal allowing the export of grain from Ukraine.
Corn futures were also nearly 2% higher on Tuesday as traders feared an impending supply crunch of the staple foods.
The last time grain prices spiked like this, it was just a temporary phenomenon because the grain deal of July 2022 was the miracle that the world desperately needed.
But there isn’t going to be a miracle this time around.
So I would very much encourage you to stock up on storable wheat while prices are still relatively low.
Right now, global food production is being hit by one disaster after another.
In California, some of the most important farmland in the entire state is now underwater because Tulare Lake has filled back up for the first time in 40 years…
Tulare Lake, which refilled for the first time in 40 years after atmospheric river storms pummeled California with snow and rain, is now receding, but it will take at least a year to evaporate entirely, experts said.
“We are still going to have a Tulare Lake next year,” said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Water Policy Center of the Public Policy Institute of California.
The sudden reappearance of the lake, which was drained for farmland in the late 1800s, has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural losses and will require a substantial cleanup effort once the water has gone, as flooded farm buildings, vehicles, homes and electrical infrastructure still lurk within its waters.
California is the most important agricultural state in the entire country.
They grow more of our fruits and nuts than anyone else by a very wide margin, but now all of the flooding that has occurred is going to hamper production for quite some time to come.
You may have noticed that I write about this new global food crisis quite a bit. Most people don’t realize this yet, but it is going to become such a huge story in the years ahead.\ No matter what decisions our leaders make now, there will be global famine.
There are multiple long-term trends that are going to make it increasingly difficult to produce enough food, and meanwhile global demand for food just continues to increase. Our leaders know this, and they will even talk about these things when they gather for conferences, but they don’t want to alarm the general public.
We are transitioning from an era of plenty to an era of great suffering, but most people in the general population still have absolutely no idea what is coming.
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
Unfortunately, all too very true!!!
Add to that all the fires, etc., at food processing plants around the world and North America, the horrific fact that Bill Gates and cronies are pushing towards genetically engineered artificial foodstuffs which will incorporate mRNA technology foe some absurd reason (???)!
https://youtu.be/Zx7sQvDiJH0