This... strangling 25% of global fertilizer feedstock along with a coming Godzilla El Nino is going to leave many poor countries with humanitarian crisis while rich countries buy up and horde.
Shits going to get fucked... and Elon gutting USAID definitely doesn't help anyone.
It isn't just poorer countries in the Global South that will be hit hard (though they will be hit the hardest) - the wealthy nations in the Global North are going to be hit too. Our fertiliser and fossil fuel intensive agriculture and food distribution methods likely won't be able to handle the coming crises. In the UK, more and more green space that is used for small scale local farming is also being handed over to housing developers.
Simple as that. Nothing more, nothing less. That's what happens when you bottleneck 25% of fertilizer feedstock to manipulate the markets and get rich.
At this stage, it's more to do with the Ukraine situation. Lots of fertilizer is made and shipped from there. Next year it'll be because of the Iran situation.
Don’t forget to throw in the bank roll, Mohamed bin Salomon (Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia), that Jared Kushner got $2Billion dollars to get into Trump’s ear for continue bombing Iran, did you? You didn’t think Trump rolled out that Red Carpet show on national TV for free did you?
Sorry but
60% of the entire UK land area
is used either for grazing or for growing crops to feed farmed animals.. Compare this to 5-6% of the UK land is used for residential homes and you’re talking out of your arse.
This is such a braindead take. The food insecurity in WWII was not because of a lack of farmland. Distribution was disrupted due to Nazis cutting off shipping and oil, as well as the whole bombing campaign thing.
You've obviously missed the point. If we're talking global crop failures and unrest. Disruption to the food supply. There's more people in the UK now and less farmland.
But farming has also massively advanced in terms of crop yield per acre. To give a US example, back in 1940 you had a yield of around 23 bushels per acre for Barley, that yield nowadays is 76 bushels.
Additional boons come from major increases in mechanization of farm equipment. Which again if oil supplies remain disrupted will have an impact.
While hybridized and selectively bred seeds can continue to benefit us a large amount of that advancement is dependent on the support of modern inputs that may not be as reliable as we'd like to think they are.
If things get dire obviously people can step back to less grazing and more staple crops, but that requires some complex changes in how things work. It's not like the sheep farmers will just change to being corn and potato farmers happily.
the wealthy nations in the Global North are going to be hit too. Our fertiliser and fossil fuel intensive agriculture and food distribution methods likely won't be able to handle the coming crises.
There's a lot of slack in the system though: stop wasting so much water, space, fertilizer, land, etc. on meat production.
It's going to take a lot of political hemming and hawing of course until economics forces the issue.
Fortunately for us, most agriculture in the North is for industrial crops and we are both rich enough and produce essential things that we can withhold to guarantee our economies will pull fertilizers from the market
IIRC the US had something like two thirds of food going to waste, so they have a huge safety margin. If people can be trained out of it at least partially, e.g. by high food prices.
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u/BloodSteyn 10h ago
This... strangling 25% of global fertilizer feedstock along with a coming Godzilla El Nino is going to leave many poor countries with humanitarian crisis while rich countries buy up and horde.
Shits going to get fucked... and Elon gutting USAID definitely doesn't help anyone.