Food Shortages

We Are Being Told To Prepare “To See High Prices At Grocery Stores” And “It’s Likely That Shortages May Only Get Worse”

If you have been to a grocery store lately, then you already know that prices are higher than usual and that there are shortages of certain items. Many Americans have been assuming that as COVID-19 restrictions are slowly rolled back that these shortages will eventually disappear, but now even the Washington Post is admitting that “shortages may get worse” in the weeks and months ahead. Of course there will still be plenty of food available in the grocery stores, but you may have to do without some of your favorite products for a while. And you should also brace yourself for significantly higher prices for many of the products that do remain available. As WBTV has noted, this will especially be true for basic meat staples such as ground beef and chicken…

Americans looking to get outside this holiday weekend, maybe fire up the grill, should be prepared to see high prices at grocery stores, especially cookout staples like ground beef and chicken.

The meat at the store is a little bit more expensive because of plants that are shutting down and causing a logjam in the food supply chain.

All over the country, COVID-19 is playing havoc with food distribution systems, and nobody has been hit harder than meat processing facilities. The virus has spread like wildfire in such facilities, and this has resulted in many of them being forced to shut down for an extended period of time.

With less supply and roughly the same level of demand, meat prices have escalated quite a bit in recent weeks. In fact, in April we witnessed the largest spike in food prices in 46 years…

Prices Americans paid for eggs, meat, cereal and milk shot higher in April as people flocked to grocery stores to stock up on food amid government lockdowns designed to slow the spread of Covid-19.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that prices U.S. consumers paid for groceries jumped 2.6% in April, the largest one-month pop since February 1974. The spike in supermarket prices was broad based and impacted items from broccoli and ham to oatmeal and tuna.

Of course there have also been whispers that some funny business has been taking place among the meatpacking giants, and federal officials are now investigating allegations of price fixing…

Federal prosecutors are looking into allegations that the meatpacking industry is coordinating or manipulating prices, a person familiar with the investigation told FOX News.

The Department of Justice investigation has been going on for “months,” the source said.

Prosecutors are specifically scrutinizing the four largest meatpackers in the U.S., which control more than 80 percent of the market: JBS, National Beef, Tyson Foods and Cargill.

But no matter how that investigation unfolds, we should expect higher prices to continue, because the industry simply cannot produce as much meat as usual with so many facilities shut down right now.

And with each passing day, we learn of more workers that have become infected. In fact, 570 workers at a single Tyson Foods plant in North Carolina just tested positive for the virus…

Meat processing plants across the country are struggling with outbreaks of the coronavirus. That includes the Tyson Foods chicken processing facility in Wilkes County, N.C.

More than 2,200 workers were tested at the Wilkesboro plant, and 570 were positive for the coronavirus.

With so many meat processing facilities all over the nation currently idle, many farmers simply do not have anyone to sell to right now, and this has pushed many of them to the brink of financial ruin.

For example, it is exceedingly expensive to raise chickens on a massive scale, but with so many plants closed down North Carolina farmers are now being forced “to euthanize 1.5 million chickens”…

Coronavirus outbreaks at meat processing plants are forcing North Carolina farmers to euthanize 1.5 million chickens, according to a state official.

Assistant Agriculture Commissioner Joe Reardon told The News & Observer that this is the first time during the pandemic that North Carolina farmers have had to euthanize their animals. Roughly a third of the 1.5 million chickens already had been killed, Reardon said.

Similar scenarios are playing out all over the U.S., and this is truly a tremendous tragedy.

Unlike some other areas around the globe right now, we would actually have plenty of meat if the farmers could get their animals through the supply chain.

Unfortunately, fear of COVID-19 has thrown the supply chain into a state of chaos, and that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. In fact, the mainstream media is now warning us “that shortages may only get worse”…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated at least 5,000 workers were infected by the end of April, though advocates have suggested there could be more than 17,000. And with plants already slow to respond to outbreaks and some still partially closed, it’s likely that shortages may only get worse.

The good news is that eventually this pandemic will subside, and when that happens it is likely that the supply chain will start to revert back to normal once again.

But if fear of COVID-19 can cause this much chaos for our food distribution systems, what will happen once a much more severe crisis hits us?

When things really start going crazy in this country, basic supplies will disappear from the stores very rapidly, and the government is not going to be bringing baskets of food to your door.

In the end, you will be on your own.

And in the short-term, you should expect food prices to continue to rise. The federal government has been borrowing and spending trillions of dollars that we do not have during this pandemic, and the Federal Reserve has cranked up the money creation machine to absolutely absurd levels. What this means is that the value of our currency is rapidly being devalued, and eventually we will see very painful inflation.

I know that food prices seem really high right now, but they are only going to go up from here.

So stock up on what you can while you have this window of opportunity to do so, because this window of opportunity will not last indefinitely.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with all many people as we possibly can.

The Sun “Has Gone Into Lockdown”, And This Strange Behavior Could Make Global Food Shortages Much Worse

At a time when the world is already being hit with major crisis after major crisis, our sun is behaving in ways that we have never seen before. For as long as records have been kept, the sun has never been quieter than it has been in 2019 and 2020, and as you will see below we are being warned that we have now entered “a very deep solar minimum”. Unfortunately, other very deep solar minimums throughout history have corresponded with brutally cold temperatures and horrific global famines, and of course this new solar minimum comes at a time when the United Nations is already warning that we are on the verge of “biblical” famines around the world. So we better hope that the sun wakes up soon, because the alternative is almost too horrifying to talk about.

Without the sun, life on Earth could not exist, and so the fact that it is behaving so weirdly right now should be big news.

Sadly, most mainstream news outlets are largely ignoring this story, but at least a few are covering it. The following comes from Forbes…

While we on Earth suffer from coronavirus, our star—the Sun—is having a lockdown all of its own. Spaceweather.com reports that already there have been 100 days in 2020 when our Sun has displayed zero sunspots.

That makes 2020 the second consecutive year of a record-setting low number of sunspots— which you can see (a complete absence of) here.

And here is what the New York Post is saying…

Our sun has gone into lockdown, which could cause freezing weather, earthquakes and famine, scientists say.

The sun is currently in a period of “solar minimum,” meaning activity on its surface has fallen dramatically.

Experts believe we are about to enter the deepest period of sunshine “recession” ever recorded as sunspots have virtually disappeared.

Yes, covering COVID-19 is important, but the fact that scientists are warning that we are potentially facing “freezing weather, earthquakes and famine” should be deeply alarming for all of us.

And since the mainstream media has been largely silent on this crisis, most Americans don’t even know that it exists.

Last year, there were no sunspots at all 77 percent of the time, and so far this year there have been no sunspots at all 76 percent of the time…

“This is a sign that solar minimum is underway,” reads SpaceWeather.com. “So far this year, the Sun has been blank 76% of the time, a rate surpassed only once before in the Space Age. Last year, 2019, the Sun was blank 77% of the time. Two consecutive years of record-setting spotlessness adds up to a very deep solar minimum, indeed.”

So why is this such a big deal?

Well, every once in a while a very deep solar minimum that lasts for several decades comes along, and when our planet has experienced such periods in the past the consequences have been quite dramatic.

For example, the New York Post is claiming that NASA scientists fear that we could potentially be facing “a repeat of the Dalton Minimum”…

NASA scientists fear it could be a repeat of the Dalton Minimum, which happened between 1790 and 1830 — leading to periods of brutal cold, crop loss, famine and powerful volcanic eruptions.

Temperatures plummeted by up to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over 20 years, devastating the world’s food production.

Even worse would be a repeat of the Maunder Minimum which stretched from 1645 to 1715. It came as the globe was already in the midst of “the Little Ice Age”, and it caused harvest failures and famines all over the globe…

The Maunder Minimum is the most famous cold period of the Little Ice Age. Temperatures plummeted in Europe (Figs. 14.3–14.7), the growing season became shorter by more than a month, the number of snowy days increased from a few to 20–30, the ground froze to several feet, alpine glaciers advanced all over the world, glaciers in the Swiss Alps encroached on farms and buried villages, tree-lines in the Alps dropped, sea ports were blocked by sea ice that surrounded Iceland and Holland for about 20 miles, wine grape harvests diminished, and cereal grain harvests failed, leading to mass famines (Fagan, 2007). The Thames River and canals and rivers of the Netherlands froze over during the winter (Fig. 14.3). The population of Iceland decreased by about half. In parts of China, warm-weather crops that had been grown for centuries were abandoned. In North America, early European settlers experienced exceptionally severe winters.

Of course this would be an exceptionally bad time for such a cataclysmic climate shift, because African Swine Fever has already wiped out approximately one-fourth of all the pigs in the world, colossal armies of locusts the size of major cities are systematically wiping out crops across much of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and fear of COVID-19 is greatly disrupting global food supply chains.

In fact, it is being reported that widespread shutdowns of meat processing facilities in the United States may force farmers to euthanize “as many as 10 million hogs by September”…

U.S. pork farmers may be forced to euthanize as many as 10 million hogs by September as a result of production-plant shutdowns brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the National Pork Producers Council.

At least 14,000 reported positive COVID-19 cases have been connected to meatpacking facilities in at least 181 plants in 31 states as of May 13, and at least 54 meatpacking facility workers have died of the virus at 30 plants in 18 states, according to an investigation by the Midwest Center for Investigative reporting.

Even if the sun suddenly started acting perfectly normal once again, we would still be facing what the UN is calling “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two”.

Global food supplies are getting tighter with each passing day, and many are warning that some areas of the globe will soon be dealing with severe food shortages.

What we really need are a few years of really good growing weather, but the behavior of the sun may not make that possible.

So let’s keep a very close eye on the giant ball of fire that we are revolving around, because if it remains very quiet that could mean big trouble for all of us.

You May Not Understand This Now, But You Need To Get Prepared For The Food Shortages That Are Coming

I was going to write about something completely different today, but I felt that I needed to issue this warning instead. Even before COVID-19 came along, crazy global weather patterns were playing havoc with harvests all over the globe, the African Swine Fever plague had already killed about one-fourth of all the pigs in the world, and giant armies of locusts the size of major cities were devouring crops at a staggering rate on the other side of the planet. And now this coronavirus pandemic has caused an unprecedented worldwide economic shutdown, and this has put an enormous amount of stress on global food supplies.

On the official UN website, the United Nations is openly using the term “biblical proportion” to describe the famines that are coming. Even if COVID-19 miraculously disappeared tomorrow, a lot of people on the other side of the world would still starve to death, but of course COVID-19 is not going anywhere any time soon.

Here in the United States, our stores still have plenty of food. But empty shelves have started to appear, and food prices are starting to go up aggressively.

In fact, we just witnessed the largest one month increase in food prices that we have seen since 1974.

For a long time I have been warning my readers that eventually a loaf of bread in the U.S. will cost five dollars, and one of my readers in Hawaii just told me that “my wife came home with ½ loaf of bread for $2.99”.

So it appears that the day I have been warning about has already arrived for some people.

Of course the price of meat is going up even faster than the price of bread. The following is an excerpt from an email that one of Robert Wenzel’s readers in Alaska just sent him…

Our local Costco as of now, beef hamburger is $9 a pound, and steaks are $18 a pound. Hamburger was at $3.50 a pound before all this.

Our local butcher shops, that butcher and package the little local beef that is raised here, are all out of meat.

Luckily, I have a couple moose in our freezers, and plenty of canned smoked salmon, and salmon season is coming soon again.

Hopefully the price of hamburger has not nearly tripled in your area yet, but without a doubt meat prices are going to just keep heading higher.

Ultimately, it is all about supply and demand. Meat processing facilities have been shut down all over America due to COVID-19, and this is starting to create some really annoying shortages…

If you go to Wendy’s this week, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to get a hamburger. Go to the supermarket and you’ll probably see some empty shelves in the meat section. You may also be restricted to buying one or two packs of whatever’s available. Try not to look at the prices. They’re almost definitely higher than what you’re used to.

This is the new reality: an America where beef, chicken, and pork are not quite as abundant or affordable as they were even a month ago.

But as I keep reminding my readers, the only reason these meat shortages are so severe is because many farmers are unable to make their normal sales to the processing plants that have closed down.

As a result, a lot of these farmers have been forced to gas or shoot thousands of their animals…

For farmers in Iowa, Minnesota, and other Midwestern states, they have had little choice but to euthanize the backlog of animals, which means gassing or shooting thousands of pigs in a day, according to The New York Times.

The financial and emotional repercussions on the farmers are profound. Some farmers lose as much as $390,000 in a day, said the report. So far 90,000 pigs have been killed in Minnesota alone.

In the end, a lot of farmers may have to go out of business after being financially ruined during this crisis, and we will seriously miss that lost capacity in the days ahead.

Because the truth is that global food supplies are only going to get tighter and tighter. As I have discussed previously, UN World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley has warned that we are facing “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two”, and he insists that we could soon see 300,000 people literally starve to death every single day…

“If we can’t reach these people with the life-saving assistance they need, our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period”, he upheld. “This does not include the increase of starvation due to COVID-19”.

And did you catch that last part?

He specifically excluded the effects of COVID-19 from his very ominous projection.

So the truth is that the number of people starving to death each day could ultimately end up being far, far higher.

In wealthy western countries, starvation is not an imminent threat. But what we are seeing is an explosion of hunger that is absolutely unprecedented. All over America, people have been lining up “for hours” at America’s food banks so that they can be sure to get something before the supplies run out…

In the past month, America’s food banks have been completely overwhelmed by demand. In cities like Pittsburgh, San Antonio, and Phoenix, residents have lined up for hours as food banks attempt to address a massive influx of need. Some organizations have been forced to turn people away while others are struggling to maintain the supplies necessary to keep up.

Images of the lines at food pickup points underscore how devastating the economic fallout from the pandemic has been.

This week, vehicles started lining up at 2 AM in the morning at a food bank in the Dallas area, and one woman said that the reason why she lined up so early was because she didn’t get anything at all on her first two attempts…

Carmel Zeno was the third car in line. This was her first time successfully getting food for her family at the mobile pantry site at Fair Park.

“This is my third attempt at this location. I didn’t make it in time before,” she said. “Of course, I’m unemployed. Right now, I have two out of five kids home. One has a diagnosis because of COVID. I’m thankful for whatever I can get, so it’s one of those situations.”

Even if you have been in line for hours, when the food is gone it is gone. So if you want to be absolutely certain to get something, you need to get in line very, very early.

And you know what?

We were warned in advance that this was coming.

Back in 2015, Heidi Baker had a vision in which she saw very long lines of people in beautiful vehicles waiting to receive food. If you are not familiar with that vision, here is specifically what she was shown…

“I had a vision in your church and it wasn’t what I expected to see. I saw bread lines, soup kitchens, and I saw people wearing beautiful clothing. Their clothing was not worn out. Now in my nation when people are hungry you can tell. I mean they are in shredded rags. They don’t have shoes or they have flip flops. Most of them have no shoes. They are hungry and they know they are hungry. They come for food, not because they are beggars, but because they are hungry.

I have held starving children in my arms. I know what starvation is. I know what pain is. I know what suffering is. But in this vision that I had that was in your nation, which the Lord is helping me to say, I will identify with America as well as Mozambique.

I saw this bread line, long bread lines, and I said, “Lord, I don’t think that is popular to say in a church, especially one that is all about revival and victory and power.”

I didn’t want to see what I saw, but I saw what I saw so, I was so undone that I just said what I saw. And I saw all these people and they had beautiful cars, 4 by 4’s and Lexus, Mercedez, BMW’s, Toyotas. There they were with fancy shiny cars, but they were standing in line.

What I said about worrying, the worriers turned into worshipping warriors.

I asked, “Why are they so well dressed and standing in this line?”

He said, “Because it is a suddenly. They are suddenly in need of food.”

I asked, “What are we to do?”

He said, “Tell them that what you see in Mozambique they will see in America with the signs and wonders and miracles. They will see it on their soil. They will see what I do.”

What is it that He does? For one thing He puts peace on you in the midst of the storm.”

Needless to say, her vision has now been fulfilled.

And most Americans don’t realize this yet, but things are going to get a whole lot worse.

In the short-term, let us hope that food processing plants will start to reopen and some of the temporary shortages that we are now witnessing will be alleviated.

But over time global food supplies are going to continue to get tighter and tighter, and much worse shortages will eventually happen here in the United States.

So use the window of opportunity that you have now to get prepared, because food prices are never again going to be as low as they are right now.

The Bible Says That There Will Be Famines In The Last Days

Could it be possible that the stage is being set for horrific famines that the Bible has been warning us about for nearly 2,000 years? A few years ago, any talk of “coming famines” would have seemed absolutely ludicrous to most people in the western world, but the events of the last several months have changed everything. Now, the UN is openly warning that famines of “biblical proportions” could be on the way, and the head of the UN World Food Program is telling us that we could soon see 300,000 people literally starve to death every single day. Nightmarish droughts, African Swine Fever, COVID-19 and armies of locusts in Africa the size of major cities have combined to create a “perfect storm”, and global food supplies are becoming tighter with each passing month.

As conditions continue to deteriorate, many are starting to wonder if certain prophetic passages in the Bible are starting to come to fruition. For example, in Matthew 24:7 Jesus specifically warned us that there would be “famines” in the days immediately preceding His return…

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

We can also find very similar warnings from Jesus in Mark chapter 13 and Luke chapter 21.

So if we actually are living during the time just before the return of Jesus, we should expect to see horrifying global famines start to emerge, and that is precisely what we are witnessing at this moment.

In Revelation 6:8, we are told that “hunger” will eventually be a major factor in the deaths of a large portion of the global population…

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Of course we aren’t at that point yet.

But are we starting to move in that direction?

David Beasley is the executive director of the UN World Food Program, and he recently stated that we are heading directly into “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two”. Hunger is rapidly rising all over the globe, and he believes that if dramatic intervention does not happen quickly we could see an astounding death toll.

According to Beasley, we could soon see 300,000 people around the world starve to death every single day, and that figure doesn’t even factor in the effect of this coronavirus pandemic…

“If we can’t reach these people with the life-saving assistance they need, our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period”, he upheld. “This does not include the increase of starvation due to COVID-19”.

As fear of COVID-19 pushes us into an unprecedented global economic downturn, how much worse will that make our rapidly growing global food crisis?

Of course in the western world we are much better off than most of the rest of the planet for now. Famine is definitely not an immediate concern for us, but thanks to COVID-19 we are now wrestling with significant food shortages. Because meat supplies are so tight, approximately one-fifth of all Wendy’s restaurants have taken burgers off their menus. When I first read that, I was absolutely stunned.

Of course Wendy’s is not the only one dealing with strained supply chains. Costco has started limiting the amount of meat that each customer can purchase, and Tyson Foods has announced that their capacity to slaughter hogs has fallen “by about 50 percent”. Time Magazine is warning us that the meat shortages “could last for months”, and they could stretch even longer than that if this coronavirus pandemic doesn’t start to subside.

Meanwhile, farmers all over America are seeing their hard work go to waste because broken supply chains have made it impossible to sell what they have produced. One industry expert is actually claiming that “billions” of dollars worth of crops have gone to waste as a result of this crisis…

Crops planted months before based on pre-pandemic demand spoiled without buyers. Billions of dollars’ worth of produce went to waste, much of it tilled back into the soil, said Cathy Burns, CEO of the Produce Marketing Assn., which represents produce companies.

I have a feeling that eventually we will greatly regret allowing so much good food to go to waste.

Sadly, most of the rest of the world is actually in much worse shape than we are right now.

Long before COVID-19 came along, crazy weather patterns were playing havoc with harvests all over the world. For instance, Australia is traditionally a major exporter of wheat to the rest of the world, but unprecedented droughts have forced Australia to actually start importing wheat…

Australia, which made a rare purchase of Canadian wheat in the current marketing year, is expected to continue buying more wheat in the 2019-20 marketing year (October-September), as weather conditions remain difficult in key states, market analysts say.

Australia’s wheat output dropped 45.6% to 17.3 million mt in the 2018-19 marketing year from a record high of 31.8 million mt in 2016-17, owing to prolonged drought conditions, data from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics shows. This forced the country to import wheat for the first time in 12 years.

In addition, another plague of “biblical proportions” has been killing off pigs in unprecedented numbers.

When I tell people that African Swine Fever has already killed off half the pigs in China and one-fourth of all the pigs in the entire world, a lot of people don’t believe me.

So let me give you a quote that comes directly from New Scientist…

A quarter of the world’s domestic pigs have died this year as a virus rampages across Eurasia, and that may be just the start. Half the pigs in China – which last year numbered 440 million, some 50 percent of the world’s pigs – have either died of African swine fever (ASF) or been killed to stamp out the virus.

ASF comes from East Africa. In 2007, it reached Georgia in the Caucasus in contaminated meat, and in infected wild boar. Now, it is all over Russia and eastern Europe and infected wild boar have turned up as far west as Belgium. It is also spreading in east Asia, killing many pigs in Vietnam and elsewhere.

And if you don’t believe them, just do a Google search and you will find countless mainstream news sources telling you the exact same facts.

This is actually happening, and the death toll is rising with each passing day.

Meanwhile, a new generation of locust armies that is being described as “20 times bigger” than the last generation is destroying countless farms all across Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The following comes from one of my previous articles…

Even before COVID-19 became the biggest public health crisis to hit the globe in decades, enormous swarms of locusts the size of major cities were devouring crops throughout eastern Africa, across the Middle East and even in some parts of Asia. Now a new generation that officials are describing as “20 times bigger” has emerged, and the devastation that this new generation of locusts is causing is extremely alarming. These colossal locust swarms can travel up to 90 miles a day, and as you will see below, when they descend upon a field they can literally eat everything there in as little as 30 seconds. This new generation of locusts has been spotted as far south as Congo, as far north as Iran and as far east as India. In other words, the food supplies of billions of people are at risk.

Never before have we seen so many catastrophic threats to the global food supply emerge at the same time.

It appears that “the perfect storm” is now upon us, and I anticipate that global events will continue to accelerate in the months ahead.

Of course we still have quite a way to go before we get to the type of famines described in the Scriptures, but it certainly looks like the stage is being set for severe hunger on a global scale.

But Jesus didn’t warn us about these things so that we would live in fear. God knew about all of this in advance, He is in control, and He has a plan.

Unfortunately, most of the world doesn’t want anything to do with the God of the Bible or His plan, and so they will be facing what is to come all by themselves.

Why The Meat Shortages Are Going To Be Much Worse Than Most Americans Are Anticipating

Many Americans have been absolutely shocked by the meat shortages that have started to happen around the nation, but what most of them don’t realize is that the worst is yet to come. More workers keep getting sick, more processing plants keep getting shut down, and Time Magazine is now warning that the meat shortages “could last for months”. And even if meat is available at your local grocery store, you may be limited to one or two of a particular item on each trip. For those not familiar with the concept, this is what is known as “rationing”. And even though President Trump just issued an executive order that “encourages” meat processing facilities to stay open, it actually won’t do very much at all to alter our current trajectory, and I will explain why below.

But first, let’s talk about where things currently stand. According to USA Today, the number of cattle, hogs and sheep being slaughtered is way, way down compared to last year…

American slaughterhouses processed nearly a million fewer cattle, hogs and sheep in the past week than they did during the same time a year ago, marking a new low that experts say will likely increase “spot” shortages of meat at some grocery stores.

And as the number of meat processing facilities closing down due to the COVID-19 pandemic has surged, the decline in meat production has accelerated…

Last week, meat production was down about 25 percent compared to the same time last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. On Wednesday, production was a full 42 percent lower than the same day last year.

If production continues to stay at such a low level, we are going to run into major supply chain headaches very rapidly.

After all, do you plan to eat 42 percent less meat this year?

I certainly do not.

In recent days, there was hope that President Trump’s new executive order would bring a quick end to the meat shortages. When I first heard about this executive order, I assumed that it would force all of the meat processing facilities to reopen and would shield the owners from any lawsuits. But it turns out that this executive order doesn’t actually do either of those things…

Meanwhile, legal experts said President Donald Trump’s executive order Tuesday declaring meatpacking plants “critical” to keep open will do little on its own to stop the slide in meat production brought on by the spread of the coronavirus among meatpackers.

“It doesn’t compel meat or poultry producers to remain in production,” said Deborah Pearlstein, a law professor at Yeshiva University, and it doesn’t give employers immunity from lawsuits.

Sadly, it appears that this executive order isn’t really going to do much good at all.

Big meat processing corporations are going to be quite afraid to reopen facilities as long as the threat of lawsuits looms large. I can promise you that there are already lawyers circling like vultures, and they are going to try to squeeze millions of dollars out of these large companies.

So when will the threat of lawsuits finally go away?

Well, it won’t just be “weeks”, and “a few months” might be overly optimistic.

In our overly litigious society, reopening facilities and exposing your employees to the virus while a pandemic is still raging is basically the equivalent of begging for a class action lawsuit.

Unless President Trump or Congress steps up and takes bold action, nothing is going to change.

And if nothing changes, Tyson Foods is warning that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the food chain”…

Tyson Foods, one of the U.S.’s biggest meat processors, didn’t mince words in a full page New York Times spread that ran Sunday, in which they warned, “the food supply chain is breaking.”

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” John Tyson, Chairman of the Board of Tyson Foods, wrote in a letter published as an advertisement. “As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.”

And with supplies getting really tight, we are already starting to see prices go into the stratosphere.

In fact, Zero Hedge is reporting that the price of wholesale beef has already risen a whopping 62 percent since February…

Wholesale American beef prices jumped 6% to a record high of $330.82 per 100 pounds, a 62% increase from the lows in February, according to Bloomberg, citing new USDA data.

Eventually, it is likely that we will get to a point where many Americans are forced to cut back on their consumption of meat because they simply can’t afford as much of it anymore.

I hope that you did what you could to get prepared in advance, because it appears that these shortages may be quite painful. If you can believe it, McDonald’s has already implemented a system of “controlled allocation” for their restaurants…

McDonald’s is temporarily changing how restaurants get their supply of beef and pork, as the US faces potential meat shortages due to slaughterhouse closures.

McDonald’s has put items including burger patties, bacon, and sausage on controlled allocation. That means the company’s supply chain will send restaurants meat shipments based on calculated demand across the American system, as opposed to the usual practice of management ordering the amount believed will be needed.

Did you ever imagine that we would see a day when McDonald’s would be worried about potentially running out of meat?

Well, it is actually happening, and supplies are only going to get tighter in the months ahead.

Sadly, farmers are having to euthanize millions of chickens, pigs and cattle because meat processing facilities won’t take them while they are shut down.

So the truth is that there should be plenty of meat to go around, but fear of COVID-19 has caused a total breakdown of the supply chain.

What is happening is truly a tragedy, and hopefully our politicians will step forward and take dramatic action before things get even worse.

The Economic Numbers That Are Coming Are “Going To Be The Worst In The Post-World War II Era”

We just witnessed the largest quarterly GDP decline since the last financial crisis, and experts are warning that the figure for the second quarter will be far, far worse. In fact, as you will see below, one expert is telling us to brace ourselves for the worst economic numbers “in the post-World War II era”. On an annualized basis, U.S. GDP fell by 4.8 percent during the first quarter, and that was a bit worse than most economists were projecting. And economists were also surprised that consumer spending was down 7.6 percent and business investment was down 8.6 percent during January, February and March. Under normal circumstances, those would be absolutely horrible numbers, but these are not normal circumstances. Yes, January and February were relatively normal, but the coronavirus shutdowns began in March and that is why these numbers are so dismal.

Unfortunately, it looks like the economic numbers for the second quarter are going to be much more depressing. One economist that was interviewed by the New York Times believes that they will actually be the worst that our nation has seen since the end of the Second World War…

“They’re going to be the worst in our lifetime,” Dan North, chief economist for the credit insurance company Euler Hermes North America, said of the second-quarter figures. “They’re going to be the worst in the post-World War II era.”

And at this point even the Trump administration is publicly admitting that the economic numbers are going to start getting really, really bad. On Monday, Kevin Hassett actually told CNBC that U.S. GDP could fall by up to 30 percent on an annualized basis during the second quarter…

On Monday morning, the White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett warned the second quarter could reflect a 20 to 30 percent decline – something that has not been seen since the 1930s Great Depression.

‘You’re looking at something like minus 20 percent to minus 30 percent in the second quarter. It’s a very grave shock and it’s something we need to take seriously,’ he told CNBC.

But we don’t have to wait until three months from now for numbers that are truly horrific.

On Wednesday, we learned that U.S. home sales in March were down by double digits in every region on the country…

Signed contracts to purchase existing homes, referred to as pending home sales, fell 20.8% compared with February and were 16.3% lower annually, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Regionally, pending sales fell 14.5% in the Northeast for the month and were 11% lower than a year ago. In the Midwest, sales decreased 22% monthly and 12.4% annually. In the South sales dropped 19.5% for the week and 17.8% annually, and in the West they fell 26.8% weekly and 21.5% compared with a year ago.

Some states are attempting to gradually “reopen” their economies, and that is good news.

But the bad news is that officials are telling us that all of the restrictions in big states such as California and New York will not be lifted until many months from now, and that is going to greatly depress economic activity for the foreseeable future.

With economic activity so low, companies all over America are laying off workers at a staggering rate. More than 26 million Americans have lost their jobs so far, and the layoffs just keep on rolling. For example, we just learned that Uber is planning to let thousands of employees go…

Executives at Uber are discussing plans to cut around 20% of the company’s employees, as it copes with a sharp decline in its ride-hailing business due to the coronavirus pandemic, reports The Information.

Layoffs of that magnitude, which haven’t been finalized but could be announced in stages in the coming weeks, could result in more than 5,400 of Uber’s 27,000 employees losing their jobs.

Of course it isn’t just the United States that is facing an unprecedented unemployment crisis.

According to the International Labour Organization, close to half of all the workers in the world “are in immediate danger of losing their livelihoods”…

Some 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy, representing nearly half of the global labour force, are in immediate danger of losing their livelihoods due to the coronavirus pandemic, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Wednesday.

The U.N. agency’s latest report sharply raised its forecast for the devastating impact on jobs and incomes of the COVID-19 disease, which has infected more than 3.1 million people globally, killed nearly 220,000 and shut down economies.

This is one of the biggest reasons why lockdowns all over the globe need to be ended as quickly as possible. If people are not allowed to make a living, they aren’t going to have anything to feed their families.

Even in the United States, we have already seen an explosion of need that is absolutely shocking. All over the country, people have been lining up for miles to get whatever food that local food banks are able to give them, and we witnessed more examples of this growing phenomenon on Tuesday…

Masses of cars waited in line for the drive-thru food giveaway in Pico Rivera, California, as volunteers sporting face masks, gloves and high-vis jackets helped dish out supplies.

Over in Prospect, vehicles were seen snaking through the Big Butler Fairgrounds. It comes as millions of people across America lose their jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic and households have been thrown into turmoil.

If things are this bad already, what is this nation going to look like as we get even deeper into “the perfect storm”?

In recent days I have been writing quite a bit about the coming “meat shortage” that the mainstream media has been warning about, and now we are being told that a serious shortage of boneless chicken is already upon us…

Goodbye, boneless chicken.

Food retailers across North America are swapping boneless chicken legs for less popular thighs and drumsticks as a wave of shutdowns at meatpacking plants has reduced supplies of sought-after cuts.

As I discussed yesterday, President Trump has decided to order meat processing facilities that were closed down because of COVID-19 to reopen, and many are hoping that this move will put a quick end to the shortages.

But on Wednesday the mainstream media was full of stories about how meat processing workers may decide to defy President Trump and refuse to go back to work…

Meat-processing plant workers are concerned about President Donald Trump’s executive order that compels plants to remain open during the coronavirus pandemic. Meat plant employees are among America’s most vulnerable workers, and some say they expect staff will refuse to come to work.

“All I know is, this is crazy to me, because I can’t see all these people going back into work,” said Donald, who works at Tyson’s Waterloo, Iowa, facility. “I don’t think people are going to go back in there.”

If fear of COVID-19 keeps a substantial percentage of workers from returning to their jobs, that could cause the emerging meat shortages to get even worse in the weeks ahead.

Of course fear of the coronavirus is paralyzing many sectors of our economy right now, and that is not going to end any time soon.

So we should expect really dismal economic numbers for the foreseeable future, and it appears exceedingly unlikely that there will be any sort of a turnaround before the election in November.

America’s next economic depression has begun, and it is going to be really, really painful.

Millions Of Of Pigs, Chickens And Cattle Are Being Euthanized While The Media Warns “Shortages” Are Coming

More than 26 million Americans have lost their jobs during these coronavirus lockdowns so far, and this has created unprecedented demand at food banks all over the nation. In many cities, vehicles start lining up at the food banks at the crack of dawn, and in some instances the lines have literally stretched for miles. But at the same time, farmers all over America have been dumping millions of gallons of milk, disposing of millions of pounds of fresh vegetables, and putting farm animals to death at a rate that we have never seen before. In fact, Reuters is reporting that “millions of pigs, chickens and cattle will be euthanized” because they can’t be sold. Unlike other parts of the globe, we actually have plenty of food right now, but we can’t get much of that food to the people because so many food processing facilities have been shut down due to fear of COVID-19.

What we are witnessing is nothing short of a tragedy. Even though there are so many needy families all across America at this time, so many farmers are being forced to waste what they have produced because food distribution pipelines have been brought to a standstill. The following is how Forbes is describing the current state of affairs.

Dairy farmers are trying to decide between dumping their milk and selling their dairy cows for beef. Contract chicken growers on the Eastern Shore have been asked to “depopulate” nearly 2 million chickens. Hog farmers in Iowa and Minnesota are starting to euthanize their pigs. For contract and cooperative farmers—producers in the food system who are obligated to a larger entity—the options are limited.

I have a feeling that we are going to end up deeply regretting letting so many resources go to waste during this time.

In Iowa piglets are being aborted by the thousands, in Minnesota tens of thousands of chickens are being gassed to death, and in Wisconsin farmers have been pouring countless gallons of good milk on to the ground.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is breathlessly warning us that “shortages” are coming.

With food processing plants closing all over the nation, our choices are going to become a lot more limited, and Tyson Foods is openly admitting that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain”…

Tyson Foods is facing a new set of challenges. In small communities around the country where we employ over 100,000 hard-working men and women, we’re being forced to shutter our doors. This means one thing – the food supply chain is vulnerable. As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain. As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.

And Smithfield Foods has also released a very ominous statement…

“During this pandemic, our entire industry is faced with an impossible choice: continue to operate to sustain our nation’s food supply or shutter in an attempt to entirely insulate our employees from risk,” Smithfield Foods, the largest global pork producer owned by the Chinese WH Group, said in a statement on Friday. “It’s an awful choice; it’s not one we wish on anyone.”

“It is impossible to keep protein on tables across America if our nation’s meat plants are not running. Across the animal protein industry, closures can have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions up and down the supply chain,” the statement said. “Beyond the implications to our food supply, our entire agricultural community is in jeopardy. Farmers have nowhere to send their animals and could be forced to euthanize livestock, effectively burying food in the ground. We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19.”

Ultimately, these big corporations are scared to death of being sued into oblivion by their workers if they stay open during this pandemic, and so that is why it is going to be necessary for the federal government to step in.

President Trump has the authority to order meat processing facilities to stay open, and apparently that is exactly what he plans to do…

President Donald Trump plans to order meat-processing plants to remain open as the nation confronts growing food-supply disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak, a person familiar with the matter said.

Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to order the companies to stay open as critical infrastructure, and the government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to the person.

This should greatly help matters, and I wish that it had been done sooner.

But for the economy as a whole, the outlook continues to be very bleak. Fear of the coronavirus is going to keep many Americans from resuming normal activities for a long time to come, and that is going to absolutely paralyze economic activity. If you doubt this, check out the results of this new poll…

Fewer than half of Americans plan to go to sports events, concerts, movies and amusement parks when they reopen to the public until there is a proven coronavirus vaccine, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

That includes those who have attended such events in the past, an ominous sign for the sports and entertainment industries hoping to return to the spotlight after being shut down by the pandemic.

I was deeply alarmed when I read that.

There has never been a successful vaccine for any coronavirus in all of human history, and so those that are waiting for one may be waiting for a very, very long time.

Meanwhile, economic suffering is going to continue to escalate all over the nation. In Arkansas, people were lining up at 5:30 AM on Tuesday at a food bank in the Little Rock area, and all of the food “was gone within an hour and a half”…

The Arkansas Foodbank planned to hand out food for four hours on Tuesday, but the demand was so high that all the food was gone within an hour and a half, the charity said.

Cars lined up at the Outlets of Little Rock mall, which hosted the event, as early as 5:30 a.m., when the food bank’s workers arrived to unload the trucks, Arkansas Foodbank CEO Rhonda Sanders said.

Everything that I have been warning about for so long is starting to happen, and this country is heading for incredibly challenging times.

Hopefully Trump’s executive order will be implemented smoothly and all of the meat processing plants will be forced to reopen.

But this is yet another example that shows how vulnerable our supply chains really are, and one has to wonder how we will fare when an even greater crisis comes along.

Are You Ready For The Great Depression Of The 2020s?

For those of you that were expecting just a “deep recession”, I am afraid that you are going to be very disappointed. It took years for the U.S. economy to fully unravel in the 1930s, but now we have witnessed a similar level of economic devastation in just a matter of weeks. More than 26 million Americans have already lost their jobs, economic activity has come to a standstill, people are lining up for miles at food banks all over the nation, and businesses are being permanently shuttered at a staggering pace. But the good news is that some states will attempt to “reopen” their economies in the weeks ahead. In most instances, there will be several stages before all of the restrictions are finally lifted, and that means that economic suffering will be stretched out for an extended period of time. And of course if cases and deaths start spiking again we could see another wave of strict lockdowns all over the country, and needless to say that would greatly escalate this economic downturn.

At this moment, so many hard working people all over America are deeply hurting.

I personally know people that have lost their jobs, and you probably do too. And because virtually nobody is hiring right now, it is going to be exceedingly difficult for newly unemployed workers to find other jobs.

Because it has an economy that is so dependent on the entertainment industry, Nevada is being hit particularly hard by this downturn. The New York Times spoke to one Nevada resident named Valicia Anderson, and she hardly knows anyone that is still actually working…

When Valicia Anderson starts to count the people she knows in Las Vegas who have lost their jobs, she runs out of fingers fast.

Her husband, the breadwinner of her family and a restaurant worker in the Rio casino. All 25 of his co-workers. Her grown son, in a temp agency. The technician who does her nails. The barber who cuts her husband’s hair. Her best friend, a waitress. The three servers and a manager at the TGI Friday’s that is her family’s favorite treat.

It has been estimated that the current unemployment rate in the state is “about 25 percent”, and that number is almost certainly going to go higher in the months ahead.

Down in Texas, they are also dealing with an oil crash at the same time that they are wrestling with this coronavirus pandemic, and this has created the worst budget crisis that the city of Houston has ever seen…

On the same day that the price for U.S. crude oil fell to about $30 below zero — a mind-bending concept and the first time oil prices had ever turned negative — Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston, the self-proclaimed energy capital of the world, stood before reporters. His words were grim and muffled by the black mask covering his face.

The mayor announced that city employees would soon be furloughed, but he declined to say how many. The Houston Zoo, he said, could expect to see funding deferred under what he called “the worst budget that the city will deal with in its history.”

The high paying energy industry jobs that fueled an incredible real estate boom in Texas are now disappearing by the thousands, and it is being reported that many of those that are being laid off are learning the news “during painful Zoom sessions from home”…

Thousands of energy workers, some of whom only lately moved to the region to take advantage of the recent prosperity, have been laid off. Many of them were told the bad news during painful Zoom sessions from home.

Warning letters from energy companies have been flooding the Texas Workforce Commission about layoffs and furloughs: 3,500 at Halliburton, 223 at Tenaris, 184 at Baker Hughes, 102 at Diamond Offshore Drilling, 95 at Energy Transfer.

By the way, when did Zoom become such a big thing?

It seems like so many people are using it now, and I don’t understand why it is so popular.

Perhaps my readers will help me to understand this.

Getting back to the economy, at this point even the Trump administration is admitting that the unemployment rate will soon be approaching levels that “we saw during the Great Depression”…

White House senior advisor Kevin Hassett says US economy is in “grave situation” and the unemployment rate could be hitting the same numbers seen during the Great Depression due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’re going to be looking at an unemployment rate that approaches rates that I think we saw during the Great Depression,” Hassett told ABC’ ‘The Week’ on Sunday.

Let’s put that into perspective for a moment.

During the last recession, we thought that things were really, really bad when the unemployment rate got up to about 10 percent.

But back in 1933 the unemployment rate peaked at 25 percent, and now we are being told that we should expect something similar here in 2020.

Wow.

And of course low income Americans are being hit harder than anyone else. Just check out these numbers…

Most Americans support stay-at-home restrictions to protect public health. And yet the burden of the country’s shutdown is disproportionately falling on those least prepared to handle it: About 52 percent of low-income Americans say they or someone in their household has experienced job upheaval, compared to 43 percent of the broader adult population, the Pew Research Center found. Only 23 percent of low-income Americans say they have enough emergency funds to last them three months.

Hopefully as some states attempt “reopenings” it will help to slow down this enormous tsunami of unemployment.

But as I pointed out the other day, millions of Americans are now making much more money being unemployed than they did when they were working, and so that is going to provide an incentive for millions of Americans to stay unemployed for the foreseeable future.

And even if all of the coronavirus restrictions in the entire country were lifted tomorrow, fear of the coronavirus would cause economic activity to be greatly depressed for many months to come.

As I discussed yesterday, the meat processing industry is a perfect example of this. Meat processing facilities are being shut down all over the nation, and one expert just told NBC News that we should expect shortages of meat in our grocery stores “around May 1″…

Beef, chicken and pork could be as scarce as toilet paper soon because so many meat processing plants have been temporarily shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic, industry experts are warning.

“We’ve just completed our third week of reduced slaughter and production,” Dennis Smith, a commodity broker/livestock analyst with Archer Financial Services in Chicago, said. “My guess is that about one week out, perhaps around May 1, shortages will begin developing at retail meat counters.”

So many of the things that we have been warning about for a long time are starting to happen, but most Americans still do not grasp the seriousness of this crisis.

All of the economic dominoes are starting to fall, and even if the remainder of this pandemic goes much more smoothly than anticipated, it will not fundamentally alter our current economic trajectory.

The “Everything Bubble” lasted far longer than it should have, but now that it has burst the pain is going to be absolutely immense.

And it is those at the bottom of the economic food chain that are going to be hit the hardest.

“The Food Supply Chain Is Breaking” And We Are Being Warned That “Meat Shortages” Are Imminent

When meat processing facilities started shutting down because of the coronavirus pandemic, we were initially told not to worry because the facilities that were still operating normally would be able to make up the difference. But now all of that has changed. As you will see below, even the mainstream media is beginning to use the phrase “meat shortages”, and we are being told to brace for supply chain disruptions all over America. Hopefully any “shortages” will only last for a few months, and hopefully supply chain disruptions will disappear later this year as the pandemic fades. But this is yet another example that shows how exceedingly vulnerable our system has become, and it makes one wonder what will happen once a crisis even worse than this pandemic comes along.

In today’s extremely litigious environment, big corporations are going to exercise an abundance of caution when it comes to COVID-19, and we have already seen that just a handful of confirmed cases can shut down an entire food processing facility for weeks. As a result of all the shutdowns that have already taken place, Bloomberg is warning that we are “dangerously close to meat shortages”…

Plant shutdowns are leaving the U.S. dangerously close to meat shortages as coronavirus outbreaks now spread to suppliers across the Americas.

Almost a third of U.S. pork capacity is down, the first big poultry plants closed on Friday and experts are warning that domestic shortages are just weeks away. Brazil, the world’s No. 1 shipper of chicken and beef, saw its first major closure with the halt of a poultry plant owned by JBS SA, the world’s biggest meat company. Key operations are also down in Canada, the latest being a British Columbia poultry plant.

Who ever imagined that we would be talking about “meat shortages” during the first half of 2020?

It is crazy how rapidly things have changed.

On Friday, Smithfield Foods announced the closure of a fifth meat processing facility…

Smithfield Foods has closed another meat processing plant amid the coronavirus pandemic, the company’s fifth facility to discontinue operations this month as a result of the illness.

According to Smithfield, a significant supplier of the global meat market, the company has stalled production on a rolling basis since April 19 “out of an abundance of caution” for employees of its St. Charles, Illinois, facility.

And on that same day, Hormel announced the closure of two major turkey plants…

A Hormel Foods subsidiary has shut down a pair of Jennie-O turkey plants after reporting some employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

The company said 14 employees out of about 1,200 workers at the two Willmar plants have tested positive for the virus.

Even more chilling, on Sunday Tyson Foods actually ran a full page ad in the New York Times in which they admitted that “the food supply chain is breaking”…

Tyson Foods, one of the U.S.’s biggest meat processors, didn’t mince words in a full page New York Times spread that ran Sunday, in which they warned, “the food supply chain is breaking.”

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” John Tyson, Chairman of the Board of Tyson Foods, wrote in a letter published as an advertisement. “As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.”

Look, the truth is that the head of Tyson Foods would not be talking like that if things were not very serious.

I believe that things will be better by the end of the year, but for now we should expect significant meat shortages in the grocery stores for several months.

And for some portions of the supply chain, the shortages are already here. In fact, one expert is warning that restaurants “could be out of fresh ground beef” in a week…

While hundreds of plants in the Americas are still running, the staggering acceleration of supply disruptions is now raising questions over global shortfalls. Taken together, the U.S., Brazil and Canada account for about 65% of world meat trade.

“It’s absolutely unprecedented,” said Brett Stuart, president of Denver-based consulting firm Global AgriTrends. “It’s a lose-lose situation where we have producers at the risk of losing everything and consumers at the risk of paying higher prices. Restaurants in a week could be out of fresh ground beef.”

The good news is that once this pandemic fades things should get significantly better for the industry.

The bad news is that we are probably going to be facing elevated prices for a long time to come. In fact, the price of U.S. wholesale beef just set a brand new record, and the price of wholesale pork surged 29 percent last week.

And as I noted the other day, all of this is happening at a time when African Swine Fever has already killed about one-fourth of all the pigs in the world.

When it comes to pork, the answer is really easy. Just don’t eat it. Pork is a highway to cancer, heart disease and a whole bunch of other very serious illnesses, and I don’t understand why anyone would ever want to eat it.

But the fact that we are also facing shortages of beef, chicken and turkey now is very concerning, and I hope everyone out there has stocked up.

Sadly, the truth is that there are plenty of chickens and turkeys out there at this moment, but because of the plant shutdowns many growers don’t have anyone to sell to right now. As a result, millions of animals are being culled…

The Baltimore Sun is reporting that 2 million chickens are set to be culled across farms in Maryland and Delaware amid coronavirus-related staffing shortages at meatpacking plants.

We’ve heard the same story with pork, turkey, and beef processing plants across the country. Reducing operations or shutting down due to virus-related illnesses among staff.

“With reduced staffing, many plants are not able to harvest chickens at the pace they planned for when placing those chicks in chicken houses several weeks ago,” before strict social distancing rules went into effect, trade group for the Delmarva poultry industry said in a statement.

I believe that it is a huge mistake to completely close all of these meat processing facilities, and hopefully many of them will be reopened as soon as possible.

But meanwhile things will become increasingly difficult, and American families will suffer.

Now that tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs, people are starting to get desperate, and the National Guard is being deployed to food banks all over the nation.

Of course this coronavirus pandemic is not the worst thing we are going to face. In fact, it isn’t even close to the worst thing we are going to face.

So if fear of COVID-19 is causing this much of a disruption to our supply chains, what is going to happen when a crisis that is far, far more severe comes along?

We are not going to see a full return to “normal”, but later this year there should be a window of opportunity to prepare for the events of 2021 and beyond, and I very much encourage all of my readers to take full advantage of that opportunity.

The Next Generation: Giant Locust Armies Of “Biblical Proportions” Threaten To Cause Mass Starvation In Africa

Even before COVID-19 became the biggest public health crisis to hit the globe in decades, enormous swarms of locusts the size of major cities were devouring crops throughout eastern Africa, across the Middle East and even in some parts of Asia. Now a new generation that officials are describing as “20 times bigger” has emerged, and the devastation that this new generation of locusts is causing is extremely alarming. These colossal locust swarms can travel up to 90 miles a day, and as you will see below, when they descend upon a field they can literally eat everything there in as little as 30 seconds. This new generation of locusts has been spotted as far south as Congo, as far north as Iran and as far east as India. In other words, the food supplies of billions of people are at risk.

Yesterday, I reported that the UN had used the phrase “biblical proportions” to describe the famines that are starting to happen around the globe as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Well, the phrase “biblical proportions” is also being used to describe these giant armies of locusts…

While much of the world focuses on the coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 1.6 million people across the globe, East Africa is battling the worst invasion of desert locusts in decades — a months-long “scourge of biblical proportions” that experts warn could get worse with a larger second wave already arriving in parts of the region.

Heavy rains last month created ideal conditions for this next generation of locusts, and we are being told that the new swarms are “particularly severe in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia”…

And now, at the worst time, a second wave of locusts 20 times bigger than the first has descended on the region, thanks to heavy rains late last month, according to the FAO. The swarms have infiltrated Yemen and firmly established themselves across the Persian Gulf, having laid eggs along 560 miles of Iran’s coastline. New swarms are particularly severe in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

Unfortunately, this is a really, really bad time for a new generation of locusts to show up, because this is the time of the year when farmers are planting their fields.

When the locusts invade a new area, all the farmers can do is watch as all their hard work is destroyed. The following is how one FAO official is describing the current state of affairs…

“The timing is really horrendous, because the farmers are just planting, and the seedlings are just coming up now since it’s the beginning of the rainy season,” says Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer with the FAO. “And it’s right at the same time when you have an increasing number of swarms in Kenya and in Ethiopia. There’s already pictures and reports of the seedlings getting hammered by the swarms. So basically that’s it for the farmers’ crops.“

Here in the United States we have never experienced anything like this, and so most Americans don’t really understand how destructive these locusts can be.

As I noted above, when they come storming into a field they can literally eat all the crops there “in as little as 30 seconds”…

Massive swarms of locusts are devouring entire fields of crops in as little as 30 seconds – fuelling fears of a major food crisis in some of the world’s poorest countries, international aid organisation Concern Worldwide has warned.

The charity said communities in Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia are facing alarming food shortages, with the crops they grow to survive being eaten in seconds by the flying desert locusts.

The United Nations is calling these locust armies “an unprecedented threat” to global food security.

Of course the exact same thing could be said about the coronavirus.

And let us not forget that African Swine Fever has already wiped out approximately one-fourth of all the pigs in the world.

This truly has become a “perfect storm” for global food production, and many believe that what we have seen so far is just the beginning.

And please don’t be tempted to think that this is just a problem that Africa is dealing with. All the way over in Pakistan, officials are using the word “disaster” to describe the threat posed by these locusts. The following comes from a Pakistani news source…

Parliamentary leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Balochistan Minister for Secondary Education Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind has expressed deep concern over the procreation of locusts across the province, stressing upon anti-locust spray on urgent basis.

“If procreation of locusts does not stop it would badly affect crops and will also lead to nutritional disaster in Balochistan,” Rind noted, adding that due to consecutive attacks, growers and farmers are facing extreme difficulties as widespread destruction of crops is feared due to procreation of locusts.

And after everything that they have already been through, farmers in Australia are facing an enormous invasion of locusts as well, although it is a different species that they are dealing with…

After a year of battling drought, fire, dust, flood and disease, farmers in far western New South Wales are now facing a plague locust infestation.

The Australian plague locust species, if not controlled, can cause significant damage to crops and pastures by consuming all in their path.

In the post-World War II era, can you point to another time when the world was facing so many major problems all at once?

As I write this article, I can’t seem to think of one.

In the days ahead, the coronavirus pandemic will continue to dominate the headlines, and the global death toll will soon cross the 200,000 mark.

But this plague of locusts should also be receiving a tremendous amount of attention, because it is wiping out farms at a blinding pace and countless numbers of people could face severe food shortages as a result.

Efforts will continue to be made to spray these locust swarms with pesticides, but when you are talking about swarms that are the size of major cities, the truth is that spraying really doesn’t make that much of a dent.

It truly is a plague of “biblical proportions”, and despite all of our advanced technology we are powerless to stop it.

Solar Minimum Madness: Is Thanksgiving’s Winter Wonderland A Preview Of The Bitterly Cold Winter To Come?

This week, three major winter storms will batter most of the country with ice, snow and bitterly cold temperatures just in time for Thanksgiving. It is being projected that 55 million Americans will be traveling this week, and so this bizarre weather comes at a very bad time. But of course we have already seen a series of blizzards roar across the nation in recent weeks and hundreds of record cold temperatures have already been shattered and we are still about a month away from the official start of winter. Normally, it isn’t supposed to be this cold or this snowy yet, but we don’t live in “normal” times.

Scientists tell us that solar activity becomes very quiet during a “solar minimum”, and when solar activity becomes very quiet we tend to have very cold winters. And in recent months solar activity has been very, very low. In fact, we haven’t seen any sunspots at all “since November 2”…

We have not seen any sunspots since November 2, and at that time they were only visible for two days, and prior to that no sunspots since October 2.

Unless things change, and that is not expected to happen, we should prepare for a very cold and very snowy winter. And this upcoming week is likely to be a preview of coming attractions. According to CNN, holiday travelers will have three major winter storms to deal with…

As Thanksgiving week starts, a record number of travelers will be dealing with three storms nationwide that will add to the holiday stress.

One storm will lash the East and will affect travel through Sunday, another one will batter the Midwest on Tuesday and a third one will move through the West on Wednesday.

Forecasters are telling us that Denver could receive a foot of snow, but it isn’t too unusual for Denver to get a lot of snow.

But it is unusual for Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to get snow this time of the year, and apparently it looks like that could happen on Wednesday…

By Wednesday Arizona could see snow, as could New Mexico, the northern Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma Panhandle.

As that storm moves through the Midwest, “winterlike travel” is expected over large portions of the heartland…

“At this time, enough snow to create winterlike travel is anticipated from central and northeastern Colorado to much of Nebraska, northern Kansas, much of Iowa, northwestern Missouri, northwestern Illinois, southeastern Minnesota, central and eastern Wisconsin and northern Michigan,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said.

Forecasters expect Tuesday into Wednesday to bring the worst conditions in the Midwest, with strong, gusty winds battering such key airports as Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

Shortly thereafter, an absolutely massive winter storm is going to hit California really hard, and we are being told that “travel may be impossible” in certain areas…

Winter storm watches have already been issued for the Sierra and the National Weather Service is saying travel may be impossible as snow levels drop which could lead to numerous road closures Wednesday into Thursday.

Several feet is forecast to snow in the mountains. In the lower elevations and along the coast, it will be rain with the possibility of totals reaching 5 inches.

This definitely is not normal.

In some parts of the country, it feels like winter already arrived more than a month ago. This has had a huge impact on harvest season, and unusually cold temperatures could also make things extremely difficult for farmers that plan to grow crops this winter. The following comes from Martin Armstrong…

The BIG FREEZE is upon us. The volatility in weather that our computer has been forecasting on a long-term basis should result in this winter being colder than the last. In Britain, the snow has hit an already flood-ravaged country as temperatures plunged to -7C. This is part of the problem we face. The ground freezes down and this prevents winter crops. During the late 1700s, the ground froze to a depth of 2 feet according to John Adams.

And over in Scotland, it is being projected that this could be “the coldest winter for 10 years”…

SCOTLAND is forecast the coldest winter for 10 years – with -13C lows, snow, ice and travel woes, with a weak sun and Arctic chills blamed.

The worst winter since 2009-10 is due as the sun is at the weakest point of its 11-year cycle of strength, said The Weather Company, the world’s biggest commercial forecaster.

The last time the sun’s power was as low as now, Scotland saw the bitter 2009-10 winter, Britain’s coldest winter since the 1970s, and the 2010 Big Freeze, with the coldest December ever recorded.

We are witnessing bizarrely cold weather all over the northern hemisphere, but most people don’t understand why this is happening.

More than anything else, solar activity determines whether conditions are going to be warmer or colder than normal. So this is why the Farmers’ Almanac and the Old Farmer’s Almanac are both telling us that this winter will be bitterly cold and very snowy…

Not long after the Farmers’ Almanac suggested it would be a “freezing, frigid, and frosty” season, the *other* Farmer’s Almanac has released its annual weather forecast—and it’s equally upsetting.

While the first publication focused on the cold temperatures anticipated this winter, the Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts that excessive snowfall will be the most noteworthy part of the season.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac, which was founded in 1792, says that the upcoming winter “will be remembered for strong storms” featuring heavy rain, sleet, and a lot of snow. The periodical actually used the word “snow-verload” to describe the conditions we can expect in the coming months.

Scientists are hoping that solar activity will return to normal soon, but there is no guarantee that will happen. In fact, in a recent article I explained that some experts believe that we may have entered a “grand solar minimum” similar to the Maunder Minimum that created a “mini ice age” in the 17th century. The sunspot cycle virtually vanished from 1645 to 1715, and this resulted in bitterly cold temperatures, disastrous harvests and famines that killed millions upon millions of people all over the globe.

Hopefully things will not get that bad any time soon, but without a doubt we live at a time when global weather patterns are going absolutely haywire. We should be hoping for the best, but we should also be preparing for the worst.

This week, the crazy weather will be a major headache for holiday travelers, but that is just a temporary problem. If solar activity does not return to normal over the next few years, we will soon have far larger issues to deal with.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

Officials Are Using The Word “Disaster” To Describe The Widespread Crop Failures Happening All Over America

We are witnessing “unprecedented” crop failures all across the United States, but the big mainstream news networks are not talking too much about this yet. As you will see below, local news outlets all over the nation are reporting the disasters that are taking place in their own local areas, but very few people are putting the pieces of the puzzle together on a national level. The endless rain and horrific flooding during the early months of this year resulted in tremendous delays in getting crops planted in many areas, and now snow and bitterly cold temperatures are turning harvest season into a complete and utter nightmare all over the country. I am going to share with you a whole bunch of examples below, but first I wanted to mention the snow and bitterly cold air that are rolling through the middle of the nation right now…

A wintry weather pattern that brought single-digit temperatures and more than a foot of snow to parts of the Upper Midwest rolled across a wide swath of the nation Monday, threatening to break hundreds of records and bring a deep freeze as far south as Florida.

“The coldest surge of arctic air so far this season will bring widespread record low temperatures for much of the central and eastern U.S. even down to the Gulf Coast,” said Kwan-Yin Kong, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

We are being told that “more than 300 daily records” are likely to be broken, and this will be the final nail in the coffin for this harvest season for countless numbers of farmers.

And even without this latest wave of bitterly cold weather, this was already going to be the worst year for U.S. agriculture that most people can remember. The following are 12 examples of the crop disasters that we are witnessing right now…

#1 North Dakota: “Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has approved North Dakota’s request for a Secretarial disaster designation for 47 counties related to late season rainfall and the October snowstorm. The declaration came on Friday, Nov. 8, the same day that Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., hosted Bill Northey, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s under secretary for farm production and conservation, to hear from producers at a roundtable and see the impacts of flooding and the early blizzard during a field tour in the Red River Valley.”

#1 Northwest Minnesota: “Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz asked the U.S. agriculture secretary on Thursday to declare a disaster for 12 counties of northwestern Minnesota where farmers are struggling through a very difficult harvest season. The governor said in a letter to Secretary Sonny Perdue that unrelenting bad weather has come on top of challenges farmers were already facing from low commodity prices and trade uncertainties. He told Purdue how the region’s crops have fallen victim to flooding, disease and freezing temperatures, leaving many producers unable to harvest them.”

#1 Iowa: “Last week, according to the Iowa weekly growing season report for the week ending Nov. 3, Iowa’s average temperature was 33 degrees, 12.6 degrees below normal, and with the southerly dip in the jet stream came multiple fast-moving winter-type systems through Iowa during the week, bringing a statewide average of 2.4 inches of snow. Mason City farmer Kevin Pope said with the early snow, all harvest has been halted.”

#1 Ohio: Three local counties are among the 14 in Ohio that the United States Department of Agriculture said are primary natural disaster areas. Champaign, Clark and Miami counties were added to a growing list of designated primary natural disaster areas, which means farmers in those counties can apply for disaster loans. Farmers are eligible only if they suffered a 30% loss in crop production or a physical loss of livestock, livestock products and real estate.

#1 The Red River Valley: “Near Grand Forks, Minnesota, successive nights of subfreezing temperatures from late October into early November caused an estimated $45 million in damage to around 9,000 acres of red and yellow potato crops in the Red River Valley. Wet conditions in October delayed the potato harvest that usually occurs around Oct. 1. This left about half of the red and yellow crops, which are grown for the fresh market, vulnerable to frost damage. This is what Ted Kreis, spokesman for the Northern Plains Potato Growers Association, told Fresh Plaza on Nov. 4.”

#1 Illinois: “Pritzker filed an appeal of the agency’s denial last week, saying the federal government is withholding assistance from 1.4 million Illinois residents affected by the flooding, which the Illinois Emergency Management Agency determined was the state’s worst in more than 25 years. The conditions caused delays for farmers planting spring crops, including corn and soybean, and prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to declare an agriculture disaster in the state in August.”

#1 Colorado: “There is no doubt that extreme weather has greatly impacted agricultural producers over the last several years, and 2019 is no exception,” said Clarice Navarro, executive director for Farm Service Agency in Colorado. “With record amounts of crops prevented from planting nationwide and other devastation, more than $3 billion is available through this disaster relief package passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in early June.”

#1 Kentucky: “The federal government has approved Kentucky’s request for a disaster declaration for counties in which farmers’ crops were negatively affected by this summer’s drought. In an Oct. 16 letter to Brian Lacefield, the state executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency, Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles asks that the federal agency consider a disaster declaration for Kentucky counties that “have suffered losses due to the extreme heat and drought.”

#1 South Carolina: “U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue recently designated six counties in South Carolina as natural disaster areas due to drought. They are: Bamberg, Calhoun, Kershaw, Lexington, Orangeburg and Richland.”

#1 Birch Hills County: “Birch Hills County has joined the County of Grande Prairie and Saddle Hills County in declaring an agriculture disaster. In a release, they say some farmers still have up to 50 percent of this year’s crop that is unharvested, while Hay crops in Birch Hills were harvested late, with some not able to be taken off the ground at all.”

#1 Crookston, Minnesota: “Sugar beet and potato farmers whose crops have been hard hit by excessive moisture this harvest converged on Crookston Tuesday, Nov. 5, to tell U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson about their unprecedented crop losses.”

#1 Idaho: There was sadness and dismay in eastern Idaho’s potato community this weekend as the 2019 harvest wound down and growers began tallying up their losses from October’s disastrous freeze while pondering what to do with the tons of unusable tubers it left behind. This season’s harvest will be marked by tons of decaying potatoes for which there is no home.

Are you starting to get the picture?

I could have easily doubled the size of that list. People all over the country are writing to me and telling me how bad things are in their areas, and ultimately all Americans will feel the pain of this crisis because all of us will soon be paying significantly higher prices for food at the grocery store.

And we don’t even know the full extent of this crisis yet, because the bitterly cold air currently ripping through the middle of the nation is going to cause even more crop failures…

The blast of record-breaking Arctic air that’s charging across the country will bring the growing season to a screeching halt in much of the southern and eastern U.S. this week.

Freeze watches have been posted as far south as the Panhandle of Florida, where Pensacola should see a low temperature of 31 degrees by early Wednesday morning. “Conditions can kill crops, new growth and sensitive vegetation,” the National Weather Service in Mobile, Alabama, warned.

A lot of people out there are still not taking this seriously.

Look, despite all of our advanced technology we still have to grow the food that we eat, and we can only grow food if the weather cooperates.

And as I discussed yesterday, experts are telling us that we should expect a very bitterly cold winter ahead of us.

This is a crisis that isn’t going away, and it is likely to continue to get worse in the months ahead.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

Are You Ready For A Catastrophically Cold Winter? Here Is What The Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You…

Experts are warning us that this will be a “freezing, frigid, and frosty” winter, and even though the official beginning of winter is still over a month away, it already feels like that in much of the country right now. Over the next several days, it will literally feel like it is mid-January in much of the central and eastern portions of the United States. Many areas will be hit by temperatures that are 30 degrees below normal, and heavy snow is expected in some areas of the Midwest. Unfortunately, this bitterly cold weather is coming at a very bad time for corn farmers. According to the latest USDA crop progress report, only 52 percent of the corn in the middle of the country has been harvested. So about half of the corn is still sitting out there, and these extraordinarily low temperatures could potentially be absolutely devastating. In essence, this cold front threatens to put an exclamation point on an absolutely horrific year for U.S. farmers. According to the National Weather Service, we could possibly see “170 potential daily record cold high temperatures” over the next three days…

“The National Weather Service is forecasting 170 potential daily record cold high temperatures Monday to Wednesday,” tweeted Weather Channel meteorologist Jonathan Erdman. “A little taste of January in November.”

The temperature nosedive will be a three-day process as a cold front charges across the central and eastern U.S. from Sunday into Tuesday.

We are being told that low temperatures in certain portions of Texas could plunge into the teens, and all across the Upper Midwest we could see low temperatures that are well below zero.

Of course this is not the first wave of record cold weather to come rolling through this season. During the month of October, a couple of major blizzards roared through the Midwest and countless new cold temperature records were established.

And unfortunately we should expect a lot more bitter weather in the months ahead. Both the Farmers’ Almanac and the Old Farmer’s Almanac are projecting that this upcoming winter will be unusually cold and snowy…

Not long after the Farmers’ Almanac suggested it would be a “freezing, frigid, and frosty” season, the *other* Farmer’s Almanac has released its annual weather forecast—and it’s equally upsetting.

While the first publication focused on the cold temperatures anticipated this winter, the Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts that excessive snowfall will be the most noteworthy part of the season.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac, which was founded in 1792, says that the upcoming winter “will be remembered for strong storms” featuring heavy rain, sleet, and a lot of snow. The periodical actually used the word “snow-verload” to describe the conditions we can expect in the coming months.

So why is this happening?

It is actually quite simple.

During a solar minimum, solar activity drops to very low levels, and that tends to mean lower temperatures on Earth.

Earlier this year, a panel of experts gathered to discuss the current solar minimum, and they came to the conclusion that it “could last for years”…

If you like solar minimum, good news: It could last for years. That was one of the predictions issued last week by an international panel of experts who gathered at NOAA’s annual Space Weather Workshop to forecast the next solar cycle. If the panel is correct, already-low sunspot counts will reach a nadir sometime between July 2019 and Sept 2020, followed by a slow recovery toward a new Solar Maximum in 2023-2026.

“We expect Solar Cycle 25 will be very similar to Cycle 24: another fairly weak maximum, preceded by a long, deep minimum,” says panel co-chair Lisa Upton, a solar physicist with Space Systems Research Corp.

But that would actually be a best case scenario.

There are others that believe that we have now entered a “grand solar minimum” such as the one that our planet experienced several hundred years ago. That one was known as “the Maunder Minimum”, and it resulted in a “little ice age”…

The extreme example happened between 1645 and 1715 when the normal 11-year sunspot cycle vanished. This period, called the Maunder Minimum, was accompanied by bitterly cold winters in the American colonies. Fishing settlements in Iceland and Greenland were abandoned. Icebergs were seen near the English channel. The canals of Venice froze. It was a time of great hardship.

Ultimately, the longer winters and shorter summers during the “Maunder Minimum” resulted in famine all over the globe, and multitudes ended up perishing…

The Maunder Minimum is the most famous cold period of the Little Ice Age. Temperatures plummeted in Europe (Figs. 14.3–14.7), the growing season became shorter by more than a month, the number of snowy days increased from a few to 20–30, the ground froze to several feet, alpine glaciers advanced all over the world, glaciers in the Swiss Alps encroached on farms and buried villages, tree-lines in the Alps dropped, sea ports were blocked by sea ice that surrounded Iceland and Holland for about 20 miles, wine grape harvests diminished, and cereal grain harvests failed, leading to mass famines (Fagan, 2007). The Thames River and canals and rivers of the Netherlands froze over during the winter (Fig. 14.3). The population of Iceland decreased by about half. In parts of China, warm-weather crops that had been grown for centuries were abandoned. In North America, early European settlers experienced exceptionally severe winters.

So far in 2019, there have been more than 200 days without a single sunspot on the sun.

We do not know when solar activity will return to normal, but for now we should all prepare for a bitterly cold winter.

Beyond that, we had better hope that we have not entered another “Maunder Minimum”, because right now we are struggling to feed everyone on the planet even in the best of years.

Despite all of our advanced technology, we remain deeply dependent on the weather. Even a year or two of bad harvests could potentially be absolutely catastrophic, and the mainstream media will not tell us the truth until it is way too late to do anything about it.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

Record Low Temps Up To 50 Degrees Below Normal Threaten To Absolutely Wreck The Rest Of The Harvest Season

It isn’t supposed to be this cold in October. The official start of winter is still almost two months away, and yet the weather in much of the western half of the country right now resembles what we might expect in mid-January. All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week. Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested. Due to unprecedented rainfall and extreme flooding early in the year, many farmers faced extraordinary delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were hoping that good weather at the end of the season would provide time for the crops to fully mature and be harvested. Unfortunately, a nightmare scenario has materialized instead. A couple of monster snow storms have already roared through the Midwest, and now record low temperatures threaten to absolutely wreck the rest of the harvest season.

When temperatures get significantly below zero for more than a few hours, scientists tell us that it will kill standing corn…

A significant freeze (28°F or colder for a few hours) will kill the whole plant, and any frost will act to defoliate plants, resulting in diminished grain filling for the seeds, especially on the upper half of the plants.

And right now we are facing a crisis because less than half of all U.S. corn has been harvested.

In fact, according to the latest USDA Crop Progress Report just 41 percent of all U.S. corn has been harvested so far…

In its weekly Crop Progress Report, the USDA pegged the U.S. corn harvest at 41% complete, below the trade’s expectation of 48% and below a five-year average 61%.

Minnesota is behind the most regarding picking corn: 22% vs. a 56% five-year average.

So when I used the term “nightmare scenario” earlier, I was not exaggerating.

The low temperatures that we have seen this week are hard to believe. According to USA Today, the temperature in one community in Utah actually hit 45 degrees below zero on Wednesday…

Subzero cold was recorded as far south as the Grand Canyon on Wednesday morning, the Weather Channel said. Big Piney, Wyoming, plunged to minus 24 degrees before sunrise Wednesday.

Notorious cold spot Peter Sinks, Utah, dipped to an incredible minus 45 degrees early Wednesday. This appeared to be the coldest October temperature on record anywhere in the Lower 48 states, according to Utah-based meteorologist Timothy Wright.

That is seriously cold.

And we have also seen many other all-time October lows in cities all across the western half of the country…

-Bozeman, Montana: minus 14 degrees (Oct. 29 and 30)

-Casper, Wyoming: minus 8 degrees (Oct. 29 and 30)

-Grand Junction, Colorado: 12 degrees (Oct. 30)

-Livingston, Montana: minus 12 degrees (Oct. 29)

-Rawlins, Wyoming: minus 20 degrees (Oct. 30)

-Rock Springs, Wyoming: minus 6 degrees (Oct. 30)

-Salt Lake City: 14 degrees (Oct. 30)

We have never seen anything like this during the month of October ever before.

In Denver, they have actually set record lows for three days in a row…

The temperature in Denver officially dropped to 3 degrees above zero early Wednesday morning. It was cold enough to shatter the previous record low for October 30 by 4 degrees. It was our third record temperature in 3 days and one more record is expected Thursday morning.

It is strange that so much of the nation is experiencing such bitterly cold weather while much of California is being burned to a crisp by horrific wildfires.

But this continues a theme that we have been tracking all year. Everywhere we look there have been bizarre weather extremes, and many expect that to continue into the winter season.

This week, even “warm weather cities” are experiencing extremely cold temperatures. For example, the forecast called for a record low of just 19 degrees in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Thursday morning…

Thursday morning in Albuquerque is expected to have a record low temperature of 19 degrees. It will feel like 11 degrees with the wind chill. The current record low for Oct. 31 in the city is 21.

According to the National Weather Service, locations from Albuquerque southward, including east central and southeast New Mexico, “have not seen temperatures this cold since February.”

But the real damage will be done as this extraordinarily cold air moves into the Midwest. According to USA Today, we could see temperatures “30 to 50 degrees below normal” in the central plains…

High temperatures Wednesday were forecast to be 30 to 50 degrees below normal across Colorado, Texas and the central Plains, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue of BAM Weather.

Right now, much of the Midwest is currently covered by snow. This has prevented a lot of farmers from being able to harvest their crops, and now devastatingly cold air is moving in.

It is likely that the crop losses in many areas will be severe. And considering what is going on elsewhere in the world right now, this is something that we cannot afford.

Despite all of our advanced technology, farmers are still deeply dependent on good weather, and if farmers do not grow our food we do not eat.

This was already going to be an absolutely abysmal year for U.S. agriculture, and now this snap of record cold weather is going to be the nail in the coffin for many U.S. farmers.

Without a doubt, this is an incredibly important story, and I will continue to keep you updated as I learn more.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

China Is “Turning To Dog Meat” As The Massive Global Pork Shortage Rapidly Intensifies

If other forms of meat suddenly became too expensive, would you feed dog meat to your family instead? Sadly, this is a dilemma that many families in China are facing right now. As I reported a few days ago, one-fourth of all the pigs in the entire world have already been wiped out by African Swine Fever. The epicenter of this crisis is in China, and as you will see below, their hog population has fallen by more than 40 percent so far. This has caused a dramatic spike in the price of pork, and as a result many Chinese citizens are now seeking out less expensive alternatives.

Here in the western world, many of us would never even consider eating a dog. But in many Asian countries this used to be a widespread practice, and now it is experiencing a huge resurgence. The following comes from a WND article entitled “China turning to dog meat as pork prices skyrocket”…

As the price of pork, the most popular meat in China, continues to skyrocket in the wake of a livestock epidemic, citizens of the communist nation are turning to dog meat as a substitute.

Pork prices have shot up 69 percent thanks to the market-killing effects of African swine fever, putting the meat out of reach for many Chinese.

The Chinese have been importing more pork than ever before by a very wide margin, but it isn’t enough.

Normally, the Chinese produce about as much pork as the rest of the world combined, but that isn’t going to happen this year as African Swine Fever continues to ravage their country. According to the South China Morning Post, China’s live hog population is now down 41.1 percent…

African swine fever has swept through China’s pig population, leading to mass culls that are expected to take years to recover from.

The country’s live hog population, which accounted for about half of the global total in 2018, had fallen 41.1 per cent at the end of September from a year earlier, according to a survey of 400 counties by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. It is unclear how much further it will fall before it bottoms out.

As I discussed in a previous article, it is being estimated that 150 million pigs have died in China.

To put that in perspective, there are only about 70 million pigs in the United States.

So if you killed every pig in the United States, and then you did it again, the total would still be less than the total number of pigs that have already died in China.

And this crisis is still in the early stages. African Swine Fever has already spread to nearly 50 nations, and at this point approximately 25 percent of all the pigs in the world have already died.

I really don’t understand why the mainstream media in the U.S. is not giving this more coverage. In some parts of rural China, the price of pork has more than doubled since this time last year…

In a supermarket in the county’s town centre, the price of lean pork was 72 yuan (US$10) per kilogram while pork rib cost 74 yuan (US$10.50) a kilogram – more than double what was being charged a year ago and at least as high as prices in major cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

“Pork only cost a dozen yuan per 500 grams last year, now it’s more than 30 yuan,” said Liang Meilu, who runs five small kindergartens across the county.

And as African Swine Fever continues to spread, the global pork shortage is only going to intensify.

Meanwhile, a massive winter storm that is going to hit the heartland of the U.S. on Halloween is causing a tremendous amount of stress for Midwest farmers…

“This is no joke, as a winterlike storm has the potential to put down a swath of heavy snow over a 750-mile long swath of the Heartland prior to the end of this week,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said.

“By midweek, a powerful storm will erupt out of the South and track northeastward across the country,” Issac Longley, AccuWeather meteorologist, said.

This has already been the worst year for Midwest farmers in ages, and this storm is coming at a very critical time when most farmers are still trying to get their crops harvested.

According to the latest forecast, there will be heavy snow from Iowa to Michigan…

Currently, the heaviest snow is expected to fall from near the Iowa/Illinois border northeastward through part of northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northern Michigan.

Confidence is high among forecasters that a swath of heavy snow will develop and impact major cities such as Madison, Wisconsin, Rockford, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa.

Because of the very heavy rain earlier in the year, many farmers faced substantial delays in getting their crops planted, and those farmers desperately needed good weather at this time of the year to give their crops time to fully mature.

According to the latest Crop Progress Report, only 41 percent of all U.S. corn has been harvested at this point…

In its weekly Crop Progress Report, the USDA pegged the U.S. corn harvest at 41% complete, below the trade’s expectation of 48% and below a five-year average 61%.

Minnesota is behind the most regarding picking corn: 22% vs. a 56% five-year average.

And now a monster winter storm is heading their way that could totally ruin harvest season.

We have entered a time when we are facing multiple threats to the global food supply simultaneously, and nobody is quite sure what this is going to mean for 2020 and beyond.

In China, things have already gotten so bad that they are turning to dog meat on a widespread basis. I could never imagine doing such a thing, but when people get hungry they get very desperate.

And desperate people do desperate things.

As Americans, we like to think that there will always be enough food for everyone, but thanks to African Swine Fever and shifting global weather patterns things are rapidly changing.

We truly are in uncharted territory, and unfortunately we are only in the very early chapters of this emerging crisis.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

Global Authorities Brace For A Worldwide Protein Shortage As “One-Quarter Of Earth’s Pigs Have Been Wiped Out”

African Swine Fever is killing millions upon millions of pigs all over the world, and this threatens to create a crippling global shortage of protein as we head into 2020. This epidemic began in China last year, and it is now also running wild in North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines. But this crisis is certainly not limited to Asia. According to the Washington Post, so far in 2019 there have also been outbreaks “in Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.” Overall, cases of African Swine Fever have been documented “in nearly 50 nations”, and U.S. pork producers are extremely concerned that it could start spreading here too.

African Swine Fever is extremely contagious, there is no vaccine, and there is no cure. Once it starts spreading in a certain area, there isn’t much that can be done “other than culling herds and loading carcasses into hazardous waste sites”. Literally, we are talking about an unstoppable global plague that is an existential threat to our food supply. Of course many of us don’t eat pork, but there will also be an immense strain on supplies of beef and chicken as those that eat pork are forced to turn to other alternatives. This is an exceedingly serious situation, and with each month it is just getting worse.

China is the epicenter for this crisis, and CNN is reporting that the Chinese herd has “shrunk by around 130 million” since this epidemic first began last year…

The damage that African swine fever has wrecked on China’s pig population is hard to overstate. The country is home to half of all the pigs on the planet, and its herd has shrunk by around 130 million since the outbreak began about 13 months ago, according to a CNN Business analysis of data from the Chinese agricultural ministry. Many farmers are reluctant to restock pigs after they are slaughtered, fearing they’ll catch the disease.

To put that in perspective, there are only about 70 million pigs in the United States.

Yes, that number is for the entire country.

So the damage that has already been done in China is beyond cataclysmic, and this crisis is very far from over.

And according to the Washington Post, the losses in China are even higher than what CNN is reporting. If you can believe it, the Post says that “as many as half of China’s pigs” have already died…

As many as half of China’s pigs, an estimated 300 million, have died of the virus or been exterminated since the disease took hold 13 months ago.

Of course the virus continues to sweep through China like wildfire, and at this point Rabobank is projecting that up to 70 percent of China’s pigs could eventually end up dead.

And considering the fact that about half of all the pigs in the entire world are in China, that is a very sobering thing to hear.

Needless to say, this crisis has been dramatically driving up the price of pork. According to CNN, the price of pork in China is now nearly 70 percent higher than it was at this time last year…

African swine fever has ravaged China’s pig population, and the country’s consumers are feeling the pain. Some are even switching to other meats as the dietary staple becomes unaffordable.

Pork in China now costs nearly 70% more than it did a year ago, according to data released Tuesday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

For the average Chinese citizen, this is a really big deal, because pork accounts for about 70 percent of their total meat consumption.

So to keep their population fed, China has started to import massive quantities of pork and beef from the rest of the world…

China has also been buying more pig meat from the rest of the world to keep its consumers happy. The country imported more than 1.3 million tons of pork in the first nine months of 2019, a 44% spike compared to a year ago, according to customs data published Monday. Imports of beef were up more than 50%, as people substitute that meat for pork in their diets.

As this virus continues to rapidly spread all over the planet, the supply crunch is only going to get worse.

Global prices are going to continue to escalate, and those on the bottom of the global economic food chain are going to have an increasingly difficult time being able to afford to buy any pork, beef or chicken at all.

And nobody should expect things to turn around in a year or two. In fact, one expert is projecting that “it will be another 4 to 6 years before China will be able to rebuild its herd”…

“We’re past a year now and it’s still spreading and getting worse,” he says. “We believe it will be another 4 to 6 years before China will be able to rebuild its herd, but that’s making assumptions about when and if they will be able to get an effective vaccine.”

Of course that projection assumes that there will be a vaccine, but right now there is no vaccine and we don’t know if there will ever be one.

Meanwhile, this virus just continues to sweep across the globe like wildfire. In fact, we just learned that it has gotten into “two more provinces in the Philippines”…

The highly contagious and deadly African swine fever virus has spread to two more provinces in the Philippines, the world’s 10th-largest pork consumer, officials said on Friday.

Cases of infections were detected in some areas in Cavite, south of the nation’s capital Manila, and in Nueva Ecija on Luzon island.

This is a global plague unlike anything we have ever seen before.

According to the New York Daily News, “more than one-quarter of Earth’s pigs have been wiped out by the virulent disease.”

I put that last sentence in bold to make sure that you caught that.

More than a fourth of our pigs are already gone, and this virus is still raging out of control.

I will continue to keep my readers updated on this crisis. What we are facing is literally a global nightmare, and we are still in the early chapters.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

National Geographic Admits Billions Of People Will “Face Shortages Of Food And Clean Water” Over The Next 30 Years

A lot of people out there don’t like when I write these kinds of articles, because they directly contradict the false narrative that humanity has an extremely bright future ahead. Sadly, the truth is that our planet and everything that lives on it is rapidly deteriorating. And I am not talking about the false environmentalism being pushed by the mainstream media, Greta Thunberg and countless well-funded NGOs. What I am talking about is the stuff that is happening right in our face. We are systematically poisoning our planet, thousands upon thousands of species are going extinct, and we are literally running out of all of our most important natural resources. There isn’t going to be enough of anything in the not too distant future. In fact, even National Geographic is admitting that up to five billion people could soon be facing “shortages of food and clean water”…

As many as five billion people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are likely to face shortages of food and clean water in the coming decades as nature declines. Hundreds of millions more could be vulnerable to increased risks of severe coastal storms, according to the first-ever model examining how nature and humans can survive together.

“I hope no one is shocked that billions of people could be impacted by 2050,” says Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer a landscape ecologist at Stanford University. “We know we are dependent on nature for many things,” says Chaplin-Kramer, lead author of the paper “Global Modeling Of Nature’s Contributions To People” published in Science.

The clock is literally ticking for humanity, but meanwhile we spend immense amounts of energy on relatively meaningless political squabbles.

Look, the reality of the matter is that this is going to happen no matter which political party is in control of the White House. We are in very big trouble, and nobody really has any idea how we can possibly turn things around.

At this point, we are running out of topsoil at a staggering rate. In fact, we have already lost “nearly half of the most productive soil” within the last 150 years…

The world grows 95% of its food in the uppermost layer of soil, making topsoil one of the most important components of our food system. But thanks to conventional farming practices, nearly half of the most productive soil has disappeared in the world in the last 150 years, threatening crop yields and contributing to nutrient pollution, dead zones and erosion. In the US alone, soil on cropland is eroding 10 times faster than it can be replenished.

If we continue to degrade the soil at the rate we are now, the world could run out of topsoil in about 60 years, according to Maria-Helena Semedo of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

So do any of you have a viable plan for how we can stop losing our topsoil?

Because if nobody has a plan, mass starvation is an absolute certainty. Even if we found a way to save our topsoil, we aren’t going to have anyone to pollinate our crops because all of the insects are dying. I covered this phenomenon in a previous article entitled “Insect Species Are Rapidly Going Extinct Across The Globe – All Insects Could Be Gone ‘In 100 Years'”.

And without enough insects to eat, the bird population is rapidly declining as well. This is something that I wrote about in a previous article entitled “North America’s Bird Population Is Collapsing – Nearly 3 Billion Birds Have Been Wiped Out Since 1970”.

Despite all of our advanced technology, we can’t seem to do much of anything to stop the death and decay that we see all over the globe.

Even the human race is steadily deteriorating. Scientists tell us that humans are now smaller, shorter, weaker and dumber than our ancestors were thousands of years ago. Today, our genes contain tens of thousands of mistakes (mutations), and those mistakes are passed on to the next generation. And each new generation adds additional mistakes (mutations) to the gene pool, and so over time the number of mutations being passed on continues to grow. In virtually every case those mutations are harmful, and we have absolutely no way to stop this systematic decay of the human genome.

Literally, our planet and everything in it is falling apart.

Here in the western world, things may seem okay for the moment because our debt-fueled lifestyles and our advanced technology allow us to live fairly comfortable lives.

But things are already starting to change, and global events are accelerating at a pace that is very alarming. As the fabric of our society unravels (#ad), it is going to be imperative to have others that you can lean on for support.

Unfortunately, making friends is not something that most of us are very good at doing. In fact, one recent study discovered that the average American adult “hasn’t made a new friend in the last five years”…

Spending time in the company of good friends regularly has been shown to have a positive impact on health. But for many Americans, socializing in adulthood gets harder with age. A recent survey reveals that 45% of adults admit they find it hard to make new friends. In fact, the average adult hasn’t made a new friend in the last five years, according to the survey.

In this day and age, our screens have become our friends. We spend countless hours with our televisions, our phones and our computers. Meanwhile, many of us don’t have any idea how the people living right next door are doing.

One of the reasons why I write so many articles is because that is how I can reach the most people.

If the most effective way of waking people up was traveling the country and holding meetings, I would do it.

But these days it is exceedingly difficult to get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting. But once I publish this article on the Internet, it will be seen by enough people to easily fill a sports stadium.

The Internet is where the battle for hearts and minds is being won or lost, and we need to do all that we can to wake more people up.

Because the clock is ticking for humanity, and the destiny of billions hangs in the balance.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles in written form on their own websites as long as this “About the Author” section is included. In order to comply with government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. You can follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.

“Due To A Poor Harvest Season, We Are Experiencing Shortages On Many Of Our Canned Vegetable Items”

I know that this headline is alarming, but it is actually a direct quote from a notice that was recently posted in a Kroger supermarket. And as you will see below, similar notices are being posted in the canned vegetable sections of Wal-Mart stores nationwide. I would encourage you to examine the evidence in this article very carefully and to come to your own conclusions about what is happening. At this moment, social media is buzzing with reports of shortages of canned vegetables all around the country. But so far, the mainstream media is being eerily quiet about all of this. Is there a reason why they aren’t saying anything? For months, I have been reporting on the extremely bizarre weather patterns that are causing crop failures all over the planet. But I certainly did not expect that we would already begin to see product shortages on the shelves of major U.S. supermarkets this summer. What I am about to share with you is shocking, but the truth needs to get out. For those that share my articles on your own websites, I know that all of the images in this article are going to be an inconvenience, but it is imperative that you include them when you republish this article because they tell a story. All of the images are taken directly from Facebook, and they prove that we are now facing a nationwide shortage of canned vegetables.

So let’s get started.

This first image was posted on Facebook by Scott L. Biddle, and it shows a “product shortage” notice that was posted in the canned vegetable section of a Wal-Mart in Tennessee…

All the way over on the west coast, similar notices were photographed by Gina Helm Taylor in the state of Oregon on July 12th…

And here are a couple of notices that Daniel Moore was able to photograph during his lunch break at his local Wal-Mart…

It appears that the exact same notices were sent to Wal-Mart stores all across America. Here is another one from Carol Guy Hodges…

And lastly, here is a photo that was shared by Randy Sevy…

This certainly isn’t the end of the world, and we can definitely survive without canned vegetables for a few weeks.

But as crop failures around the globe continue to intensify, will shortages such as this start to become increasingly common?

Earlier today, I received a very detailed email from a reader that had some excellent intel about what was going on at his own local Wal-Mart. The following is an excerpt from what he sent to me…

This is alarming in and of itself, however, they are experiencing shortages across most product categories. The only information I could find online was pointing to a driver shortage. I noticed the shortage over the holiday weekend and returned this past weekend to take a closer look. There were problems with paper products, OTC medications, pickles (everyone wanted pickles?), lunch meats and hot dogs, vinegar, produce, alcohol, eggs, cereal, and feminine hygiene products. None of these items had signs like those posted in canned veggies, instead there were small tags placed over the original price tag the say “out of stock” in very small print.

While a driver shortage could cause issues, it’s a little odd to me that there are 12 packs of toilet paper and 6 packs of coke but no 24 packs of either. One of the items being restocked were more of the 12 packs of toilet paper. Does a driver shortage account for this? Another oddity is that one Walmart may have pickles but no tortillas while the exact opposite will be true for a different Walmart. The employees that would normally be stocking were instead counting products (manually) and pulling product to the front of the shelves. There was a six foot stretch of Cheerios along one shelf that was one box deep, hiding the empty shelves behind them.

One more item to note is that the first trip I made over the fourth of July weekend was to purchase canned corn. They had 9 cans of what I was looking for so I purchased them all. The following weekend they had restocked the same corn (there were 10 cans) but the price had increased almost 30%! The original purchase was for $1.44 while one week later the price had increased to $1.88.

Sadly, the economic law of supply and demand is going to continue to push prices higher.

And the tighter that food supplies become, the higher prices will go.

Since the mainstream media is being completely silent about this, many people on social media don’t have much information to go on. Speculation is rampant, and many are fearing the worst.

One Facebook user named Stephen Dubaniewicz believes that all of the product shortage notices at his local Wal-Mart could mean that a food shortage is on the way…

Hopefully we have some more time before things start getting really bad, but I would encourage you to use this time to get prepared while you still can.

For months, I have been documenting the problems that U.S. farmers have been experiencing due to all of the endless rain and flooding in the middle of the country.

But sometimes a picture is worth a thousands words, and this before and after photo from Nebraska speaks volumes…

We know that food production in the United States is going to be way below expectations this year.

And as I just showed you, it appears that a shortage of canned vegetables has already begun.

A full-blown crisis has not arrived yet, but perhaps one is a lot closer than many of us had anticipated.

This is a huge story, and I will continue to keep you updated.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Food Shortage Warnings Are Already Starting To Appear, And Now Tropical Storm Barry Is Going To Rip Through America’s Heartland

The middle of the country has been relentlessly hammered by endless rain and unprecedented flooding for months, and now it is about to be absolutely pummeled by Tropical Storm Barry. Needless to say, this is going to cause even more headaches for Midwestern farmers. At this point, millions of acres of prime farmland are not going to be planted at all this year, and there are tens of millions of other acres where crops are really, really struggling. Those farms desperately need some warm, sunny weather for a while, but instead they are about to get hit by another enormous storm. In the end, this could potentially turn out to be the worst growing season in modern history, and it comes at a time when crops are literally failing all over the planet. Sadly, we really struggle to feed everyone on the globe even during the best years, and so what will things look like if worldwide harvests are catastrophic during the second half of 2019?

I want to make it clear that we have not reached a full-blown crisis yet, but what we are seeing are some very early signs of trouble which could greatly escalate in the months ahead.

For example, it is being reported that we are now facing a “shortage of avocados”…

A shortage of avocados has sent prices soaring.

Wholesale prices of avocados are more than double what they were just a year ago.

Most of the extra cost is being passed onto consumers, with retail prices almost doubling.

That is certainly not the end of the world, because we can definitely survive without avocados.

But corn is another matter altogether. All over the middle portion of the United States, corn fields look absolutely disastrous right now. For example, just check out this photo which a reader took of a corn field in Illinois on July 6th. The corn should be at least waist high by now, but instead it is barely out of the ground and most of that field appears to be covered by water.

It is still very early, and we shall see how the rest of the growing season plays out, but some analysts are already starting to use the word “shortage” in connection with this crisis…

“U.S. corn will be in short supply, but emotions, fears, and hoarding could push it to shortage,” says Ned Schmidt, editor of the Agri-Food Value View Report. The “reality of the situation will develop over time, pushing December 2019 corn to $5.05” a bushel by year end.

Of course many of my readers were greatly concerned about the recent nationwide “tortilla shortage” at Taco Bell, but for the moment that shortage appears to have been resolved…

Taco Bell confirmed to Fox News that they’ve resolved the issues with their suppliers and that the affected restaurants should be able to offer customers the entire menu. This includes all burritos and quesadillas.

A spokesperson for Taco Bell told Fox News, “We appreciate our burrito-loving customers’ patience. We have worked closely with our suppliers to resolve any shortages, and most, if not all, of our impacted restaurants should be offering our full menu so fans can now enjoy their Taco Bell favorites from the classic Bean Burrito to the new Steak Reaper Ranch Fries burrito.”

Far more alarming is the photo of a “product shortage” at Wal-Mart which has been floating around social media.

I do not know who originally took this photo, and I am unable to confirm if this same notice has been posted at locations around the country, but it is definitely alarming…

This is just another reminder of how dependent we are on America’s farmers.

If they do not grow our food, we do not eat.

And now Tropical Storm Barry is going to dump enormous amounts of rain on farms throughout the middle portion of the country all the way through Wednesday.

It is being reported that approximately 11 million people are currently under flash flood warnings right now, and this storm is moving very, very slowly…

As of Sunday afternoon, Barry was crawling north across Louisiana at around 9 mph — slower than a bicyclist. That means it’s still hovering over the same state where it made landfall Saturday, dumping copious amounts of rain on cities already deluged.

And it’s not even close to done.

“Barry is expected to produce additional rain accumulations of 3 to 6 inches across portions of the lower Mississippi Valley with isolated maximum amounts of 10 inches across eastern Arkansas, western Tennessee, southeast Missouri, and northwest Mississippi,” the NHC said.

The slower this storm moves, the more rain it will dump, and we are talking about immense amounts of water.

In fact, at one point it was being projected that Barry would dump 14 trillion gallons of rain on Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas…

Heavy rain packs the biggest danger over the region through the weekend. Forecasters said up to 20 inches is expected over southeast Louisiana, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Alexandria, and in southwest Mississippi, with as much as 25 inches in some isolated areas.

In all, some 14 trillion gallons of rainwater is forecast to fall on Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas during Barry, according to an estimate from BAM Weather meteorologist Ryan Maue.

The current track of this storm is going to take it over some of the hardest hit areas of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

Needless to say, a lot of farmers are saying prayers and hoping for a miracle.

Weather patterns are behaving very, very strangely all over the world, and many believe that the worst is yet to come. I encourage you to get prepared for the challenging times that are ahead while you still can.

For now any food shortages will just be minor inconveniences, but if harvests around the world are as disastrous as many are projecting, that could soon change in a major way.

“An Estimated 150-200 Million Pigs” Have Been Hit By A Global Plague Of Biblical Proportions

African Swine Fever is the greatest threat to global food production that we have seen since World War II ended. As you will see below, the disease has now spread “to every province in mainland China”, and it has now infected “an estimated 150-200 million pigs”. To put that number in perspective, that is more pigs than the entire U.S. pork industry produces in an entire year. In other words, the equivalent of the entire U.S. pork industry has just been wiped out. On top of that, African Swine Fever has also spread to Cambodia, Tibet, Romania, South Africa and Vietnam. The losses are staggering, and this crisis continues to get worse with each passing week.

Earlier today I came across a Canadian news article entitled “Why bacon could get a lot more expensive”, and in that article a Canadian expert claimed that there are “tens of millions of pigs who have disappeared” in China…

“The meat of choice in China is pig and disease has been devastating for them,” Friendship said. “They have lost a lot of pigs and they will be doing lots of culling.”

He noted that although official figures from China suggest the outbreak’s effect have been minimal, experts estimate that “we’re dealing with tens of millions of pigs who have disappeared.”

Friendship estimated the decrease in pigs is roughly the equivalent of what Canada and the U.S. produce combined. And this lack has created a vacuum.

That claim is consistent with the information that I put into an article about this crisis a few weeks ago, but I decided to go hunting for some even newer numbers.

So eventually I ended up over at PorkBusiness.com, and according to them African Swine Fever “is now affecting an estimated 150-200 million pigs” in China…

Production losses from African swine fever (ASF) have eclipsed initial estimates, Rabobank said on Thursday. In 2019, Rabobank expects Chinese pork production losses of 25% to 35%, creating new challenges and opportunities for animal protein exporters.

“African Swine Fever has spread to every province in mainland China and is now affecting an estimated 150-200 million pigs,” said Christine McCracken, RaboResearch animal protein analyst. “The expected 30% loss in pork production is unprecedented. These losses cannot easily be replaced by other proteins like chicken, duck and seafood, nor will larger pork imports be able to fully offset the loss.”

When I use the term “plague”, I am not using it lightly. I have never heard of a single disease wiping out this many farm animals before.

Have you?

We are potentially talking about an absolutely crippling blow to the global food supply.

And pork prices are already starting to skyrocket. The following comes from the same Canadian article that I mentioned earlier…

At the beginning of 2019, Canadian farmers earned $150 for every pig shipped to market but now they’re making between $220 to $225, he said.

Since first being detected on a small hog farm in northern China last August, African Swine Fever has spread like wildfire, but so far it hasn’t reached the United States.

And U.S. farmers are doing all that they can to keep that from happening, because African Swine Fever can have a mortality rate “as high as 100% within 2-10 days”…

ASF is a highly contagious viral disease that causes death in domestic and wild pigs of all ages. Symptoms include high fever, decreased appetite and weakness, red, blotchy skin or skin lesions; diarrhea and vomiting; and coughing and difficulty in breathing. Mortality rate is as high as 100% within 2-10 days.

Even if a pig survives African Swine Fever, it is often culled anyway to help prevent the spread of the disease.

There is no vaccine, and there is no cure. And even if this outbreak was ended immediately, it would likely take the Chinese pork industry many years to recover. The following comes from CNN…

“China normally accounts for 49% of global pork consumption, while consuming 28% of the world’s meat supply,” said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at INTL FCStone. “As such, this is a big problem for China, and we expect it to be a five to seven year problem before production can be restored.”

Of course this outbreak is not likely to end any time soon. In fact, all of the experts expect African Swine Fever to continue to spread.

So pork prices will continue to skyrocket, and prices for chicken and beef will also rise aggressively as many consumers shift to alternatives to pork.

Unfortunately most people still don’t seem to understand what we are facing. In this country, most Americans are partying instead of preparing, and that is a huge mistake.

And the mainstream media certainly is not helping. Millions upon millions of pigs really are dying all over the globe, and yet there is barely a peep about this crisis on our major news networks.

We’ll see what happens. Hopefully this outbreak will subside and things will return to normal.

But so far that hasn’t happened, and African Swine Fever just continues to spread.

If it starts spreading in North America too, there is going to be a lot of panic and the mainstream media will be forced to start paying a lot of attention to this story.

Over the coming months, supplies of pork are going to get tighter and tighter, and prices are going to shoot higher and higher.

We have never faced a crisis quite like this, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.

Hundreds Of Millions Of Pigs Feared Dead From Swine Fever – Price Of Pork Has Risen 38 Percent In The Last 4 Weeks

A plague of epic proportions is ripping through the global pig population, and CNBC is warning that this unprecedented outbreak of African swine fever “could lead to significant shortages” of pork in the global marketplace. As you will see below, the price of pork has already risen 38 percent over the last 4 weeks, and it appears inevitable that it will go a lot higher as this crisis continues to intensify. When the first case of African swine fever was reported in China last August, nobody was really too concerned at the time. But since then it has been spreading like wildfire, and the most recent estimates of the spread of the disease that we are getting from the experts are absolutely terrifying.

China consumes 49 percent of all pork produced in the world, and they slaughter approximately 700 million pigs a year.

So we are talking about the primary source of protein for the most populated country on the entire planet.

According to the Daily Mail, one major pork supplier has “suggested that 30-50% of Chinese pig farms have been affected by the outbreak”. And apparently this is the primary reason why the price of pork has increased by 38 percent over the last month…

There was an 18% increase in the price of bacon from February to April this year, according to Bidfood, Beacon said, and the market price of pork has risen by 38% in the last four weeks.

The company also said another of its suppliers, Brakes, suggested that 30-50% of Chinese pig farms have been affected by the outbreak, which has increased pig prices around the world.

If what this pork supplier is claiming is true, then this plague is far, far worse than we had previously been told.

And commodities economist Arlan Suderman is giving us similar numbers. He just told CNBC that hog feeding in China is down “at least 40%”, and in some areas he says that it is down “more than 50%”…

“What our people there in China find is a far different story where the disease is continuing to spread,” said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist with INTL FCStone in Kansas City, Mo. “China just doesn’t want the rest of the world to know what the situation is.”

The economist termed it “a very dire situation” and estimates hog feeding in China has fallen at least 40% and in some larger swine producing regions plummeted more than 50% in response to the disease. He said the decline is directly attributable to infected pigs dying and producers afraid of the disease and liquidating herds to salvage some value.

There is no cure for African swine fever, and when it hits a pig farm it spreads like wildfire. In an effort to fight the spread of the disease, most of the time authorities slaughter any pigs that somehow survive.

So if 40 percent of China’s pig farms have already been essentially wiped out, we are talking about a blow to global pork production unlike anything we have ever seen before…

“If we’re down 40%, that would mean on an annualized basis that they’ve lost more pork production capacity than what we produce in all of North and South America together on an annual basis,” said Suderman.

I hope that most of you are starting to grasp the implications of what I am sharing.

And China is not the only one grappling with this outbreak. African swine fever is also devastating pig farms in Vietnam, Cambodia, Tibet and we just learned that an outbreak has now erupted in South Africa…

South Africa has detected an outbreak of African swine fever on a farm in North West province, the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Wednesday, citing a report from the South African agriculture ministry.

The outbreak killed 32 out of a herd of 36 pigs on a farm in the Ditsobotla district, with the remaining animals slaughtered, the report said.

The good news is that there haven’t been any outbreaks in the U.S. yet, and the National Pork Producers Council just canceled the World Pork Expo due to fears about the disease…

The National Pork Producers Council said it would be safest for the U.S. herd to cancel the World Pork Expo, which attracts about 20,000 visitors annually to the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

Visitors attend from 40 countries, including areas that have tested positive for the disease.

“Producers have been very concerned about the risk of African swine fever,” said Jen Sorenson, vice president of the council’s board.

The United States sells approximately 20 billion dollars worth of pork annually, and so there is a tremendous amount at stake.

The Department of Homeland Security is taking this threat extremely seriously, and they are going to do all they can to keep African swine fever from crossing our borders.

But even if the disease never reaches the United States, it is still going to deeply affect us. If the numbers that I shared with you above are accurate, that means that hundreds of millions of pigs are already dead, and this plague continues to spread.

Pork prices have already shot up, but they will never be lower than they are right now. China and other major pork consuming nations will be trying to import all of the pork that they possibly can, and that is just going to drive the price of pork through the roof.

And for those of us that don’t eat pork, we will see prices for chicken and beef also rise as pork eaters alter their buying behavior due to rising prices. So in the end, all forms of meat are going to become significantly more expensive.

Also, let us not forget that “as many as a million calves” were lost in the state of Nebraska alone during the recent flooding in the central United States. That is going to drive up meat prices too.

No matter how much meat is actually produced, people are still going to be just as hungry. If you take a basic course in economics at one of our universities, you will learn that when demand stays the same and supply goes down, prices are going to rise.

Of course if African swine fever continues to spread wildly all over the globe, eventually we are going to have a much bigger problem on our hands than just rising prices.

This is a developing story, and I will do my best to keep you updated.

In Venezuela The Economic Collapse Is So Bad That People Are Hunting Dogs And Cats For Food

The full-blown economic collapse that is happening in Venezuela right now is a preview of what Americans will be experiencing in the not too distant future. Just a few years ago, most Venezuelans could never have imagined that food shortages would become so severe that people would literally hunt dogs and cats for food. But as you will see below, this is now taking place. Sadly, this is what the endgame of socialism looks like. When an all-powerful government is elevated far above all other institutions in society and radical leftists are given the keys to the kingdom, this is the result. Food shortages, looting and rampant violent crime have all become part of daily life in Venezuela, and we all need to watch as this unfolds very carefully, because similar scenarios will soon be playing out all over the planet.

The funny thing is that Venezuela actually has more “wealth” than most countries in the world. According to the CIA, Venezuela actually has more proven oil reserves than anyone else on the globe – including Saudi Arabia.

So how did such a wealthy nation find itself plunged into full-blown economic collapse so rapidly, and could a similar thing happen to us?

The president of Venezuela has declared a 60 day state of emergency in a desperate attempt to restore order, but most people don’t anticipate that it will do much good. Social order continues to unravel as the economy systematically implodes. The Venezuelan economy shrunk by 5.7 percent last year, and it is being projected that it will contract by another 8 percent in 2016. Meanwhile, inflation is raging wildly out of control. According to the IMF, the official inflation rate in Venezuela will be somewhere around 720 percent this year and 2,200 percent next year.

If people are able to get their hands on some money, they immediately rush out to the stores to use it before the prices go up again. This has created devastating shortages of food, basic supplies and medicine.

Electricity is also in short supply, and a two day workweek has been imposed on many government employees in a desperate attempt to save power. Violent crime is seemingly everywhere, and most law-abiding Venezuelans lock themselves in their homes at night as a result.

Much of the crime is being perpetrated by the mafia and the gangs, but sometimes it is just normal people looking for food. Desperate people do desperate things, and according to the Guardian there have been “107 episodes of looting or attempted looting in the first quarter of 2016″…

Crowds of people in Venezuela have stolen flour, chicken and even underwear this week as looting increases across the country in the wake of shortages of many basic products. Many people have adopted the habit of getting up in the dead of night to spend hours in long lines in front of supermarkets. But as more end up empty-handed and black market prices soar, plundering is rising in Venezuela, an Opec nation that was already one of the world’s most violent countries.

There is no official data, but the Venezuelan Observatory for Social Conflict, a rights group, have reported 107 episodes of looting or attempted looting in the first quarter of 2016. Videos of crowds breaking into shops, swarming on to trucks or fighting over products frequently make the rounds on social media, though footage is often hard to confirm.

One example of this looting took place on May 11th. Thousands of hungry people stormed Maracay Wholesale Market in central Venezuela, and the police seemed powerless to stop them…

“They took milk, pasta, flour, oil, and milk powder. There were 5,000 people,”one witness told Venezuela outlet El Estímulo.

People from across the entire state came to the supermarket because there were rumors that some products not found anywhere else would be sold there.

“There were 250 people for each National Guard officer… lots of people and few soldiers. At least one officer was beat up because he tried to stop the crowd,” another source told El Estímulo.

You can see some rough footage of this incident right here…

¡VENEZUELA TIENE HAMBRE! #Video Saquean Mercado Mayorista Maracay #11May pic.twitter.com/DGRZ1bgkgI vía @venezolanodecen #CNERevocatorioYA

— El llanero (@llaneroVen) May 11, 2016

It is important to remember that this was not an isolated incident. As people have become hungrier and hungrier, there have been reports of looting at “pharmacies, shopping malls, supermarkets, and food delivery trucks“. During some of these episodes there have actually been people chanting “we are hungry”.

Other Venezuelans have resorted to digging in dumpsters and trash cans for food. This many seem detestable to many Americans, but when you are desperately hungry you may be surprised at what you are willing to do.

And as I mentioned above, some Venezuelans and now actually hunting dogs and cats for food…

Ramón Muchacho, Mayor of Chacao in Caracas, said the streets of the capital of Venezuela are filled with people killing animals for food.

Through Twitter, Muchacho reported that in Venezuela, it is a “painful reality” that people “hunt cats, dogs and pigeons” to ease their hunger.

You may be tempted to dismiss these people as “barbarians”, but someday Americans will be doing the exact same thing.

There has been a breakdown of basic social services in Venezuela as well. Acute shortages of drugs and medical supplies are having absolutely tragic results. When I read the following from the New York Times, this crisis in Venezuela become much more real to me…

By morning, three newborns were already dead.

The day had begun with the usual hazards: chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions, even food. Then a blackout swept over the city, shutting down the respirators in the maternity ward.

Doctors kept ailing infants alive by pumping air into their lungs by hand for hours. By nightfall, four more newborns had died.

So once again I ask – how did such a thing happen to such a wealthy nation?

Here is Business Insider’s explanation…

The real culprit is chavismo, the ruling philosophy named for Chavez and carried forward by Maduro, and its truly breathtaking propensity for mismanagement (the government plowed state money arbitrarily into foolish investments); institutional destruction (as Chavez and then Maduro became more authoritarian and crippled the country’s democratic institutions); nonsense policy-making (like price and currency controls); and plain thievery (as corruption has proliferated among unaccountable officials and their friends and families).

Are not the same things happening here?

The U.S. government is mismanaging our money too. During Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House, the U.S. national debt has risen by more than eight trillion dollars. We waste money in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable, and at this point our national debt is nearly the double the size it was just prior to the last major financial crisis.

Institutional destruction is also a legacy of the Obama regime. With each passing day, our society resembles the Republic that our founders originally intended less and less, and it resembles socialist dictatorships more and more. We may as well not even have a Constitution anymore, because at this point nobody really follows it.

The third thing that Business Insider mentioned, “nonsense policy-making”, is a perfect description of what has been going on in Washington D.C. these days. Perhaps that is why Congress only has a 12.8 percent approval rating right now.

Lastly, thievery and corruption are also out of control in our nation too. The elite and special interest groups spend massive amounts of money to get their favorites into office, and in turn those politicians shower their good friends with money and favors. It is a very sick relationship, but that is how our system now works.

We are sitting on the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, and our debt-fueled prosperity is completely dependent on the rest of the world lending us gigantic amounts of money at ridiculously low interest rates and continuing to use our increasingly shaky currency which we are debasing at a staggering pace.

We consume far more than we produce, and unlike Venezuela we aren’t sitting on hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. The amount of “real wealth” that we actually have does not justify our current standard of living. The only way that we are able to live the way that we do is by stealing consumption from the future. One study has found that our debt level is the highest that it has been since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and yet we continue to race down this road to economic oblivion without even thinking twice about it.

What you sow is what you will reap.

And just like Venezuela, America will ultimately reap a very bitter harvest.

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*