The Coming Famine: How war and empire are starving the world
- In "The Coming Famine: Engineered Starvation and the Price of Empire," Col Douglas MacGregor warns that a global famine is being deliberately engineered, with the daily cost of the current war machine destroying enough grain and fertilizer to feed 30,000 people for an entire year.
- The United States has approved over $113 billion in aid to Ukraine with minimal oversight, while American farmers face doubled fertilizer prices and domestic infrastructure crumbles.
- Sanctions on Russia and blockades on Iran are strangling the inputs needed for modern agriculture, such as natural gas for nitrogen fertilizer, which causes crop yields to fall by 40% to 50% in a single season.
- The military-industrial complex profits from destruction, as defense contractors benefit from policies that cause starvation, with war profiteering being a deliberate outcome rather than an accident.
- The solution proposed is humanitarian disengagement – including an immediate ceasefire, removal of foreign troops, an end to sanctions on food and fertilizer and a focus on local food sovereignty and home gardens.
Col. Douglas MacGregor, a decorated combat veteran and former senior advisor to the Department of War, has been sounding the alarm that the mainstream media refuses to broadcast. His credentials are impeccable: He led troops in battle, then helped plan strategy from the top floor of the military establishment.
When MacGregor speaks about the connection between endless war and engineered starvation, he speaks from decades of insider experience that few can match. And the numbers are staggering.
The United States has approved over $113 billion in aid to Ukraine alone, yet oversight is so minimal that much of this money disappears into a black hole of corruption. Meanwhile, American farmers face fertilizer prices that have more than doubled, and our own infrastructure crumbles.
The connection between energy wars and food production is the key that the corporate media refuses to explain. Modern agriculture depends entirely on natural gas for nitrogen fertilizer through the Haber-Bosch process.
When the United States and its allies impose sanctions on Russia and blockade Iran, they are not just punishing geopolitical rivals. They are strangling the very inputs that keep the world's crops growing.
Iran's oil fields are old and fragile. If shut down for even two weeks, they can suffer permanent damage that cuts output by 20% to 30%. The same applies to Venezuela, whose production collapsed from 3.5 million barrels per day to just 400,000.
MacGregor has warned repeatedly that this is not an accident. The same elites who control the financial system and the war machine have engineered conditions for mass starvation.
The Houthi blockade of the Red Sea, the destruction of fertilizer plants, the sanctions that prevent shipments of ammonia and urea – all of these fit a pattern that benefits defense contractors while destroying the Global South. India, Bangladesh, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia are already on the brink. When fertilizer supplies are cut off, crop yields fall by 40% to 50% in a single season. That means hundreds of millions of people facing starvation.
The hypocrisy is staggering. Western leaders claim to be defending democracy and human rights, yet their policies have caused more deaths from starvation than from all the bombs dropped in the conflict. The World Food Programme's own data shows that the resources poured into weapons could have prevented famine.
But the military-industrial complex profits from destruction, not from feeding people. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman donate heavily to both political parties, ensuring that no vote to continue war will ever fail. The War Powers Act of 1973, designed to prevent endless conflict, has become a rubber stamp for the very thing it was meant to stop.
