The coronavirus is disrupting food supply chains because farmers and laborers cannot work or travel without being vaccinated, transportation delays are causing shortages, and in the United States, for example, many meat processing plants have been forced to close.
Basically, everyone should give into the vaccine mandate or face the consequences. They are masking authoritarianism as utilitarianism. The vaccine has not been mandated at the federal level in the US, yet, but it is apparent that the government plans to make life as difficult as possible for those who do not obey.
Not only are these breaks in the supply chain affecting the availability of food, but also its affordability. Millions who already struggled to support themselves and their families have been struck by economic hardship caused by lockdowns around the globe.
Millions of people had been pushed into extreme poverty this year owing to the pandemic, but the long-term effects will be even worse, as poor nutrition in childhood causes lifelong suffering. Already, one in five children around the world are stunted in their growth by the age of five, and millions more are likely to suffer the same fate if poverty rates soar.
Throughout history, mankind has waged a constant war with starvation. From the time of the first hunter-gatherers, through the early cultivation of crops and all the way to our modern, industrialized farming techniques, we humans have been working to ensure that we can survive the next winter when no crops are growing and animals hide in their burrows. To our ancestors, this was a great challenge, unlike today. For that reason, the idea of being a “prepper” would seem strange, as they all lived a prepping lifestyle.
Yet somehow, modern western culture has distanced itself from the reality of needing to grow food. As the number of farmers in our midst keeps dwindling and industrialized farming takes over, fewer and fewer people have any idea of where their food comes from. The idea that the grocery store produces meat and vegetables rather than farmers and ranchers growing it, might make for a good joke, but the ignorance behind it is outright frightening.
The United States is the number one food-producing nation in the world, yet we do it with a very small percentage of our overall population. Farming, fishing, forestry, and related activities account for only 1.8% of the overall workforce. Those people not only produce the food that we eat here at home but much that is exported overseas.
We depend on this small portion of our population, plus the others who work in the foodservice industry, to keep the rest of us fed. The rest of us don’t even bother thinking about it. After all, there’s always food in the grocery store… lots of food. There always has been and there always will be, right?But what if they can’t? Since coronavirus lockdowns have started, the farmers in this country can’t produce the food needed to feed our population, let alone all the other countries in the world that buy $159 billion in American food products. What will we do Next?
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