I've been following the issue of supply-chain shortages carefully. Of all the stories that have plagued the news over the last two years, one of the most disturbing was a piece I read last November entitled "Fertilizer Shortages Could Become the Death Knell for Global Food Production."
Normally I dismiss the scare factor in these kinds of doom 'n' gloom articles; but as someone involved in small-scale homesteading, this one caught my attention.
"The production of fertilizers has stopped for various reasons and prices have reached record highs," begins the article. "Sky-high prices for electricity and transport will have a major impact on food prices, but fertilizer shortages risk knocking out large parts of global food production. The consequences could be grave."How grave? As it turns out, very grave.
Fertilizer factories across Europe have been closing down their operations due to the high costs of natural gas, which is used in production. In America, fertilizer production and availability have been crippled by everything from hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast to fires in fertilizer plants (North Carolina and Washington) to (oddly) train derailments (Iowa and Minnesota). In short, fertilizer is a lot scarcer and more expensive than before.
In some ways, a shortage of fertilizer is one of the biggest issues the world faces – and that includes war, threats of war, inflation, COVID, rising crime and a host of other current ills. That's because food is a universal requirement and an immediate need. Starvation is a common tactic of tyrants (just ask the Ukrainians). Alfred Henry Lewis said it best: "There are only nine meals between humanity and anarchy."
Modern agriculture is scarily, frighteningly, dependent on commercial fertilizers to feed the world. "Half the world's population gets food as a result of fertilizers … and if that's removed from the field for some crops, [the yield] will drop by 50%," Svein Tore Holsether, head of agri company Yara International, told the BBC.For a multitude of reasons, it's like we're having this "perfect storm" of issues facing world agriculture. Weather, storms, droughts, pandemics, supply-chain problems, conflicts, fertilizer shortages – the list goes on and on. As a result, countries are moving into a stage called "food protectionism." This is an every-man-for-himself position where exports are severely curtailed or halted, and imports are ramped up (if possible) to try and make sure each nation can feed its people.
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