2-20-23 Food Lines Get Depressingly Long In The U.S. Again As Crops Fail All Over The Globe

Food Lines Get Depressingly Long In The U.S. Again As Crops Fail All Over The Globe - by Michael Snyder - http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/food-lines-get-depressingly-long-in-the-u-s-again-as-crops-fail-all-over-the-globe/ It is happening again. Lines at food banks all across the country are getting extremely long, and this is happening even though we are still only in the very early stages of the next major economic downturn. If the lines are this long already, what will they look like six months or a year from now? Since the beginning of 2022, I have been relentlessly warning my readers about the rapidly emerging food crisis that we are witnessing all over the globe. Food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter, and now insane weather patters are causing crops to fail throughout the northern hemisphere. We really are moving into unprecedented territory, but this hasn’t really hit home with the general population yet. Personally, I didn’t expect to see a huge surge in demand at food banks around the nation until the summer was over. But according to ABC News, the surge that so many of us have been anticipating is already here… Long lines are back at food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation turn to handouts to help feed their families. With gas prices soaring along with grocery costs, many people are seeking charitable food for the first time, and more are arriving on foot. It is certainly true that the cost of living is quickly eating away at our standard of living. A single shopping cart full of food can now easily cost 250 or 300 dollars at this point, and as a result more struggling families are turning to food banks for some assistance. In Phoenix, one food bank recently reported a 78 percent increase in demand compared to the same time last year… The Phoenix food bank’s main distribution center doled out food packages to 4,271 families during the third week in June, a 78% increase over the 2,396 families served during the same week last year, said St. Mary’s spokesman Jerry Brown. I was extremely alarmed when I first read that. Have things really gotten this bad already? One woman that was interviewed said that she was willing to wait in such a long line because “it’s really impossible to get by now without some help”… Tomasina John was among hundreds of families lined up in several lanes of cars that went around the block one recent day outside St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix. John said her family had never visited a food bank before because her husband had easily supported her and their four children with his construction work. “But it’s really impossible to get by now without some help,” said John, who traveled with a neighbor to share gas costs as they idled under a scorching desert sun. “The prices are way too high.” Unfortunately, things are only going to get worse in the months ahead. Extreme weather is absolutely scorching crops all over the northern hemisphere, and there is no relief in sight. Over in Europe, we are seeing temperatures that we have never seen before. In fact, UK authorities are expecting all-time record highs all across the country on Monday and Tuesday… Britain’s national weather agency, known as the U.K. Met Office, issued its first-ever red extreme heat warning Friday. The warnings, in place for Monday and Tuesday, cover much of southern England, where temperatures could reach 40 degrees Celsius – or about 104 degrees. “Nobody alive has seen a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius in the U.K.” weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman pointed out. “That would be a hot day this time of year in Dallas or Houston, much less London.” Of course temperatures are far higher elsewhere. At one point, a record high temperature of 117 degrees was recorded in Portugal, and so far there have been more than 1,000 deaths from the heat throughout all of Europe… At least 1,000 deaths have been attributed to the heatwave in Portugal and Spain so far, according to the country’s weather agencies, which are reporting 1,027 at this time. Around 440 deaths were recorded on Thursday alone, when temperatures exceeded 40C (104F) in several regions and 47C (117F) at a meteorological station in the district of Vizeu in the center of the country. Here in the U.S., an endless drought in the Southwest has been playing havoc with crops for a long time, and now a “heat dome” is forming which will bring extreme temperatures to the region for at least “several more weeks”… The heat will be prolonged, with computer models projecting several more weeks of unusually high temperatures as a heat dome shifts west with time, setting up hot and dry conditions from Colorado to California. When things are this hot and this dry for an extended period of time, it is inevitable that crops will fail. And at this point, we are being told that crops are failing in much of the northern hemisphere. The following comes from Zero Hedge… Infrared satellite imagery designed to measure moisture levels and the health of farmlands suggests that staple crops such as wheat are in poor condition and in sharp decline among major exporters including the Ukraine, the US and India. Two countries do have bumper crops so far though; namely Russia and China. It is hard to say which governments and institutions monitor this data, but a few months ago a multitude of political leaders and global banks issued simultaneous warnings of a “global food shortage” and an impending crisis. Such institutions included the IMF, World Bank, the BIS and even the White House. So far, a perfect storm of stagflation, supply chain disruptions and poor weather conditions have combined to disrupt food production around the world. Read those two paragraphs again. This is beyond serious. And I wouldn’t be anticipating a good harvest from Russia either, because right now millions upon millions of locusts are voraciously devouring crops in the agricultural heartland of that nation. In all of my years, I have never seen anything quite like this. Here in the U.S., our food supply continues to get hit by more very strange accidents. They are happening so frequently now that it is really hard to keep up with them all. All over the world supplies of food are getting tighter and tighter, and the stage is being set for the sort of historic global food crisis that I have long warned about. The UN has already told us that we are heading into an “unprecedented” global food crisis, but most people aren’t taking such warnings seriously. But perhaps when they are finally forced to get in the food lines themselves they will finally wake up.