If you are the sort to pay attention to world events (and I hope you are), you may have noticed a disturbing trend in the last few years, namely the amount of food to be found in grocery stores is lowering in various places around the world, including the USA and Australia.
The USA
In the USA, the food shortage and food infrastructure system have gotten so bad the truth can no longer be denied. To put it bluntly, the USA is running out of food. To everybody who walks through the grocery store with their eyes open, this comes as absolutely no surprise.
The USA has witnessed massive disruptions within their logistics system nationwide. Workers have gone on strike over the “public health” policies which were put in place, leading to a lack of workers available to run the trains.
Container ships have been purposefully left to sit off the coast of California. Because of this, there isn’t enough fertilizer to produce the food they need. Meat prices are also rising. Inflation has hit, and they’re running out of precious metals as well.
The Whitehouse weighs in
It doesn’t matter where you look, everybody is now saying that the USA is about to experience food shortage.
Things have become so blatantly bad that even Washington DC is weighing in on the matter. On 21 March, 2022, Jen Psaki, who formerly criticized the idea of supply chain problems even existing or mattering at all, said
“We do anticipate that higher energy, fertilizer, wheat and corn prices could impact the price of growing and purchasing critical food supplies for countries around the world.”
A few days after Psaki’s comment, on 24 March, 2022, Biden said food shortages are indeed coming.
Needless to say, the people of the USA will have troubles with keeping their families fed (if they’re not already), keeping enough petrol in their tanks, and it is only going to get worse. There is a high probability they will struggle to keep their families cared for at the level they’re used to over the course of the next year.
The USA was once known as the land of plenty, unfortunately it’s become a land of scarcity and impending starvation. Since the beginning of 2022, there have been several very large food processing facilities that have exploded or burned to the ground across the USA.
Australia
Australia is also starting to feel the pinch. Big weather events have impacted on fruit, vegetable, dairy, and meat production, with shortages of particular ingredients, such as lettuce, herbs, cabbage and fruits.
Flooding
Flooding recently saw some stores in Queensland and New South Wales with only extremely limited supplies due to trucks unable to get to them to restock. Major supermarkets introduced buying limits on some foods in flood affected areas. Empty supermarket shelves and temporary food shortages are becoming more common in Australia due to disruptions in the food supply.
Recent flooding on Australia’s east coast has inundated vegetable crops in low lying areas of the Lockyer Valley near Brisbane, an important area of horticultural production, with food supplies damaged in warehouses.
The problem in Australia isn’t lack of food—there’s plenty available on farms or in warehouses—but disruption to the supply chain required for its distribution.
The third seal
With this in mind, it would be wise for us to stop taking for granted that food will always be available at the supermarket whenever we need it. In Revelation chapter six verses 6-8 it suggests the food price is about 12 times higher than normal and implies inflation and famine conditions: A litre of flour that would supply the average person 1 day’s sustenance. The opening of the third seal indicates the onset of a period of severe famine unlike any before.
Food insecurity and outright famine is already a reality faced by hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. Breakdowns in the supply chain have resulted destruction or waste of perfectly good food simply because it isn’t able to be delivered due to border restrictions and lockdowns, slowing harvests and millions of seasonal workers without livelihoods, constraining transport of food to markets. In fact, there are reports of farmers having to bury perishable produce or dumping milk as a result of their supply chain disruption and falling consumer demand.
Looking at all this, it’s safe to say planet earth is in for some rough times in the days ahead.
Katelin Staples is from Gladstone, Queensland. By day Katelin is employed as a proofreader. Katelin has a passion for discovering the deep things of God and how they affect the world around us.