I started writing this in the night of April 20. I was out most of the day, and thought if I should paywall this or not. Not as “bait”, but because of the tone.
I have covered the rise in price, and sequential shortage of steel in this Substack for months, every quarter there is a new reason for it. Magnesium being one of the culprits. The steel shortage is also not new.
There is now a national cement shortage, affecting construction, demand is so high companies are having labor problems. As I previously stated, if you need anything I covered in this series to work, or just build something you planned, the time to buy was yesterday. The situation is not getting better short term.
I have held the opinion for a while now, that the EU politicians and their elites are hellbent on collapsing the entire continent, this isn’t news, and here is another example, the Dutch Government to Shutter Groningen, one of the Dutch biggest gas fields, they plan to completely shut it down in 2 years, regardless. The dutch import only 15% of their gas needs from Russia, which will now bid on the market.
At this point, I have covered enough of the gas market for the reader to be aware of the changes, and I will continue to do so, but it’s safe to say that all my previous analyses and a couple of opinions stand the test of time so far. There won’t be enough gas in the global market regardless, and even if there is, there is not enough carrying capacity, and after banning Russian coal from the market in many of the biggest consumers, demand for both coal from other sources, and especially gas will keep going up. Onto to empty problems. As in empty stomach ones.
Corn has been going throw a rally, continuously rising in price, driven by, as usual lately, the conflict in Ukraine disrupting spring plating. investors, alas this would have the title it has, if not for defying the odds. From here.
The world corn and wheat situation could be much tighter than this data suggests as Ukraine sits on stocks importers cannot receive. If the Ukraine Black Sea ports remain closed, current estimates are up to 20 million metric tons of 21/22 crop year corn and wheat production may not get shipped any time soon.
Many posts ago I covered how the drought last year affected the Brazillian corn harvest, usually named Safrinha, and I also forecasted that Brazil would experience really odd weather. And once again, Mother Nature plot against brazillian corn.
But the dry weather expected to be seen at least until early May in states such as Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goias, Minas Gerais, and Sao Paulo keeps worrying farmers.
“We are looking at it with great caution and concern,” said Cleiton Gauer, superintendent at Imea, a farm economy institute based in top grain producing state Mato Grosso
While the biggest producers expect record yield, Brazil is suffering from an intense shortage of fertilizers, and the weather has been very dry, which will impact the yield, globally.
This leads us to the cost of fertilizers, per the last post, rail companies decided, unilaterally to reduce the amount of fertilizer they carry by up to 30%, not only this will reflect in yield, but in prices.
As the world shifts towards the cheaper grain, the biggest staple grain in the diet of billions of people, this happens. Demand + fertilizer woes.
Rising Fertilizer Costs are Catching up to Rice Farmers, Threatening Supplies
War has severely disrupted Russian exports of crop nutrients
Farmers dealing with inflated costs and subdued rice prices
A shortage or steep increase in the price of rice has massive effects, Libera is already facing problems, and their politicians lying, Peru is verging ever closer to food shortages and actual loss of production, and they already faced civil unrest because of the current inflation rate, let us not forget Sri Lanka, which is facing massive political and social upheaval, and now predicts a loss of rice production for the next two plating seasons. Brazil itself experience a substantial increase in rice prices a couple of times in the last 2 years, and people voiced their unhappiness, which led to the government attempting to lower the prices.
Here is McKenzie catching up with the rest of us and talking about the potential food crisis on our hands. It has literally nothing new, but you can listen to the entire piece if you are doing chores, might pick up one, or two things. The news above is merely another signal to our endless list.
Per my analysis, of thte last 3 months, events as they are right now, without any form of further disruption, or worsening of supply chain delays, and shocks, will impact Africa, imensely, and now the words I once mentioned (biggest human migration in history) are now a meme (the original sense), and are being spouted by others elsewhere, I have commneted about the following twice already, but situation demands I write about it again, in a more clearer form.
If you, as an average Joe, or any type of professional, want to gauge the current emotional state “of the crowd”, or forecast where certain events will shift towards without massive time investment, you should do a simplified form of Linguistic Analysis. If you have a good memory, take a mental note, if not able to retain so much information in the mind, write it down on paper, take a screenshot, or use an app and take note of specific terms you see being repeated.
One of the memes, or frequency of specific words we now have is “food crisis”.
I shared this image a few days ago.
These are not cells attacking a pathogen, but the current marine traffic in China… Roughly 10% to 15% of the world’s containers are now stuck there, plus God knows how many ships, in my last post I already shared parts of my opinions on the impact of the current lockdowns in China, but now you can visualize it.
China’s zero-Covid policy risks causing agricultural crisis and food shortages
Farmers lack fertiliser and labour ahead of crucial spring season due to strict lockdowns
China’s strict Covid lockdowns are exacerbating serious shortages of fertiliser, labour and seeds, just as many of the country’s biggest agricultural provinces prepare for their crucial spring planting season. According to official data, as many as a third of farmers in northeastern Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces have insufficient agricultural inputs after authorities sealed off villages to fight the pandemic. The three provinces account for more than 20 per cent of China’s grain production.
A drop in output of Chinese spring-planted grains, such as rice or corn, could undermine Beijing’s decades-long effort to achieve self-sufficiency in staple foods, forcing it to increase imports and potentially adding to global food price inflation. While national and global attention has been focused on Shanghai’s lockdown of its entire population over the past week, Jilin province has been battling an outbreak with even stricter measures for most of the past month.
A Beijing-based adviser to the central government on agriculture policies said China risked “facing food shortages”. “We have to adjust the zero-Covid policy for farming,” said the adviser, who asked not to be named. “We shouldn’t prioritise virus control over everything else. This can’t carry on forever.”
The situation in Jilin is daring to say the least.
In some parts of the province like Lishu county, an important corn production area that President Xi Jinping inspected last year, crop-straws from the previous harvest litter the ground because farmers have not been allowed to leave their houses.
“There are crop-straws all over the fields now,” said Dong, whose family farms two hectares (5 acres) of corn fields in Lishu. “It is impossible to plant the seeds.”
“Now no one is allowed to go out,” he said. “And the agricultural stores have no seeds and fertilisers. Even if they have, farmers can’t go out to buy.”
“Feeding corn is still in tight supply,” he said. “But it will depend on the situation of the hog market, where there is an excessive supply, and the excessive capacity might be gradually cut in the rest of the year.”
China, the world’s biggest grain consumer, imported 28.35 million tonnes of corn in 2021, up 152 per cent from a year earlier, with Ukraine and the United States the biggest suppliers, according to customs data.
Now the rampant Chinese buying of American corn, any corn they can get their hands on, makes much more sense, but this was one of the articles that made me realize, that even my most dire forecasts, might pale in comparison to what human stupidity and hubris can achieve.
Since I have been sharing more of my opinion, I will now write what I and a few others agree with. This has the potential to be a global catastrophe. A constant in Chinese history, and their relationship with authoritarian governments is simple. When there is mass starvation, or famine, whoever is ruling, gets to experience the gallows. The same is true of Western Civilization. Whenever there is low bread, and no circus, SHTF.
Westerners have a very different relationship with power, and power figures, but arguably, in a cultural sense, we can say there is almost no circus, given the distinct cultural perspectives in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the rest of the world (Netflix has been bleeding massively lately). The pressure cooker is starting to get steam. Talking about steam.
The user below cataloged a list of fires, a concerning trend.
It isn’t exactly new if you go looking a little deeper.
Which in fact, goes a lot earlier than you would expect, when the second-biggest producer of HCQ, went up in flames.
Thankfully I have been growing my Substack, over 50% of my reader will NOT have read the piece below. This is where it all started, I want you to click it, and scroll down to the screenshots.
These are but a few, you could literally spend hours scrolling down.
What which point does this stop merely cascading failure or the effects of the Nova Swan, and start defying mathematical odds, and looking like engineered chaos, and manufactured collapse of the industrialized world, for whatever insane purpose the elites convinced themselves it is the best goal?
Just to reiterate a point I make from time to time, my goal with these posts is not to depress you, but to make you aware of everything going on, connect unexplored dots, and try to make the reader prepared for possible outcomes. This is a type of road map for your own actions, but you need to think about them. God bless you all!
I will leave you with this tweet.
You can buy me a coffee whenever you feel like it.
Deep appreciation for all the supporters!
Addendum
The FAA said an "unidentified small plane" crashed into the General Mills plant in Covington early Thursday evening.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/covington-plane-crash-general-mills-factory?taid=6261f25a7d8a320001e1ff9d&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to kill you.
Love your posts.