Brace Yourself: Food Shortages Will Be a Reality in the West This Winter

Because most people don’t know a farmer personally anymore, everyone should realize that they don’t make piles of money producing our food. A good year can be followed by three bad ones, and 2022 has been a burden. Between record heat waves in the U.S. and abroad, droughts in the middle of the country, fertilizer shortages, and rising costs for just about every farm input, many American farms are on the brink. Everyone will feel the pinch in continued food price increases and shortages at the store.

As bad as the agricultural outlook is in America, it is far worse in Europe. The dedication to a green energy suicide pact on the continent is colliding with the news Russia will not ship any fossil fuels until the West lifts sanctions. The skyrocketing energy prices have farmers leaving crops in the fields to die.

In Norway, one farmer’s story is instructive. Vegetable farmer Per Odd Gjestvang is leaving his leeks in the field to die because the cost of harvesting and adequately storing them is too high:

Around 29 tonnes of leeks are lost. It has a gross value of around 700,000. “This is madness. This is food that should have been harvested and taken care of,” says Gjestvang.

On the farm, the family grows around 3,000 tonnes of vegetables each growing season. The leeks had normally been taken to cold storage, so that they would be found in Norwegian vegetable counters this winter. But the calculation simply does not add up for the farmer.

With today’s electricity prices, Gjestvang does not see it as financially sound to spend money on storing the vegetables. In that case, it will be a purely loss-making project, he believes.- READ MORE