The coming famine: Russia, peak oil and the collapse of cheap food

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I’ve gotten a couple emails from people who have asked me what I think the “end game” is in regards to Russia. And, indeed, the government is going into extra innings with this whole Russia vilification project. This is worse than someone who has held on to a grudge for years. The government does that, too, but they haven’t done it over ideology (as with Cuba) for quite some time now. What, then, is the motive?

(Article by Jack Perry from LewRockwell.com)

The motive is perfectly clear: Oil. You see, Russia has already eclipsed Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer. This means the big Saudi oil fields are drying up. And the government knows that, but they can’t tell us this because it’ll create a panic. One would think this would motivate the United States to get cozier with Russia. However, what the United States government fears is that if we do that, Russia will twig to the motive for it, and realize it has the United States over a barrel. An oil barrel. At which point the price goes up. Not to mention extracting concessions in the global sphere of influence.

Thus, what the United States is playing at here is trying to install a different “regime” in Russia. That being, one that Vladimir Putin does not control or have any influence over. This is easier said than done and the United States knows this. But the stakes are quite a bit higher than controlling the dwindling oil supply in the Middle East. Russia is obviously in control of most of the world’s remaining oil reserves. The United States needs a puppet regime in Russia to have access to that oil without paying the correct market price for it.

At some point, this gambit will fail. Russia is not the Middle East. A war with Russia cannot be won or cease-fired out of. Nor can a United States-backed “regime change” succeed over there. This is not the 1990s Russia of Boris Yeltsin. The United States, however, cannot come clean with the truth to the American people. The reason is because if the American people knew the truth, they’d never sleep nights anymore. The truth is this: Our entire economic system is based on petroleum and low-cost petroleum at that. But the actual nightmare is that our entire agricultural system is based on cheap oil.

The United States diet, especially for average Americans, is based on only three crops: Corn, wheat, and soy. Every processed food you see is based on fractions of those three staples. Meat is fed those three staples, even the farm-raised salmon you see in the store. Without those three crops, the United States would undergo a famine not seen in the United States ever at any point. The United States cannot feed itself without those three crops. What’s more, many large parts of the world depend on those three crops exported from the United States to feed themselves, too. Therefore, without them, the famine would turn into a runaway famine of global proportions.

Those three crops require large inputs of oil to grow, maintain, fertilize, and harvest. The corn alone depletes the soil to the extent synthetic fertilizer made by the Haber Process is an absolute requirement. That synthetic fertilizer requires oil to produce. The tractors and combines to plant and harvest these crops run on oil. All the transportation involved runs on oil. People have been led to believe we’ve discovered domestic oil reserves that will give us self-sufficiency. Who’s telling us this? The oil companies who are in bed with the government. The fact is, if we have to rely on these reserves alone, they will need to be devoted to agriculture alone. Or we won’t eat.

At some point, the oil is going to dwindle. It may have already begun, which is the entire motive for trying to isolate Russia. See, we think the sanctions will create economic hardships that will topple Putin. Then we can install “our guy” (probably being groomed in Ukraine) to run the show and give us access to those last reserves at the price we want to pay. But if that doesn’t happen, and it probably won’t, we better start thinking about the fact food is about to get a lot more expensive. The days of .99 cent super bags of corn chips are about to come to an end. Soon.

Keep in mind that the government heavily subsidizes those three crops as it is. Otherwise, food would be a LOT more expensive. Understand this: We are all on food stamps because the government subsidizes corn, wheat, and soy. If they did not, many people would not be able to afford food at all. What you see in the store is not the real and actual cost of that food. You’re seeing it after the government paid up to half (or more) of the cost to grow that corn, wheat, and soy. Including that which was fed to animals, we eat. Meaning, if you think beef is expensive at $6.99 a pound, the actual cost is $15.99 a pound if the government did not subsidize the corn fed to that cattle.

That can only take place because the oil is relatively cheap. Were the oil not cheap and the government still had to subsidize the food crops, the money will probably have to be diverted from Social Security, interstate highways, and the military budget. So you can see the corner the government has painted themselves into. They can’t afford to do nothing but they can’t afford to get into an actual war with Russia, either. However, the steps they are taking carry the very real seeds of a war, but the government is willing to risk that, gambling a certain future of food riots against the possibility of a war. It’s a lose-lose proposition, but the government and Wall Street are stubbornly refusing to own up to the truth. They have staked “growth” of the economy on the price of oil. We are in a suicide pact with them right now.

Oil is a finite thing. It will run out. This is a fact. Now, the cheap oil has led up to more food grown and, as a result, more people born because we had the available food to feed them. These people, in turn, have increased the demand for more oil. Hence, the consumption of oil goes up each year. Meaning, the oil supply (being finite) gets lower and lower but the demand for it goes higher and higher. In truth, this means the oil will run out faster than any predictions made based upon world population numbers of even ten years ago. Every person who comes into the world, whether that person drives a car or not, has a demand upon the oil supply. Why? Because oil is the only reason food can be grown in any industrialized nation. It isn’t the cars, folks. It’s the food.

Go to your supermarket and start reading the ingredient lists of the processed foods people have come to rely upon. You will find that corn, wheat, and soy are in all of them. The entire meat department relies upon corn and soy to feed those animals. The entire dairy department relies upon those cows being fed corn and soy. Yes, there is rice and potatoes. But those two crops will not make up the deficit in the public diet if we lose just corn alone. This entire system is a house of cards built upon corn which, in turn, is teetering precariously on a barrel of oil.

My prediction? I’d say if Russia refuses to play ball with the United States, we will begin to see oil prices quietly going up. One day, some major oilfield is going to dry up completely and the price will quadruple overnight. Any corn out to harvest will see the projected cost to harvest it skyrocket. The trains to transport it may be in control of railroads without the available capital funds to pay for the diesel. Remember, this country runs on credit, not cash. Credit will not be worth squat in the coming economy of low oil availability and food scarcity as a result. We may see entire fields of corn rot for lack of oil to harvest and transport it while entire cities see supermarket shelves bare.

This is the “end game”. This is the future. There can be no other reason the United States is willing to risk war with Russia. Oil is always the reason the United States goes to war since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo showed us how vulnerable we really are. But this time, we’ve got a “false prosperity” and millions of people born solely because of the cheap food brought to us by cheap oil. When that oil is gone, guess what? We will not be able to feed all those people born because cheap oil made feeding them possible. You do the math on what that means.