Member-only story
The Crisis Report — 05
Addendum to my last piece.
So, after writing my last article I got a lot of feedback. I have added an addendum to that piece to address that feedback. It’s a large addendum. Longer than the piece actually.
I know that many people who have already read The Crisis Report — 04 would never see this additional information, which is a shame. I think it adds a lot of context to what I said and provides a bigger view of what’s happening.
For those readers, here is the addendum.
ADDENDUM 061022
There has been some questions and push-back on this piece that I want to address. I want to start by saying thank you to everyone who commented. I truly appreciate your feedback.
Issue #1 — What does it mean when I say the world’s cushion is ten days?
Several people have asked about this number. It is a very interesting rough estimate of global food production that does not include stockpiles.
It works like this. The authors of the paper take the reports of everything produced in a year, subtract everything that gets used, whatever is leftover is “the cushion” between what we produce and what we need.
In 1999 it was 116+ days.
Then Bush II sunk a big pile of money in ethanol production and ADM started selling their corn to make biofuel. The result.
By 2006 the cushion shrank to 57+ days and food riots started happening across the Middle East.
Now the cushion is down to 10+ days.
However, some countries have very deep reserves. The US and China being the biggest two. The rest of the world operates on a “just in time” basis much more than we do.
Most countries in the world have to import food.
Our global food supply situation was already under pressure.
World food import bill to reach record high in 2021
Global output peaked in 2013 because of climate change. Our population has been increasing while the gap between what we need and what we can produce has been growing.
Last year a Cornell-led study showed that global farming productivity is 21%…
