The Price Of Corn Hits A Record High As A Global Food Crisis Looms

• Beef: +10.2%
• Pork: +8.5%
• Fish: +7.1%
• Eggs: +9.2%
• Dairy: +6.8%
• Oils and Fats: +9.3%

If prices rose that fast last year, what will those statistics look like at the end of this year if this drought continues?

Sadly, America is not alone. According to Bloomberg, the U.S. is not the only place that is having problems with crops right now….

Dry weather in the U.S., as well as the Black Sea region; a poor start to the Indian monsoon and the possibility of emerging El Nino conditions suggest agricultural products may rally, Barclays said in a report e-mailed yesterday.

And all of this is very bad news for a world that is really struggling to feed itself.

In many countries around the globe, the poor spend up to 75 percent of their incomes on food. Just a 10 percent increase in the price of basic food staples can be absolutely devastating for impoverished families that are living right on the edge.

You may not have ever known what it is like to wonder where your next meal is going to come from, but in many areas around the world that is a daily reality for many families.

Just check out what is happening in Yemen…

Crying and staring at his distended belly, 6-year-old Warood cannot walk on his spindly legs.
“We become so familiar with sickness,” said his mother, who according to social norms here does not give her name to outsiders. 

She says she has watched two of her children die. “I have to decide: Do I buy rice or medicine?” 

The United Nations estimates that 267,000 Yemeni children are facing life-threatening levels of malnutrition. In the Middle East’s poorest country hunger has doubled since 2009. More than 10 million people — 44% of the population — do not have enough food to eat, according to the United Nation’s World Food Program.

In the United States, we aren’t going to see starvation even if nearly the entire corn crop fails. Our grocery bills might be more painful, but there is still going to be plenty of food for everyone.

In other areas of the world, a bad year for global crops can mean the difference between life and death.

Sadly, it is being projected that the current drought in the United States will last well into August at least.

But even when this current drought ends, our problems will not be over. The truth is that we are facing a very severe long-term water crisis in the western United States.

Just check out the following facts from foodandwaterwatch.org….

-California has a 20-year supply of freshwater left

-New Mexico has only a ten-year supply of freshwater left

-The U.S. interior west is probably the driest it has been in 500 years, according to the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Geological Survey

-Lake Mead, the vast reservoir of the Colorado River, has a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021

The 1,450 mile long Colorado River is probably the most important body of water in the southwestern United States.

Unfortunately, the Colorado River is rapidly dying.

The following is from a recent article by Jonathan Waterman about how the once might Colorado River is running dry…

Fifty miles from the sea, 1.5 miles south of the Mexican border, I saw a river evaporate into a scum of phosphates and discarded water bottles. This dirty water sent me home with feet so badly infected that I couldn’t walk for a week. And a delta once renowned for its wildlife and wetlands is now all but part of the surrounding and parched Sonoran Desert. According to Mexican scientists whom I met with, the river has not flowed to the sea since 1998. If the Endangered Species Act had any teeth in Mexico, we might have a chance to save the giant sea bass (totoaba), clams, the Sea of Cortez shrimp fishery that depends upon freshwater returns, and dozens of bird species. 

So let this stand as an open invitation to the former Secretary of the Interior and all water buffalos who insist upon telling us that there is no scarcity of water here or in the Mexican Delta. Leave the sprinklered green lawns outside the Aspen conferences, come with me, and I’ll show you a Colorado River running dry from its headwaters to the sea. It is polluted and compromised by industry and agriculture. It is overallocated, drought stricken, and soon to suffer greatly from population growth. If other leaders in our administration continue the whitewash, the scarcity of knowledge and lack of conservation measures will cripple a western civilization built upon water. “You can either do it in crisis mode,” Pat Mulroy said at this conference, “or you can start educating now.”

People need to wake up because we have some very serious water issues in this country.

In the heartland of America, farmers pump water from a massive underground lake known as the Ogallala Aquifer to irrigate their fields.

The problem is that the Ogallala Aquifer is rapidly being pumped dry.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, “a volume equivalent to two-thirds of the water in Lake Erie” has been permanently drained from the Ogallala Aquifer since 1940.

Once upon a time, the Ogallala Aquifer had an average depth of about 240 feet.

Today, the average depth of the Ogallala Aquifer is just 80 feet, and in some parts of Texas the water is totally gone.

Right now, the Ogallala Aquifer is being drained at a rate of approximately 800 gallons per minute.

Once that water is gone it will not be replaced.

So what will the “breadbasket of America” do then?

Most Americans do not realize this, but we are facing some major, major water problems.

Let us pray that this current drought ends and let us pray that everyone around the world will have enough to eat.

But even if we get through this year okay by some miracle, that doesn’t mean that our problems are over.