February 17, 2009
The Trumpet
Could the global food crisis hasten civilization’s collapse?
The world could be just months away from global famine. Six of the past eight years have produced grain harvests that have fallen short of global consumption. As world population rises and environmental trends deteriorate, global food shortage is fast becoming a reality.
Photo: The largest dam on the River Murray, the Hume Weir, sinks to its lowest level ever. Drought in Australia is one of a number of factors contributing to global food shortages. (Getty Images)
“World carryover stocks of grain (the amount remaining from the previous harvest when the new harvest begins) have dropped to only 60 days of consumption, a near record low,” says Spiegel Online (February 11).
Grain production is at record lows as prices skyrocket. Demand for grain is especially high not only because of the accelerating world population growth (at the rate of 70 million people a year), but also with the emergence of more grain-intensive products and ethanol-fuel distilleries. The use of grain for ethanol production in America alone has nearly doubled the annual growth in world grain consumption.
Lack of available farmland also poses a major obstacle to expanding food production. The amount of available land is actually continually shrinking. As the world’s population grows, some of the best farmland is being lost to construction of housing developments, factories and highways.
Water shortages are another rising concern. Droughts of historic proportions are currently scorching vast areas of the United States, Australia, China, India, Central Asia, the Middle East and South America.
Signs of food stress are widespread as the number of chronically hungry and malnourished people on Earth topped 980 million in 2007. “For the first time in several decades this basic social indicator is moving in the wrong direction, and it is doing so at a record rate and with disturbing social consequences,” says Spiegel Online.
The article warns, “There is a real risk that we could soon face civilization-threatening food shortages.” It predicts that countries will increasingly strike private trade deals with each other—to the detriment of other nations, ultimately leading to social unrest and disorder. In many countries, the social order has already begun to break down as a result of food shortages last year.
The world stands on the cusp of global famine if agricultural trends do not turn around fast. Herbert W. Armstrong forecasted such conditions decades ago. Over 50 years ago, he wrote,
Yes, time is running out on us, fast, and we’re too sound asleep in deception to realize it!
Our peoples will continue only a few more years in comparative economic prosperity. This very prosperity is our fatal curse! Because our people are setting their hearts on it, seeking ease and leisure, becoming soft and decadent and weak! …
Then, suddenly, before we realize it, we’ll find ourselves in the throes of famine, and uncontrollable epidemics of disease. Already we’re in the beginning of a terrible famine and we don’t know it—a famine of needed minerals and vitamins in our foods. Our peoples have ignored God’s agricultural laws. Not all the land has been permitted to rest every seventh year. The land has been overworked. Today, the soil is worn out. And food factories, in the interest of larger profits, are removing much of what minerals and vitamins remain—while a new profit-making vitamin industry deludes the people into believing they can obtain these precious elements from pills and capsules purchased in drug stores and “health food” stores!
And all this state of affairs because man is in defiance of his Maker!
Only when humanity realizes that God’s way of life is the only way to true joy will these terrible droughts and famines cease to exist. Until this happens, the global food crisis will continue to intensify. For more information, read “Sleepwalking Into a Food Nightmare” and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=5952.4324.0.0