There are some stark prospects facing us in 2022, accelerated by the war in Ukraine, but they have been on the horizon for some time. We may find a way to avert them, but they will not be banished, and will be back soon enough. We need to understand the fundamentals to have a chance of mitigating their inevitable impact, and in the worst case, to prepare our families and communities to weather the storm that will follow.
In an earlier article, we discussed energy futures, the false boogeyman of global warming, and the foolish and shortsighted measures that ideology is pushing upon us. That discussion has become even more important in the last 60 days.
Our energy future demands our attention, and demands it more loudly and urgently now than just a few months ago. The Biden administration's ideological war on fossil fuels, the direct global impacts of the Ukraine war and the sanctions regime imposed by the U.S. and its allies, and the second-order consequences of both, are going to impact every aspect of our lives, and those impacts are upon us already.
Let's look at some critical measures, and lay our groundwork with a few assumptions.
First, so far as fossil fuels and "green energy" go, the situation is bleak unless we can come to our senses. Fossil fuels are indeed a finite resource; oil production has peaked and begun to decline, even without the Biden administration's misguided intervention, while global demand grows, and of course prices trend irrevocably upward. The same is true for coal and natural gas, and the fundamental takeaway is that the era of cheap energy is gone, and will not return. The recent spike in gasoline and diesel prices at the pump are just a bump in an upward trend that has been underway for years. We are not in a death spiral by any means, but we need to drop the fiction that the "good old days" can be resurrected. We need to be looking hard at alternative energy sources, and that does not mean the fantasy of electric cars and windmills, but safe and affordable forms of nuclear power that are barely past the experimental stage now but hold enormous promise for the future, if we get to work. Anything else will bring, a little sooner or a little later depending on our near-term choices, a rapid and chaotic collapse of industrial civilization, with barely imaginable consequences for the human population of the Earth.
These consequences are beginning to be felt already. Why?
The warming trend that began in the early 19th Century created the most stable and favorable climate for agriculture since the emergence of modern man. Human population surged along with the food supply, the Industrial Revolution, scientific and medical progress, the discovery and exploitation of petroleum, and the real "green revolution" that multiplied grain yields worldwide in the 1960s. From approximately one billion in 1800, the world's population doubled in 130 years (to 1930), doubled again in the next 44 years, and has almost doubled again to eight billion in 2022. That growth was driven by agriculture, and agriculture in the last century has depended upon energy – primarily the diesel fuel that drives farm machinery – and the mining and the petroleum-fueled industrial sector that provides fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides.
However, we now see population growth slowing, and that's only the beginning. That growth curve has depended on a meteoric rise in food – mostly grain – production. World grain production rose tenfold from 281 million metric tons in 1930 to an estimated 2.8 billion metric tons in 2021-2022. But grain production flattened between 1996 and 2000, while human population continues to grow rapidly. Inevitably, grain prices have been increasing. Most of the countries on earth consume more grain than they can produce, and depend on trade or aid for the balance – from surplus producers like the U.S., Canada, Russia, and the European Union. The price of those surplus grains has been mounting steadily, with several short-term and long-term consequences.
In the long term, the proportion of their income people have to spend on food is growing rapidly, with a severe impact on discretionary spending and therefore, on the market for other goods and services.
In the short term, we have an impending crisis, as the price of grain production is skyrocketing in 2022. Russia and Ukraine together account for about 30% of the world's grain exports, and this year, Ukraine's ability to plant grain crops due to the ongoing warfare is severely challenged, and Russia's economy is being devastated by the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its European allies. Fifty countries rely on Russia and/or Ukraine for at least 30% of their grain imports. There are no ready alternatives.
Global stockpiles of grain are less than half of one year's consumption, and they are anything but "fairly" or evenly distributed.
To make things worse, Ukraine and Russia together also account for almost 50% of the world's production of nitrogen-based fertilizer, and already fertilizer prices are spiking worldwide, in the spring planting season across the Northern Hemisphere.
If that were not enough, the combination of global market disruptions resulting from the war, with the unrelated Biden Administration attack on US oil production, has already pushed the price of diesel fuel – critical to agricultural production – to unprecedented highs.
The outlook is bleak. There will be food shortages worldwide for one year at least, resulting in political instability; as one author dryly commented, people get cranky when they're hungry. The "Arab Spring" revolts and unrest across North Africa and the Middle East from 2010 to 2012 were driven by spikes in food prices that have already been exceeded in 2022 before any crops are even planted, and this time it's going to be worldwide.
For example, Egypt's population in 1800 was approximately 4 million. It is now almost 106 million, and increasing by almost 2 million each year. Wheat is the staple of the Egyptian diet, and the average Egyptian consumes 350 kilograms per year, or more than 37 million metric tons total, increasing by 700,000 metric tons each year as the population grows. Egypt produces less than 20 million tons of grain per year, and the balance it needs to avert large scale starvation is equal to half the total grain exports of the United States, in a good year not impacted by skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer prices. These numbers are representative of most of the Arab world, of sub-Saharan Africa, and of many other nations worldwide.
There's a word for what's coming – for what hasn't been seen on a large scale in a very long time. It is famine, and it is coming. And starving people do get cranky, before their strength fades.
Nations now producing surplus grains will be hit hard by the increasing cost of production, but should be able to feed themselves. The nations they have previously fed, through exports to those who can afford to buy, and outright aid to those who cannot, will not be so lucky.
The impacts on America will be felt in food prices – grain, meat, produce, specialty products – at the supermarket, and in unpredictable but highly dangerous global instability as less fortunate populations experience widespread famine.
What can be done? In international policy, we need to dial back the intensity of the Russia-Ukraine war – ending the West's ill-advised proxy war on Russia - and encourage a swiftly negotiated resolution so that the global economic impacts can be ended, and those two countries can restart their enormous productive capacity brought back on line for their own sake, and for everybody else's. Reject the disinformation that casts this conflict as anything but a regional war between neighboring nations, a war in the Clausewitzian sense of "a continuation of politics by other means," that must end before it spins even more out of control. The West should stop the flow of weapons into Ukraine that encourages that nation to continue a fight that it cannot ultimately win. Let your elected representatives know that you want the U.S. to become a force for peace, not for open-ended war.
In national policy, the cynical, election-motivated course reversals now underway in the Biden Administration's terrible energy policies and unsustainable deficit spending need to be accelerated. America's farm output is now critical, not just to our own well- being, but to global stability and the survival of millions. We need to stop the inflationary spiral and the war on fossil fuel production, that is about to cripple our agricultural production at the worst possible moment.
On the personal level, if you do not have a substantial amount of food stored to buffer you through a one- to two-year period of scarcity, start before prices spike even higher and availability begins to drop. If you haven't yet seen serious supply chain impacts in food and in other necessities of life, be thankful, but start acting like you expect them next week. Stock up on tools, parts, and supplies that you have always assumed were only a shopping trip away. When you can't afford the fuel, or the shelves begin to empty, or your money is further devalued, by double-digit inflation, it will be a little late to wake up. Stock up now and avoid the rush.