(The Epoch Times)—Upon perusing the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals included in the well-known 2030 Agenda, one may conclude that they are all harmless and entirely reasonable goals. Who could be opposed to reducing poverty and hunger or advancing infrastructure, innovation, and industry? The trick, akin to the tale of the Trojan Horse, is that those goals have been appropriated by the most heinous interventionism, and bureaucrats with a foundation of conceit and stupidity use it to impose governmental control over every aspect of the economy. They are attacking farming, agriculture, and nearly any private activity in a Europe that is beginning to resemble a society suffocated by a predatory state and zombies close to the government, à la Chapter 9 from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” First, they destroyed the very industry that the 2030 Agenda is purportedly committed to strengthening.
The most interventionist politicians are really attacking the 2030 Agenda because, despite their pretenses to the contrary, their policies invariably have the opposite effect of what they seem to support. The socialists in all parties have taken over the 2030 Agenda, which does not advance industry, growth, equality, or the fight against poverty or hunger.
This exploitation of the 2030 Agenda’s objectives is exactly like the Trojan Horse that conceals people who will destroy the city beneath the guise of an impressive and lovely gift.
The number of farms in the European Union has drastically decreased in recent years. According to Eurostat, there were 9.1 million farms in 2020, a projected 37 percent decrease, or roughly 5.3 million fewer than in 2005. This trend has only worsened since 2020.
According to the European Commission itself, the EU’s agricultural land is predicted to shrink by 1.1 percent between 2015 and 2030, primarily due to the declines of the two main groupings (agricultural land and farming), which are forecast to decline by 4.0 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively. This implies ruining our future and increasing Europe’s dependence and poverty.
It is not acceptable for the industrial fabric to be destroyed. According to the International Energy Agency, businesses are now paying twice as much for electricity and natural gas as they would in China or the United States due to an energy strategy that is incorrect and enforced by activists who lack industry knowledge. And how is it justified by the bureaucracy? “The breakdown analysis reveals that the lower economic growth in the EU in relation to the world had the greatest negative impact on the contribution of its manufacturing sector,” according to a study published by the European Commission. It’s not that they are destroying industry, so don’t worry. It is just that the EU is growing far less than before. Fascinating (note the irony). As if the decline in competitiveness isn’t already a contributing factor in stagnation.
A report from the European Round Table for Industry (Vision Paper 2024–2029) states that the market share of European Union industry in the globe has plummeted from 21 percent in 2001 to a pitiful 14.5 percent. The paper also offers positive remedies. The U.S. proportion, which had a 21 percent share during the same period, decreased less significantly, to 16.5 percent. They reaffirm that “business is the lifeblood of a robust economy.” “The EU’s industrial sector contributes 16 percent of its GDP. It creates millions of jobs indirectly and 25 percent of direct employment. It is essential for advancing innovation and enhancing the capabilities of the labor force in addition to creating income and jobs. Its potential to promote growth and prosperity is enormous, given the correct conditions. These factors make it clear that Europe needs to increase its appeal to foreign investors.” Furthermore, what has been accomplished? Taxes, restrictions, and bureaucracy are increased, destroying the very thing they claim to safeguard.
Why do people accept the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda which are redundant as free-market capitalism would achieve all of them without the need for propaganda? Interventionism has denigrated capitalism and free markets while positioning itself as the answer to the mistakes brought about by extensive intervention. The only ways that any of those goals will actually be met are through increased capitalism and economic freedom. Socialism not only falls short of all these goals, but it also adds a secret number 18: the cancelation and persecution of complainants.
It is not anti-European to criticize this agenda’s incorrect imposition. It is in favor of Europe.
Many of us were labeled anti-Europeans years ago for supporting nuclear energy. The EU made agreements recently to create new reactors in large quantities. When we criticized the fiscal plunder and bureaucracy placed on farming, agriculture, and industry years ago, we were labeled anti-Europeans. Many governments are realizing now how grave a mistake they made. Similarly, criticizing the digital euro does not mean attacking the euro; rather, it means arguing that it should continue to be a store of value and maintain its purchasing power.
Being pro-European does not mean accepting every interventionist policy put out by a committee of bureaucrats. We must reject socialism and central planning if we are to protect Europe. Despite decades of financial support, East Germany is still struggling to recover from the devastation caused by central planning.
Centralized planning does not work. It was never successful. However, there are always those who believe that if they put it into practice, it will work because they do not have to pay for the repercussions.
What is the ruse behind this latest attack on liberty? The usual “good intentions” to target and penalize those who produce and create jobs, using goals that appear innocent and that we all defend. Thus, if you disagree, some may claim that you are opposed to ending poverty, hunger, and inequality if you publish a piece like this one or warn against the risks of central planning. Can you spot the ruse? In actuality, it employs the same tactic as Leninism, which is to create an oppressive government while hiding behind a cause that everyone supports.
The people who have stocked this Trojan Horse with warriors ready to mercilessly slaughter the city’s populace once they are behind the wall are well aware that their scheme will fail so they must enforce objective number 18, which establishes the only connection between reality and the fallacy of central planning. What does objective number 18 mean? Suppression and annihilation of personal autonomy, impoverishment, and elimination of demand. It’s not even a hidden target. This set of self-proclaimed European saviors is aware that imposing a contraction in demand is the only way to make the equation of corporate destruction and declining supply square, rendering us less free and poorer.
The first thing we should do is give up on socialism and stand up for the promotion of individual freedom if we want to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals without the covert eighteenth of poverty and elimination of individuals’ rights.
The only way to accomplish the goals that the 2030 Agenda purports to support is to take these policies out of the hands of socialist and extortionate interventionism and give Europe greater economic freedom, more robust businesses, and regulations that are straightforward, predictable, and conducive to investment. There should be less poverty redistributors and more manufacturing, farming, and agriculture.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
