(The Economic Collapse Blog)—A “perfect storm” of factors has created a global food crisis that just continues to intensify. While you are enjoying a warm dinner tonight, millions of parents on the other side of the globe will have nothing to give to their children. The world simply is not producing enough food to feed everyone, but I am entirely convinced that things are going to get dramatically worse by the end of this decade. Yesterday, I discussed the red horse of war. I believe that we are in the early stages of World War III, and during the years ahead we will see death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Needless to say, conflict of that magnitude would greatly disrupt global food production and global supply chains, and as a result we would experience horrifying famines all over the planet.
The scenario that I just described is exactly what we see in the Book of Revelation.
In Revelation chapter 6, the black horse of famine immediately follows the red horse of war…
4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
Right now, we are literally teetering on the brink of such a disaster.
According to the UN’s World Food Program, we are dealing with “a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions” right now…
Conflict, economic shocks, climate change and soaring prices for food and fertilizer are all combining in a perfect storm to create a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions. Right now, in some of the hungriest places around the world, there just isn’t enough food to feed the population.
They are not talking about a “perfect storm” that is coming someday.
They are talking about a “perfect storm” that is already here.
Last year, more than 3 billion people could not afford to eat a healthy diet…
Worldwide, more than 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet, according to the report. That’s 42% of the world’s population, and a significant increase over pre-COVID levels.
Why aren’t we hearing more about this?
Just because our families aren’t facing severe hunger yet does not mean that we shouldn’t be paying attention.
According to an article that was posted by the New York Times, the number of countries that are “at risk of famine” just continues to grow…
The list of countries at risk of famine now includes Afghanistan, Syria and Mali. Humanitarian observers also worry that North Korea may be nearing a famine.
That same New York Times article pointed out that things are particularly dire in eastern Africa…
About 90 million people are facing severe hunger in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen. These countries, unfortunately, have their own histories of severe food shortages, but the world has never witnessed all of these countries descending toward mass starvation at the same time.
I am not the one that used the term “mass starvation” to describe what is happening in eastern Africa.
This is the New York Times that we are talking about.
Even they are admitting that this crisis has started to spiral out of control.
Here in the United States, there is still enough food to go around, but supplies of food have been getting tighter.
According to the Farm Bureau, the U.S. actually lost more than 140,000 farms during one recent five year period…
Between 2017 and 2022, the number of farms in the U.S. declined by 141,733 or 7%, according to USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture, released on Feb. 13. Acres operated by farm operations during the same timeframe declined by 20.1 million (2.2%), a loss equivalent to an area about the size of Maine.
And the size of the U.S. cattle herd is now the smallest that it has been in 73 years…
Not many ranchers active today will remember the last time the U.S. cattle industry was this small. On January 1, 2024, the All Cattle and Calves inventory was 87.15 million head, the smallest total inventory since 1951. The All Cattle and Calves inventory is 1.9 percent smaller year over year and is the fifth consecutive year of declining cattle inventories, a total decrease of 7.65 million head or 8.1 percent since the most recent peak in 2019. The 2023 calf crop was 33.6 million head, down 2.5 percent year over year and the smallest calf crop since 2014.
Meanwhile, the bird flu continues to spread all over the country, and this has pushed up egg prices dramatically in recent months…
Data from the United States Department of Agriculture shows that Grade A egg prices per dozen jumped 40% from $2.13 to $3 between November and February.
Of course just about everything has been getting a lot more expensive since Joe Biden entered the White House.
Here are some more examples…
Boneless chicken breast has increased in price 26%, from $3.26 per pound in January 2021 to $4.11 per pound in February 2024.
White bread per pound is 30% more expensive, up to $2.01 per pound in February vs. $1.55 per pound in January 2021.
And white sugar has increased cost per pound from $0.68 to $0.98 in the last three years, a 44% increase.
I always warned my readers that the way that the global food crisis would initially manifest itself in the United States would be through much higher food prices.
And now I believe we are reaching a tipping point for certain commodities.
Just look at what is happening to cocoa prices. They just continue to shoot up at an exponential rate…
May ICE NY cocoa (CCK24) today is up +381 (+5.42%), and May ICE London cocoa #7 (CAK24) is up +377 (+6.55%).
The May NY and London cocoa futures contracts today both rallied sharply to new contract highs on continued concern about tight cocoa supplies from West Africa.
Lower cocoa production in the Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer, is a major bullish factor for cocoa prices. Monday’s government data showed Ivory Coast farmers shipped 1.22 MMT of cocoa to ports from October 1 to March 10, down -29% from the same time last year. The Ivory Coast cocoa regulator said last Thursday it expects the Ivory Coast mid-crop, which officially starts in April and is the smaller of two annual harvests, to fall -33% to 400,000 MT from 600,000 MT last year. Trader Ecom Agroindustrial projects Ivory Coast 2023/24 cocoa production, which ends in September, will fall -21.5% y/y to an 8-year low of 1.75 MMT.
I know that I have said it before, but I will say it again.
If you love chocolate, stock up now while you still can.
The same thing could be said for many other food items as well.
During a recent interview with Fox News, prepping expert James Nelson explained that most Americans are woefully unprepared for any sort of a major supply chain disruption…
Nelson calculated that if a freezer goes out, people will only have that food for three days. If the power goes out, Americans are now reduced to five days of food in their homes. A local suburban or urban area will also have about two weeks of food and has generators if the power goes out, but when people are dependent on storefronts, they will quickly be emptied out.
“In the event of even a temporary supply chain collapse, most homes are within two weeks of being entirely dependent on handouts from a government entity or non-government organization,” Nelson said.
“Anybody who doesn’t have 3 to 6 months of basic staples and food within your home, and the ability to grow a garden. Then what’s your plan? I mean, these are not weird concepts to talk about,” he added.
He is right.
Our world is rapidly approaching a time of unparalleled chaos, and most of the population is completely and utterly unprepared for it.
If you plan to get prepared, now is the time.
Because it appears that the black horse of famine is getting ready to ride, and it won’t be too long before it finally gets released.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
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.
Problem I have with this story is that the 4 horsemen come during the tribulation… Christians will be raptured before the tribulation. The more appropriate passage is Matthew 24 not Revelation 6