Do you believe in “coincidences”? There have always been droughts all throughout human history. So if there were a couple of isolated droughts in 2022, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But that isn’t what we are facing. Instead, right now the United States, Europe, Africa and China are all experiencing droughts of epic proportions. As a result, crops are failing in key agricultural areas all over the globe. Of course if just one country or one region was experiencing a “historic drought”, agricultural production from the rest of the world could make up for that. Unfortunately, what we are currently witnessing is truly unprecedented. For the very first time in modern history, virtually all of the largest economies on the entire planet have been hit by extreme drought conditions simultaneously, and that means that global agricultural production is going to be way below expectations in 2022.
In this article, I would like to start my discussion by taking a look at what is going on in China right now.
Thanks to the endless drought that has gripped the nation, the mighty Yangtze River has fallen to “the lowest for this time of year since records began in 1865”…
Wan Jinjun, a 62-year-old retiree who has swum the Yangtze River almost every day for the past decade in Wuhan, said he’s never seen a drought like this before.
An extreme summer has taken a toll on Asia’s longest river, which flows about 3,900 miles (6,300 kilometers) through China and feeds farms that provide much of the country’s food and massive hydroelectric stations, including the Three Gorges Dam — the world’s biggest power plant. A year ago, water lapped almost as high as the riverbank where Wan swims. Now, the level is at the lowest for this time of year since records began in 1865, exposing swathes of sand, rock and oozing brown mud that reeks of rotting fish.
It is being reported that rainfall along the Yangtze River is 45 percent below normal levels, and that is extremely alarming.
Meanwhile, an absolutely monstrous heatwave has been scorching China for the past two months…
People in large parts of China have been experiencing two months of extreme heat. Hundreds of places have reported temperatures of more than 40°C (104°F), and many records have been broken. Subway stations have set up rest areas where people can recover from the heat.
On 18 August, the temperature in Chongqing in Sichuan province reached 45°C (113°F), the highest ever recorded in China outside the desert-dominated region of Xinjiang. On 20 August, the temperature in the city didn’t fall below 34.9°C (94.8°F), the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in China in August. The maximum temperature was 43.7°C (110.7°F).
That is hot!
In fact, scientists are telling us that what China is currently experiencing is “the most severe heatwave” in recorded history…
It is the longest and hottest heatwave in China since national records began in 1961. According to weather historian Maximiliano Herrera, who monitors extreme temperatures around the world, it is the most severe heatwave recorded anywhere.
“This combines the most extreme intensity with the most extreme length with an incredibly huge area all at the same time,” he says. “There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China.”
In recent days, factories have been shut down in some areas of China as mandatory power restrictions have been implemented.
Hopefully relief will come soon, because the Chinese desperately need it.
Meanwhile, Europe is enduring the worst drought that it has experienced “in at least 500 years”…
Europe is facing its worst drought in at least 500 years, with two-thirds of the continent in a state of alert or warning, reducing inland shipping, electricity production and the yields of certain crops, a European Union agency said on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, I wrote an article about the crippling crop losses that Europe is now facing as a result of this drought.
And today we got even more bad news. According to Zero Hedge, corn production for the entire EU could be reduced by about one-fifth this year due to a lack of moisture…
Besides the news of record high electricity prices, a troubling new crop failure report about Europe’s upcoming harvest was published Monday. The bloc’s Monitoring Agricultural Resources forecasted corn yields could drop by nearly a fifth due to a devastating drought, according to Bloomberg.
Before we dive into the crop report, Europe’s centuries-old ‘hunger stones’ were recently revealed in the Elbe River, which runs from the mountains of Czechia through Germany to the North Sea. The stones date back to a drought in 1616 and read: “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine.” That translates to “if you see me, then weep.”
Sadly, conditions are even worse in eastern Africa.
Over the past year, endless drought has resulted in the deaths of at least seven million animals…
Seven million livestock in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have died since last September due to severe drought conditions, according to a recent report by the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
“The Washington Post” reported last year that the carcasses of giraffes, goats, camels and droves of cattle were found in villages after starving to death in northern Kenya. Such losses can be ruinous for families, who face food insecurity as a result.
But have you seen any images of these dead animals on the nightly news?
Of course not.
They aren’t telling you what is really going on out there.
Before I end this article, I want to give you an update on what is going on in the United States.
The worst megadrought in 1,200 years has an iron grip on the western half of the country, and it is having an enormous impact on agricultural production.
In fact, it is being reported that in some areas the corn is under such stress that the plants are not even producing ears of grain…
It’s been so dry in parts of Nebraska and South Dakota that corn plants are doing something truly strange: they’re not producing ears of grain.
The stalks, which should be about 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall by this time of year, are withered, browning and short — some are only standing at about 5 feet. Crop scouts set out this week to analyze yields, and in some isolated patches, they actually had trouble finding enough corn ears to measure.While it’s not a widespread problem, the shocking development is an indicator of just how harsh the hot and dry weather has been.
Everything that I have shared in this article is not normal.
That is because we are entering times that are going to be exceedingly abnormal.
Every year, there are always a few parts of the globe that struggle with food production.
But we have never seen it happen simultaneously to so many key areas all over the planet.
Do you really think that what we are witnessing is just a “coincidence”?
If you are willing to believe that, there is a giant bridge on the west coast that I would like to sell you.
***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending digital copies as gifts through Amazon to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.
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Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.
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.
I live next door to China, and we have had more rain than ever for a summer.