The Coming Food Crisis

We're in a good bit of trouble. Trump's war with Iran has, as previously discussed, closed the Strait of Hormuz. We're now fighting to open the Strait, which would have been open if we had simply done nothing, but now we're also blockading the Strait, which Iran is already doing. Also we're not doing it well. Regardless of how hare-brained our government is, the war has been awful, killing thousands of civilians–targeting them and civilian infrastructure, which is a war crime–and has led to Israel seeing fit to ferociously attack Lebanon, displacing over a million people and killing, at this point, more than two thousand. As the American working class begins to stand up, I hope that we hasten our rebellion to help put an end to our own aggression as well as Israel's.

But for today, there is another problem to discuss. The closing of Hormuz has greatly reduced the world's ready supply of oil. This may not be entirely permanent, and for all we know the Strait will be open tomorrow, but the damage has been done. 20% of the world's oil passes through the Strait, and when Iran closed off that waterway, it cut off that supply. The ships that carry this oil are some of the largest objects ever made, and they move extremely slowly–such that we are only now receiving our last shipments of Hormuz-originating oil this week following the closure over a month ago. All of the price spikes for gas, any increases in food cost you may have seen thus far, are not from an actual lack of oil–these price spikes come only from the idea of that lack. We are only now seeing the actual loss of that oil.

You'll recall that we use oil to create fertilizer. So it's not just gas that has jumped in price–it's fertilizer, too, and right when farmers would be using it. Farmers are hit by this twice, then, in that their fuel costs and fertilizer costs have skyrocketed. Some farmers inevitably don't have the money to fertilize their fields, meaning their yields, if they have enough money to plant, will decrease.

The Cost

Food is about to cost a whole lot more. Some things you might just not see on the shelves, but everything, and I mean everything, is going to get more expensive. I would say that this is temporary, that eventually oil blockaded at Hormuz will flow again and prices will reduce, but that's not likely. Gas is one of the few things that actually returns to a kind of "normal." Everything else, once inflated, tends not to shrink–as evidenced by Delta's CEO. But all is not lost: Doritos are getting cheaper.

I'll stop being glib. Chances are very good that we're about to hit with a pretty hard economic stretch. When the world went through a similar oil crisis in the 70s, a six-month interruption took about 5 years for economies to get over. We're probably (hopefully) not going to see an interruption quite that long, but we are sitting close to two months now. Of course the United States is insulated from the worst of the wrecks it causes, but if you look at countries like Thailand, Philippines, and India, extreme cuts are being made to try to soften the shock. Without propane, 400,000 people lost their jobs in India almost overnight, as the supply of fuel used in their industry was cut off. Countries are instituting even and odd license plate fueling days, declaring "holidays" to close businesses and making government workers stay home.

Projection

Bringing this back to the people feeling the worst of this pain: in Lebanon, the economy hasn't suddenly paused because they're being bombed by Israel. Gazans weren't suddenly free of the cost of flour because they are being slaughtered–everyone still has to buy things, and wartime inflation is brutal. Yes, there is aid–a little. But capitalism persists even in these conditions. All of Lebanon is not being bombed as yet, and for some life must continue, jobs have to be done, people get sick, go to school, all of the trappings of normalcy in a supremely surreal time (some might say this is unfortunately normal and not surreal. Israel's history of aggression against Lebanon is long and terrible).

The increase in the cost of oil has slammed the region. Lebanon's economy has been reeling for years, and inflation has long made lives difficult. You might have put together that the idea we're skirting around here is how I talk about climate change; Lebanon–and Gaza, and really the whole world to a lesser degree–are dealing with a threat multiplier. All of the complications in the region are made worse by the oil crisis. This is honestly a pat way of putting things; we tend to think of threat multipliers as coming into play at the start of the disaster, and then you're in the fire. Well, Lebanon is in the fire.

My Recommendation

It's entirely possible we don't see anything here but higher prices and some scarcity. That's the best-case scenario. The worst is that we're driven much closer to the brink. Considering the way things are going, I wouldn't take the worst out of the realm of possibility. I wrote this in the middle of last week and am finishing the post Saturday. Ceasefire talks are back on, and the Strait is again (for the moment) open.

But it's not that the Strait being or remaining open saves us. The blow has already landed and the pain is still to come. And any solution here so long as this administration is at the helm is likely to be very temporary because it is only a matter of time before we are thrown into another crisis. I want to be clear that so long as the United States remains this fascist state, the world is in danger. And I don't think electing Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris ameliorates that danger.

If you haven't been serious about stocking your pantry yet, now is the time. Start with some light basics and double up on food you eat regularly. Build up a buffer–it doesn't have to be much, at least not right away. But remember the goal is not just to keep yourself fed–we want to be able to help our community as well. I happened upon a good deal for humanitarian rations, which are like MREs with fewer bells and whistles, and bought quite a few. These are a pretty good deal if you can find them. They tend to carry around 2000 calories, are vegan, and convenient to simply hand out.

Remember that your best preparedness practice includes the people around you. We have to do the work of saving each other–and I mean that in the biggest sense. We're living in a rogue state and propping up another, and we have to be part of the solution to that. Build up your communities so that we can be safe enough and strong enough to start pushing back.