Prices Flare and
Bread Lines Form!
Black Eyes of Famine,
For a Lack of Mammon,
When a Black Horse Man,
Shows His Long Boney Hand,
Across the Earth’s Farm Lands!
Famine Eyes and weakened Hands!
Grain Prices Rise under Chaotic Skies,
And Political Rhetoric is Filled with Cries,
Of Wonderful Solutions that are blatant Lies!
April 8, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Revelation 6:5,6 – 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.
I wrote the following concerning famine in 2000 when we began this Web Site.
“The population explosion that has suddenly burst on the scene should come as no surprise to mankind. The world’s population has roughly, in somewhat similar manner, followed the principle of daily doubling pennies. Suppose that someone proposed to give you five billion dollars if you would double a penny he gave you for forty days. Would you take the deal? A single penny on the first day would produce two cents on the second day, four cents on the third day, eight cents on the fourth day, sixteen cents on the fifth day, thirty-two cents on the sixth day, sixty-four cents on the seventh day, and only $1.28 on the eighth day. So, based on what you’ve read so far, it seems like a pretty good deal. But on day forty you would have to fork over move than five billion dollars.
This principle is now being added into the famine equation.
The world’s famine outbreaks in the developing countries have been occurring closer and closer together in time since World War II, and this trend, like a woman’s birth pangs, will definitely accelerate until Jesus comes. Why? A few thousand years ago eight men and women descended in an ark “upon the mountains of Ararat,” and then began to multiply. At first, just like the penny, the increase was slow and insignificant numerically.
When Jesus was born, the world population had only reached about 200 million. When Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, it had only reached 400 million.
But, like the multiplying multiples of the penny, it began to accelerate about the time of the Civil War, and exploded after the Great Depression of the thirties. In 1989 the world population reached five billion and, the same year, eleven million of the earth’s residents died of starvation. The world population passed six billion in October of 1999, and is predicted to reach ten billion in 2030. There is no way under heaven that the developing countries across the Bible Lands of Asia and Africa, where most of this increase is forecast to occur, can fail to have an ever increasing, massive famine. Some say the population will only reach 8.5 billion in 2030. But even if this is true, how can the additional 3.5 billion be fed if 11 million died of starvation in 1989 with a population of only five billion.
In the late seventies, when I wrote my second book, The Tribulation Triad, I pointed out that the famines absolutely had to continue to increase in frequency and intensity. It is even more of a sure thing today! One might suppose that the prediction of thirty million Africans dying from AIDS during the next quarter century, would cause the predicted population growth to be canceled out. Nothing could be farther from the truth! In spite of this staggering AIDS toll, Africa’s population is expected to double during this time period.
Some say, don’t worry, agricultural technology will solve the famine problem. No way! The latest U.N. study found ten percent of the world’s soil profile badly damaged. The three-year study accessed soil conditions on a global scale, and involved more than 250 soil scientists.
It marked the first time since World War II that soil profiles had been assessed on a global scale. As reported by Larry B. Stammer in the Los Angeles Times, the study found that “about two-thirds of all seriously eroded land is in Asia and Africa, home to most of the world’s poor.” The article, using the report as its basis, stated: “ Despite the much acclaimed green revolution of the past several decades, which produced unprecedented gains in food production through the introduction of fertilizers and hybrid grains, the per-capita food production has declined in about eighty developing countries in the past decade.” The report, Vital Signs 1993: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future, as reported by David Brisco in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette of July 18, 1993, stated: “This new report shows the first clear sign that population is outpacing the food available for humans. The trend is mostly because of record world population growth, but also reflects a slowdown in decades of increasing food supplies. The main sources of food – farms, ranches, and oceans – all appear to be approaching, or may have reached, their maximum per-capita output, according to Vital Signs 1993.” The simple truth is this, the world’s maximum food production, since the mid-nineties, has not been able to keep up with the stork, and the ever increasing population will cause it to fall farther and farther behind. Earthquakes, pestilence, and famine will continue to increase the pain of God’s creation while it awaits the manifestation of his sons at the appearance of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.”
End quote of 2000 Article.
The two articles which follow deal with the world problem we are facing in grains from which is made “our daily bread.”
Begin Quote from SAUDI GAZETTE via IMRA
April 7, 2008
In Egypt, long queues for bread
Reuters QUOTE: “subsidized bread which provides daily nutrition to 50 million Egyptians – or over two-thirds of thepopulation”
EXCERPTS:
CAIRO – Abdel Nabi Salim’s main job in life is queuing for bread.
The graying 65-year-old retired administrator stands under Egypt’s glaring noon sun, waiting in a queue that snakes out to the street to buy 20 loaves of steaming subsidized pocket bread from a barred window for 1 Egyptian pound ($0.18).
Egypt has for decades provided cheap bread for the poor as an expensive butessential component of its economic policy because it enables millions tosurvive on low salaries and wards off political discontent.
But bread lines have lengthened in recent months as costs of other
non-subsidized Egyptian staples soared, forcing more reliance on a subsidy regime that depends heavily on costly imported wheat and is also strained by a thriving black market.
The current crunch means that once Salim buys his first batch of bread, he will return to the back of the line to wait, again, for the additional 10 loaves he needs to keep his extended family from going hungry. . . .Excruciating lines have prompted media headlines of a bread “crisis” in the most populous Arab country, where cuts in bread subsidies led to riots in 1977 that killed scores and forced the government to back down.
Observers say sustained problems in the subsidy system could lead to a repeat of the 1977 crisis, if not quickly contained.
“It may be something far more reaching and much more violent, I’m afraid, because people are increasingly feeling that their faces are to the wall,” said Gouda Abdel Khalek, a Cairo University economist.
Top Egyptian officials have vowed speedy intervention to restore easy access to subsidized bread, which provides daily nutrition to 50 million Egyptians – or over two-thirds of the population.
Sue Lerner – Associate, IMRA
Begin WorldNetDaily Article
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Silent’ famine sweeps globe
Rice, fertilizer shortages, food costs, higher energy prices equal world crisis
Posted: April 01, 2008
8:59 pm Eastern
WorldNetDaily
WASHINGTON – From India to Africa to North Korea to Pakistan and even in New York City, higher grain prices, fertilizer shortages and rising energy costs are combining to spell hunger for millions in what is being characterized as a global “silent famine.”
Global food prices, based on United Nations records, rose 35 percent in the last year, escalating a trend that began in 2002. Since then, prices have risen 65 percent.
Last year, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42 percent.
“This is the new face of hunger,” said Josetta Sheeran, director of the World Food Program, launching an appeal for an extra $500 million so it could continue supplying food aid to 73 million hungry people this year. “People are simply being priced out of food markets. … We have never before had a situation where aggressive rises in food prices keep pricing our operations out of our reach.”
The WFP launched a public appeal weeks ago because the price of the food it buys to feed some of the world’s poorest people had risen by 55 percent since last June. By the time the appeal began last week, prices had risen a further 20 percent. That means WFP needs $700 million to bridge the gap between last year’s budget and this year’s prices. The numbers are expected to continue to rise.
The crisis is widespread and the result of numerous causes – a kind of “perfect storm” leading to panic in many places:
In Thailand, farmers are sleeping in their fields because thieves are stealing rice, now worth $600 a ton, right out of the paddies.
Four people were killed in Egypt in riots over subsidized flour that was being sold for profit on the black market.
There have been food riots in Morocco, Senegal and Cameroon.
Mexico’s government is considering lifting a ban on genetically modified crops, to allow its farmers to compete with the United States.
Argentina, Kazakhstan and China have imposed restrictions to limit grain exports and keep more of their food at home.
Vietnam and India, both major rice exporters, have announced further restrictions on overseas sales.
Violent food protests hit Burkina Faso in February.
Protesters rallied in Indonesia recently, and media reported deaths by starvation.
In the Philippines, fast-food chains were urged to cut rice portions to counter a surge in prices.
Millions of people in India face starvation after a plague of rats overruns a region, as they do cyclically every 50 years.
Officials in Bangladesh warn of an emerging “silent famine” that threatens to ravage the region.
According to some experts, the worst damage is being done by government mandates and subsidies for “biofuels” that supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight climate change. Thirty percent of this year’s U.S. grain harvest will go to ethanol distilleries. The European Union, meanwhile, has set a goal of 10 percent bio-fuels for all transportation needs by 2010.
“A huge amount of the world’s farmland is being diverted to feed cars, not people,” writes Gwynne Dyer, a London-based independent journalist.
He notes that in six of the past seven years the human race has consumed more grain than it grew. World grain reserves last year were only 57 days, down from 180 days a decade ago.
One in four bushels of corn from this year’s U.S. crop will be diverted to make ethanol, according to estimates.
“Turning food into fuel for cars is a major mistake on many fronts,” said Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental group based in Washington.
“One, we’re already seeing higher food prices in the American supermarket. Two, perhaps more serious from a global perspective, we’re seeing higher food prices in developing countries where it’s escalated as far as people rioting in the streets.”
Palm oil is also at record prices because of biofuel demands. This has created shortages in Indonesia and Malaysia, where it is a staple.
Nevertheless, despite the recognition that the biofuels industry is adding to a global food crisis, the ethanol industry is popular in the U.S. where farmers enjoy subsidies for the corn crops.
Another contributing factor to the crisis is the demand for more meat in an increasingly prosperous Asia. More grain is used to feed the livestock than is required to feed humans directly in a traditional grain-based diet.
Bad weather is another problem driving the world’s wheat stocks to a 30-year low – along with regional droughts and a declining dollar.
“This is an additional setback for the world economy, at a time when we are already going through major turbulence,” Angel Gurria, head of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, told Reuters. “But the biggest drama is the impact of higher food prices on the poor.”
According to the organization, as well as the U.N., the price of corn could rise 27 percent in the next decade.
John Bruton, the European Union’s ambassador to the U.S., predicts the current trend is the beginning of a 10-15 year rise in food costs worldwide.
The rodent plague in India occurs about every half century following the heavy flowering of a local species of bamboo, providing the rodents with a feast of high-protein foliage. Once the rats have ravaged the bamboo, they turn on the crops, consuming hundreds of tons of rice and corn supplies.
Survivors of the previous mautam, which heralded widespread famine in 1958, say they remember areas of paddy fields the size of four soccer fields being devastated overnight.
In Africa, rats are seen as part of the answer to the food shortage. According to Africa News, Karamojongs have resorted to hunting wild rats for survival as famine strikes the area.
Supplies of fertilizer are extremely tight on the worldwide market, contributing to a potential disaster scenario. The Scotsman reports there are virtually no stocks of ammonium nitrate in the United Kingdom.
Global nitrogen is currently in deficit, a situation that is unlikely to change for at least three years, the paper reports.
South Koreans are speculating, as they do annually, on how many North Koreans will starve to death before the fall harvest.
But this year promises to be worse than usual.
Severe crop failure in the North and surging global prices for food will mean millions of hungry Koreans.
Roughly a third of children and mothers are malnourished, according to a recent U.N. study. The average 8-year-old in the North is 7 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than a South Korean child of the same age.
Floods last August ruined part of the main yearly harvest, creating a 25-percent shortfall in the food supply and putting 6 million people in need, according to the U.N. World Food Program.
Yesterday, the Hong Kong government tried to put a stop to panic-buying of rice in the city of 6.9 million as fears mounted over escalating prices and a global rice shortage. Shop shelves were being cleared of rice stocks as Hong Kong people reacted to news that the price of rice imported from Thailand had shot up by almost a third in the past week, according to agency reports.
Global food prices are even hitting home in New York City, according to a report in the Daily News.
Food pantries and soup kitchens in the city are desperately low on staples for the area’s poor and homeless.
The Food Bank for New York City, which supplies food to 1,000 agencies and 1.3 million people, calls it the worst problem since its founding 25 years ago.
Last year, the Food Bank received 17 million pounds of food through
the Emergency Food Assistance Program, less than half of the 35 million pounds it received in 2002. And donations from individuals and corporations are also down about 50 percent, according to the report.
High gas prices, increased food production costs and a move to foreign production of American food are contributing to the problem.
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