The World Catastrophe Wrought by Covid Lockdowns
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The latest index of world food prices was released by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on April 8th. The FAO’s Food Price Index climbed to 159.3 in March, which in real terms is roughly double its level in 2000, about 80% above its 2019 level, and the highest since records began in 1961.
This graph indicates that civil war and famine in poor countries are now inevitable. World food prices were already 40% above pre-lockdown levels at the start of 2022 due to supply chain disruptions, caused largely by covid containment measures instigated by governments around the world.
Factories closed and workforces were told to stay home even when they weren’t sick. Shipping costs increased because of arbitrary port closures that diverted containers and ships to the wrong places, so exporters struggled to find containers and when they did they couldn’t find ships to put them in. Food rotted in warehouses.
Then came the war in Ukraine, pushing the food situation into even more acute crisis mode.
While the world has plenty of spare food-growing capacity, it takes a few years for additional production to materialize. Existing farms can only slowly increase productivity or bring more land into cultivation. It only takes a month without food for a person to starve to death though, so a two-year food crisis means human catastrophe.
Some propagandists will point the finger at China, which is believed to have huge stockpiles of rice, maize and wheat – perhaps more than half the world’s reserves. Yet it has had those reserves for almost 10 years now. The Chinese have not suddenly bought up food since March 2020 in order to cause wars elsewhere.
How much political unrest is coming our way as a result of the global food shortage? A 2015 paper on the riots caused by food price spikes in 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 found that about two serious riots per month occurred when food prices rose 50% above previous levels. Four to six riots occurred when prices doubled.
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