The Village Oak Tree
The War in Ukraine and Global Food Shortages by 2027?
Fáilte
The War in Ukraine and Global Food Shortages by 2027?
I’m your host, Terrance Ó Domhnaill.
Thank you for joining me again this week.
Things are a little bit quieter on the western front this week, but not by much. Trump is still being Trump and the congress is arguing about whether they should pay the Mafia Don the tribute he’s asking for.
The war in Iran is looking a little better, for now, but I don’t know for how much longer. It’s a little quiet this week as the diplomats are working things out, so they say. But that may change at a moment’s notice, as we all know by now.
What is heating up, is the war in Ukraine. And that’s where I lead off this week and I end with an economic outlook at late 2026 and into 2027. If we think grocery prices are high now, just wait.
So, gather round, sit you down somewhere comfortable for a bit while I bring you more stories from the world outside of your village. News that the western media isn’t talking about very much, if at all.
Last weekend, Ukraine hit a school in western Russia with a drone strike that killed twenty one people, and wounding several others, most of them teenagers attending the school. Russia is outraged, of course, and retaliated with what looks like an Oreshnik strike at a military air base near Kiev.
Western media ‘afraid to see truth’ – Russia’s human rights chief
Mainstream outlets could not even offer a plausible excuse for not visiting the college dorm destroyed by Kiev, Yana Lantratova has said
From RT News/Russia
The American former U.N. weapons inspector, now journalist, Scott Ritter, is speculating on RT News that it certainly looks like it was an Oreshnik strike.
Russia hit target ‘worthy of Oreshnik strike’ – Scott Ritter
Moscow is taking action in response to “atrocities” perpetrated by Kiev in Lugansk, the former UN weapons inspector has said
From RT News
Will the U.S. government come after him again for publicly siding with the Russians? Russia invited every western news outlet they could to tour the damaged school. A few did show up but the western press has been largely silent. Especially the U.S. and British press. It’s okay when the Ukrainians commit war crimes against the Russians, but when the Russians do something in retaliation, Europe and the west cry foul as loud as they can. There are rumors circulating in Russia that Putin is looking at mission plans for more strikes on Kiev.
Is this going to be the new boundary for weapons strikes going forward? If so, Russia will have a distinct advantage in munitions. All of that new found drone technology will be useless if Russia decides to break out some of their larger toys and deploy them beyond the front lines of the battlefield, like they just did last weekend.
Ukraine, as some of you might now, has upped their drone warfare technology in the last year or so and they’ve made some small advances on the front lines, but overall, they’re still losing the war of attrition against Russia. As I said last week, Russia is also losing patience and Putin has predicted an end to the conflict, one way or another, by the end of the summer.
Ukraine has a lot to answer for and once they finally surrender, and they will out of pure exhaustion. Then the Russians will come after the corrupt Ukrainian regime with a vengeance. Russia is not beholden to international law, although they do try to uphold basic law, as defined by the Russian courts. So, any Ukrainian officials stupid enough to get caught by the Russians after the surrender will end up in a Russian court and be tried for war crimes.
You can bet that once the Ukrainian army finally surrenders, the Ukrainian oligarch rats will run as fast as they can for the borders and do their best to find a friendly safe haven in the west. Most likely within a EU country, or in Britain, hoping for protection from Russian assassins. But I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit. The war isn’t over yet.
One of the stories that came to me since last week, was this news story from British independent journalist, Kit Klarenberg from his Substack, Global Delinquents.
In this riveting news story, he tells us about the Ukrainian special forces groups waging war in Mali, Africa, a once French colony. They’re using the training they received from the U.S. CIA and British MI6 to train ethnic Tuareg rebels and Al Qaeda militias to fight for regime change there. The primary reason for the Ukrainians, is to force the Russians out, as they’re supporting the current military junta government there, along with a couple of other African governments in the region.
He references the French news outlet RTL from May 13th, who wrote about all of this as, apparently, Kiev wants to destabilize the region, long encouraged by the CIA and MI6. They’re trying to help the French retake Mali and the neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. All of whom kicked the French out back in 2022. All of these militia groups are being backed by the west, with Ukraine leading the charge on the ground against the Russian Afrika Korps., who used to be Russian Wagner mercenaries.
What everyone in the world should be watching for, is for this to expand further. As I told someone last weekend, World War III will probably not start in Europe, but in central Africa.
The Mali crisis could have a dangerous spillover effect
The Sahel region could see a major surge of instability unless urgent action is taken to seek a diplomatic solution.
By Mohamed El Hajj Mahmoud El Talib for Al Jazeeera
Any major war there could easily spread to the middle east, such as in the gulf states region, whose nation states are already at odds with one another in Sudan. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been backing the opposition parties in the Sudan war because of Sudan’s resources the last few years. Much like the war in Yemen not so long ago between the Saudi’s and the UAE. The UAE seems to be the belligerent in several of these little proxy wars in that region within the last few years. And now, they dropped out of OPEC recently because they’re mad at the Saudi’s and Iran. For such a small country, they seem to want to get involved in foreign affairs much bigger than themselves a lot lately.
But I digress. We’re supposed to be talking about Ukraine and Russia. The Ukrainians are being vocally public in their propaganda news media, that they want to push Russia and China completely out of Africa. Which I don’t think will happen. They apparently feel inspired by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, who pushed out the previous Russia supported Assad government.
What us regular everyday people who want to be able to eat at least two meals a day should be worried about, is if the Ukrainians and their proxy militias do what they say they want to do in central Africa, which is to disrupt Russia’s food supply chain from this region by using drones to take out agrochemical plants and other refining and chemical production assets, how much will this disrupt the global food supply chain across the rest of the world?
If the Ukrainians take out the fertilizer plants that provide agrochemicals to farmers around the world, in addition to the already slowed down production from the gulf states because of the Iran war, what will food growing capacities world-wide look like by the spring of 2027?
In this article, the writer asks the existential question. Will world-wide famine caused by food supply choke points be the start of a new world war? One fought by deliberately starving millions of people around the world? Gaza and Sudan may be only the first casualties in this new type of warfare.
Adding to that scary thought, is the real possibility that by the end of this year, the El Niño Pacific ocean warming cycle may become a super El Niño by early 2027. Which will cause possible catastrophic drought conditions all over North America and into Europe. Which will create havoc with the agriculture industries around the world.
During the El Niño cycles, the eastern Pacific gets heat waves, while the western Pacific usually gets very wet. All of that hot, moist air creates lots of big storms with lots of flooding, which leads to loss of crops and so on as it cascades across the global food supply chain.
Something like this will have a major effect on agriculture in China, south east Asia and west Asia. Places like northern Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and so on.
I have another great article from Ms. Sarah Conner about the price of groceries. She writes about what’s coming to everyone’s neighborhood grocer by the end of this year, no matter how soon they open the straits of Hormuz.
Why has a catastrophic raw-material shock not yet reached the grocery store?
“a perfect storm”
By Sarah Connor in Collapse2050
It’s very detailed but to summarize it some, the high prices we’re seeing and complaining about now, are just the beginning of what’s coming by the end of the Gregorian calendar year. She writes that because of the long global supply chain, the grocery warehouses won’t be completely empty until about the time the Americans and Canadians celebrate their Thanksgiving holidays and beyond.
What that means, is that grocery chains typically stack up non-perishable foods in warehouses to last a while in case of food supply disruptions, such as what we’ve experienced on and off since 2020. Especially since the Covid lockdowns.
The trouble is, with all of the fertilizer disruptions taking place this year, the effects of that won’t be felt for months yet. Once this year’s harvests are brought in and the yields are less than usual, due to the lack of fertilizers, the food producers who make and package all of that food will be caught short.
She explains that grocery chains typically stock up anywhere from six to nine month’s - worth of inventory, and, because of the supply chain disruptions coming from the gulf and now, possibly central Africa, they won’t be resupplied to anywhere near the amounts they had before the war. It’s not that they won’t stock them (although there has been some of that due to Trump’s tariffs), they just won’t be there anymore or be in a lot less quantities.
She says we can expect to start seeing empty shelves by next winter as the raw agriculture we import around the world to make food products with, won’t be available in sufficient quantities anymore, with some just not available at all.
There will likely be less grain to feed the cattle that we slaughter for the grocery stores. Which means leaner beef in the future, and probably less of it. The same for pigs and chickens, who all eat a lot of grain to fatten them up for our tables.
What happens to the prices we pay when a commodity starts to become scarce? They go up and up. The less available something we want becomes, the higher the prices will get. The basics of economics 101. The law of supply and demand.
The days of the United States being able to grow enough of its own food to feed its people are long gone. With fertilizer imports severely disrupted for the next several months, if not years, the farmers around the world are all up against a wall. A lot of them can’t afford the factory made fertilizers they used to import now, so they’ll resort to less efficient fertilizers, such as manure, or go without. All of which will give smaller crop yields and maybe even endanger people in the U.S. because Trump fired nearly all of the food inspectors.
The only countries that will be the least affected, will be China and its nearest neighbors in southeast Asia and maybe, South Korea, as long as they behave. Japan would have to offer Owabi with many low bows before China would offer much help. China will suffer a small disruption but Chinese ships have been transiting the straits fairly regularly since the conflict started at the end of February. There were some delays at first over security concerns but once the IRGC put China on the good boy list, Chinese ships were granted exceptions and allowed to come and go. Even the Americans didn’t dare challenge any Chinese flagged ships when they started their blockade to stop the blockade.
Without the raw materials to make the fertilizers, factories across the world are shutting down production due to a lack of materials to make refined fertilizers with.
This shutdown could take upwards of twelve months to fully emerge in the grocery stores across the world but when it finally arrives, it will come like a sucker punch to the face.
North America will be one of the last places to be hit but they will not escape, just delayed a bit behind Europe and Australia. Canada, with its pot ash fertilizer factories may be able to ward off some of this but not all, as the world is now economically connected more than ever before.
The weak link in all of that global interconnectivity is, as we’re seeing right now, that all it takes is one major disruption in the global supply chain and the house of cards comes tumbling down for everyone across the planet.
Once a majority of the global population starts living with severe food shortages for the poorest among us, unrest becomes worse. Europe is already seeing some angry mutterings about all of the money being spent on military buildups by their scared near to death old politicians. They’re more worried about losing their social benefits, than any Russian invasion. They’re watching the cost of living across Europe skyrocket, while their governments toy with the idea of military conscription. Major companies are downsizing and pushing mass layoffs in once very stable industries. Germany being the most prominent of them all right now. The EU council is floundering around like a fish out of water because they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. They want to fight Russia but they know they don’t have the military assets to do so. They’re working on that, at the expense of their once lauded social programs.
The Yanks have pulled away and Trump levied severe tariffs that near crippled some European economies. It’s going to take a while for them to reorientate to someone else to trade with, and provide the missing security umbrella they thought would never go away. In the meantime, a lot of people in Europe are skipping meals and health care to try and survive another day. So much for nationalized health care systems. They’ve largely become just emergency rooms for the poor, because the governments don’t have enough money to keep them going. This includes the British NHS.
Britain is on its last legs economically. Their government is getting ready to recycle another prime minister soon, and their economy is slowly crashing into the seas. There is no one left in Europe that can help them anymore, not that they would do all of that much anyway after the British snubbed them with Brexit those few years ago.
Now that Trump and company is insulting everyone and stiffing them all like a Mafia Capo, they’re running around like Chicken Little, crying that the sky is falling, instead of working with whomever they can. Including the largest exporter in the world, the Chinese, to diversify away from the U.S. Rather than tucking tail and being gracious, they would rather show everyone that western European stiff upper lip and pout about why no one feels sorry for them.
I truly hope the Russians can end the war in Ukraine this year. I agree with them. Enough is enough. It’s time to end it once and for all, and everyone will have to accept the terms offered by the victors. Screw the spoiled little Ukrainians. Or at least the corrupt government in Kiev anyway. Once Russia brings stability back to the region, the majority of the Ukrainian people can try to pick up the pieces and try to get along with everyone. They have a lot to offer the world, if only the corrupt oligarchs around the world would let them.
The only downside to a battlefield surrender to the Russians, is that someone will have to deal with all of those neo-Nazis in eastern Ukraine who will try to continue the war, guerilla style. They hate anyone who speaks Russian and they hate anyone they consider Russian collaborators. They were like this for years before the special military operation started and they aren’t going to go away quietly. Putin is going to have his hands full with them once everyone else stands down finally.
As for the Ukrainian special ops troops in Africa, who knows. I guess it will depend on how many of them will return home and how many others will try to carry on the fight against the Russian Afrika Korps. It could get very messy, despite a surrender and formal cessation of hostilities in Ukraine.
Will Europe continue to support these Ukrainian terrorist groups under the table after a formal surrender? That’s another question for after the war is officially over. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say the answer is yes. The U.S. CIA, British MI6 and NATO will continue their clandestine war against the Russians in perpetuity. Unless the European people stop them.
If allowed to continue, the Russians and Chinese will be forever locked in a existential struggle for survival against these colonial mindset governments in the west for decades to come.
Maybe a global food shortage will convince people to force their governments to stop the war mongering and start taking care of their people for once. We can only hope.
That’s all I have for you this week. This is where I take a short break, then I have the next chapter of The Priest to read for you. More retrospection from our intrepid heroes of the next dystopian apocalypse. I’ll add the link to The Priest below.
I’m trying to draw some attention to my website at https://crann-na-beatha.com these days. I have made it more mobile friendly for those who prefer to scroll the internet with their mobile devices. Use the link in the image at top to visit with me there, where I have a separate blog with a more personal viewpoint on the events of the week, plus a lot more. If you do check it out, let me know your thoughts using the contact page. I’d love to hear from anyone around the world who cares to weigh in on what’s going on where they live.
Warning, there is an instance of adult language in this episode
Go raibh maith agat, thank you for watching or listening to the show today. I hope you enjoyed it and that you’ll return again to listen to me offer a voice to what a lot of people are thinking these days.
As I say good bye this week, I will leave you with this quote from Dr. Art Laffer. “It is not true that congress spends money like a drunken sailor. Congress spends our money.” Slán go fóill.