The California Drought: Steps Towards Food Shortage

There have been some people who have been talking about coming food shortages for a number of years now.  While it’s easy to dismiss them as alarmists and fear mongers, things are happening today which may lend credence to what these people have been saying for some time.

We are currently faced with a number of man-made disasters, each of which has an effect on our food supplies. While we could easily weather one of these events, each one makes the situation a little bit worse. We may soon reach the point where food shortages abound. Some countries may very well be at that point today.

Let’s take a look at three different events:

• The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
• The Fukushima reactor accident
• Drought in Southern California

After four years, you’d think that the effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico were over. This isn’t the first oil spill that has happened and nature seems to be fairly well equipped to overcome these incidents. While oil spills always kill a large amount of sea life, the spilled petroleum dissipates and populations recover. Yet four years later, the fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico is still reeling. Catches are skimpy, driving up costs.

If we look at the Exxon Valdez oil spill, we see that some of the worst effects of an oil spill can take years to manifest. Eight years after that oil spill, the herring hatcheries collapsed, drastically reducing the number of herring in the Pacific Ocean.

That problem pales in comparison to the Fukushima reactor accident, caused by an earthquake and tsunami in March of 2011. Dead fish and other sea creatures are washing up on California shores, indicating the possibility that pretty much all seafood in the Pacific Ocean are contaminated. While there are many sources declaring that seafood from the Pacific Ocean is safe to eat, there are others who are screaming “government cover-up.” With the low level of confidence in what comes out of Washington today, it’s hard to believe any reports that this seafood is safe to eat.

Now we add the recent drought in Southern California. This problem was actually not unexpected. Planners have realized for years that there wasn’t enough water in Southern California to support the agricultural industry there. In order to protect farmers and their produce, California officials started working on building the infrastructure to provide water to Southern California as much as 50 years ago.

All that planning and investment has gone to waste though, with a simple stroke of the pen from Washington. No, this wasn’t Obama’s pen, but rather the pen of some nameless bureaucrat in the EPA. New regulations require that water which has been collected to support the farmers and population of Southern California be given instead to the Delta Smelt, which is considered an endangered species.

Without that water, something like 700,000 acres of farmland, which is normally seeded to produce vegetables, will go untilled this year. Farmers are scrambling to drill wells, in the hope of finding water to grow their crops; but that’s an expensive and time-consuming process, which may not show fruit for a couple of years.

The state of California, acting on behalf of the farmers and residents have filed suit against the federal government, demanding that this water be released back to the residents of California, so that it can be used for its intended purposes. However, this suit was overridden in federal court, giving the EPA the right to steal California’s water.

These aren’t the only things happening to affect our food supplies, merely a sampling of the worst. However, it’s enough to see that on a worldwide basis, food supplies are dwindling. Between industrial accidents and environmental groups the world’s food supply is under constant attack.

Those who are attacking our food supplies aren’t concerned; their focus is on other things. The environmentalists see man as a parasitic species on the face of the earth. They don’t care if their actions cause food prices to rise. They don’t even care if their actions cause the death of millions of people; they are more interested in saving the lives of fish or even insects.

With all these actions, it’s clear that the world is heading for a food shortage. Not because we can’t produce enough food, but because mankind’s ability to produce that food is being attacked on every side. While we may not feel the effects as strongly here in the United States as other countries, we will feel it in higher food prices in the checkout line. Other countries will feel it in empty bellies and malnutrition.

It is clear that the more we can become self-sufficient in our food supplies, the better. As government actions and future disasters continue to erode the world’s food supplies, food prices will continue to climb. Food shortages will become more and more common. Those who are self-sufficient in their food production will be affected much less than everyone else.

This trend supports another trend we are seeing in the prepper community today; that of becoming more self-sufficient. As the prepping movement matures, preppers are not just stockpiling, but turning to homesteading and self-sufficiency.

They aren’t just putting their efforts into being ready for the disaster which will strike tomorrow, but preparing for the low-key disaster which we live with each and every day.

I have only one thing to say to those who are making this switch: well done!

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.