Full screen recommended.
"Two Shortages That Threaten To Absolutely
Eviscerate The Global Economy In 2022"
by Epic Economist
"We were promised that things would be getting back to normal at this point. But of course, those promises were empty. And here we are at the end of January 2022, realizing that our problems have only gotten worse. As we move forward into February and beyond, we should keep a close eye on two key global shortages that are threatening to disrupt the American status quo. The first is the rapidly spreading fertilizer shortage. It seems that all over the globe, agricultural fertilizing supplies are getting increasingly tighter. The situation is escalating so quickly that even our biased mainstream media is already reporting alarming updates about this shortage. A couple of days ago, the Wall Street Journal ominously warned that “high fertilizer prices are weighing on farmers all across the world”.
The article highlighted that from South America’s avocado, corn and coffee farms to Southeast Asia’s plantations of coconuts and oil palms, skyrocketing fertilizer prices are impacting farmers in every corner of the planet, making it much more expensive to cultivate and forcing many to cut back on production. As a consequence, that means our grocery bills will go up even more in the coming months, following a year in which global food prices have already risen by over 30 percent. And this relentless rise in the cost of food is going to exacerbate hunger crises and food insecurity. In America, at least 24 million people still need aid to have enough to eat. Even more concerning, in Africa, surging fertilizer prices can cause an acute decline in agricultural output, “equivalent to the food needs of 100 million people”, according to the International Fertilizer Development Center.
That’s a very big deal, and if global leaders don’t act to prevent that from happening, we might witness a tragic humanitarian crisis this year. Unfortunately, if we do get to this point, governments and corporations are likely to prioritize profits over human lives, given that consumer demand for food is at all-time highs. We can only hope that doesn’t happen. At the same time, here in the United States, fertilizer shortages and rising prices are also already affecting millions of farmers in the nation. In a recent opinion piece authored by U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, he argued that by now it is no secret that this crisis is having a major impact on domestic food production.
“Prices for phosphorus-based and potassium-based fertilizers have more than doubled in Kansas while Nitrogen-based fertilizers have more than quadrupled. Fertilizer is vital to feeding not only the country but the world. It contains essential nutrients for plant life, and without it, American agricultural yields will quickly suffer as well as food prices in local grocery stores,” Marshall stressed. “If we want to help people in need the best play is to get inflation under control and to encourage economic growth – not stifle it. The unfortunate reality is this is only the beginning. And the effects felt by fertilizer prices at the farm will also be felt at the fork,” he warned.
Moreover, the other shortage that we all need to pay attention to is the worsening computer chip shortage. A new report released by the Department of Commerce revealed that U.S. chip inventories “have become dangerously thin”. Today, the semiconductors needed to produce automobiles and medical devices to meet our national demand are in such short supply that our industries are losing several billion that could be used to generate more jobs and boost economic growth. According to the Washington Post, industry insiders aren’t very optimistic about the near-term outlook for chip production. They say that although federal funding could help build up the long-term supply of chips, it wouldn’t help in the short term because chip factories cannot be built overnight.
Every single industry requires semiconductors to make their machinery, and in some cases, their products operate properly. The vast majority of chip consumers surveyed by the department estimated that shortages will not go away in this year, and some suggested it could take another year until production is normalized. Over the past decade, we’ve become perilously dependent on chips sourced from Asia, and more specifically, from Taiwan.
That’s why, it is “both an economic and national security imperative to solve this crisis," Raimondo says. If the trade conflict between China and Taiwan escalates to an aggressive confrontation, it means that our computer chip supply chain will be completely cut off. Needless to say, things are looking very scary. We should start thinking about all of these issues and the possible outcomes because what was once “unimaginable” can become very real in 2022."
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