We're not talking enough about the looming African food crisis.

La Niña in the Horn + 40% increase in wheat prices + 40-50% reductions in crop yields due to lack of fertilizer.

show full tweet

Government officials seem as likely to make it worse as to make it better.

Ukraine is a major wheat producer, but war is likely to ensure a poor spring planting and harvest. Russia is also a major grower, but sanctions and war will prevent it from exporting to most of the world.

Russia is also a major manufacturer of fertilizer; in fact, it is the world’s largest. Second on the list is . . . China, a nation aligned with Russia and notably unfriendly to the United States and the West. (Canada is a distant third.) That has people worried.

The issue is that farmland without fertilizer is vastly less productive. Without fertilizer, corn and wheat yields in the United States would decline by more than 40%.

We’re looking at really dramatic increases in food prices. In the West this will mean discomfort. Elsewhere it will mean starvation. Bureaucrats aren’t helping.

Scottish farmers and planners have asked the government to allow farmland programmed for “rewilding” to be put back into production in response to anticipated food shortages. [...] Nature emergencies outrank human emergencies in the green world.

But don’t worry — the government and NGO officials behind it won’t miss any meals. Consequences are for the little people.

Some [responsible for the upcoming situation] will. After all, food shortages led to the Arab Spring riots and the overturning of governments.)

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s response to concerns about fertilizer and food shortages: “Maybe sacrifices are necessary.” You can rest assured Vilsack won’t be the one making them.