Are We in the Early Stages of a Global Food Crisis?

So far, there are just some hints. Anecdotal evidence here and there. An unusually wet spring planting season for potatoes in America’s northwest led to a poor fall harvest. Where I live, America’s upper Midwest, a weak year for corn. In several parts of America, a much-reduced sugar beet harvest. World stocks of pigs down dramatically over the last few years due in large part to the spread of African Swine Fever, with China particularly hard hit. Canadian soybean yields down 9% since last year. Russian wheat output seems to have peaked in 2017. And on and on.

Okay, so I’m not an agricultural economist. Maybe shortfalls in one place are being made up by bumper crops in others. Perhaps news sources are selectively favoring bad news stories. If it bleeds, it leads.

If you spend a bit of time on YouTube, you’ll find a bunch of channels with posts about a coming food crisis. Many of them assign the blame for this to an upcoming Grand Solar Minimum that will allegedly cause a string of unusually bitter winters and short growing seasons. I have to admit that I’m a bit skeptical, none of them even try to explain why The Little Ice Age started before The Maunder Minimum.

That said, you won’t find much in the way of YT channels predicting increasing levels of food production.

Is 2019 an anomaly, or the start of a trend?

Pixabay (Michi-Nordlicht) image

(Posted to the Economics Community of beta.steemit.com)