The Unwanted Visitor Coming to Breakfast

An aged Indian, an elderly woman, and her granddaughter are prisoners of a band of Comancheros in the film The Outlaw Josey Wales. The old woman, dragged behind a wagon, is almost dead from exhaustion when the chief notices Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) watching them from a nearby hill. “Get ready, little lady,” he says. “Hell is coming to breakfast.” Then Josey Wales rides through the bandit gang and blows all the bad guys into eternity.           

Hell may soon be coming to breakfast around the globe. Or rather, for our breakfasts.             

Russia and Ukraine are at war. It’s a no-holds-barred fight, with each side allegedly inflicting terrible casualties on the other.

It’s tough to reap a harvest of crops in the middle of a war or to ship it to other countries when the ports are blocked. And in Russia and Ukraine, those crops include grains, especially wheat.           

These two countries provide about 30 percent of the world’s grains and fertilizers. The conflict in Ukraine will inflict widespread higher prices on food and may even bring famine in poorer countries, as Monica Showalter notes at American Thinker. She writes that “the United Nations says food prices are likely to rise 20 percent worldwide as a result of this war.”           

According to Showalter, countries like the Philippines are ordering large amounts of grain “just to get some kind of cushion for what’s coming down the pike.” Other grain-producing countries are limiting exports to make sure their own people have enough to eat.           

This doesn’t bode well for anyone.             

As we all know, grains—wheat, rye, barley, oats, and so on—are an essential part of our human diet, going into bread, flour, breakfast cereals, soups, and many other products. When major producers fail to grow grain, especially in today’s global economy, millions of people may soon find themselves paying whopping-high prices for a loaf of bread … and facing starvation if they can’t pay those prices. Livestock depend on these cereal crops as well, meaning that there may be even higher prices for beef and dairy products in the grocery store.           

Exacerbating these problems, particularly in Ukraine, are shortages of fuel, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer. Even if the war were to end today, some farmers in that country are predicting their harvest will be only half of what it was in previous years. When you can’t get the fuel to fill a tractor, the harvest dies in the field.           

As Showalter also reports, food shortages and spiraling costs, especially in the world’s poorer countries, have in the past led to riots, revolution, and mass migration. She points us back to 2008, when a food crisis led to unrest around the world and helped produce the “Arab Spring.”

Meanwhile, the state of our crops and farms here in the United States is also rather disturbing, as John Klar tells us in “Food, famine, fear: Beware the great agricultural reset.” “Food security will be the future battleground in America,” he writes, adding an ominous quote from Henry Kissinger, “Control the oil, control the nations. Control the food, control the people.”

The warning bells are ringing, alerting us to a storm in the making. The question is: Are we paying attention? More specifically, are those in government aware of this possible catastrophe? Do they care what happens to ordinary Americans? Given their track record so far, I wouldn’t make book on it.

So here are a few pieces of advice for readers. Stock up now on pastas and canned goods. If you’re a lover of breakfast cereals, put in a good supply of Cheerios and granola. If your town or city has a farmer’s market, buy from the men and women who are your neighbors. Likewise, if you have the means and the space in your freezer, purchase meat from local suppliers. If you have the yard area, consider planting a vegetable garden. Go heavy on those veggies, like potatoes and onions, that have a long shelf-life in storage.

If nothing else, investing in food will save you money during the inflationary period we now find ourselves in. If everything goes south, you may still have something to eat.

As is usual these days, we can no longer depend on our government to watch our backs. Some of us will soon be paying the Feds thousands of dollars in income taxes, and all we’ll get in return are empty promises and a shrug of the shoulders.

The time has come once again when we must look out for ourselves and our families. Hell is coming. But this isn’t a movie: Clint Eastwood is not going to save us.

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