In Ukraine, a bomb landed next to a huge grain silo. The silo was blown to bits and from a satellite in space, the golden grain can be seen flung all over the countryside. Starvation. War is not kind nor considerate. Russia is targeting the agriculture of Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia together export 10% of all wheat and 16% of all corn to the world. North Africa is the main buyer. Over 400 million people depend on grain supplies from Ukraine only.

Russia will win, but what they win will be a crippled, destroyed, angry country that will take millions of dollars to reconstruct- millions the Russians don’t have.

Russa wants that grain. If they can’t have it- no one will. Millions of people will starve and millions more will fall into poverty.  The global food shortage will not be just for one year it will last for years. Mr. Putin is using food as a weapon.

But that is just the tip of the melting wheat-berg. Even before the invasion of Ukraine, the World Food Program had predicted that 2022 would be a low global food yield.  China, the largest wheat producer, claims that after heavy rains delayed planting this year's crop, yields may be the lowest ever. Sprinkle in the rising cost of petroleum-based fertilizers and gas to run tractors and you have shrinking profit margins for farmers. As farmers cut back on fertilizers, yields will be lower. Add extreme temperatures in India, second in world wheat production, and world droughts from America to France to Africa and you have a very small loaf of bread. We knew Global Warming would be a problem, but we have been too distracted with Covid and wars and Johnny Depp’s divorce to notice.

Even here in the country of plenty, the heavy dependency on the wheat industry has a looming problem. The American wheat industry in the central part of the USA receives very little rainfall – average 20-30 inches. The water used to grow crops, predominantly wheat and corn, is well over the amount of rainfall average. Farmers have been drawing from an aquafer called the Ogallala Aquafer. It is the largest aquafer in the United States. Farmers have been tapping into this aquafer for years but what farmers are finding is that they must draw deeper and deeper to get enough water for their crops- the ground water is being depleted.

The farmers know it. They call it ‘Day Zero” -the day when the wells run dry. Scientists predict a 70% depleted aquifer in less than 50 years. This is serious because a ¼ of the nation’s crops come from this area.

There are things we can do. Czechoslovakia is also dependent on groundwater. After a drought in 2015, they started to proactively working on replenishing their aquifer. They designed catchment ponds and started a program to drain wastewater into the ground instead of the rivers. They found it helped their aquifers. We could stop feeding grains to animals and cut back on global meat eating. It takes more than double the grain to make the same amount of caloric food. We can strengthen local food markets, ban development on agricultural land, and one more thing that nobody likes to hear – more people working in growing food. All the dot-com weaklings will have to develop some muscles because you can’t eat video games.

If we were logical beings, this time of global uncertainty should be used to unite and create solutions. Instead, we are frustratingly unpredictable, petty, and near-sighted. So, Russia blows up the grain silos and the US can’t do anything about it because we could start World War III. – pathetic.

Humanity, with our ego-maniac intelligence, enters into the age of world consciousness with a war no one will win. Seeing a dangerous future, you would think that we would choose our path carefully. It could be a cooperative world, with women’s rights, family planning, healthy foods, political stability, interdependence, and a future. But it is becoming clear that thoughtful people are not in charge. I guess our future is selling more AK-47s to 18-year-olds, suppressing women so we can continue to increase our bulging, hungry population, and fighting amongst ourselves until there is nothing left - or Christ gets here to straighten the whole mess out.