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Are We Facing Famine in America?
Has our agribusiness model broken?
With a full page ad in the New York Times, Tyson Foods warned, “The food supply chain is breaking.” Tyson doesn’t seem to be alone in this sentiment. Many other large food producers have cut back, or shut down completely in the wake of the current pandemic.
What does the future hold for the agricultural model in this country, and is this something we should have seen coming? What can we do to stop it, or at least to live with the consequences of the choices Big Food has forced on our farms and farmers?
David Beasly the director of the UN food agency recently warned that the world could face a famine of Biblical proportions within a few months.
Facing a possible famine with a possibly broken agribusiness model, where do we go from here?
The Soviet Model
A teenage Ukrainian girl boarded the train to Kiev with her mother. They were a well-to-do family with both parents holding government offices. They lived in a small rural city and were going to Kiev to buy necessities that were not available locally. They carried with them the equivalent of several hundred dollars in order to stock up while they were in the capital.
