The epidemic is deep, but there are more serious things happening.
A week ago, the UN Secretary-General said:
The crisis in Ukraine could plunge as many as 1.7 billion people into poverty and hunger, and more than a fifth of the world's population will be left without food.
Just as severe as the fight against the epidemic is that
The upcoming "hunger pattern" will be unprecedented,
We may face the "biggest food crisis since World War II."
01
The landlord's family also had no surplus grain
In 2019, Guadalupe, 37, immigrated to the United States from Mexico with two children, the eldest being 17 and the youngest only 2.
Three years ago, she was able to support her family by working as a cleaner.
But in the spring of 2020, the sudden epidemic swept the world, and the old owner who had worked for six years helplessly fired her.
Unemployment, frugality, and receiving relief food are the portrayal of life in the past two years.
But she was not the only poor in New York.
Relief stations are almost a source of livelihood for low-income people.
However, due to funding, shortages of volunteers, and rising food prices, a large number of food relief stations in New York City have now ceased to operate.
Freezing three feet is not a cold day.
Since last year, new York's relief stations have been lined up.
At two or three o'clock in the morning,
The truck waiting for the relief food was out of sight.
There is a last meal, not a next meal,
It is being staged in the most developed city, New York, USA.
The same is the United States,
A food pantry in Virginia,
Ten years ago, 10 bags of relief food were sent out every week.
However, at present, the United States has to help about 1,000 people every month, and at present, 20% of virginia's population depends on food relief to survive.
What is even more incredible is that among the relief food recipients, the "post-90s" actually account for the majority.
Official figures show:
In 2020, 3.3 million new people will be poor in the United States.
Today, U.S. inflation is at its highest level in 31 years, and the number of poor people continues to rise.
Who would have thought that in the days when the coal mining industry was at its peak, Virginia was one of the most economically developed regions in the United States, and who would have thought that 1 in 5 people here today would need to rely on food subsidies to survive.
There is also the enviable rich island nation of Japan,
The per capita GDP is 40,000 US dollars, which is about 260,000 yuan.
But the reality is staggering.
Yuichiro, 46, is a construction worker.
The epidemic has left him completely unemployed, and he also lives on relief food.
In the past six months, 500,000 Japanese people have lost their jobs.
And the twin of Japan's unemployment rate is the suicide rate.
For every 1 percent increase in Japan's unemployment rate, the number of suicides increases by about 3,000.
A large part of the reason for the rise in suicide rates stems from economic hardship.
Proud Britain is not immune.
In the past, a relief station served about 20 poor families, but today, 140 families are vying for the only relief resources they have to make ends meet.
In 2020, UNICEF announced for the first time in its 70th anniversary that it would provide food to hungry children in the UK to ease the supply strain in food banks.
British children, whose sense of superiority was full, also ate the relief food of the United Nations.
It is predicted that in the next three months,
Nearly 1 in 10 parents in the UK need food relief to support their children.
02
Global food hoarding
On April 22, Indonesia's president abruptly announced a ban on edible oil exports.
Subsequently, Argentina, Moldova, Hungary and Serbia have also banned some food exports.
But what really shakes the lifeblood of global grain is Russia and Ukraine.
Russia is a major global exporter of crops, energy and fertilizers.
With an annual wheat yield of 80 million tons, nearly 1/3 of which is exported, it is truly the world's largest wheat exporter.
Sunflower oil, barley and corn are all exported.
More importantly, Russia is the world's largest exporter of fertilizers.
After Europe and the United States announced sanctions against Russia,
Russia directly countered: the suspension of exports of fertilizers.
As a result, there is a shortage of energy and raw materials in the international market, and energy prices are soaring on a rocket, directly leading to the rise in fertilizer prices, and the impact on global agriculture is self-evident.
Ukraine, known as the "granary of Europe", has a land area of 600,000 square kilometers, but it is the world's third largest grain producer.
With 14 countries more than 10% dependent on Ukrainian wheat, it can be said that Ukraine plays a pivotal role in the global food supply.
Since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Ukraine has announced a ban on the export of grain.
And the local area is about to miss the spring sowing and fertilization season,
This year's grain production plummeted at a rate visible to the naked eye.
One is a food exporter, the other is a fertilizer supplier,
This war has already spread the disaster across the globe.
Roughly speaking, there are 25 countries in the world, and at least half of the food supply needs to rely on Russia and Ukraine.
After Russia suspended fertilizer exports, Farmers in Ukraine suffered first, as they did not have access to the fertilizers and chemicals they needed, and because of the severe shortage of fuel for tractors and other agricultural equipment.
The workers either quit their jobs and joined the army or left Ukraine to see what it meant to be "few people in the wilderness."
Ukraine's Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food, Roman Leshchenko, who just stepped down in March, revealed that Ukraine's spring sowing area this year could be more than halved from 2021 to about 7 million hectares, compared with the pre-conflict forecast of 15 million hectares.
A field of sunflowers and wheat in eastern Ukraine
The cut in production is bound to affect exports, and Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food, Taras Vysotsky, said that in the best case, agricultural exports this year will also fall by one-fifth from last year, but there is a possibility of a larger decline.
In addition to production cuts, logistical disruptions have also hampered Ukraine's ability to export agricultural products, with 85 percent of crop exports going by sea, but commercial operations in Ukrainian ports are currently suspended.
The Russo-Ukrainian war lasted for a month, and the international price of wheat rose by 36%.
Biden, who often says the wrong thing, has finally got his IQ online recently, and at a press conference, he said bluntly:
"The food shortages caused by the situation in Russia and Ukraine are real".
"Food Crisis",
At one point, it rushed to the top of the hot search in the past 12 months.
Before the Russo-Ukrainian War was over, many countries could not stand it.
Lebanon, 90% of wheat is dependent on Russian-Ukrainian imports, affected by the Russo-Ukrainian war, Lebanon has recently been communicating with the United States, Canada, Australia, India and other markets.
Unfortunately, sellers have not yet been able to find it, and soaring wheat prices have stretched Lebanon to the limit.
Lebanon is currently in the midst of its worst economic crisis in decades, with its central bank's holdings of dollar reserves falling to $16 billion in August 2021.
Last year, Lebanon's food inflation rate has soared to 350%!
Facing the same dilemma are Afghanistan, Sudan and other countries.
The World Food Programme reports that 95 per cent of households in Afghanistan face food insecurity, which translates to this: lack of food.
Sadly, there is not just one Afghanistan that is starving.
In 2020, instead of shrinking the number of chronically hungry people, humanity added 132 million more worldwide.
The 2030 Zero Hunger goal set by the United Nations is no longer achievable.
03
China's rice bowl - stable happiness
There is a strange phenomenon in the 2021 Global Hunger Index (GHI) rankings: with 170 million hectares of arable land, and ranking first in the world, India, which has a higher per capita arable land area than China, ranks 101st, ranking lower than North Korea, Sudan, Mali and other countries! It is "severely hungry" and has one of the highest levels of hunger in the world.
What concept?
There are 800 million hungry people worldwide, 200 million in India.
Images of people and animals snatching food from garbage can be seen everywhere.
Compared with China, only 7% of the world's arable land supports nearly 20% of the world's population.
Many people only know that China is the world's largest grain importer, but they do not know that China's total grain output has been more than 600 million tons for 7 consecutive years.
Wheat and rice, which are the main grains, have long since ceased to need to be imported, and the self-sufficiency rate is more than 95%!
In order to let the people of the whole country keep the bowl in their hands,
Our motherland has long been prepared for the rainy day.
At the beginning of the outbreak in 2020,
Many countries around the world have banned the export of food.
At the same time that Wuhan is building Vulcan Mountain Hospital day and night, a magical building is rising from the ground in Chengdu!
This is the COFCO Chengdu base, in order to store more grain, 128 people spent 15 days, built a 90,000-ton shallow round warehouse, just to expand the granary.
China's speed is legendary, and such granaries are not in the minority at home.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said:
"Whoever controls oil controls all countries; whoever controls the currency controls the global economy; whoever controls the food controls the human race."
The United States seems to have found the trick to it.
It has always controlled the fate of the world's food.
The world's four major grain merchants and three giants - ADM, Bunge, Cargill,
It is a tool manipulated by the United States.
The rise and fall of the price is all within the calculation.
In Haiti, because the four major grain merchants launched a food war to push up international grain prices, an unprecedented food crisis directly broke out.
In order to make ends meet, eat soil all day long.
Of course, the United States also tries to raise the price of grain in China with this move.
Even secretly spend money to buy a large amount of Chinese grain.
But they neglected to store grain,
Because just when the international grain price soared, the Grain Reserve was sold!
Like a needle in the haystack, the price of grain was quickly stabilized.
The United States can only helplessly admit that this road is not feasible.
It has become an indisputable fact that the war between Russia and Ukraine led to a sharp rise in global grain prices, but unexpectedly, the United States once again jumped up and down and pointed directly at China.
Recently, Bloomberg issued a document accusing: "China's import and hoarding of grain, blind pursuit of grain self-sufficiency has led to a rise in global food prices." ”
In the rhythm of the United States, the younger brother Japan immediately spoke:
Although China's wheat stocks can already meet the nation's 18-month supply, it is still importing grain, and China needs to be responsible for rising global food prices and for famine in poor countries.
Well, since the mention of responsibility,
Gua Mei wants to let everyone see how China is responsible.
04
Global assistance
Over the years, while China has ensured self-sufficiency, its foreign food aid has never stopped.
Assistance to Sri Lanka
Assistance to Afghanistan.
Assistance to Kenya.
Assistance to Africa.
Far from mentioning, just say recently.
On April 23, Afghans received Chinese aid in the capital, Kabul.
1,500 people living in extreme poverty have received China's "life-saving food."
This is the fifth batch of food for the Chinese government's humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan earlier this month.
And what does the United States, which self-labels our Lady, do?
In 2021, the United States announced the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and then quickly froze the $7 billion assets of the former Afghan government in the United States.
In the 20 years that the US military has been in Afghanistan, the Afghan people have suffered from war and become the country with the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world.
Statistics from the United Nations World Food Programme show that:
After the hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, more than half of the country's population (23 million people) were severely starved, 95% of whom could not meet their daily diets, and 3.2 million Afghan children under the age of 5 were severely malnourished. 3.4 million people were displaced.
I remember that a reporter once asked Academician Yuan Longping:
Are you particularly afraid that a scene like famine will recur?
Elder Yuan replied emphatically: It is impossible.
When Elder Yuan was alive, he liked to go to the supermarket,
Whenever you see the price of rice is very cheap,
The old man was happy like a child.
Drinking water thinks of the source, this moment is good to think of Grandpa Yuan.
Perhaps, we cannot stop this global food crisis, but we can ensure that China's bowl of rice is firmly in its own hands.
In addition to gratitude,
Please cherish the grain in front of you and every grain of rice in your bowl.