Feed the enemy?

 

'Hurrah! The Butter is Finished!'

John Heartfield, 1935

How many friends have we over there?

The border guards fight unconvincingly.

Whatever we do it seems things are arranged.

We always have to feed the enemy.

The lyrics quoted above are from a 1979 song by English band Magazine, and today they have an eerie quality. I seem a little obsessed with the late 1970s in Britain just at the moment. Perhaps it was the last time that country had a chance of forging its own survival, a sort of event horizon it crossed and which ultimately is leading to its death spiral, along with the rest of the West.

Speaking of Death, he was of course the most famous of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, as mentioned in the Book of Revelations. The horseman everyone always forgets is Famine. It's a bit like when someone asks you to name the Seven Dwarves and you forget Doc. But, if the four riders were involved in a horse-race, Famine has just got her nose in front.

Food shortages are being seriously talked about by the political class, which means either that we are being distracted - see an earlier episode in these pages - or that the elites really can feel the rumbling hooves of the horsemen, with Famine now leading by a length and a half.

Of course, Putin is to blame. He has taken on the role of the pantomime villain, hissed and booed by the crowd. Russia and Ukraine are the 'breadbasket of Europe', we are told, (just as Zimbabwe was once called the 'breadbasket of Africa' because of its natural maize production. That ended well) and the current conflict will lead to famine and starvation. Sure. But let's have a cursory look, a sort of thumbnail sketch, of other reasons why there may well be a food supply crisis in the near future. This will be rather unscientific and unsupported, but here are some other factors which may help Famine win Hell's version of the Kentucky Derby.

The French political writer Guillaume Faye wrote that everyone is happy as long as the shopping basket is full. When it isn't, people begin to get restless. Faye also wrote - in reference to the sabotage of capitalism, I think - that one day we will wake up and all the magic will be gone.

When the first inklings of inflation began to seep through the media's defensive line, people were complaining about the rise of the price of petrol - as it is called in Britain rather than the rather more attractive American term 'gasoline' - and trashy food. One could be forgiven for thinking that Americans like to drive and eat, or even drive to eat. The drive-through McDonalds is, sadly, the new version of the American dream. But I digress.

If inflation drives up the price of your Happy Meal, it does not put you on the dietary equivalence of a swollen-bellied Ibo child in Sub-Saharan Africa who has flies on her eyelids and no plant roots left to suck. This much is true. But Americans like their excess, and have grown used to it. It is the main reason that morbid obesity is such a problem in the US.

But what if staples start to balloon in price? I am in Costa Rica, which is a long way from Ukraine, and I have seen an 800g bag of red beans - part of the Latin American staple of gallo pinto, aka rice and beans (I chop a raw onion into mine) - go from 900 Colones, or about a buck and a half, to 1200 in two months. That is a big jump in a country which could probably be self-sufficient.

There is a theory that runs as follows - if the food runs out, even a civilised society has about 10 days until anarchy. At the moment, the big deal in the US is the lack of baby formula. I must say, this is still a bit of a mystery to me. There was no baby formula in Medieval England and, although lots of babies undoubtedly expired from plague or cold or wolves, I don't imagine any died because of lack of mother's milk. But that is a tale for another day.

What happens when the shortages are not baby formula, or Krispy Kreme Donuts, or baseball caps, or candy, but bread and rice and fruit? My cat is an instructive example. I forgot to put down fresh water one morning and I only realised when I saw her drinking rainwater from the leaves of a plant. I forgot to buy catfood one weekend, and on Monday morning I found her eating a bird she had killed and dragged into the kitchen. She ate everything but the wing feathers and the beak. (How do they do that?)

My point is this. If the food runs out, which plant are humans going to drink from and which birds are they going to catch?

No one bet on Famine for the 3.30 Handicap Chase at the Gomorrah race-track. But sometimes the outsider wins the race.

Eat well today, but make sure the pantry is well stocked.