EpochTV host Roman Balmakov’s documentary, “No Farmers No Food,” shows that climate policies are being used to push farmers out of business, cause a decline in animal husbandry, and promote the human consumption of insect protein. Balmakov accurately describes how climate activists are collaborating with governments around the world to shut down farms by imposing burdensome regulations and top-down decrees on farmers, allegedly to prevent a purported climate crisis.
Balmakov explains in the film that the United Nations leads these efforts.
“People in charge of some of the most powerful organizations on the planet have determined that agriculture, specifically animal agriculture, is to blame for global warming, and global warming is to blame for the high prices of food and food shortages,” says Balmakov.
The film cites a variety of specific policies imposed by governments around the world that are driving farmers out of business, such as water regulations in California, nitrogen policies in the Netherlands, and organic farming mandates in Sri Lanka. These policies are also leading to food shortages and higher food prices. Climate Realism has likewise previously reported on the dangerous results of these perverse policies, in “Yes, Breitbart, The Netherlands Anti-Agriculture Scheme Is a Disturbing Development,” covering the voluntary-or-else government buyouts of small to midsized farms in the Netherlands, as well as a scheme in Britain to “rewild” farmland. Climate Realism also discussed how the Sri Lankan government’s push to take its agriculture industry all organic resulted a rapid and steep reduction in output, and an equally rapid and steep increase in food prices.
Data show that amid modest warming, world crop production and yields are increasing, regularly setting new records, as has been discussed in dozens of articles on Climate Realism. For most places food security has improved, and hunger and malnutrition have fallen significantly during the recent period of climate change.
Take for example world production of staple food crops like rice, corn, and wheat. All of these crops, according to data from the United Nations’ own Food and Agriculture Organization, have seen steady production increases over the same time period that alarmists have been warning of a dangerous warming. (See Figure below)
Research shows that carbon dioxide is contributing to this increase in crop production because of the fertilization effect of higher CO2 levels. Additionally, the modest warming of the past decades has likely contributed to a slight increase in precipitation in the northern hemisphere and the “bread basket” regions, which means that less groundwater is needed for irrigation.
Eating bugs is certainly not going to help anything. As Climate Realism pointed out, here, for example, insects are not bulletproof earth-friendly health foods, in fact they can cause serious allergic reactions and other health complications. Also, replacing cattle with insects is unlikely to improve emissions, because factory-scale insect farming for human consumption is energy intensive, especially in the quantities needed if proponents intend to totally replace other animal proteins.
As The Epoch Times explains, Balmakov’s “documentary shines the spotlight on how some innocuous-sounding policies are harmful to the food supply.” The facts indicate that climate change does not threaten the global food supply. Rather, as Balmakov’s documentary shows, it is governments and international agencies retrograde farm policies which threaten the continued growth in food production, by eschewing modern agricultural technological innovations which have brought about the largest, fastest decline in hunger around the world in history, during the past century. Banning fertilizers and pesticides, limiting the amount of water that can be used for farming and ranching, restricting fossil fuel development and use, and threatening livestock ranchers over the amount of methane produced by their animals, can only result in reduced food production and increased hunger.
Congratulations are in order for EpochTV and Balmakov for producing and promoting this important documentary. The impact of green policies on the food supply is one of the most dangerous emerging global issues. Shockingly, as Balmakov exposes, these policies are largely driven by climate alarmists in governments and supported by the climate alarmists in the mainstream media.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”
The Green Blob really wanted Paul Ehrlich to have been right. The Green Revolution was using tech to solve the problem of food production, and the Greens hate tech as much as they do people.
Except for their iPhones. No emissions from an iPhone, because an iPhone doesn’t have a smokestack or an exhaust pipe. Therefore, iPhones are the most environmentally friendly piece of tech, ever. Except for an EV, those are even better.
“Sarah, did you just spend twenty grand on garden furniture?”
“But Lovey, they were on sale; I saved two thousand bucks today! can we afford to go on that romantic holiday now?”
When you get into it with a liberal, check the second hand on your watch to see how long it takes them to play the “Too many people card” or “The race card”
CO2 is more than a fertilizer. It is plant food without which plants die.
Life on Earth is dependent on two
chemical compounds, H20 and CO2,
and one of them is in short supply.
O2 is also good for animals
But plants split water to release O2, so ……..
…and people…and animals….but not ecoloondeluders it seems..
…ecoloondeluders…I like that. I’m stealing it, by your leave.
the word “FOOD” has many definitions… so it comes down to definition as to if CO2 is “food” or “fertilizer” for plants.
Maybe this definition?
Almost all living organisms have two basic responsibilities, survival and reproduction, in other words food and sex. Without either one, the species passes from existence. Everything else is a complication. Humans have been able to succeed with both food and sex, accounting for their continued presence on the planet. Cultural anomalies that inhibit these activities are insane from a biological viewpoint.
Through the centuries there has been no shortage of cults advocating counter-productive policies. One example was the Ephrata Cloister in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Per Wikipedia:
The members of the order were celibate. Members were required to sleep on wooden benches 15 inches (380 mm) wide, with wooden blocks for pillows. They slept six hours per night, from 9 P.M. to midnight, and from 2 A.M. until 5 A.M., with a two-hour break to “watch” for the coming of Christ. They ate one small vegetarian meal a day. The only time the followers of Beissel were permitted to eat meat was during the celebration of communion when lamb was served. The members of the cloister spent much time at work or praying privately. Services every Saturday were led by Beissel, often being several hours long.
This community existed in its original form for only a few years.
Since there is no empirical proof that domestic ruminants or the crops needed to feed them are a cause of climate change we can conclude that the beliefs of the AGW people are a superstition, a religion and a cult operating in a manner opposed to survival of the species. You could describe it as the slow-motion equivalent of atomic Armageddon.
From a biological standpoint, the only reason for survival, is to provide more opportunities to have sex.
There are several species that die right after reproducing.
Hmmm… Difficult choice…
Pacific salmon spend their lives dodging seals and seiners, return to the place of their birth, either deposit their eggs or fertilize them without touching one another, and then die. What fun is that?
Maybe the point is to slowly starve us to death? Get rid of the huddled masses and leave more for our betters to enjoy? There’s not just too many, people, but too many of the wrong people, right?
I thought that thought’s exactly what you try to convey with your handle (username)?
That would only work if the betters were out there producing food–at least enough for themselves. Most look like they wouldn’t know the business end of a shovel if it hit them.
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UhHuh, and Figure below shows corn up sharply starting in 2000.
If you Google “How much of the US corn crop goes to ethanol?”
it says:
Much of this growth in area and production is a result
of expanding ethanol production, which now accounts
for nearly 45 percent of total corn use
If you’re interested in my opinion, using valuable farm land to fill
our collective gas tanks amounts to a crime against humanity.
Steve, I would argue that Biofuels are a valid, even foresightful use of farmland. Admittedly resulting in fuel that is about 4 times as costly to produce as present petroleum production. But someday in about 3 decades, the “finding costs” of petroleum will exceed the cost to “find” farm fields for biofuels. Liquid fuels will be expensive relative to today, when that time comes, but AVAILABLE due to the foresight we had to develop that supply system today. Fusion will still be 30 years away. Fission reactors will power cities after a 20 year licensing process (oops running low on time already)
Nobody in the modern world need starve due to agricultural failure…instead political and transportation system failure are what causes hunger. And there is a lot of land considered marginal for agricultural purposes that can produce biomass for alcohol production
You may be right- but does that require 45% of corn production to be prepared for the future shortages of petroleum?
As a forester, I’d prefer to see much of that land growing high value timber with the secondary benefits of abundant wildlife (nice to look at and for hunting). We’re more likely to have a timber shortage than a petroleum shortage. Whenever the price of petroleum goes up- more is found. Same for most things including timber- but if there is a true timber shortage and the price goes up, it’ll take decades to produce more- contributing to housing shortages.
Beyond that, it takes almost as much, if not more, energy to grow, harvest and turn corn into fuel, as is in the fuel being produced.
In other words, corn based fuel provides precious little energy savings.
The crops are toxic, liable to contaminate food crop genomes, and will, because of “careful steering of subsidies” eventually override food production as priority.
Did I mention the toxic genome?
No, you forgot to name the toxin. But don’t feel bad, everybody that talks about toxins never names the toxin or the dose of any compound that makes it toxic.
The entire genome of the maize variety bred for fuel, is not metabolisable by any mammal, it actually disrupts the metabolism, therefor, the plant’s genome is toxic.
Stop trying to be clever, and at least research basic nomenclature used by those you presume to ridicule.
…and in my hurry to appraise you of the benefits of being precise, I abuse the English language. It is not the genome that is toxic, it is the metabolic byproducts of said genome, and that genome can contaminate other genomes with its aberrant metabolic triggers.
But I still think you rude for trying ridicule as conversational tactic, without a second thought.
If plant geneticists want to muck around with corn, they should produce a variety that doesn’t need soaking in enzymes (or lye as was developed unknown centuries or millennia ago) to break it down enough for the human metabolism to fully access the nutrients in it.
Imagine corn with the nutrient bioavailablity of hominy but has it while still on the cob.
Every human outside the Americas survived for millennia, completely ignorant of the existence of maiz maiz, and we survived. Just like air conditioning is not some kind of human right, so genetic modification is not the solution to nutrition.
Technology is a wonderful thing, until the Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibblers of the world get hold of it…
We have hundreds of years before we have to worry about oil becoming scarce.
When that does happen, we can worry about whether turning food into fuel is a good idea or not.
Given the rate at which technological advancement is accelerating, predicting anything regarding the technology that will be available in 50 years, much less 200 years, is a fool’s errand.
They might go back to nuclear power.
Just pointing out that adding EtOH to gasoline is mandated by government. Its use as a fuel would be ok if it was voluntary.
Especially if you could just stuff your tank with corn on the cob. 🙂
Government also mandated MTBE be put into gasoline, then that same government sued the companies they forced to use MTBE, over groundwater contamination with MTBE.
Step one. “You have to use this toxic additive in the fuel in summer. Causes breathing problems? Not according to us, because we say it doesn’t.”
Step two. Inevitable spillage when putting fuel into tanker trucks and railroad card, and from gas station tanks into road vehicles.
Step three. “We’re suing you for the toxic chemical contamination we forced you to put out there spilling on the ground. Doesn’t matter that it was entirely beyond your control, it’s your fault, according to us.”
That same TLA would then go on to cause a major toxic spill into a river from a sealed mine they were warned not to drill into, and absolved themselves of responsibility.
Yeah. Used to be a country had to loose a war before their crops were burnt.
That IS a law of Nature.
Ergo…
That corn land would be better used for any other edible crops. Corn is a lousy food for humans, without being processed to make its nutrients more available to our biochemistry.
That’s why the ancient western hemisphere people developed the process called nixtamilization. Originally done with lye obtained from wood ash, it’s long been done using enzymes. Hominy is corn kernels that have been nixtamilized in some way. Partially broken down and swelled up.
Dry hominy and grind it, you have a corn meal that can be used in nutritious foodstuffs like tortillas and multiple varieties of corn based breakfast cereal.
But growing other grains, any vegetables or fruits on the land would be better because they don’t need such artificial processing to provide nutrients instead of stinky farts.
Don’t feed food with corn to dogs or cats. Even when processed, those animals’ digestive systems are less capable than humans’ at handling corn. Corn, so plentiful, so cheap, so often one of the first five ingredients in dry dog or cat foods.
Have not seen the documentary so cannot comment on that.
But “Congratulations are in order for EpochTV” should always be caveated with an acknowledgement that they are Falun Gong.
So you rather get your news from Chinese Communist Party. Got it.
No. That is not the point.
It’s that they are a religious fringe group whose choice of coverage is influenced by partial viewpoints.
I am in no way a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party, or their allies in the Kremlin and the US Republican Party.
Got it, you support Communist Chinese Party and crap on anyone pointing out the crimes Communist Chinese Party has and continues to commit.
Falun Gong is a freedom party, disliked by the Chicoms. Makes them alright in my book.
TIP TIP
New in the Wall Street Journal, 9 Sept ’23
17 years; That is the time it took (USA) for the country’s soon-to-be largest wind farm to get a permit to start construction. A WSJ video report breaks down how the yearslong permitting process has become a major obstacle.
for clean-energy development and looks at some of the efforts to overhaul the system.
Inside the Decades long Permit Process Holding Back 10,000 Energy Projects
“especially in the quantities needed ”
Linnea makes a great point.
I live in cattle country. ClimateCult™ activists appear to have never seen herds of cattle. Maybe some of them should come for a visit, count the cattle within 7 miles of me, and determine the number of insects needed to replace them. Then they could design the infrastructure to grow, harvest, and process those little critters. The mind boggles!
If herds of cloven hooved ungulates “destroy the environment”, where is the wasteland taking forever to recover from the millions strong herds of bison that roamed the great plains only a couple of centuries ago?
I have determined that the UN is UNhinged
Not unhinged, evil.
It’s Malthusian
If you haven’t noticed, many major food processing plants have been burned down in the USA for the past several years. Gates and his cronies have been buying farmland and letting it go fallow. Using “nitrogen is bad for man” narrative the Netherlands is losing its’ farms to the government who is paying 120% of the land value to acquire the farms …. and the farmers aren’t given the choice to sell or not. It’s mandated they sell. Much, if not most, of Europe’s food comes/came from the Netherlands. Coincidence? This is another conspiracy theory coming true and you’d have to be in denial if you don’t see it.
What makes it even sadder, is that we have known the exact details for 120 years already, but then we were told the document is a forgery. The most famous, most unknown, most hated forgery in the world… and every day the movie unrolls, perfectly according to script.
I wanna know how you forge such perfect prophecy.
The only alternative, is that it is indeed The Plan. I present The World Today as supporting evidence.
What document? Not the Protocols of the Elders of Zion???
There you gone dunnit! Accusing me of promoting a forgery! Now I can’t comment on new articles…
WordDepress censors 2, cilo 0. For this week.
The rich and famous get away with a big carbon footprint by buying phony carbon credits. But if they tell us to eat bugs, they had better be the first inline or this peaceful old hippy will be far less peaceful. I try to tolerate stupidity but that would be a bridge too far.
As long as stupid people are only harming themselves, I say live and let live. Besides they provide entertainment value.
But when stupid people start harming others, as you say, that is a bridge too far.
In the USA, family owned farms, land and businesses have been in massive decline since the 1940’s, ( complicated intertwine of culture change and big boy ag policy). If the corporate and coop farms struggle to survive under the Global Green Regime, there will be nothing to fall back on. Fake meat and insects require biomass coming from somewhere! Forcing populations in developed nations like the USA back into subsistence farming on marginal lands will spell disaster. A sizable percentage of Americans hardly know how to do anything without a keyboard….even mowing the lawn is too hard. So if we see accelerating reduction in food supply or increase in prices, Americans will need to get hot learning how to grow food to feed themselves. Depopulation will not happen fast enough to maintain stable commodities markets with reduced supply of food.
Right now the problem with our food supply is market collusion. I seen the Green Regime as a lever to increased consolidation and centralization of global commodities markets. Just as I see the Green Regime as a lever to maintain our energy market collusion in status quo.
Forcing green solutions such as EV, Windmills, Solar before there is a truly viable electrical storage and distribution system is a recipe for failure. The Ford Corp is already feeling the pain.
Until the truly economically viable next generation battery or all temp high energy density SC happens (may be happening now), we will be living in the current dystopic propaganda war while paying higher and higher prices for energy and food commodities. It’s a ginormous money game.
BTW Re-wild the plain states ( our breadbasket) will result in more methane production by Bison that is currently being emitted by our ag meat industry by a couple of factors. just saying. The data is out there do the math. At least there will be plenty of natural organic meat for the elite.
It used to be the goal was cheap energy, Major tech advances in high Energy density all temp SC would provide a model for energy generation (any input) storage and distribution scalable for application from the lawn mower to the Air Craft Carrier etc. Pie in the sky? Well yes maybe but R&D in SC is accelerating. Recently all temp lead/copper SC was reported a month ago from South Korea. Is it still possible that major energy tech advances could be suppressed? Can you think of who and why anyone would do such a thing?
The point is cheap energy is only one tech breakthrough away. This is what is driving the global Green Regime and Commodities markets into a frenzy of propaganda and corruption. They want us to be the problem. WE are not the problem! We should be respected because we have the dollars and are the ones buying crap. Sell us what we need and shut up. All the useless stuff can stay on the shelves.
One point to keep in mind concerning corn, it’s production has had a dramatic increase because of government mandates for ethanol in motor vehicle fuels, not increase for human/animal consumption.
We are in a 2.5 million-year ice age, in a still cold interglacial period, and the environmentalists are trying to keep it cold.
Around 4.6 million people die per year from the cold, mainly through increased strokes and heart attacks in the colder months, compared with 500,000 heat-related deaths.
It is still cold outside of the tropics, 20% of the land is either permafrost or covered by glaciers.
“”We are in a 2.5 million-year ice age…””
And winter is coming
Fun ‘climate’ fact
More people have signed the Welsh petition against the 20 mph speed limit than voted for the Labour administration implementing it.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1817809/mark-drakeford-wales-20mph-petition-senedd
Restricting methane emissions for global warming reasons is particularly ignorant. Happer has shown very clearly that methane is a very minor influencer, even less so than the small effects from further increases in CO2.
There is also the Grand Solar Minimum that will start getting serious in 2025 NOAA forecasts.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/predicted-sunspot-number-and-radio-flux
They forecast that the Sunspot Number, in which cooler sunspots are associated with hotter areas and more solar output, will start dropping from the current level of around 100 to single digits in 2031 and zero in 2040 when their forecast ends.
That means colder temperatures.
A Grand Solar Minimum has not been tested with live forecasts against actual climate in the climate change models since the last Grand Solar Minimum was in the 1600s.
The AG trend I see growing in this area is farm to table operations. After getting cut out by
big meat forever a group of local producers now have their own slaughter house and marketing
operations, and one player who was a leader in this trend told me he is finally making some
decent returns. Big Meat controls over 80% of the beef production, eg they buy and market
the beef. I have a freezer full at the present, grown and produced locally.
WalMart now grows a lot of their own beef, as does McDonalds. Stan Kroenke
who is married to a Walton daughter owns the Broken O ranch in MT along with couple
of other similar sized operations. He’s said to be the 5th largest land owner in the US.
The Broken O owns over 100 miles+ of both sides of the Sun River
on the Rocky Mountain front which is amazingly productive. I’ve tried their beef and it is very
good.
It’s the small players of which is the majority of beef producers that are at the most risk.
The order buyers don’t even have to grade the calves anymore, they just want to see
the bulls papers. It’s not our granddads farm/ranch world anymore. It’s not farms
but food factories..
So, we should have bug farms now? It takes a hell of a lot of bugs to equal the meat of one steer. And what about bug “escapees” from the farm? Talk about locust plagues!
Here’s a really crazy one:
Turn all of Australia in one giant cow pasture
Put one dairy cow onto each acre of that pasture…
..take that as 2 billion acres
Assume that each cow produces the global average of 25 litres of milk per day
….that that milk is 4% fat
Assume that an average human requires 2,500 kCals per day
Tadaaaaah – you’ve just satisfied the caloric requirements for everybody on this Earth, all 8 Billion of them.
And when the cow(s) get old and ‘retired’, you eat them and get all your trace elements and minerals
While you’re about it: Wave bye-bye to obesity, diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, autisms & dementia, most cancers and all autoimmune diseases
just think how many sunshine panels you can now plant on all the land left over all around the globe.
haha, only kidding.
Put windmills there instead
Sorry Aus, no windmills for you, you’ve got some cows to look after.
The average carrying capacity in Australia is more like 1 sheep per 10 acres, so you might be pushing it a bit with the dairy cows.
Dairy cattle generally only found where there is adequate water…
They need a good bit of feed as well, plus the refrigerated transport logistics.
As a rule of thumb, a milking dairy cow needs about 50% more feed than a dry beef cow, and twice as much water.
That map’s a bit optimistic. I don’t recall seeing many dairy farms at Coonamble, Walgett or Wee Waa. There used to be some around Tamworth, years ago.
Extend that NSW yellow portion about the same distance again south. You might potentially run dairy cattle in the cotton growing areas, but it takes a good while to build the numbers up again if the dams get low and you have to reduce stock numbers.
This map shows the 8 main dairy regions.. probably makes more sense.
There may be small local dairies elsewhere though.
Yep, that looks more like it.
The first map might have included a few cockies with a house cow.
The processing costs probably don’t work for smaller plants any more. Most of the NSW dairy farms and processors are still borderline, especially with Coles and Woolies refusing to pay enough to even cover costs.
“I don’t recall seeing many dairy farms at Coonamble, Walgett or Wee Waa.”
Dairy Council doesn’t show any that I can find, either.
“Turn all of Australia in one giant cow pasture”
Gunna need one heck of a lot of water to do that. 😉
Actually, a lot of it is. Not at those stocking rates, though.
Cattle are preferential grazers, but will browse if they have to. Sheep very rarely browse. In addition, watering points in The Centre and a lot of the NT and WA are too far apart for sheep, Goats handle those conditions quite well, but aren’t commercially viable.
First there has to be anthropic global warming. Only then do you look for a cause.
Story tip.
Can someone please rip into Doctors Without Borders for their scaremongering video advertisements claiming disasters are more frequent and worse due to climate emergency?
Using scare tactics to solicit donations and other support.
They really do want us dead. How did they manage to gobble up so much power?
Left out of this discussion is another idea from the far left voluntary human extinction people (yes, they really do exist, https://www.vhemt.org/).
Given their lack of progress in getting everyone on board with the “climate is in crisis” narrative, maybe they’ve decided on a more involuntary approach?