If this drought in America’s breadbasket continues through the summer, we are going to have a very serious problem on our hands.

At this point, farmers all over the middle of the country are praying for rain, because right now things are not looking good…

Below-average rainfall and high winds also exacerbated drought conditions in much of the High Plains region from top spring wheat producer North Dakota to the largest winter wheat state Kansas, the U.S. Drought Monitor report showed.

Concerns about the dry start to the U.S. summer crop season and potential harvest shortfalls have sent corn and soybean prices soaring to multi-month highs, although both crops can still rebound with timely rains.

The last time that I wrote about this, a little bit more than a third of all U.S. corn was being grown in areas affected by drought.

Now, 64 percent of our corn and 57 percent of our soy is being grown in areas that are affected by drought…

Drought continues to be a major story for farmers this year, and new data shows drought conditions are deepening across the Midwest. According to the National Drought Mitigation Center, 64% of the corn crop and 57% of the soybean crop across the U.S. are now covered in drought. That’s a sizable jump in just a week, which is reflected in the ongoing decline in crop conditions.

In other words, conditions are deteriorating very rapidly.

According to the latest report, only 55 percent of U.S. corn is rated good to excellent.  The last time we witnessed such a low level was in 1992…

Nationally, USDA-NASS says 55% of the corn crop is rated good to excellent. Lance Honig, NASS Crops Branch Chief, says there are only two years in history where condition ratings have been lower for this week: 1992, when 52% of the crop was rated good to excellent and 1988 with a 37% good to excellent rating.

It has been more than three decades since we have seen anything like this.

And in the key corn-producing state of Illinois, only 36 percent of corn is rated good to excellent…

“I’m very concerned about the weather,” said Sherman Newlin, who grows corn and soybean in Illinois. “We have low humidity, 90-degree temperatures and now the wind is sucking the moisture out of crops really fast.”

Conditions have been particularly poor in Illinois, the No. 2 US producer. Only 36% of the state’s crop was rated good to excellent for the week ending June 18, down 12 percentage points from a week earlier.

“I was shocked at the big drop in Illinois ratings,” Newlin said. “I knew we were bad, but: Wow.”

Big trouble is brewing, and most Americans have no idea that this is happening.

The bad harvests that we had last year have already pushed food prices to ridiculous levels, and now it appears that the price of corn could be headed a lot higher…

Futures in Chicago have jumped more than 12% over four sessions, the biggest such gain since early March 2022, when the outbreak of the war in Ukraine rattled grain markets.

Meanwhile, it appears that the orange harvest in Florida is going to be even worse than the experts were projecting…

Predicted crop production numbers have been dropping since December 2022, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service estimated that 20 million boxes of oranges would be produced. 20 million boxes would have been a 51 percent decrease from 2021’s season.

But the state’s produced just under 16 million boxes of oranges through May, which amounts to a 60 percent decline in production, according to Florida Department of Citrus Director of Economic Market and Research Marisa Zansler.

I hope that you don’t like orange juice. Because it is about to get really expensive.

And I wouldn’t count on eating a whole lot of beef in the year ahead either, because the size of the U.S. beef cow herd is “the smallest since 1962”.

It is almost as if some sort of a “perfect storm” has hit U.S. food production.

No matter what the Federal Reserve does with interest rates, food prices are going to continue to surge higher in the months ahead, and that is because we are simply not producing as much food as we normally do.

And of course U.S. farmers are facing operating costs that continue to spiral out of control.  For instance, an excellent article that Zero Hedge has just published has some sobering news about used farm equipment…

A proprietary used farm equipment price tracker published by Jefferies showed clients this week that “used farm equipment shows continued strong pricing as we move through 2023.”

Jefferies scraped used equipment website MachineFinder. Its analysts found large farm equipment was up 13% year-over-year in June, while small farm equipment was up 11.4%. The most significant price move was a 42.% jump in combines.

Sadly, the U.S. is not alone.

Drought, flooding, natural disasters and extremely bizarre weather patterns are devastating crops all over the planet.

And that is really bad news, because even CNN has admitted that we are already in the worst global food crisis in modern history. You may not want to hear this, but the coming global famine has already begun.

In the western world, this will initially manifest itself in higher prices. In poorer areas of the planet, people are dying from starvation even as you read this article.

But because the corporate media is not making a big deal out of this, many of you still believe that everything is just fine…

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.

Personally, I didn’t expect to see a huge surge in demand at food banks around the nation until the summer was over.  But according to ABC News, the surge that so many of us have been anticipating is already here…

Long lines are back at food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation turn to handouts to help feed their families.

With gas prices soaring along with grocery costs, many people are seeking charitable food for the first time, and more are arriving on foot.

It is certainly true that the cost of living is quickly eating away at our standard of living.

A single shopping cart full of food can now easily cost 250 or 300 dollars at this point, and as a result more struggling families are turning to food banks for some assistance.

In Phoenix, one food bank recently reported a 78 percent increase in demand compared to the same time last year…

The Phoenix food bank’s main distribution center doled out food packages to 4,271 families during the third week in June, a 78% increase over the 2,396 families served during the same week last year, said St. Mary’s spokesman Jerry Brown.

I was extremely alarmed when I first read that.

Have things really gotten this bad already?

One woman that was interviewed said that she was willing to wait in such a long line because “it’s really impossible to get by now without some help”…

Tomasina John was among hundreds of families lined up in several lanes of cars that went around the block one recent day outside St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix. John said her family had never visited a food bank before because her husband had easily supported her and their four children with his construction work.

“But it’s really impossible to get by now without some help,” said John, who traveled with a neighbor to share gas costs as they idled under a scorching desert sun. “The prices are way too high.”

Unfortunately, things are only going to get worse in the months ahead.

Extreme weather is absolutely scorching crops all over the northern hemisphere, and there is no relief in sight.

Over in Europe, we are seeing temperatures that we have never seen before.  In fact, UK authorities are expecting all-time record highs all across the country on Monday and Tuesday…

Britain’s national weather agency, known as the U.K. Met Office, issued its first-ever red extreme heat warning Friday. The warnings, in place for Monday and Tuesday, cover much of southern England, where temperatures could reach 40 degrees Celsius – or about 104 degrees.

“Nobody alive has seen a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius in the U.K.” weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman pointed out. “That would be a hot day this time of year in Dallas or Houston, much less London.”

Of course temperatures are far higher elsewhere.

At one point, a record high temperature of 117 degrees was recorded in Portugal, and so far there have been more than 1,000 deaths from the heat throughout all of Europe…

At least 1,000 deaths have been attributed to the heatwave in Portugal and Spain so far, according to the country’s weather agencies, which are reporting 1,027 at this time.

Around 440 deaths were recorded on Thursday alone, when temperatures exceeded 40C (104F) in several regions and 47C (117F) at a meteorological station in the district of Vizeu in the center of the country.

Here in the U.S., an endless drought in the Southwest has been playing havoc with crops for a long time, and now a “heat dome” is forming which will bring extreme temperatures to the region for at least “several more weeks”…

The heat will be prolonged, with computer models projecting several more weeks of unusually high temperatures as a heat dome shifts west with time, setting up hot and dry conditions from Colorado to California.

When things are this hot and this dry for an extended period of time, it is inevitable that crops will fail.

And at this point, we are being told that crops are failing in much of the northern hemisphere.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

Infrared satellite imagery designed to measure moisture levels and the health of farmlands suggests that staple crops such as wheat are in poor condition and in sharp decline among major exporters including the Ukraine, the US and India.  Two countries do have bumper crops so far though; namely Russia and China.

It is hard to say which governments and institutions monitor this data, but a few months ago a multitude of political leaders and global banks issued simultaneous warnings of a “global food shortage” and an impending crisis.  Such institutions included the IMF, World Bank, the BIS and even the White House.  So far, a perfect storm of stagflation, supply chain disruptions and poor weather conditions have combined to disrupt food production around the world.

Read those two paragraphs again.

This is beyond serious.

And I wouldn’t be anticipating a good harvest from Russia either, because right now millions upon millions of locusts are voraciously devouring crops in the agricultural heartland of that nation.

In all of my years, I have never seen anything quite like this.

Here in the U.S., our food supply continues to get hit by more very strange accidents.  They are happening so frequently now that it is really hard to keep up with them all.

All over the world supplies of food are getting tighter and tighter, and the stage is being set for the sort of historic global food crisis that I have long warned about.

The UN has already told us that we are heading into an “unprecedented” global food crisis, but most people aren’t taking such warnings seriously.

But perhaps when they are finally forced to get in the food lines themselves they will finally wake up.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including  “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending digital copies as gifts through Amazon to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.

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Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.