- Justin Haggerty | The Daily Knight
UN Global 2030 Agenda destroying Food and Energy Markets - Farmers Protest, Governments Fall
Justin Haggerty | The Daily Knight
The geopolitical crisis between Russia and Ukraine, following two years of s fabricated pandemic, is only masking the underlying degrading conditions within the global food and energy markets. Weighed down by regulations, inflating prices, and bureaucratic red-tape in accordance with the United Nation's Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, the availability of main food commodities (wheat, maize, edible oils, and fertilizers) has greatly decreased, causing the number of people affected by hunger to "increase [by] about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic."
The first major domino to fall was Sri Lanka, which saw its free market destroyed by Chinese CCP predatory loans, climate change mandates, and UN led international restrictions to energy and farming sectors.
- "As of July 15, 2022, the Agricultural Price Index is 19% higher compared to January 2021. Maize and wheat prices are 15% and 24% higher, respectively, compared to January 2021, while rice prices are about 11% lower. (See “pink sheet” data for agricultural commodity and food commodity prices indices, updated monthly.)"
- "Information from between February and June 2022 shows high inflation in almost all low- and middle-income countries; 94.1% of low-income countries, 88.9% of lower-middle-income countries, and 87% of upper-middle-income countries have seen inflation levels above 5%, with many experiencing double-digit inflation."
- "Global commodity markets face upside risks through the following channels: reduction in grain supplies, higher energy prices, higher fertilizer prices, and trade disruption due to shutting down of major ports."
- "As of July 15, 18 countries have implemented 27 food export bans, and seven have implemented 11 export-limiting measures" against Russia.
- "According to the 2022 State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) report, the number of people affected by hunger rose in 2021 to 828 million, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic."
UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals
"Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*
Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
* Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change."
Read the detailed plan and approach to achieving each goal.
Recently, The Epoch Times reported how "Sri Lanka’s economy had seemingly collapsed overnight in 2022, but the seeds of that collapse and ensuing food shortage had been sewn earlier. And the COVID-19 global health crisis had meant that tourism—Sri Lanka’s economic mainstay (12.6 percent of GDP in 2019)—had been wiped out between 2020 and 2022.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the former prime minister’s younger brother, in May 2021 compounded the problem by instituting a policy to make Sri Lanka the world’s first fully organic farming nation, banning all importation of agrochemicals, including fertilizers and pesticides. The move was ostensibly instituted to address a rise in kidney disease—thought to be the result of fertilizer exposure—among farmers.
But food production plummeted immediately (between 20 percent and 70 percent, depending on the crop), severely impacting the local supply of foods and major export crops, such as tea. This problem, the loss of local food and export revenues, coupled with a shortage of foreign exchange holdings, escalated the country’s economic crisis.
Farmers make up some 30 percent of the Sri Lankan labor force. And their output of rice, a staple of the local diet, fell between 40 and 50 percent during the growing season, known as Maha. As a result, Sri Lanka imported some 330,000 tons of rice in the first three months of 2021, compared with the 15,000 tons imported in 2020.
By May 2022, the government said that it would reinstate the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but it was too late: many farmers had left the land or had been bankrupted, and no funds were available to import fertilizer...
At the same time, Sri Lanka was forced to default on interest payments on its sovereign debt; it had run out of cash, and the country faced the reality that it had little food and no reserves of petrol and petroleum products. Widespread and rolling power cuts followed."
The forced collapse of Sri Lanka is a direct plan to disrupt the economic growth of India, which has developed to be a major competitor to China in labor, commodity, industrial, and technology markets. India also stands as a geopolitical rival to the control of free trade in the Indian Ocean, which links China to the resource rich Middle East and Eastern Africa.
EU's War on Energy and Farming
In 2021, The Guardian reported that "the dozen draft laws, spanning tighter curbs on industrial pollution, higher renewable energy targets, and the goal of planting 3bn trees, are intended to ensure the EU cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 compared with the levels in 1990."
European food commodity and farming markets have been hindered by the EU Green Deal's "levy on polluting imports, such as steel, aluminium and fertiliser." The deal's “carbon border adjustment mechanism” has forced "foreign companies paying to sell polluting products into the EU – an attempt to protect European firms from being undercut by lightly regulated rivals." Well over half of Europe's fertilizers are imported from Easter Europe and Asia.
The EU has required "fuel suppliers to buildings and vehicles to buy the pollution permits," with the intent to adjust "price signals [that] will drive down emissions more effectively than standard setting [i.e. regulations] alone."
Furthermore, a "cap and trade system for these sectors, which together account for more than half of the EU’s emissions, could send consumer energy bills soaring, adding to energy poverty and public protests. The commission has said this outcome could be avoided, given its proposed social climate fund with €72.2bn (£61.4bn) earmarked from the EU budget over seven years. The social climate fund would be used for energy efficiency improvements in homes and as a help to drivers switching to “green” vehicles. National governments would be required to pay into the fund and organise the programmes. “This is not an EU cash machine,” said a senior EU official," which is erroneous.
The recent logistics and freight bottleneck was also greatly caused by the EU's climate change mandates; "ships larger than 5,000 tonnes docking at EU ports to be required to buy pollution permits under the emissions system...Fuel suppliers to airports and ports will be mandated to use “sustainable” fuels."
Other Mandates:
The EU acquiring 40% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, an upgrade to the current 32% target.
EU member states to be given binding targets to boost energy efficiency, with the aim of renovating 3% of their public buildings each year.
Reduced emissions for new cars – by 55% by 2030 and 100% by 2035 – so spelling the end to petrol and diesel powered vehicles.
Requirement for governments to accelerate installation of charging and refuelling facilities for non fossil fuel cars, with a target of electrical charging points every 60km and hydrogen refuelling every 150km on EU roads.
Ecuador, the next domino to fall after Sri Lanka?
The recent resignations of the heads of states of Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, Italy, and Estonia point to further unrest, degrading market conditions, geopolitical turmoil, and dissolved governments. Is Ecuador the next domino to fall?
Last month, The Guardian reported that "Violent protests against the economic policies of Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso have paralysed the country’s capital and other regions, but the government on Wednesday rejected their conditions for dialogue.
Quito is experiencing food and fuel shortages after 10 days of demonstrations in which protesters at times have clashed with police. After officials rejected the conditions for negotiations, the United States government issued an advisory urging travellers to reconsider visiting the country due to “civil unrest and crime”.
The demonstrations led primarily by the Indigenous organization Conaie, began on 14 June to demand that gasoline prices be cut by 45 cents a gallon to $2.10, price controls for agricultural products and a larger budget for education. The protests began with peaceful roadblocks but levels of violence have escalated in parts of the country, including the capital, Quito, prompting conservative ex-banker Lasso to decree a state of exception in six provinces...
The protests – longer-lasting and larger than marches over fuel prices in October last year – are testing Lasso’s ability to restart the country’s economy and kickstart employment."
Any collapse to the Ecuador government and free market will spill over to neighboring countries, many of which (Columbia and Venezuela) are unstable. Such instability will only cascade up through Latin America and add another variable to the worsening border crises of the United States.
Farmers Revolt Across Europe
First seen in the Netherlands, farmers across Europe have begun to revolt against the climate control mandates of the EU and the UN Agenda 2030. Farmers have filled streets, highways, and city squares in the Netherlands with their tractors and harvesters, and are now motiving other farmers to coalesce in other European cities like Milan, Italy.
The Epoch Times recently reported that "Dutch farmers’ protests have drawn the world’s attention. According to Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek, the government’s climate policy, which caused widespread protests, follows a communist agenda of the global elites.
“It’s communism to the T,” Vlaardingerbroek told The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD on July 7. “If the state comes in and says ‘I’m going to take away your property for a so-called greater good.’ I don’t know what could be more essential to communism than that.”
The Dutch government has planned for years to drastically cut emissions of nitrogen and ammonia, which are produced by livestock, to meet the European Union’s climate goals.
On June 10, the coalition government announced a national and area-specific plan for curbing nitrogen greenhouse gas emissions. Some parts of the country would have to slash those emissions by 70 or even 95 percent.
The protests culminated after the announcement. More and more farmers have joined protests, blocking highways and food distribution centers, and plans to protest at some airports.