Food Productions Update
Farmers all around the world are unable to get a break from bad weather. In a previous article, I noted that China has had record flood damage to many crops. This is the second year in a row that China has had a failed growing season.
The corn and soybean crop in the US has been a mixed bag. Some of the northern states like North and South Dakota and Minnesota have been too dry. The crops in the rest of the Midwest are rated as being in excellent condition. The crop is not safe until it makes it into the silo. Last year’s Derecho that ripped through Iowa proves that point.
The drought in California continues to get worse. The water levels of many reservoirs are at all-time lows. California already had 500,000 acres not get planted this year because of the lack of water.
California grows more than a third of our vegetables and two-thirds of our fruits and nuts. Millions of trees have had to be cut down because the farmers could not get the water needed to keep them alive. Salt damage, caused by the lack of drainage with fresh water, is taking tens of thousands of acres of farmland out of production.
Southern Africa is suffering through its worst drought in several decades and perhaps a century.
Diminished and late rainfall, combined with long-term increases in temperatures, has jeopardized the food security and energy supplies of millions of people in the region, most acutely in Zambia and Zimbabwe. The drought in South Africa is bad because it is normally a major exporter of grains to other nations.
The only good news I could find is in Australia. Grain production down under is expected to be strong in the 2021-22 marketing year following a record-breaking wheat production year, according to a report from the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Food production in South America has been an absolute disaster. In Brazil, drought and frost caused second corn yields in the country’s center-south to hit their lowest level in 10 years. Crop losses due to unfavorable weather may result in shortages and persistent food inflation due to Brazil being a top player in global corn production.
Reuters, citing a new report via agribusiness consultancy AgRural, said drought, then frosts destroyed much of the crop this year. Brazilian farmers expect to harvest around 51.6 million tons of corn, down 19 million from last season’s 70.5 million.
“Failure of the 2021 corn crop, planted with much delay due to the later soybean harvest, was the result of the lack of rain in most of the producing areas in April and May,” AgRural said. “The frost starting at the end of June and lasting until now reduced yields and also caused quality problems.”
Besides corn – citrus trees, coffee, and sugar cane in Brazil have also been heavily impacted by adverse weather conditions. Prices for coffee beans are up 50% in the past 12 months, hitting seven-year highs in July on news of the frost.
Chile is not a major producer of food but is suffering such a massive drought, it raises concern for its neighbors. The drought in Chile is now in its 10th year, going from bad to worse due to a scorching July, a month which typically brings midwinter weather showering the capital Santiago in rain and snow.
The USDA’s quarterly Grain Stocks report, released with the June 30 Acreage report, shows sharp declines in corn, soybean, and wheat stocks.
Corn stocks totaled 4.11 billion bushels, down 18 percent from the same time last year. Soybeans stored totaled 767 million bushels, down 44 percent from last year. All wheat stored totaled 844 million bushels, down 18 percent from a year ago.
What helped draw down US grain stocks is China importing a record amount of grains in 2020. The nation bought 11.3 million tonnes of corn, exceeding the annual quota, set at 7.2 million tonnes, for the first time. It also imported a record 8.38 million tonnes of wheat. As China works to rebuild its swine herd, the country imported over 100 million tonnes of soybeans, with nearly 40 million tonnes coming from the United States.
It was just two years ago that China said it was going to boycott America’s grain supplies. With Brazil a bust for this year, Chinese grain ships are going to be lining up at American ports. Washington DC is probably starting to wonder how much grain we can afford to sell to our Asian trading partner.
As we get close to the last days, food production is likely to become more problematic. Since the Bible predicts a deadly famine will take place in the tribulation, it explains why we are having one bad year after another.
“And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine” (Rev. 6:5-6).
–Todd
Replacing God
At the heart of iniquity—the evil God’s Word says indwelt Lucifer when he decided to make himself more important than the Creator—festers the wicked desire to replace God.
This rebelliousness has been deeply ingrained within all of humanity since the Fall in Eden. That iniquitous desire is dramatically manifested in the biblical account of Israel’s Exodus of Moses’ time.
The scene centers on Pharaoh, the most powerful potentate of the world in that day.
And Pharaoh said, Who is the LORD that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go. (Exodus 5:2)
Pharaoh’s fate ended no better than will Lucifer’s, ultimately. Neither will the fate of anyone of any generation who seeks such position be any better than that of the one now called Satan. To desire to make oneself one’s own god is a fool’s errand, to be sure. The eternal lake of fire is the God-guaranteed end of that endeavor.
Yet most of humanity, especially those who consider themselves to be the elite, is determined to do what is right in their own eyes. The deeper mankind moves into history, the more pronounced their determination to cast off God’s moorings. They have become creators themselves, and like described in the prophecy of Psalm 2, they want to break the bands that God puts in place to govern them in the ultimate sense.
Nothing in last-days movement into history more illustrates the truth that man was created in God’s image than their own creative ability. We’ve made truly remarkable progress in terms of inventions that, in juxtaposition against previous century’s, border on miraculous. And now, as their genius pierces into uncharted technological atmospherics, the future seems to circle back to the past. The writer of Proverbs is again proven right: “There is nothing new under the sun.”
God said in that Genesis account that nothing people could think to do would be kept from them; they could do anything they could imagine. Thus He came down and interfered with their Tower project. He then scattered them about the earth—because their corporate mind again came to be like in the days before the Flood. They had determined to, like Lucifer, put their collective will into opposing the Creator, to cast His cords from themselves.
And, like during those antediluvian times, their thoughts were only on evil continually. Things they could produce from that sin-fallen thinking would, inevitably, bring man to its destruction.
This ultimate destruction of mankind, of course, has been Lucifer’s intention from the time he was evicted from Heaven along with his complicit hordes to, like a roaring lion, seek and devour all human beings.
And now it appears that both mankind and Satan have reached the moment of rebellious progression—like in times of the pre-Flood era and the time of Babel. The earth-dwellers have nearly reached a moment when they can shed God’s tethers and become their own gods: do what is right in their own eyes. Therefore, we sense the Lord is about to again intervene as He did in those previous junctures of human history. Jesus spoke of this time in which we’re living in His “days of Noah, days of Lot” forewarnings as recorded in Matthew 24:36–42 and Luke 17:26–30.
This sense of God’s imminent intervention comes from a number of different kinds of signs prophetic progression. But the one sensed most keenly is a specific, burgeoning scientific development of these frenetic times.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is that specific indicator.
Man’s creative genius has reached the point that the luciferian thinkers now believe they can surpass human intelligence. They can, they believe, construct intelligence that will free them to do whatever is right in their own eyes. They need no deity to encumber their utopian plans. They have, in their superior minds, replaced God.
We’ve been bombarded in recent decades with fictional scenarios of technologies getting out of control. These Hollywood dystopian fantasies have most often ended with the day being saved by one hero or group of heroes or the other. Humans have regained control and all ends well. A few cases see the climaxes of the movies go in the other direction, resulting in man’s downfall. One prophecy writer says the following.
Most accredited universities have within their computer science departments, active programs for the creation of artificial intelligence. At some point in the not-too-distant future, man is going to cross that technological threshold between fantasy and reality and launch a system that is “self-aware.” Scary thought!…
We have moved firmly into the realm of creating a super-intelligent AI system. We have developed the technology to create “deep fakes” that can fake audio and video, making it indistinguishable from the real thing. We have further developed cloud technology. Cryptocurrencies are proliferating. Drone and robotic technology are continuing to improve at an incredible pace and scale. Genetic manipulation (to include data storage) is continuing to be refined and enhanced…
And between man’s desire to live forever through artificial means (trans-humanism and singularity) and AI’s ability to solve seemingly unsolvable problems, it will be a Babel-like moment when God will have to step in and intervene, yet again. (“Even the Elect, Part I: Deception,” Pete Garcia, https://rev310.com)
There is coming another like the leader of the rebels of earth at the time of the Tower of Babel. But the neo-Nimrod will have technology far superior to that of the first Nimrod’s time to carry out his regime’s evil. There will be no place on planet earth to hide (except that provided by God Himself) when Antichrist’s technology of control is released upon those alive during the Tribulation.
The current striving of the principalities and powers to replace God will fail miserably. Christ will rule and reign upon a pristine planet that will have been restored to its original glory.
That Babel moment is coming. God will again take total charge as He did then.
And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. (Genesis 11:6)
—Terry