War & Impact on the world

 Repost - taken from FB posted on 4-April-2022

I always wonder what is the biggest cause of famine when the bible mentioned that one of the sign of end times wouls be Famine, besides war and rumours of war as well as earthquakes and pestilences. 

 

So I always thought that, what kind of disaster that will strike that can cause food production be so severely affected - a drought? But watching the developments unfold… there seems to be different possibilities of severe famine could come.

 

The war between Russia and Ukraine really opened up my mind to different revelation of how things could have potential impact on various things. 

 

Im sharing a bit of my early stage experiences now, since i am involved in food industry, a small aqua-entreprenuer i wouls say, with a small fish farm. 

 

Prices of feed that is controlled by the feedmill have already increased 20% since the day of year 2000 around the time Pandemic jus started. Prices are anticipated to go up. So when you saw prices of food in hawker are going up, it is because everything is getting expensive. 

 

I also gathered there is a large shortage of ingredients (maize/corn) to make feeds especialy for meat industry like cows and goats. It is not jus a matter of money, we will see rationing too. 

 

This is compounded by the logistic issue faced since the pandemic started, and now made worse with war.

So i received this video being viraled about Russia being key exporter to wheat and also Urea Nitrogen - yes Urea is the cheapest form of fertiliser we used to prep the farm. Also from Russia. 

 

Are we embracing for this situation? 

 

When pandemic started in 2020, and we went into unprecedented lockdown, I began to see how fragile human in urban areas are, when we have no capability to produce food. We naturally think food is something coming from supermarkets and never go slightly beyond that. 

 

I believe some wise things we can do include: 

 

1. cut on wastages. God promised that the seasons to stay, and enough food for mankind. However, the greed means food never seem to be able to reach everybody equally. 

 

2. Learn to make simple backyard gardening - make compost, pickup skills to make ur own fertilisers, save up the water after u rinsing your rice. You may not make much different, but you see how long it takes for vegetable to be created from seed to the table. You do get the skills to produce food. 

 

I am pretty sure Malaysians can still afford to buy food, not to extent of famine, but it definitely means it will be more expensive. But there are other parts of the poorer world that will suffer more. 

 

On a large scale.. sustainability, a way that can allow a full self dependent cycle is necessary. 

 

The bible said, there will come to a time, your wage for one day’s work is to buy your daily meal. That will happen, when food become the most important commodity - when you see famine, you know this is true.

 

Photos: 

 

1. % of Global export by Russia & Ukraine

 

2. Top producer in urea fertiliser

 

Low Chin Ann is a Director of Genesis Origo

Teaching the ACCA programme for about 22 years in the year of 2022.