Free Republic

The fertilizer crisis just got a whole lot worse after 3,000 Canadian Pacific Rail Workers walked off the job, leaving fertilizer shipments stranded. Thousands of CP Rail conductors, engineers, train, and yard workers represented by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference decided to strike after the union and the rail company failed to strike a deal. This could result in a shortage of fertilizer and other needed farm supplies ahead of the spring growing season. “CP Rail is the leading carrier of potash, a potassium-rich salt mined from underground deposits formed from evaporated sea beds millions of years ago, used to...

March 14 (Reuters) - A worsening drought in the southern U.S. Plains is threatening the region's winter wheat crop just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine dents global supplies. Some farmers in southwestern Kansas, the top U.S. wheat producing state, have not received much measurable rain or snow since October. Winter wheat is planted in autumn, lays dormant in winter and begins sending up green shoots in spring. Proper soil moisture is critical at this stage for the crop to thrive. More than half of Kansas was classified as under severe drought or worse as of March 8, the driest...

Williamsport, Pa. -- A mother accused of the homicide of her two daughters, Nicole and Jasmine Snyder, admitted during a preliminary hearing on Wednesday that she and her girlfriend starved each of the two girls “so she would die.” During the hearing held at the Lycoming County Courthouse for Echo Butler and Ronald Butler, Marie Snyder relayed intimate details of the death of both of her daughters. The girls, just four and six years old at the time of their deaths, were subjected to physical abuse, verbal abuse, restraint, humiliation, and starvation, Snyder admitted.

Iowa reported an outbreak of highly lethal bird flu in a commercial flock of egg-laying chickens on Friday, raising the risk for further infections in the top US egg-producing state. Iowa was already facing restrictions on exports of poultry products after a commercial turkey flock tested positive for the disease on Sunday.

The Chinese regime continues to mandate its COVID-zero policy that quarantines all potential infections and locks down cities. Residents in Shenzhen, a city with multiple districts reporting outbreaks of COVID-19, complained that they were surrounded by “trash mountains” and in desperate need of food due to the lockdown. “On the evening of Feb. 28, a neighbor tried to jump off the building from his apartment. Other neighbors told me that he has depression and hadn’t eaten for two days. He lost all hope and tried to commit suicide,” Lin Dai (pseudonym), a resident of Shangshadong village in the city of...

A scarcity economy begins with inflationary hikes. Consumer prices surged more than expected over the past 12 months, indicating a worsening outlook for inflation and cementing the likelihood of substantial interest rate hikes this year. With all of the things that have transpired, from bad weather, wildfires, disasters and even food chain shortages — I often wonder what it takes to get people to invest in protecting their own food chain and the ability to have some kind of food that provides and calories necessary to survive. I guess a lot of people need the mainstream media to convince them...

DURING 15 years of confinement in psychiatric institutions in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, Dimitri Gerasimenko was starved and repeatedly beaten. The indignities did not end with his death five years ago at the age of 30.Staff at the ramshackle asylum 50 miles from Bishkek, the capital, have never told his mother Raisa, 65, how he died. All her attempts to retrieve his remains have been met with prevarication, compounding her grief. “First I was asked for money if I wanted the body back,” she said. “Then I was told Dimitri had been sent to a medical academy. When...

SEATTLE—Edmina Romanov fasted all day so she wouldn’t have to worry about calories at her friend’s Communist-themed party, but it was all for naught because no food was offered at the authentic commie get-together. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got egg on my face,” said Romanov. “I mean not really. I wish I did. I’m so hungry.” “But think of the weight you will lose, comrade!” joked the party’s host, Larry Bolshevik. “Come! Let us play ‘Arrest the Lienz Cossack.’” Another guest of the party, Natasha Summers, didn’t understand why Romanov was so upset. “There’s plenty of food if you know where...

Yeah so that absolute catastrophe that was the Biden administration's immediate and complete pull-out of Afghanistan -- turning our backs on many Americans, as well as any and all Afghans who have helped us for the past who-even-remembers-how-many years, and handing the country of Afghanistan as well as $85 billion in U.S. weapons and vehicles over to the Taliban terror group -- continues to pay off in spades.Afghanistan is now on the brink of a mass starvation event that will be especially brutal on children:Nearly four months since the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan is on the brink of a mass...

As Ethiopia heads towards a potential collapse, the Biden administration worries the situation will turn into another Afghanistan, Axios reported. The government of Ethiopia has called on its citizens to arm themselves as rebels make their way towards the capital, Addis Ababa, Axios reported. The rebels are reportedly from the Tigray region, where concerns have risen about ethnic cleansing and the use of starvation by the government as a tactic of war.

Social media platforms are getting flooded with testimonies from farmers, friends of farmers and people who work with farmers explaining how the Biden regime is now paying the people who grow America’s food supply to destroy it. At a time when inflation is soaring, Washington, D.C., is ordering farmers to plow under the crops they worked so hard to grow. In exchange, these farmers are reportedly being paid high dollar for their obedience (watch below): VIDEO (language warning) “This year, farmers are being offered 1.5 times the value of their crops to destroy them,” one man in the above video...

A record-breaking snowstorm and severe winds are wreaking havoc in northeastern China. It’s snarling traffic, disrupting train and flight services, closing schools, and freezing millions of livestock.

The truth is starting to come out, and a lot of people aren’t going to like it. When the supply chain problems and the shortages began, government officials repeatedly assured us that they would just be temporary, and most of us believed them. But now it has become clear that they aren’t going to be temporary at all. In fact, during a recent interview with Bloomberg, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg admitted that some of the supply chain problems that we are currently facing could last for “years and years”. I don’t know about you, but to me “years and...

Calories are an important part of your daily life. Your body needs calories just to operate, with even the most basic functions of your organs, such as the beating of your heart, consuming calories. But how many calories you need in a day to survive is different from how many calories you usually eat on a day-to-day basis. That’s because, in a survival situation, your priority is staying alive until you can better your circumstances and eat more enjoyable foods. Until then, you may not get all the nutrients your body needs to stay in top shape. Determining the minimum...

What I am going to share with you in this article is extraordinarily alarming, but I want my readers to clearly understand what time it is. It is human nature to procrastinate, and when we aren’t faced with a fixed deadline there is a tendency to assume that there is always “more time” to get something done. Over the years, I have begged and pleaded with my readers to get prepared, and some took that advice but many others didn’t. Now I am getting emails from readers that are deeply alarmed by all of the craziness that is erupting all...

Supermarkets are stocking up on everything from sugar to frozen meat before they get more pricey, girding for what some executives anticipate will be some of the highest price increases in recent memory. Some supermarkets said they are buying and storing supplies to keep their shelves full amid stronger demand. Grocery sales in the U.S. for the week ended June 19 rose about 15% from two years earlier and increased 0.5% from a year earlier, according to Jefferies and NielsenIQ data. Stockpiling by food retailers is driving shortages of some staples, grocery industry executives said, and is challenging a U.S....

More than 5 million children died across the world in 2019 from preventable causes, according to the World Health Organization. Add to that the approximately 46 million unborn babies who were aborted and the total number of preventable children’s deaths was a staggering 51 million. Yet, the United Nations seems to be making matters worse for children, not better. While “the world’s poor are dying daily due to limited access to hospitals, medicine, and proper treatments, the United Nations is exhibiting a preoccupation with pushing countries to legalize abortion,” said Neydy Casillas, the vice president of International Affairs for Concerned...

Our enemies now understand that you can completely paralyze America by taking out just a handful of pipelines. Even though all of us knew that any gasoline shortages were just going to be temporary, the shut down of the Colonial Pipeline caused a frenzied wave of “panic buying” all along the east coast. But if something caused the gasoline to stop flowing for a longer period of time, not being able to fill up our vehicles would be among the least of our problems. Trucks need gasoline too, and if our trucks stopped running for an extended period it would...

Food insecurity in the world’s poorest countries reached record highs in 2020, with millions staring at famine, a situation exacerbated in part by the COVID pandemic, according to a UN report. From Haiti to Syria, some 155 million people across 55 countries who rely the most on humanitarian assistance were classified as being in “crisis” – meaning in urgent need of food – a 20 million increase since 2019, according to the report released Wednesday. The report – based on a study organised by the Global Network Against Food Crises, a partnership between the European Union, Food and Agriculture Organization,...