Throughout history, famine has been used by tyrants to punish and control populations.

From a news report on Friday:

“Smithfield Foods announced in a news release Friday that it is ceasing all harvest and processing operations in Vernon, California, early next year and plans to “align its hog production system by reducing its sow herd in its Western region.”

That includes decreasing its sow herd in west-central Utah and potentially exiting its farms in Arizona and California, according to Smithfield Foods. The company said it is taking those steps due to the ‘escalating cost of doing business in California.'”

That is a loss of 250 jobs in Beaver County, Utah alone – but couple that with all the “accidents” at food processing facilities around the country and a picture is beginning to develop.

Companies are being costed out of operation and we are already facing relatively minor food shortages. Our local warehouse clubs have been out of poultry on and off for weeks and if you look around, you will notice the racks in the Big Box stores and even your local grocery stores are not as full as they used to be.

Setting aside the fact there are many food production facilities already damaged or completely offline, you may wonder why you haven’t already seen major shortages.

I’ve thought about this a lot lately and I don’t have the empirical data – yet – but one real possibility is it is due to raw food stocks being depleted to the point that those productive capacities aren’t needed. The scary possibility is that there aren’t enough raw stocks to support those facilities even if they were able to produce.

Here’s a frightful possibility that, in my estimation, has a real potential to become reality.

There is no greater fear than the fear of starvation.

Famines are one of the major causes of civil unrest, wars and regime change in world history. They are also one of the most effective means of control of a populace if a leader has the cojones to use them. Stalin did. Even Lincoln and Grant approved starving the Confederate Army and citizens out of Vicksburg in my home state of Mississippi/

Those are facts.

We have already witnessed that fear during the baby formula shortage – now imagine that fear spread due to a complete failure to meet other basic needs. The first to go will be the fresh produce, meats, and fish in the urban centers.

How long do you suppose it will be before people, blinded by fear, will cry out for government to “do something” and that something will be for it to take over farms and reopen food processing facilities under government direction?

We have already seen the impact of so-called “public/private partnerships”, so is it so out of the questions that the government would “partner” with large corporate agribusinesses to “plan” and control the food supply? We already have a system of resource rationing that was used during WWII, how long do you suppose that would take to get rolling again?

My bet is that this is already being talked about as a solution for the “supply chain issues” and the Biden administrations other failures. The know-nothings in Biden’s cabinet would make perfect, pliable little dictatorial commissars. Just look at what incompetent bureaucrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo did to the people of their states during the alleged pandemic.

You can just see the Cuffy Meigs (gratuitous Atlas Shrugged reference) coming out in Pete Buttigieg and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm is already laughing at you through her veil of total ignorance.

Let’s not kid ourselves, high-minded concepts tend to take a back seat to survival. Parents have little time to consider things like liberty and constitutionality when they fear their children might starve.

When the master rattles the food bowl, the dogs come running.

Look, I’m not saying that this is all planned and it might well be my own little conspiracy theory, but we currently have a shortage of conspiracy theories because so many of them are coming true. The fact is that throughout history, there are examples of perfect storms of events of which tyrants are more than willing to take advantage.

Please, I encourage you do buy twice as much as you need of canned goods and long-life products like powdered milk, sugar and flour and set half aside while you can still get them. I would also ask that you consider stocking up on freeze dried food stocks like those from a company called Patriot Supply (I have no connection with them, nor do I benefit from them in any way).

What have you got to lose?

If I am wrong, you just have a lot of canned green beans to eat.

If I’m right…well, I hope I am not.