Dolphins are jerks

Oh that's a lovely post! I wonder who this "Jasmine" is that retweeted this?

Huh.

Firstly, the food price surge over the summer and beyond is likely to be significant – and will come on top of a near-40% rise in the price of food since 2020 – due to a devastating combination of the Iran war and a forecast record-breaking El Niño, which will hammer global food production. And secondly, Britain’s food system is painfully exposed to such shocks. The long-held assumption that a global food system can be relied on to meet the nation’s needs, at a reasonable price, no longer applies. With about one-third of the fertiliser trade travelling through the strait of Hormuz, and about half of the world population’s food supply dependent on artificial fertiliser, the shock to global food systems will play out over the next year – regardless of how quickly the strait may or may not reopen. The strait of Hormuz isn’t the only chokepoint in the global food system. In a prescient study from 2017, the foreign policy thinktank Chatham House said the world food system had become painfully exposed to 14 “critical junctures”, from the strait of Hormuz to the strait of Malacca, between the Malay peninsula and Sumatra, to the Black Sea ports that connect Ukrainian and Russian farmers to the world. The Panama canal is another; a multi-year drought across Central America has restricted transits through the freshwater-fed canal, which carries 16% of the world’s grain trade, forcing up global prices.

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World hunger has been rising since 2014, with Covid-19 markedly accelerating the trend. And a belief that open markets can always compensate for disruption flies in the face of the growing dependency of the whole system on a few “breadbasket” locations, with 60% of global food production occurring in just five countries. It also ignores the possibility of simultaneous shocks – precisely what the climate crisis, as it leaves weather systems more unstable, starts to make more likely.

[...]

Our entire food system needs an overhaul. In private, the government recognises this. The grudgingly released summary of a still-secret Defra document on the national security risks from “ecosystem collapse” reported that “without significant increases in UK food system and supply chain resilience, it is unlikely the UK would be able to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse drives geopolitical competition for food … Countries best placed to adapt are those that invest in ecosystem protection and restoration, and resilient and efficient food systems.” Global price shocks alone won’t force the change, as an Oxford University study of previous shocks found. Government action is needed. Tariff reductions on nuts, and pleading with the supermarkets are unlikely to deliver results. Like other countries, the UK needs to rebuild its strategic food reserves, abandoned in the mid-1990s. It needs tighter government control and regulation of essential foods, including well designed price regulations like those being introduced across the world. And it needs a focus on longer-term investments in its own farming, supporting farmers in a more volatile environment with proposals like a basic income for farmers, and incentives to build in more resilient, sustainable food production.

~Also love your btw!

-the rightful heir is a baby and they can tell it’s the right baby because of a giant birthmark on his asscheek

-the main character’s only talent is singing and the rest of the pseudo robin-hood group just kinda tolerate him because he repeatedly fucks up

-he gets hypnotized into believing he is this amazing swashbuckling sword fighting hero along the lines of Wesley from the Princess Bride and ends up fighting the villain while snapping in and out of hypnosis

-the vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison, the chalice with the palace has the brew that is true “what”

-he stumbles his way through the entire plot and never knows what the hell is going on

-Danny Kaye is the funniest motherfucker you’ve never heard of