Potential Food and Energy Shortage Across the World
- Thread starter PabloAngello
- Start date
An interesting video that combines information and health tips. Here are some notes.
This is ALARMING INFO but you need to know...GET READY!
OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY
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John Kaness
This is ALARMING INFO but you need to know...GET READY!
OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY
Related notes
John Kaness
Not long after the Lexington, Nebraska beef plant closed that produced 7-9% of the Nation's beef supply, JBS workers go on strike at the Greeley facility, which is one of the biggest beef packing plant in the world:
So as long as the Greeley plant is closed to to ongoing strikes, we're down ~14% of the nation's beef production capacity so far in 2026.
Beef packers are hemorrhaging money, their employees can't pay their bills, and consumers can barely afford their product. Me thinks something is broken here. Not a good sign.
So as long as the Greeley plant is closed to to ongoing strikes, we're down ~14% of the nation's beef production capacity so far in 2026.
Beef packers are hemorrhaging money, their employees can't pay their bills, and consumers can barely afford their product. Me thinks something is broken here. Not a good sign.
There seems to be something similar happening with physical vs. futures price divergence in the oil markets, as has been going on with silver market since last autumn. For example Dubai crude, which represents real physical demand from the region, is trading at 30-40 dollar premium compared to Brent and WTI oil price.
Same development is seen in some other oil benchmarks and products that are grounded to physical oil demand and supply tightness in the Middle East and Asia:
Where as some of these other (often non-Western) benchmarks are grounded more in "facts on the ground", e.g what the current production costs, risks, physical demand, and cargo transaction are for oil (some are also traded as futures at CME or ICE, so there's probably overlap and other factors involved too).
Thus, even though Brent and WTI price has risen significantly in short time, prices settled outside the Western financial institutes reflect the true demand (in similar manner as silver is priced in Shanghai vs. Comex). I wonder if in the not-too-distant-future something breaks (April is again around the corner...) as these two competing price mechanisms keep clashing?
Same development is seen in some other oil benchmarks and products that are grounded to physical oil demand and supply tightness in the Middle East and Asia:
Since WTI (primarily US-produced oil) and Brent (North Sea-produced oil) trade is based on futures that are settled in Western institutions (CME group and Intercontinental Exchange ICE), they have more room for manipulation (e.g based on false expectations that the war is soon over or creating artificial selling pressure of these contracts etc).
Where as some of these other (often non-Western) benchmarks are grounded more in "facts on the ground", e.g what the current production costs, risks, physical demand, and cargo transaction are for oil (some are also traded as futures at CME or ICE, so there's probably overlap and other factors involved too).
Thus, even though Brent and WTI price has risen significantly in short time, prices settled outside the Western financial institutes reflect the true demand (in similar manner as silver is priced in Shanghai vs. Comex). I wonder if in the not-too-distant-future something breaks (April is again around the corner...) as these two competing price mechanisms keep clashing?
Update on the Greeley strike. The workers returned after 3 weeks following a commitment from both sides for in-person negotiations. There is just one issue though. With the plant closed for 3 weeks, slaughter volume decreased nationally, which drove up the price for beef, and beef packers made higher margins.
So the workers go on strike to put pressure on JBS to pay them a livable wages and JBS could really care less since reducing capacity benefits their bottom line.
Let's recap my last few posts for perspective since this is pretty alarming:
- "We pretended to work and they pretended to pay us"
So the workers go on strike to put pressure on JBS to pay them a livable wages and JBS could really care less since reducing capacity benefits their bottom line.
Let's recap my last few posts for perspective since this is pretty alarming:
- Beef prices are up 70% at the store level since Covid
- Consumers can barely afford beef
- Beef packers are losing money even with that price increase
- Beef packers are hemorrhaging money
- Tyson reacts by closing one of the biggest beef plants in the world (7-9% of US packing capacity)
- Beef packers have to alter market dynamics to make a profit
- Cattle population vs. US population has reduced ~60% over 55 years
- Shades of National submission by starvation tactics
- Senator chuck schumer proposes a bill that reads like a glossed up bailout for meatpackers
- You can guarantee that the government will improve things 100% of the time.
- JBS employees go on strike to fight for livable wages (additional 6% of US packing capacity)
- Employees can't pay their bills
- The strike has little to no power / has the opposite effect - JBS margins increase
- Beef packers have no incentive to pay their employees livable wages. This signals that further plant closures are likely and workers will continue to be financially crushed.
- "We pretended to work and they pretended to pay us"
The Russian government has the upper hand, which it never intended, as Putin once again demonstrates that the global supply chain depends on fossil fuels. 
gcaptain.com
By Dmitry Antonov and Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW, April 7 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday there were a huge number of requests for Russian energy from a range of different places amid a grave global energy crisis that was shaking the foundations of the oil and gas markets.
The U.S. and Israeli war against Iran has triggered an energy crisis for the global economy by trapping a large volume of oil in the Gulf due to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz to most vessels.
The crisis comes just as European consumers were trying to end their reliance on Russian energy to punish Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine, and as Russia itself looks set to cut its output in the wake of Ukrainian attacks on its oil infrastructure.
President Vladimir Putin has suggested switching supplies more swiftly away from European customers if they do not want Russian energy.
“Now that the world has confidently embarked on the path of a rather serious economic and energy crisis, which is growing day by day, the market and market conditions in the field of energy and energy resources have completely changed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“There are a huge number of requests for the purchase of our energy resources from alternative sources. We are negotiating, we are negotiating in such a way that this situation best suits our interests.”
Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, produces around 10 million barrels of crude per day and about half are exported. Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves.
Still, Russia may in fact have to reduce oil production because Ukrainian strikes on ports, pipelines and refineries have cut export capability by 1 million barrels per day, or a fifth of total capacity, Reuters reported last week.
SELLING EASTWARDS
Asian countries including Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka are lining up to buy Russian oil as the Iran war blocks supplies, raising the possibility that demand may exceed supply, Reuters reported last month.
In a sign of the demand, prices for Russia’s Urals blend traded at a premium of $5.00 to $8.00 per barrel to Brent last month. Usually, Urals trades at a discount.
Beyond oil, Russia is also moving LNG eastwards.
Yamal LNG, controlled by Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer Novatek NVTK.MM, has sent its first cargo to China since last November, LSEG data showed on Tuesday, weeks before the gradual enforcement of Europe’s ban on Russian LNG imports.
The project, located on the Yamal peninsula in the Arctic, has previously mostly exported its frozen gas to Europe.
Putin said last month that Russia could divert gas away from Europe, given the European Union’s decision to ban imports of Russian pipeline gas by late 2027 and new short-term Russian LNG contracts from April 25 this year.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov and Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Vladimir Soldatkin and Hugh Lawson)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026.
Option by © OilPrice.com
oilprice.com
By Michael Scott - Apr 07, 2026, 7:00 PM CDT
Oil is surging on the Iran strikes. Gas costs more. Everything costs more. That pain is real.
But here’s what most Americans don’t realize. Oil and gas have dozens of global suppliers.
When one source gets disrupted, others fill the gap. Prices spike, then stabilize.
Rare earth alloys -- especially the ones the Pentagon won't name publicly -- are different.
There is no backup supplier. There is no strategic reserve…
And, because of that, one Euclid, Ohio company just became an important stock in the space.
If rare earth alloys disappear tomorrow, your phone goes dark, your EV won’t start, and the F-35 production line at Lockheed Martin goes silent. Not slowed. Silent.
China controls over 90% of the global capacity to make these alloys. And they’ve already started turning off the tap -- restricting exports of rare earth processing technology, equipment expertise.
And there’s a hard deadline coming. On January 1, 2027 – 268 days from today -- new U.S. defense procurement rules kick in. Under DFARS and 10 U.S.C. §4872, Chinese-origin rare earth materials will be BANNED from American defense systems.
Lockheed, RTX, Northrop Grumman, as well as every major defense contractor, must have a domestic, China-free alloy supply chain by that date.
That supply chain barely exists. China didn’t just dominate the alloy market. They eliminated the competition.
That’s what Trump's $12 billion critical minerals stockpile is all about.
The West stopped producing rare earth alloys decades ago. The expertise left. The equipment left. The workforce left.
But here’s what most investors could soon see as front-page news.
One company in North America that can produce defense-grade heavy rare earth alloys today. It operates from a facility in Euclid, Ohio -- with 30 years of metallurgy expertise and active Pentagon contracts.
It completed a reverse merger six weeks ago and now trades on NASDAQ.
The company is REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY), and its processes include the critical final step in the rare earth supply chain: metallization.
This is the stage where processed heavy rare earth materials become metals and then the alloys used to manufacture permanent magnets - the components inside fighter jets, missile guidance systems, electric vehicles, and advanced electronics.
China spent decades building dominance over this step. Outside China, almost no industrial capacity exists.
The Real Chokepoint, Resolved
The alloy is the chokepoint. And REalloys is one of the only companies in the Western Hemisphere managing it.
But here’s the part the market hasn’t priced in yet.
REalloys isn’t just operating a facility in Euclid.
It’s scaling it.
A few weeks ago, the company announced an expansion that will build the largest heavy rare earth metallization platform outside China.
This isn’t a pilot project. It’s full industrial capacity.
In addition to NdPr metal, this new platform will produce metals like dysprosium and terbium -- the two metals that allow permanent magnets to operate inside extreme heat and high-stress environments.
At planned capacity, this system feeds into a downstream magnet market measured in the tens of billions.
But that’s only the starting point.
Once converted into NdFeB magnets, that output supports roughly $400 million in annual magnet value, with expansion plans targeting multi-billion-dollar revenue at full scale.
The global NdFeB magnet market is already worth more than $20 billion annually and continues to grow as demand from electric vehicles, wind turbines, and defense systems accelerates.
Without those metals, the magnets inside missile guidance systems, radar arrays, and advanced aircraft simply don’t work.
That includes next-generation platforms developed by contractors like Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), where stealth systems, advanced sensors, and electronic warfare capabilities depend on high-performance materials that can operate under extreme thermal and electromagnetic stress. These aren’t interchangeable inputs. They are engineered into systems that take years—sometimes decades—to design and deploy.
Remove the material, and the system doesn’t degrade. It stops.
And this new facility isn’t appearing out of nowhere.
It’s part of a larger North American supply chain now forming.
REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) has partnered with the Saskatchewan Research Council in Canada, which is building North America’s first commercial multi-source rare earth processing facility.
That plant will produce the rare earth oxides.
Those oxides will then move south to Ohio, where REalloys converts them into finished metals and alloys.
Mine to metal.
Canada to the United States.
A fully allied supply chain built specifically to comply with the Pentagon’s 2027 ban.
And the scale is enormous.
The current platform which goes into production in 2027 is designed to convert rare earth oxides into 600 tons of high-purity metals and alloys.
From there, the company plans to move even further downstream.
REalloys is designing its first magnet manufacturing facility capable of producing 3,000 tons of NdFeB magnets annually in its first phase -- eventually scaling to 18,000 tons per year.
At full capacity, that level of production could supply magnets for 3 to 4 million electric vehicles each year, along with thousands of wind turbines, robotics systems, industrial motors, and defense platforms.
Which means something remarkable is happening.
That level of capacity doesn’t just close a gap. It sets the floor for an entire market that currently has no domestic base.
At full scale, 18,000 tons of NdFeB magnet production feeds directly into industries measured in the hundreds of billions annually. Electric vehicles alone are approaching a trillion-dollar global market, and every unit depends on high-performance permanent magnets. In aerospace, manufacturers like Boeing (NYSE: BA) are already navigating complex supply chain constraints across critical components, where even minor disruptions can ripple through multi-year production schedules.
Introduce a hard constraint at the material level, and those delays don’t stay contained. They compound.
What this tonnage enables is where the value concentrates.
Every kilogram of magnet material supports end products that are orders of magnitude more valuable. Cut off the supply, and you’re not just shaving margins; you’re shutting down production lines tied to some of the most capital-intensive and critical industries in the world.
That pressure isn’t isolated to defense. Companies like Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), which rely on high-performance permanent magnets for electric drivetrains, are drawing from the same constrained pool of materials. As EV adoption accelerates globally, civilian demand is beginning to collide directly with military and industrial requirements.
And when multiple trillion-dollar systems compete for the same upstream inputs, the bottleneck doesn’t ease - it tightens.
REalloys is right at that chokepoint. Not as a participant on the edge of the supply chain, but at the point where multiple trillion-dollar systems converge.
For the first time in decades, the entire rare earth magnet supply chain -- mining, processing, metallization, alloying, and magnet manufacturing -- is being rebuilt inside North America.
And it’s happening just as Washington’s deadline arrives.
January 1, 2027.
268 days.
After that date, Chinese-origin rare earth materials can no longer go into American defense systems.
The Pentagon will need a new supply chain.
And right now, almost none of it exists.
But they can find it.
In Euclid, Ohio.
By. Michael Scott
The AI boom is triggering an unexpected and unprecedented bull run in natural gas and power stocks. If you aren't paying attention to the energy demands of data centers, you will miss the biggest energy story of the decade. The smart money is already quietly moving into the few companies prepared to power the trillion-dollar AI machine.
Oilprice Intelligence brings you the inside view on where the next gains will come from, breaking down the market's biggest growth driver with analysis from veteran oilmen and experts.
World is Lining Up for Russian Energy, the Kremlin Says
The Kremlin said on Tuesday there were a huge number of requests for Russian energy from a range of different places amid a grave global energy crisis that was shaking the foundations of the oil and gas markets.
gcaptain.com
MOSCOW, April 7 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday there were a huge number of requests for Russian energy from a range of different places amid a grave global energy crisis that was shaking the foundations of the oil and gas markets.
The U.S. and Israeli war against Iran has triggered an energy crisis for the global economy by trapping a large volume of oil in the Gulf due to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz to most vessels.
The crisis comes just as European consumers were trying to end their reliance on Russian energy to punish Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine, and as Russia itself looks set to cut its output in the wake of Ukrainian attacks on its oil infrastructure.
President Vladimir Putin has suggested switching supplies more swiftly away from European customers if they do not want Russian energy.
“Now that the world has confidently embarked on the path of a rather serious economic and energy crisis, which is growing day by day, the market and market conditions in the field of energy and energy resources have completely changed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“There are a huge number of requests for the purchase of our energy resources from alternative sources. We are negotiating, we are negotiating in such a way that this situation best suits our interests.”
Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, produces around 10 million barrels of crude per day and about half are exported. Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves.
Still, Russia may in fact have to reduce oil production because Ukrainian strikes on ports, pipelines and refineries have cut export capability by 1 million barrels per day, or a fifth of total capacity, Reuters reported last week.
SELLING EASTWARDS
Asian countries including Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka are lining up to buy Russian oil as the Iran war blocks supplies, raising the possibility that demand may exceed supply, Reuters reported last month.
In a sign of the demand, prices for Russia’s Urals blend traded at a premium of $5.00 to $8.00 per barrel to Brent last month. Usually, Urals trades at a discount.
Beyond oil, Russia is also moving LNG eastwards.
Yamal LNG, controlled by Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer Novatek NVTK.MM, has sent its first cargo to China since last November, LSEG data showed on Tuesday, weeks before the gradual enforcement of Europe’s ban on Russian LNG imports.
The project, located on the Yamal peninsula in the Arctic, has previously mostly exported its frozen gas to Europe.
Putin said last month that Russia could divert gas away from Europe, given the European Union’s decision to ban imports of Russian pipeline gas by late 2027 and new short-term Russian LNG contracts from April 25 this year.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov and Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Vladimir Soldatkin and Hugh Lawson)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026.
Option by © OilPrice.com
The Pentagon Has 268 Days to Replace America’s Most Critical Supply Chain | OilPrice.com
There is no second supplier. There is no strategic reserve. The clock is ticking, and one company can help save them.
oilprice.com
Oil is surging on the Iran strikes. Gas costs more. Everything costs more. That pain is real.
But here’s what most Americans don’t realize. Oil and gas have dozens of global suppliers.
When one source gets disrupted, others fill the gap. Prices spike, then stabilize.
Rare earth alloys -- especially the ones the Pentagon won't name publicly -- are different.
There is no backup supplier. There is no strategic reserve…
And, because of that, one Euclid, Ohio company just became an important stock in the space.
If rare earth alloys disappear tomorrow, your phone goes dark, your EV won’t start, and the F-35 production line at Lockheed Martin goes silent. Not slowed. Silent.
China controls over 90% of the global capacity to make these alloys. And they’ve already started turning off the tap -- restricting exports of rare earth processing technology, equipment expertise.
And there’s a hard deadline coming. On January 1, 2027 – 268 days from today -- new U.S. defense procurement rules kick in. Under DFARS and 10 U.S.C. §4872, Chinese-origin rare earth materials will be BANNED from American defense systems.
Lockheed, RTX, Northrop Grumman, as well as every major defense contractor, must have a domestic, China-free alloy supply chain by that date.
That supply chain barely exists. China didn’t just dominate the alloy market. They eliminated the competition.
That’s what Trump's $12 billion critical minerals stockpile is all about.
The West stopped producing rare earth alloys decades ago. The expertise left. The equipment left. The workforce left.
But here’s what most investors could soon see as front-page news.
One company in North America that can produce defense-grade heavy rare earth alloys today. It operates from a facility in Euclid, Ohio -- with 30 years of metallurgy expertise and active Pentagon contracts.
It completed a reverse merger six weeks ago and now trades on NASDAQ.
The company is REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY), and its processes include the critical final step in the rare earth supply chain: metallization.
This is the stage where processed heavy rare earth materials become metals and then the alloys used to manufacture permanent magnets - the components inside fighter jets, missile guidance systems, electric vehicles, and advanced electronics.
China spent decades building dominance over this step. Outside China, almost no industrial capacity exists.
The Real Chokepoint, Resolved
The alloy is the chokepoint. And REalloys is one of the only companies in the Western Hemisphere managing it.
But here’s the part the market hasn’t priced in yet.
REalloys isn’t just operating a facility in Euclid.
It’s scaling it.
A few weeks ago, the company announced an expansion that will build the largest heavy rare earth metallization platform outside China.
This isn’t a pilot project. It’s full industrial capacity.
In addition to NdPr metal, this new platform will produce metals like dysprosium and terbium -- the two metals that allow permanent magnets to operate inside extreme heat and high-stress environments.
At planned capacity, this system feeds into a downstream magnet market measured in the tens of billions.
But that’s only the starting point.
Once converted into NdFeB magnets, that output supports roughly $400 million in annual magnet value, with expansion plans targeting multi-billion-dollar revenue at full scale.
The global NdFeB magnet market is already worth more than $20 billion annually and continues to grow as demand from electric vehicles, wind turbines, and defense systems accelerates.
Without those metals, the magnets inside missile guidance systems, radar arrays, and advanced aircraft simply don’t work.
That includes next-generation platforms developed by contractors like Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), where stealth systems, advanced sensors, and electronic warfare capabilities depend on high-performance materials that can operate under extreme thermal and electromagnetic stress. These aren’t interchangeable inputs. They are engineered into systems that take years—sometimes decades—to design and deploy.
Remove the material, and the system doesn’t degrade. It stops.
And this new facility isn’t appearing out of nowhere.
It’s part of a larger North American supply chain now forming.
REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) has partnered with the Saskatchewan Research Council in Canada, which is building North America’s first commercial multi-source rare earth processing facility.
That plant will produce the rare earth oxides.
Those oxides will then move south to Ohio, where REalloys converts them into finished metals and alloys.
Mine to metal.
Canada to the United States.
A fully allied supply chain built specifically to comply with the Pentagon’s 2027 ban.
And the scale is enormous.
The current platform which goes into production in 2027 is designed to convert rare earth oxides into 600 tons of high-purity metals and alloys.
From there, the company plans to move even further downstream.
REalloys is designing its first magnet manufacturing facility capable of producing 3,000 tons of NdFeB magnets annually in its first phase -- eventually scaling to 18,000 tons per year.
At full capacity, that level of production could supply magnets for 3 to 4 million electric vehicles each year, along with thousands of wind turbines, robotics systems, industrial motors, and defense platforms.
Which means something remarkable is happening.
That level of capacity doesn’t just close a gap. It sets the floor for an entire market that currently has no domestic base.
At full scale, 18,000 tons of NdFeB magnet production feeds directly into industries measured in the hundreds of billions annually. Electric vehicles alone are approaching a trillion-dollar global market, and every unit depends on high-performance permanent magnets. In aerospace, manufacturers like Boeing (NYSE: BA) are already navigating complex supply chain constraints across critical components, where even minor disruptions can ripple through multi-year production schedules.
Introduce a hard constraint at the material level, and those delays don’t stay contained. They compound.
What this tonnage enables is where the value concentrates.
Every kilogram of magnet material supports end products that are orders of magnitude more valuable. Cut off the supply, and you’re not just shaving margins; you’re shutting down production lines tied to some of the most capital-intensive and critical industries in the world.
That pressure isn’t isolated to defense. Companies like Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), which rely on high-performance permanent magnets for electric drivetrains, are drawing from the same constrained pool of materials. As EV adoption accelerates globally, civilian demand is beginning to collide directly with military and industrial requirements.
And when multiple trillion-dollar systems compete for the same upstream inputs, the bottleneck doesn’t ease - it tightens.
REalloys is right at that chokepoint. Not as a participant on the edge of the supply chain, but at the point where multiple trillion-dollar systems converge.
For the first time in decades, the entire rare earth magnet supply chain -- mining, processing, metallization, alloying, and magnet manufacturing -- is being rebuilt inside North America.
And it’s happening just as Washington’s deadline arrives.
January 1, 2027.
268 days.
After that date, Chinese-origin rare earth materials can no longer go into American defense systems.
The Pentagon will need a new supply chain.
And right now, almost none of it exists.
But they can find it.
In Euclid, Ohio.
By. Michael Scott
The AI boom is triggering an unexpected and unprecedented bull run in natural gas and power stocks. If you aren't paying attention to the energy demands of data centers, you will miss the biggest energy story of the decade. The smart money is already quietly moving into the few companies prepared to power the trillion-dollar AI machine.
Oilprice Intelligence brings you the inside view on where the next gains will come from, breaking down the market's biggest growth driver with analysis from veteran oilmen and experts.
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