We’re living in an unprecedented time when strange happenings continue to occur in quick succession. In March 2021, a massive container ship became wedged across the Suez Canal in Egypt — blocking “an artery of world trade,” triggering a rise in oil prices and leading to fallout that affected shipping around the globe.1
Now, war has disrupted supplies further, driving up fertilizer prices and, in turn, food costs. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has been buying up U.S. farmland at a frenzied pace and owns more farmland than any other private farmer in the country.2 Leaders around the world have warned that, due to the war in Ukraine — which is considered the world’s bread basket — food shortages are coming.
On top of that, the Really Graceful video posted above points out, cases of bird flu have been reported in the U.S., with millions of poultry killed off by farmers as a result. “All of these incidents have driven up the price of items at your grocery store,”3 the video notes, but there’s yet another series of events that is somehow even stranger — a rash of fires at U.S. food processing plants.
Could this all be coincidence, driving up food prices to record highs and causing food shortages, or is something more sinister going on?
Fires and Accidents at Food Processing Plants: Coincidence?
In the whole of 2019, there were only two reported fires at U.S. food processing plants. From January 2021 to April 21, 2022, at least 20 were reported — a sizable jump — and they seem to be accelerating in recent weeks.4 Here’s a timeline of some of the events:
August 9, 2019 — A fire destroyed part of the Tyson Foods beef plant in Holcomb, Kansas.5 |
January 12, 2021 — A fire destroyed the Deli Star meat plant in Fayetteville, Illinois.6 In fighting the blaze, firefighters used most of the water in the town’s water towers, leading to a boil order for residents until the water could be replenished. |
January 21, 2021 — The Washington Potato Company plant was declared a total loss after a fire started in the plant’s dehydrator.7 |
July 25, 2021 — A three-alarm fire occurred at a Kellogg plant in Memphis, Tennessee, drawing 170 emergency personnel to the scene.8 |
August 24, 2021 — Severe damage was reported following a fire at Patak Meat Processing facility in Cobb County, Georgia,9 leading to a temporary closure. |
September 12, 2021 — A five-alarm fire broke out at JBS USA’s beef processing plant in Grand Island, Nebraska.10 The plant slaughters about 5% of U.S. cattle. “This year, processing capacity has already been squeezed by COVID disruptions and labor availability and the industry can ill afford losing a big processing plant like this,” Steiner Consulting told Reuters at the time.11 |
November 29, 2021 — A fire broke out at Maid Rite Steak Company, a meat processing plant in Scott, Pennsylvania.12 |
December 12, 2021 — West Side food processing plant was left with smoke damage estimated at over $ 100,000 due to a fire that broke out. No one was working at the plant at the time of the fire.13 |
January 2, 2022 — A fire at Van Drunen Farms Tuthill freeze-drying plant in Momence, Illinois, suffered extensive damage from a fire, with a company official describing it as a “total loss.”14 |
January 14, 2022 — An explosion and fire occurred at the Cargill-Nutrena feed mill in Lecompte, Louisiana, burning for 12 hours.15 |
February 3, 2022 — Fire swept through Wisconsin River Meats in Mauston, Wisconsin, causing a near total loss.16 |
February 17, 2022 — A fire broke out at the Louis Dreyfus Co. (LDC) in Claypool, Indiana.17 LDC is the largest soybean processing and biodiesel plant in the U.S. |
February 22, 2022 — A boiler explosion triggered a fire at Shearer’s Foods near Hermiston, Oregon. Company officials estimated it would take 15 to 18 months to restart production.18 The plant made snacks including potato chips, tortillas, whole grain chips, cheese curls/puffs, popcorn, pork rinds, rice crisps, wafers, cookies, and both sweet and savory biscuits. |
March 13, 2022 — A Hot Pockets plant in Jonesboro, Arkansas, was shut down after a fire started inside a production line cooler.19 |
March 16, 2022 — A massive fire at a Walmart fulfillment center in Plainfield, Indiana, caused the closure of the facility. In April, the company announced it would not be reopening the facility, affecting the jobs of 1,132 employees.20 The center stored food, clothes and cardboard.21 |
March 28, 2022 — A fire at Maricopa Food Pantry in Maricopa, Arizona, leading to the destruction of more than 50,000 pounds of food.22 |
March 31, 2022 — Rio Fresh, an onion warehouse facility in south Texas, was damaged by a structure fire.23 |
April 11, 2022 — A fire broke out at East Conway Beef & Pork in Conway, New Hampshire, destroying the building and killing two cows.24 |
April 13, 2022 — A plane crashed into the Gem State processing facility in Heyburn, Idaho.25 The plant made dehydrated potato flakes, flours, dices, slices and shreds.26 |
April 13, 2022 — A four-alarm fire occurred at Taylor Farms in Salinas, California, drawing nearly 100 firefighters from 22 fire units. The facility, which makes bagged salads and chopped fresh vegetable kits,27 was in the process of restarting operations after being closed for the winter.28 |
April 18, 2022 — The headquarters of Azure Standard in Dufur, Oregon, was destroyed in a fire. Azure Standard the largest independent distributor of organic and health foods in the U.S.29 |
April 30 2022 — A soybean processing tank caught fire at Perdue Farms in Chesapeake, Virginia.30 |
What’s Behind Rising Food Prices?
People are beginning to take notice of these seemingly random fires and accidents that are occurring with increasing frequency at food processing plants across the U.S. As noted by Really Graceful:31
“We’ve got all these factors at play to cause food shortages and increased prices. But are we witnessing total happenstance and coincidence or is it intentional? Are they trying to take down our food supply? Are they trying to sabotage our supply chain? And by ‘they,’ who do we mean? The enemy from within or an enemy of a foreign variety?”
There are no concrete answers to these questions, unfortunately, but we’re witnessing what appears to be the perfect storm for sky-high food prices and food scarcity. The global food price index hit its highest recorded level in March 2022, rising 12.6% in a single month.32 On average, food prices were one-third higher than in March 2021. In the U.S., food prices rose 9% in 2021, and are predicted to rise another 4.5% to 5% in the next 12 months.33
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is certainly not helping. As mentioned, Ukraine is known as “the bread basket” of Europe, responsible for producing and exporting 12% of all food calories traded on the international market. Russia is also a major exporter of food and, together with Ukraine, the two countries account for nearly 30% of global wheat exports, nearly 20% of the world’s corn and more than 80% of the sunflower oil.34
Still, the Ukraine conflict is not entirely to blame. Price inflation was already ramping up well before Russia went into Ukraine, thanks to the uncontrolled printing of fiat currencies that occurred in response to the COVID pandemic. Governments’ COVID response have also wreaked havoc with global supply chains, causing disruptions that continue to this day.
The climate has also been uncooperative, causing poor harvests around the world. China, for example, has reported it expects the lowest harvest yields in history this year, thanks to serious flooding of its farmland in the fall of 2021.35
Are We Entering Phase 2 of The Great Reset Plan?
By now, you may have heard about the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Great Reset and their plan for you to “own nothing and be happy” as part of WEF’s 2030 agenda.36 In the first quarter of 2021, 15% of U.S. homes sold were purchased by corporate investors37 — not families looking to achieve their American dream.
While they’re competing with middle-class Americans for the homes, the average American has virtually no chance of winning a home over an investment firm, which may pay 20% to 50% over asking price,38 in cash, sometimes scooping up entire neighborhoods at once so they can turn them into rentals.39 It appears we’re quickly entering an era where home ownership is becoming out of reach for many — necessitating renting instead of owning, a first step to “owning nothing.”
World war, however, is Phase 2 of The Great Reset plan, which includes the destruction of supply chains, the energy sector, food supply and workforce, to create dependency on government, which in turn will be taken over by private interests and central banks through the collapse of the global economy. An anonymous correspondent recently wrote about this on WinterOak.org:40
“Welcome to the second phase of the Great Reset: war. While the pandemic acclimatized the world to lockdowns, normalized the acceptance of experimental medications, precipitated the greatest transfer of wealth to corporations by decimating SMEs [small and medium-sized businesses] and adjusted the muscle memory of workforce operations in preparation for a cybernetic future, an additional vector was required to accelerate the economic collapse before nations can ‘Build Back Better.’”
The article presents “several ways in which the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is the next catalyst for the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda, facilitated by an interconnected web of global stakeholders and a diffuse network of public-private partnerships.”
Disruption to supply chains fit right into this plan, while food shortages, driven by the many factors discussed and, perhaps, orchestrated attacks on food plants, will accelerate the acceptance of synthetic foods, such as lab-grown meat, which has also been championed by Great Reset front men like Bill Gates.
Of course, it’s possible that Gates buying up farmland, The Great Reset’s push to build a nation of renters, world leaders warning of food shortages, a war and, now, an unexplained jump and apparent acceleration in fires at food plants could all be just coincidence — or could it? What do you think?