Commentary; balances are symbolic for economic transactions and ‘prices’ for things such as wheat and barley grain, bread, olive oil, wine, various food commodities. These are common throughout the world and are considered by most as the ‘staples of life or living.’
6 And I heard (7) a voice in the midst of the (7) four beasts say, A measure of wheat (7) for a penny, and three measures of (7) barley for a penny; and see thou (7) hurt not the oil and the wine. (77777) 5×7
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/26W6/the-epoch-times-food-crisis
The world will have reached a point of ‘climate apartheid’ where only the wealthy can afford basic food resources in the face of fatal droughts, famine, locust swarms and heatwaves, while the rest of the world suffers. Only the extreme rich can afford expensive cooking oil, baked pastries and loaves of multi-grain breads, fancy wines and related luxurious food stuffs. Yet, the ‘average peasant’ has to work for an entire day’s wages just to be able to buy enough wheat to make a loaf of bread. Great and severe income inequality is rampant worldwide. The ‘few’ own a massive disproportion of the earth’s wealth and bounty. Billionaires vs billions of poor. The ‘Crown Prince’ owns 60,000 (6) tonnes of wheat in his store houses or graineries while the few grain silos in the Port of Lebanon were destroyed and its people are threatened with expensive grain shortages that require humanitarian assistance.
Black Horseman / Food Scarcity
Extreme weather and war in Ukraine bring food security into sharp focus in China
Story by Janis Mackey Frayer and Henry Austin and Larissa Gao •2d
NBC NEWS October 7, 2023
HENGDU, China — As the green and yellow crops swayed around her, the farmer provided a small insight into China’s efforts to feed its 1.4 billion people.
“It’s all rice,” the woman surnamed Liu, 60, told NBC News last month. “Even in the local graveyard.”
Left reeling from a summer of record flooding after some of the heaviest rainfall in 140 years, destroying harvests and leaving millions of tons of grain lost — all amid heightened tensions with the West and the war in Ukraine — China’s leaders have been ramping up efforts to shore up the supply of food and lessen dependence on imports.
“Food security is very important to China,” said Tim Benton, a professor at the University of Leeds in England and the director of the Environment and Society Center at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“Over the last 20 or 30 years the requirements for large-scale urban populations eating more ultra-processed food and a greater range of food means that their self-sufficiency ratio, in terms of how can they feed themselves, has dropped from a percentage in the high 90s to about 66%,” he said.
Benton added that President Xi Jinping and other leading figures in the ruling Chinese Communist Party would remember growing up during the Great Leap Forward, a disastrous attempt in the late 1950s and early 1960s by then-leader Mao Zedong to rapidly industrialize Chinese society that led to millions of deaths from starvation and the brutal purges of the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.
As a result, Benton said, there is a recognition that in a “very authoritarian state, the ability to keep everybody happy ultimately rests on food security.” If there were to be another significant famine, he said, “the center of the party would feel at risk.”
More recently, he said, the war in Ukraine, tensions with the West and extreme weather have reinforced “this basic issue that they are frightened of food insecurity and they don’t want to rely on the market.”
He added that it had been “interesting to see the use of food as a weapon of war” by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, which has blocked Ukrainian grain exports, and that “a country like China is very nervous about being held to ransom.”
In its bid to seek greater self-sufficiency for a fifth of the world’s population with less than 10% of the world’s arable farmland, the Chinese government is expanding areas for planting and has already reclaimed nearly half a million acres nationwide to grow more staple foods like rice, soybeans and wheat. But most of the country’s farming regions are under the monsoon influence, making them susceptible to floods and drought.
Flooding in July in Chongqing, a metropolis in China’s southwest, prompted the country’s highest emergency alert as it killed at least 15 people, affected more than 13,000 others and damaged tens of thousands of acres of crops, including rice and corn.
Further north, high temperatures compromised the quality and quantity of crops in other parts of the country, prompting farmers to warn that the situation is getting worse as extreme weather events occur more often.
So Beijing has started to focus on food technology.
At the Institute of Urban Agriculture in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, professor Yang Qichang said that indoor vertical farming had allowed them to “achieve year-round growth” of wheat in an artificial environment.
“The growth cycle of wheat usually takes 120 to 150 days,” he said. “Now the wheat in the breeding base can be harvested in about 55 to 65 days, which means the growth cycle is shorter.”
He added that this meant there was the potential for five or six harvests a year instead of one or two.
Already the world’s biggest food producer, China is also the biggest food importer. The country imported more than 140 million tons of grains last year, the equivalent of 21% of its annual domestic grain production.
Amid tensions with the U.S., which was its biggest agricultural supplier before a trade war began in 2018, Beijing has turned to countries such as Brazil and Argentina for food imports, while ramping up efforts to ensure food security and carrying out a high-profile campaign against food waste.
“We cannot control the environment in an open field,” Yang said, adding that indoor growers could control the temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide, as well as plant nutrient systems.
“Inside there is no drought, there is no flood. There are no extreme weather patterns to worry about,” he said.
“Because we can control the environment of this kind of system,” he said, “we can grow food everywhere.”
Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Chengdu, and Henry Austin from London.
The unsteady truth about global poverty (msn.com)
https://news.yahoo.com/un-warns-looming-hunger-emergency-144824250.html
The Surprising Poverty Levels Across the U.S. (msn.com)
China’s food security threatened by climate change | Watch (msn.com)
But how can (7) they call on him (Jesus Christ) to save (7) them unless they believe in Him (Jesus Christ)? (7) And how can they believe in Him (7) (Jesus Christ) if they have never heard about (7) Him (Jesus Christ)? And how can they hear (7) about Him (Jesus Christ) unless someone tells them?” Romans 10:14 (777777)
In His Service,
Night Watchman
Paul Rolland
Night Watchman Ministries
Make Your (7) Decision for Christ NOW!!!!!!! Time is Up!!!!!!!
Jesus Christ’s Offer of Salvation:
The ABCs (7) of Salvation through Jesus Christ (the Lamb)
A. (7) Admit/Acknowledge/Accept that you are sinner. Ask (7) God’s forgiveness and repent of your sins.
. . . “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
. . . “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8).
B. Believe Jesus is Lord. Believe that (7) Jesus Christ is who He claimed to (7) be; that He was both fully God (7) and fully man and that we are (7) saved through His death, burial, and resurrection. (7) Put your trust in Him as your (7) only hope of salvation. Become a son (7) or daughter of God by receiving Christ. (7777777) 7×7
. . . “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).
C. Call upon His name, Confess (7) with your heart and with your lips (7) that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.
. . . “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (John 1:8-10).
. . . “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:2).
. . . “In this was manifested the love of god toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:9, 14-15).
. . . “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-10).
. . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).
. . . “Jesus saith unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).
. . . “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” (Romans 1:16).
. . . “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts: 4:12).
. . . “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth for there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:4-6).
. . . “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).
. . . “But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12).
True Church / Bride of Christ Spared from God’s Wrath:
Romans 5:8-10. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
Romans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
1 Thessalonians 5:9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Jeremiah 30:7. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.
Revelation 3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.