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Samantha Power loads manure on flailing farmers, literally says out loud, ‘never let a crisis go to waste’

May 2, 2022 | | Print Article

In the midst of a fertilizer shortage that is crushing the nation’s farmers, threatening the American food supply, and contributing to the soaring cost of pantry staples, one Biden administration official believes now is a great time to force farmers to “hasten transitions” to “natural solutions, like manure and compost.”

The administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, told ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” we should “never let a crisis go to waste.”

“Fertilizer shortages are real now,” Power stated, “because Russia is a big exporter of fertilizer, and even though fertilizer is not sanctioned, less fertilizer is coming out of Russia.”

“As a result,” she continued, “we are working with countries to think about natural solutions, like manure and compost.”

“And this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway,” Power said. “So, never let a crisis go to waste, but we really do need this financial support from the Congress to be able to meet emergency food needs so we don’t see the cascading, deadly effects of Russia’s war extend into Africa and beyond.”

 

As BizPac Review reported in January — a full month before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine — the soaring price of fertilizer on the global market has already caused U.S. farmers to change their planting schedules and significantly impacted those developing countries with limited access to bank loans.

“Fertilizer demand in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to dip 30% in 2022 for this reason, resulting in a reduction of 30 million metric tons of food produced, or enough to feed 100 million people, according to the International Fertilizer Development Center,” BizPac Review reported.

By the end of March, President Joe Biden was confirming that food shortages were coming to the United States.

“With regard to food shortage, yes, we did still talk about food shortages and it’s going to be real,” Biden told reporters following a NATO summit with world leaders. “The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well, because both Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat, for example, just give one example.”

As Reuters reported at the time, “Western sanctions on Russia, a major exporter of potash, ammonia, urea and other soil nutrients have disrupted shipments of those key inputs around the globe. Fertilizer is key to keeping corn, soy, rice and wheat yields high. Growers are scrambling to adjust.”

And now, Power seems to suggest, we should just s**t on it all to save humanity from hunger.

Not surprisingly, Twitter was not impressed.

“She is grotesque and disgusting,” tweeted former Trump 2016 campaign surrogate David Wohl.

“I thought cow manure was bad for a ‘green’ environment?” noted another, to which yet another user sarcastically replied, “Comrade, E. coli and Salmonella are good for you.”

“Sure, but the reason we have the modern industrial techniques for farming is because natural methods would not be able to feed enough of the current population,” one user countered. “But they know that.”

Geneticist Razib Khan thinks Power should “trust the science.”

“[A]lot of middle to upper-middle-class americans (sic) are totally detached from the realities of agriculture and world food production,” Khan observed.

At least, implied Fox News contributor Ben Domenech, Power is a “glass-half-full” kind of person.

“Untold numbers of the world’s poorest people will die because of the coming food shortages,” Domenech tweeted, “but Biden USAID Administrator @SamanthaJPower urges you to find the bright side.”

Melissa Fine
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