E76.5: Food shortage, China's grand plan, inflation, French election plus an All-In Summit preview

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
All right, what? Oh, I'm doing this again? All right, listen, it's a two-parter. You listen to the first part, now this is the second part. Episode 76.5, if you will. This is our first ever two-parter, part two of our two-parter.
You already listened to part one of episode 76 That's Elon and Twitter. Lots of details there.
And now, we're going to cover some more topics, including the global food crisis, China's plan to stockpile a bunch of food, geopolitics, wall around the horn, French election, Germany, et cetera. And then we'll go into details about a little bit of the drama and details, pageanty, parties, poker, all the good stuff of the All-In Summit coming soon. Okay. Enjoy the show.
Thanks for watching! There's still a war raging, but I wanted to get an update from Friedberg on the food crisis, which he predicted very early for a lot of further fertilizer prices are still climbing like crazy. There's been some food rioting in China, which I think is a separate issue. He'll educate us in a minute. Sri Lanka.
So what is your theory of what we're going to do from here, Friedberg, because I think we're all waiting for this shoe to drop. And I think you predicted this is something that we would experience into the fall and into next year. So when are we going to actually see these food riots occurring? And then is China's food riots have anything to do with this? Or does that have to do with the fresh food?

**David Friedberg** (1:43)
I would put the Chinese food riots as kind of a separate localized supply chain problem related to the lockdowns.
But we're definitely, you know, I think I mentioned last week, the USDA planting report showing in the US how acreage is being reduced on corn. And we're seeing this around the world where acres are coming out of production or less fertilizers being used, which means less foods being made. So everything that we predicted, I mean, this is a slow train, a Titanic into the iceberg that we're watching right now. And it's going to continue for nine to 18 months.
So, you know, one of the questions that people are now asking, which I said, you know, would become a really critical next step in this crisis, is how are we going to bridge the gap in calories? Where's the food going to come from?
And how are we going to feed nations that are almost entirely dependent on imports that are running out of food or out of food? So I've mentioned this in the past, the whole world runs on a 90-day food supply, which means roughly 25% of the world's calories are in storage right now. But that's not the case uniformly. So some countries like Tunisia and Somalia, Ethiopia, have close to zero calories in storage. Some countries, like the United States, are roughly 30%, 40% of our annual consumed calories are sitting in storage. China is a complete outlier. For years, China has been stockpiling food. At this point, China has 150% of their annual consumption of food in storage. So they have supplies that if all food production and import stopped in China, they would be able to feed their population for one and a half years. That's an incredible supply of food. So if you look around the world to places like Sri Lanka and places like Somalia, they're struggling to figure out how are we going to bridge this gap on calories that's about to hit us. Egypt's about four months of food, by the way, and Egypt is dwindling. They cannot get the food out of the Black Sea.
So China is going to be one of the very few potential solutions for bridging the calorie gap over the next year. And I have a strong prediction and a strong belief that because of that, China will use it to maximum leverage. And we will see over the next year an incredible amount of leverage and power being accumulated by China because of transactions that they're going to start to enter into to bridge the calorie gap around the world. So in the Horn of Africa, for example, there has been this continuous presence of China trying to give themselves a military base, trying to take some influence over local media.
And there's been this kind of push and pull with certain populations around whether or not we should kind of embrace China locally. And I think that, for example, the food crisis that we're seeing emerge in Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti is going to be resolved by China. And China is going to end up gaining influence, gaining military presence, and establishing a more permanent foothold in the horn of Africa, because of the position that they're in of strength with all these calories, and the need in these regions. That's not just there. Sri Lanka, other parts of Southeast Asia, even Western Africa, Northern Africa, China is going to show up. And they're the only country that can show up. The UN, the World Food Program, they're going to do everything they can to shuffle calories around, change food supplies. But I think I do think that one of the things that everyone's going to be watching, and it's a slow roll, this isn't going to be some one big deal and everyone wakes up. Over the next year, while the US is trying to do everything we can to maximally impose sanctions on Russia, China is slowly turning the crank around the world on the influence that they are going to gain because of this food crisis and the absolute surplus that they have locally and the ability to export that surplus to support needs around the world. It's not going to be free. It's not going to be cheap. I thought it was worth highlighting what we're seeing. I shared a couple of articles with you guys and with Nick, articles that no one is paying attention to.