While the news media have kept the focus on the California drought and Lake Mead's vanishing act, it turns out that there's a significant drought in the Southwest, home to the cattle raised for America's steaks and hamburgers.  Because inflation means ranchers cannot afford hay, they're selling the stock to the slaughterhouses.  While that means lower prices now, it also means there won't be cattle next year.  Start looking for cricket burgers in your market in 2023 and beyond.

Instapundit tipped me off to a Michael Snyder article at America First Report warning about the great cattle sell-off:

Thanks to the horrific drought which is absolutely devastating ranching in the Southwest, ranchers are now in "panic mode" and are selling off their cattle at an unprecedented rate.  In fact, some are choosing to sell off their entire herds because they feel like they don't have any other options. [snip] But in the long-term the size of the U.S. cattle herd will steadily become much smaller, and that has very serious implications for our ability to feed ourselves in 2023 and beyond.

[snip]

According to the USDA, the vast majority of the pasture and range land in the region is now in either "poor" or "very poor" condition[.]

Moreover, inflation, especially in the agricultural sector, is making it impossible for the ranchers to afford to tide their cattle over the hard times by feeding them hay:

Prices for hay, which is widely used to feed cattle, were 56% higher in April than in 2021, according to a June report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Cattle producers are estimated to have lost money the past two months, according to a cost-and-return analysis from Iowa State University.

And just to add to the post-apocalyptic feel of what's happening, the crickets are, quite literally, having a field day: "Grasshoppers have reportedly been destroying what's available in some counties."

Image: Grasshopper from birdphotos.com.  CC BY 3.0.

Meanwhile, although it hasn't been a headline story, chickens in America have been dying or slaughtered in the tens of millions thanks to a virulent outbreak of bird flu.

In sum, chickens are dying in the millions, rain isn't falling, hay is too expensive, and all the cattle are being slaughtered.  Chicken prices are up, but meat prices are temporarily down — a drop that will be offset by the fact that, in the future, there won't be any affordable chicken or meat...but there will be grasshoppers.

It's the grasshopper bit that really sets the seal on the deal.  One of the major initiatives among the climate-change, Green Nude Eel, New World Order crowd is that we'll all learn to eat grasshoppers.  We're promised that they're more sustainable, healthy, and nutritious than the meat we've learned to love since the dawn of humankind.

President Trump would have had a solution to this problem, drought or not (especially because inflation and supply chain shortages wouldn't have happened on his watch).  But thanks to the Biden administration, there's a real possibility that you'd better start stocking up on grasshopper recipes if you want to feed your family in 2023 and beyond.