Jeremy Clarkson warns of food shortages due to Russian invasion of Ukraine

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Outspoken television presenter and celebrity personality, Jeremy Clarkson, who operates a farm, warned that global food shortages caused by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine could eventually lead to cannibalism. He was only slightly joking.

Clarkson, who hosts The Grand Tour, wrote in the Sunday Times that the “war in Ukraine means less food and higher prices,” noting that he has been losing sleep over the looming global food crisis.

The popular host, who owns a farm that serves as a basis for his Amazon Prime series, Clarkson's Farm, states that more and more farmers in the United Kingdom have been allowing their crops to die due to impossibly high fertilizer costs.

“The problem is that next year many farmers will decide that, because of the costs involved, they’ll use less fertiliser,” he wrote. “Some will doubtless try to use none at all. Others will try to use cardboard or lawn clippings or faeces instead. Either way they will produce less food. Some farmers — I know of three in my area alone — have already decided to fallow their fields next year and grow nothing at all.”

“And this is not just happening in the U.K. It’s a global phenomenon and it could well result in there being maybe 20 per cent less food in the shops than is necessary. That’s bad. And then it gets worse because, between them, Russia and Ukraine grow more than a quarter of global wheat exports,” he wrote, warning that the world is “hurtling down a well-watered slide into the pit of hunger, misery and death.”

Clarkson took aim at the British government for its failure to respond to the soaring price of living, and cautioned that while people can “live without heat, clothing, or even sex,” however, “they cannot live without food.”

As detailed by Summit News, several staple foods are already being rationed in the United Kingdom, such as sunflower oil, which is sourced from Ukraine.

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has also seen the blockade of Ukraine’s wheat exports, which poses a serious food shortage crisis for developing African nations dependent on the Ukrainian harvest.

The shortage of wheat and other global supplies has prompted countries like India from prohibiting its wheat from being exported, the SCMP reported. India, which is the world’s second largest wheat producer, said it made the decision to calm local prices following damaged yields due to record-setting heat waves.

Prior to the recent heat wave, India was slated to fill in the gaps left by the deficit of Ukrainian wheat. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi boasted that India “can feed the world if WTO allows it” two weeks ago, stating that “at a time when the world is facing a shortage of wheat, the farmers of India have stepped forward to feed the world.”

It didn’t really work out as planned.