by Rhoda Wilson, Expose News:
In 2015 a two day simulation game was held dubbed by some as the “hunger games” 65 people played out a food crisis simulation set in the years 2020 to 2030.
Do you recall a pandemic simulation held in 2019 called Event 201 that served as a dress rehearsal for the response to the covid “pandemic” in 2020?
Well, it seems such simulations have been used for the war on food as well. As pointed out by Tracey Thurman, the food crisis simulation, officially called the Food Reaction Game, reveals their strategy for the war on food.
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What is the Food Chain Reaction Game?
On 9 and 10 November 2015, Thomson Reuters and other media organisations joined event organisers Cargill, CNA, Mars, World Wildlife Fund (“WWF”) and the Centre for American Progress for a simulation of a real-world food-crisis scenario called the ‘Food Chain Reaction Game: A Global Food Security Game’.
The simulation exercise was held at WWF’s headquarters in Washington DC where 65 international policymakers, academics, business and thought leaders gathered to game out how the world would respond to a future food crisis.
Over two days, the players – divided into teams for Africa, Brazil, China, the EU, India, the US, international business and investors and multilateral institutions – crafted their policy responses as delegations engaged in intensive negotiations.
The game was set between 2020 and 2030 and was based on a scenario of a global food crisis caused by population growth, rapid urbanisation, extreme weather events and political crises.
Each team was tasked with responding to the global food crisis by making decisions on food production, trade and policy. The game was played over several rounds, with each round representing a year from 2020 to 2030.
Cargill, of course, has a vested interest in understanding the future of food – where it will be grown, how it will be grown, and how it can be traded efficiently and sustainably. It’s their business. “Cargill, the world’s largest agribusiness, has been a strong supporter both of this initiative and of WWF’s mission. As one of the organisers of Food Chain Reaction, Cargill provided a critical private-sector voice to the dialogue,” World Wildlife Fund noted.
“The most eye-catching result [ ] was a deal between the US, the EU, India and China, standing in for the top 20 greenhouse gas emitters, to institute a global carbon tax and cap CO2 emissions in 2030,” Cargill noted.
The day after the simulation exercise had been completed, Bloomberg reported:
The year is 2026. Flooding, worsened by climate change, has devastated Bangladesh and driven millions of hungry refugees to its border with India. Worried about unrest and disease, India asks other nations for help.
The US and China respond – China with aid deliveries, the US by boosting aid to Pakistan, which has its own food crisis that’s adding to India’s tensions. That assistance helps India focus on Bangladesh. The crisis recedes.
While the scenario was fictional, two food-price shocks since 2008 have prompted riots and fuelled revolutions around the world. Experts say such disruptions are likely to occur more frequently as a warming climate plays havoc with global food production. That fear brought together representatives of corporate food producers, aid groups and governments for two days this week in Washington where they role-played a simulated food crisis. Bloomberg News also participated, representing how media would react to a crisis.
“With climate change, how we deal with food-security threats requires some serious rethinking,” said Kathleen Merrigan, a former US Deputy Secretary of Agriculture who participated in the exercise. “The ups and downs of prices and surpluses will only become more extreme.”
In the simulation – some called it the “hunger games” – at the US headquarters of the World Wildlife Fund a fictional narrative was created to simulate real dangers that can emerge quickly as an increase in greenhouse gases contributes to volatile weather. In 2011, a real-life drought in Russia fuelled food riots in North Africa that fed the Arab Spring uprisings, the aftermath of which reverberates in Syria today.
The fictional scenario began in 2020, with El Nino devastating crops in India and Australia, followed by a major drought in North America the following year.
Eight teams represented the US, European Union, Brazil, China, India, Africa, multilateral organisations such as the United Nations and World Bank, and global businesses.
Global food inventories declined through the first half of the simulated decade, with the Mississippi River flooding and drought in Asia. Food-importing nations in Africa saw demonstrations against rising food prices, while rising oil prices diverted more production to ethanol, further stressing supplies.
The crisis peaked in 2024, with record food prices generating unrest in Africa, South Asia and Ukraine. Both the US and EU teams decided to repeal mandates requiring ethanol use, while Brazil ramped up production of all crops, including sugar used for biofuels. China invested in dams to protect scarce water.
‘Lifelike, Realistic’
The EU added a meat tax to discourage expensive livestock production and temporarily relaxed environmental regulations to boost its own production. The US enacted a carbon tax, India taxed coal and support for a global climate deal was universal.
One point of the simulation was to create plausible scenarios to prepare participants to respond to real-life threats, said Kate Fisher, a game director with CNA Corp., a research organisation that creates crisis simulations for the Defence Department and other federal agencies.
“It’s planning by doing,” forcing participants to make decisions and react to one another, she said. “We try to make it realistic. The players make it lifelike.”
These hunger games proved to be never-ending.
By 2027, the EU repealed its emergency measures on meat and regulations, as a series of large harvests built up supplies, though trouble persisted in Chad, Sudan and other parts of Africa that hadn’t invested in agriculture. Countries began working more closely with the United Nations to handle refugees from climate catastrophes.
