food shock

At first I thought this might be one stage worse than a food coma, that feeling of indolence that comes over you after a heavy meal. But no, a food shock is the shock to the whole system of food production caused by the massive loss of a particular source of supply as the result of natural disasters such as drought, flood, the drying up of rivers, the warming of oceans, the loss of crops or livestock, fish kills on a massive scale, overfishing to the point of extinction, and so on.  It is thought that with climate change such large-scale disasters will be on the increase.

 Food shocks threaten food security and push up prices. In the past they have been local events impacting on local economies but now they are a global threat.  It seems probable that the death of hundreds of thousands of cattle in the recent floods in northern Queensland, combined with unprecedented drought in other places in Australia, will not go unnoticed and could constitute a food shock.