The Jenga Doctrine: Collapse by the Calorie
In a nation of abundance, it feels absurd to talk about food collapse. But the system that feeds America is a wobbly tower of scale, subsidies, imports, and denial. Pull the wrong block, and the whole structure shifts.
This isn’t doomerism. It’s arithmetic.
Tiered Nutrition, Tiered Survival America runs on a two-tier food system: Big Ag feeds the masses with bulk calories, while a sliver of the population shops farmers' markets and eats quinoa like it's sacrament. The first tier is efficient, calorie-dense, and hollowed out nutritionally. The second is localized, eco-friendly, and economically inaccessible to most.
Big Ag supplies the calories—corn, soy, wheat—not for nutrition, but for livestock, ethanol, and processed food. Cheap and scalable, yes. Resilient? Not really. 60% of U.S. fruit and 38% of vegetables come from imports. Most of the domestic supply comes from California and a handful of industrial operations. The rest of the country? Fed on slop, shaped by subsidies.
Can the 93% Feed the 100%? If the 7% of large farms vanished, could the 93% of smaller, independent farms feed the nation? Not today. Those small farms produce only 36% of our food, work half the land, and often lack the mechanization or labor force to scale quickly. Transitioning from hay to kale, or pasture to legumes, sounds great until the labor crunch and yield gaps hit.
Could they adapt eventually? Yes—with redirected subsidies, infrastructure support, and public will. But right now, the system's too top-heavy. Pull the big players, and the bottom isn't ready to catch the fall.
Geopolitics on a Plate Food is leverage now. Countries hoard, embargo, or weaponize supply chains. Droughts in Australia, bans from India, Russia playing grain kingmaker—they all spike global prices. The U.S. imports 60% of its fruit, relies on fertilizer pipelines, and bleeds produce from water-choked states. A hot war or a trade freeze isn’t just a headline—it's empty shelves.
Self-sufficiency isn't a luxury; it's national security. But America treats food like a commodity, not a lifeline. That gap is where the shockwaves start.
Water: The Rabbit Punch Food's the body blow. Water is the knockout. The Colorado River is at 25% capacity. The Ogallala Aquifer is vanishing. California is sinking, quite literally, from overpumping. No water, no crops. No crops, no calories.
Urban sprawl, industrial ag, and climate extremes are a losing combo. You don’t need to believe in climate change to believe in dry wells.
The Cascade National-level food failure doesn't stay put. It ricochets. Corn dies in Kansas, feed prices spike, meat vanishes in markets, tortilla riots break out in Mexico. Export bans follow. Refugees flow. Borders harden. Riots burn. Governments fall.
We don't have seven years to prepare like Joseph in Egypt. We have quarterly reports, culture wars, and supply chains built on wishful thinking.
The Doctrine Collapse won't come as a bang. It'll come as a wobble. Then a crack. Then a cascade.
Fixing it means rebalancing the tower:
- Reroute subsidies to sustainable staples.
- Localize without fetishizing.
- Mechanize nutrition, not just calories.
- Treat water as fate, not backdrop.
- Build redundancy into food, not just finance.
This isn’t about returning to some agrarian fantasy. It’s about getting serious before the tower tips.
Because the blocks are shifting. And the rabbit punch is coming.