TOWNSEND, N.J. — — It was the summer of 2016.
The world had been caught up in the “Borussia-Dortmund” geopolitical rivalry between Russia and the United States and the Russian annexation of Crimea.
The war in Syria was heating up and thousands of U.S. soldiers were deployed to Iraq.
The Russians were busy taking over the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland.
And, just like that, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was issuing its annual report on food security in the world.
“In the years since, the world has experienced a rapid increase in hunger, the most severe since the 1930s,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said at the time.
“This is particularly acute in regions of the world with limited access to food and in some regions of Europe and North America where the number of hungry people has grown.”
The U.K. was hit hard.
The government ordered the closure of schools, closed hospitals, closed airports, and imposed a ban on foreign aid. The U