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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#471

Post by nicoburns »

kickout wrote: post #254
Gordonjcp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I mean, this comment is wrong. The US has some of the world most stringent food standards in the world. FDA, USDA, OSHA etc. wield immense regulatory power. Is it perfect? No. You can't sell meat at scale in the USA without the government signing off. It may not be up to your or mine standard, but it has proven successful at getting _quality_ meat into the mouths of millions. Also, I would bet there aren't any cattle…

> The US has some of the world most stringent food standards in the world.

I can think of at least two issues I have with US food standards:

- Very few restrictions on pesticide use. There are nasty chemicals ending up on your food and killing off a lot of the biodiversity where it grows

- Antibiotics being fed to livestock. Not good for them, and practically begging for antibiotic-resistant pathogens to develop.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#472

Post by nwallin »

arthurcolle wrote: post #444
giantg2 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dream of having land with a pond. Properly managed, it could produce about 50 pounds of bluegills, etc from a 1/2 pond every year, with little input and infrequent work.

Do bluegills taste any good?

It's not dissimilar from tilapia; mild flavored whitefish. It's not as flavorful or tender as trout, but better than catfish.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#473

Post by CydeWeys »

kickout wrote: post #255
mauflows wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need meat. And there are many price and institutional barriers to completely grass fed cattle. The primary being that slaughter is centralized to FSIS inspected facilities where most non-poultry spend their final weeks packed in eating soy and corn.

We don't need programming, iphones, cars, computers, boats, houses, clothes, etc. But we like them.

The point is that, if the alternative is massive global starvation, we can give up on eating most meat so that that food can be more efficiently be eaten directly by humans instead. And you don't have to give up any of programming, iphones, cars, computers, boats, houses, clothes, etc., to do so.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#474

Post by golemiprague »

blockwriter wrote: post #406
cerol wrote: post #107

Food security always makes me think about food waste. When I was 17 years old I went to Sweden as part of a cultural exchange program (I'm from South America). One of the first things that shocked me was the sheer amount of food being wasted for no reason whatsoever. In my country, even though I come from a privileged family, you can't shield yourself away from poverty. Throughout my entire life living with my parent…

I agree with eating what you acquire and prepare, but food waste is also a byproduct of adequate food supply, or of supersaturated food systems. It is not only an individual attitude toward food. It would be great if I could give my leftovers that are likely to go to waste to someone down the hall in my building, but they are not in a food scarce situation. In their calculus, it would be easier, and safer, to make th…

No post body was provided.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#476

Post by Diederich »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #432
samatman wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to make decisions for me on the basis of what is necessary from your perspective.

What is meat necessary for, other than proteins and iron? Taste? Tradition? Also, what decisions are you talking about? OP said one does not need meat. Isn't that a provable fact?

My wife needs to eat red meat, otherwise she has very low iron levels.

Note: she does not like red meat, and we spent years and years trying to get her iron levels up without it. She started to have to get iron infusions, which are no fun at all.

All that stopped when she started eating red meat twice a week.

Yes, this is a very rare case, and I can imagine a future where red meat is provided as something like medicine for those few who really need it.

But some people do effectively need red meat.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#477

Post by wrycoder »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #186
wrycoder wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't going to get thin eating corn chips. That combination of fat and high glycemic carbohydrate is one of the worst.

The corn in corn chips has undergone nixtamalization, which makes more of the nutrients available to humans. As others have commented, no. 2 yellow field corn can be ground into cornmeal, and even without nixtamalization, it is certainly digestible by humans, it's just that nixtamalization makes important nutrients like niacin available.

Sorry, it has not.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_chip

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#478

Post by rootusrootus »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #405
titzer wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the first-order (i.e. direct) effects of suburban life. In fact, TBH, suburban life can be downright cozy--you got your own decent-sized home, a little patch of grass, maybe a patio, barbecue, deck, maybe even a garden. That's not the issue. It's the externalities , the downstream effects, of trying to scale up suburban living to huge numbers of people. At a small scale, a little town of a few hundred or cou…

I don't like American suburbs for me personally, but the US has tons of space and I don't understand how traffic would be better if we pushed more people into less space (with fewer streets and so on). Indeed, most big cities are famous for their congestion. With respect to prices, these are self-regulating. If prices go up, things either get denser and/or people move elsewhere. > Culture takes a dive. Again, suburbs…

> I don't like American suburbs for me personally

I'm not sure if this is really clear to people who don't live here, but I think it's important to note that 'suburbs' doesn't really mean just one thing. Portland is mostly suburbs, for example. I think it's tempting to think suburbia must be endless miles of tract housing with no business, no retail. While that happens, it's not at all universal.

> Can suburbs be designed to be more walkable/bikeable (I would actually be surprised if they aren't already)?

Can't speak for everywhere in the US, but in the places I've lived, this is standard. Part of the cost of building a house is putting sidewalks in. So the problem isn't walkability. The problem, where it exists, is a lack of anything to walk to. But that shouldn't be that hard to address -- knock down some houses and zone for commercial. Build small cities out of suburbs. (I expect that already happens, it certainly happened decades ago in places with long established suburbs).

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#479

Post by wrycoder »

twofornone wrote: post #249
wrycoder wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't going to get thin eating corn chips. That combination of fat and high glycemic carbohydrate is one of the worst.

Dietary fat does not contribute to weight gain any more than any other macronutrient. This long lived myth needs to die. Similarly dietary cholesterol also likely does not contribute significantly to blood levels.

Fat combined with refined carbohydrates produces a strong insulin reaction, which directly results in fat deposition. This is not a myth. [0]

I agree with you in that fat, by itself, does not promote weight gain. It's the combination that does.

[0] https://smile.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About-ebook/dp/B003W...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#480

Post by rootusrootus »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #277
rootusrootus wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it make sense to give every family 0.75 acres of grass, 400 sqft of driveway and a 2 car garage A standard suburban house doesn't sit on 0.75 acres. 0.2 is typical. Though you're probably low on the driveway and garage :). I'd like to see a better argument for why we shouldn't live this way. There are relatively large metros (e.g. Portland) that are predominantly suburban single family homes, and so far it see…

I'm hopping on a plane in a minute, but I'll do my best to at least start an example :) The real question is "what do you mean by 'it works fine'?" To me, the effects of suburban living are such that we don't treat people as people unless they're shrouded in a big rolling box of metal. Of course it'll vary from person to person and family to family. I think urban environments offer children much more freedom than cor…

> The real question is "what do you mean by 'it works fine'?"

Portland has been around for almost 180 years, and people still seem to think it is an attractive place to live. The last couple years have been pretty terrible, but that doesn't seem to be unique to this area, and if anything is more of an urban problem than a suburban one.

I won't tell you what you should like, or what your definition of good is. But for me, I enjoy suburban living more. For example, I drove into downtown Portland a few days ago and watched Hamilton, it's only 20 minutes away. We go to museums, art shows, etc. But, I can turn away from Portland and in less than 20 minutes be in an entirely rural area enjoying nature. 20 minutes farther and I'm approaching Mt. Hood. When I get home, I have my own little square of paradise: no shared walls with strangers, a place for the kids to play, a nice community where everyone sorta knows everyone else. City living is the right answer for some people, but definitely not all of us.

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