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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#61

Post by EddieDante »

Johnny555 wrote: post #40
EddieDante wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your local zoning board might object. I live in PA, and one of the neighborhood vigilantes immediately ratted me out to the local government when I started growing corn, squash, and beans in my backyard while raising a couple of chickens for eggs.

Did she object to the chickens or the garden? I suspect just the chickens, rather than your back yard garden.

She griped about both, the zoning board demanded I get rid of the chickens.

I was tempted to leave their corpses on her doorstep and egg the municipal building as a petty sort of revenge, but that would have been too obvious.

Those chickens were good eating, though, especially with some homegrown corn on the cob and baked beans. The squash didn't work out so well, unfortunately.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#62

Post by mschuster91 »

cabirum wrote: post #38

Quoted post unavailable.

> Now, Europe tries to buy out all grain stock that's left

No. Europe is pretty much self-sufficient for vital crops. The problem is China [1] and the fact that Africa doesn't have much of its own once famous agricultural power left after decades of European and American "donations" - hard to compete against donated products...

[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Datawatch/China-hoards-ove...

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#63

Post by codefreeordie »

closedloop129 wrote: post #42

Haven't ethanol fuels been introduced to have a buffer for this situation? If we don't turn grain and corn into petrol then there should be some reserves. Additionally, if we stop rising live-stock, where roughly 10 units of plant create one unit of meat, there should be even more calories available.

Energy is having an even greater supply crunch than food (indeed part of the food shortage is that agricultural inputs can't get delivered in adequate quantities because the energy to transport them doesn't exist).

The energy market is willing to outbid the food market, so I wouldn't expect the conversion of agricultural inputs into fuel outputs to decelerate.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#64

Post by PebblesRox »

stickfigure wrote: post #27
ceejayoz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of Soylent's primary ingredients is sunflower oil, for which the world's largest producer is (drumroll please) Ukraine. Guess who's #2, and under major international sanctioning? Between them, they're about 50% of worldwide production.

I assumed parent was referring to the Green variety. The primary ingredient is... abundant.

I have never been able to understand how Soylent has taken off given the name. And I haven't even watched the movie!

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#65

Post by Comevius »

What nobody understands is that this is not happening strictly because of the war or the drought, but because of the fragility of the global food system, which simply cannot bear any shocks.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/2/02...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1712-3

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/19/banks-...

We either fix this or we simply won't have a global food system.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#67

Post by windowsrookie »

ceejayoz wrote: post #22
sydthrowaway wrote: post #12

This is Soylent's time to shine.

One of Soylent's primary ingredients is sunflower oil, for which the world's largest producer is (drumroll please) Ukraine. Guess who's #2, and under major international sanctioning? Between them, they're about 50% of worldwide production.

I'm looking at my bag of Soylent right now and sunflower oil is not a listed ingredient. Canola oil is the second ingredient. This is the powder.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#68

Post by c-smile »

codezero wrote: post #19
doodlebugging wrote: post #14

From doom-scrolling the Ukraine/Russia war it is pretty obvious that Ukrainian farmers have not been idle. Battles are being fought in the treelines and along rivers next to plowed and planted fields. Hopefully some of these crops are harvested and make it to market.

I don't know if it was just propaganda, but I saw several videos of grain being looted by Russian troops and supposedly brought back to Russia. Even if that's not the case, a live war has to decrease productivity immensely.

> videos... grain being looted by Russian troops...

Oh, that's new. How exactly do they do that?

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#70

Post by colechristensen »

LegitShady wrote: post #31
jeremyjh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like asking how fungible are calories. People with the means to mill and cook with wheat flour can probably manage with corn too if the alternative is starvation.

I had read somewhere that the varieties of corn grown for ethanol are not the same as the varieties grown for food but can't find the article now.

There are special varieties of corn you can grow for ethanol, but you don't have to, the ethanol plants do not require it.

There are required varieties and practices for growing corn intended for direct human consumption (i.e. making cornmeal or breakfast cereal).

Most corn though goes to animal feed, industrial uses (corn starch, syrup, etc), or export.

(source: am a 5th generation corn farmer)

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