If you're in the West, it doesn't hurt to buy a couple big bags of rice from the local Indian market, and have some dried or canned beans handy, and cycle through them as you cook. A pallet of bottled water and a bag of charcoal don't hurt either. A dumb power outage or a downed wire or a tornado or something is much more likely than Red Dawn, but you'll still be happy to have all that.
The Coming Food Catastrophe
91–100 of 634 posts
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#92The sky is falling and we're all going to die! Get to the end of the story Subscribe today for just $19.90 $10/first month. Cancel at any time
In the past decade I've also noticed the word 'crisis' being used a lot more in less inappropriate ways. I just found, in today's DDG news stories, headlines about a US border crisis, a baby formula crisis, Sri Lanka having a fuel crisis, the Israeli govt. in crisis, a covid crisis in N. Korea, a mental health crisis in Alabama, a gun violence crisis, a cost of living crisis.... and many more. Methinks journalists ne…
They'll use whatever words increase their revenue in the A/B tests unfortunately.
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#93It is clear that Putin needs to go. By any means necessary.
"All we have to do is put a bell on the cat's neck."
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#94Tip from an old geezer: Plant Your Victory Garden Now! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden
These are part of a propaganda strategy to make people feel like they're "helping". They are not an effective or efficient way of improving food availability. If you enjoy gardening as a hobby, that's great, but these are not practical bulwarks against food shortages. The economies of scale in industrial farming are insane. The ROI on a personal garden is abysmally low, except for herbs and other low-volume plants.
These are part of a propaganda strategy to make people feel like they're "helping".
Depends whether you're gardening for a global food shortage, or to supplement your own use, which I suspect is why most people have home gardens.
A home garden can supply a significant fraction of your food - especially if you do canning or otherwise preserve for winter use.
From the link in the parent post:
Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community plots was estimated to be 9,000,000–10,000,000 short tons (8,200,000–9,100,000 t) in 1944, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#95Meta rant: You know a thread is compromised by sock-puppets when "Article photo is pretty badass" is one of the top comments in the thread, ahead of criticisms about the article.
I think its twitter refugees. Give 'em a few days, they'll figure out the differences.
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#96The sky is falling and we're all going to die! Get to the end of the story Subscribe today for just $19.90 $10/first month. Cancel at any time
Is there any topic on which we’re not currently facing a catastrophe? In the last few months I’ve been warned about impending doom for insects, food, nuclear weapons treaties, democracy, the economy, the internet, space, the environment, the arctic circle, abortion rights.
Most all of them. As people have gotten safer they have gotten progressively more afraid of the remaining danger.
Doom sells, don't buy it.
Economic cycles, political unrest, diseases, on and on and on, these things always have existed and constantly will ebb and flow, while people will pretend what's happening now is the worst its ever been because grabbing your attention is profitable and gives people the sense that their life has meaning.
We weren't living in an idyllic world n years ago, we're not living in one now, we won't be living in one in the future. The things that suck just kind of rotate from time to time. Things remain pretty ok.
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#97Tip from an old geezer: Plant Your Victory Garden Now! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden
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.
> one of the neighborhood Karens
Please keep that sort of slur off HN. We don't need it here, and you don't need it to make your substantive points.
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are part of a propaganda strategy to make people feel like they're "helping". They are not an effective or efficient way of improving food availability. If you enjoy gardening as a hobby, that's great, but these are not practical bulwarks against food shortages. The economies of scale in industrial farming are insane. The ROI on a personal garden is abysmally low, except for herbs and other low-volume plants.
> The economies of scale in industrial farming are insane. The ROI on a personal garden is abysmally low, except for herbs and other low-volume plants. So I read this book called "How Asia Works" which documented the economic transformations of a few different Asian countries. I was shocked to learn that in a lot of cases, the industrial farming not the huge boon that was expected efficiently a few people can grow th…
> Countries that promoted small-scale household farming instead of moving too soon to large scale farming were more successful
Promoting small-scale farming and industry lead to widespread poverty and famine in cultural revolution China.
> very few people work in farming, the smallest amount in history. Why can't it slide back the other way?
It could, but this would probably be a pretty bad thing. I guess it depends how many people who currently have fake bullshit jobs transition to being farm workers. My guess is that almost everyone who would go into an expanded ag labor base is currently doing some actually useful work, and we would suffer a severe net decrease in labor output, if we tanked farming efficiency.
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#99The sky is falling and we're all going to die! Get to the end of the story Subscribe today for just $19.90 $10/first month. Cancel at any time
In the past decade I've also noticed the word 'crisis' being used a lot more in less inappropriate ways. I just found, in today's DDG news stories, headlines about a US border crisis, a baby formula crisis, Sri Lanka having a fuel crisis, the Israeli govt. in crisis, a covid crisis in N. Korea, a mental health crisis in Alabama, a gun violence crisis, a cost of living crisis.... and many more. Methinks journalists ne…
And they're really using the word "crisis" wrong. It's supposed to mean something like a fork in the road, a situation that forces change. Not just "shit is bad right now".
Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe
#100If you have gluten intolerance there’s nothing you should be worried about? Or are these grains necessary for growing meat?
If there’s a wheat shortage, people will be eating more rice than usual.