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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#101

Post by roflyear »

wyager wrote: post #86
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.

> where roughly 10 units of plant create one unit of meat Those units are not remotely fungible. Protein quality of plant protein (as measured by PER or other metrics not explicitly designed to favor soy) is horrendous compared to beef. Much of the plant material fed to cows is also not even slightly edible to humans, like soy meal. I would rather have 1lb beef than 10lb nominally edible soy extractives (or wheat, or…

They are comparable in many ways. The fact is it takes more land to make meat than it does to make plants we can eat.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#103

Post by sbf501 »

bell-cot wrote: post #28

Tip from an old geezer: Plant Your Victory Garden Now! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

This is really hard, I had four 8x4 raised beds (all I could fit) for 5 years. The amount of space and time it takes to produce enough food to replace actual meals for more than just a few times in the summer is absolutely astonishing (unless you like squash all the time). I grew tomatoes, kale, squash, onions, lettuce and peppers. It tasted great, and got some salads and side dishes out of it, but that was about it. And it only yielded from July to August, I had nothing in the winter (except some canned tomatoes that were really good). It really takes a community effort to make this work. Like, plots of land that multiple people tend to. I've seen some cities do this and think it is fantastic.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#104

Post by Scoundreller »

mbg721 wrote: post #91

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.

I wanna add a solar panel. Having 50 or 100w is going to make my life a lot better than 0w.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#105

Post by thangalin »

ceejayoz wrote: post #36
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.

It also takes well over an acre to support a single person, and that's if you know what you're doing and have the time to manage a garden of that size.

> well over an acre to support a single person

Source?

https://www.thespruce.com/how-many-vegetables-per-person-in-...

> To grow all the food for one person's needs for the whole year requires, for most people, at least 4,000 square feet—though some diet designs are possible that can use a smaller area.

https://permaculturism.com/how-much-land-does-it-take-to-fee...

> A 0.44 acre of land can produce enough vegetables and fruits to meet up with the daily calories needed for one person to feed for a year.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1993:

> It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare–and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#106

Post by ceejayoz »

Johnny555 wrote: post #41
ceejayoz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also takes well over an acre to support a single person, and that's if you know what you're doing and have the time to manage a garden of that size.

You don't have to grow 100% of your food to benefit from a home garden.

Sure, but "the coming food catastrophe" implies something more than "I grow some tomatoes in a corner of my yard" as a necessary response.

A garden is great, but it's not gonna solve a global food crisis.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#107

Post by ProAm »

Isn't this one of the reasons why farm subsidies exist in the US? Paying farmers not to farm so in time of need or emergency we can produce more? (In addition to not over farming soil and depleting it permanently, keeping the price of food in a range to support farmers livelyhood)

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#108

Post by gcheong »

EddieDante wrote: post #61
Johnny555 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What was she griping about with the garden? Chickens I can understand if there are smell complaints. In San Francisco you are allowed to keep them but there are rules about the number you can have and the minimum distance their enclosure can be to any neighbors window, etc. But squash? That’s really an odd thing to complain about.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#109

Post by commandlinefan »

Comevius wrote: post #65

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…

... but the only fix is going to mean higher prices.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#110

Post by waffle_ss »

daenz wrote: post #82

Meta 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.

That's just a typical high noise comment that no longer gets downvoted into oblivion like it used to. It was a top comment due to HN's comment ranking system weighting new comments towards the top for a while.
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