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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#171

Post by carom »

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.

The whole reason I wanted to take up camping was to understand what I can eat in an emergency situation. Now I own a camping stove, a few fuel canisters, some boil in bag rice, and a few large cans of plain freeze dried chicken and beef. Add in the charcoal BBQ and I'll have a feast the day the power goes out.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#172

Post by Comevius »

mrtksn wrote: post #129
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…

I wouldn't argue against the research but to me, the "global food system" is much more robust than I imagined. We stayed in our homes for months en mass without prep time and prior warning and the food availability barely changed. We are creatures that need to eat multiple times a day and yet we can stay in our homes for months and get fed just as well. Therefore I'm not very worried about the management of the food…

We are extremely good at it is your take when 900 million people don't get to eat even in times of abundance?

If our food system can't take a little bit of war and drought imagine how will it fare when production starts falling. Climate change is happening at global scale, and we must be able to coordinate and innovate on a similar scale to be able to handle it.

Instead we have a spontaneously formed a shitty system. Most people are ignorant of this. Some pretends that isolation is the solution, let's Brexit it, some are blaming ethanol apparently. There is no shortage of bad takes on this, but the fact remains that we suck at this.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#173

Post by wyager »

Johnny555 wrote: post #154
wyager wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Depends whether you're gardening for a global food shortage, or to supplement your own use No, the effect on supply is the same. > A home garden can supply a significant fraction of your food It takes 5+ acres in a decently arable region with fertilizer to feed one person. By the time you're providing for a significant fraction of your caloric intake, it ceases to be a "garden". > an amount equal to all commercial…

No, the effect on supply is the same. well, no, if you're growing for personal use you can make a notable effect on your own supply/food costs. You don't have to solve the global food shortage to benefit from a personal garden and since the global food shortage will drive up prices, the financial benefit is even greater (as long as price increases in things like fertilizer don't eat up your cost savings).

You seem to be thinking about this from a personal finance angle instead of an economy-wide production angle.

It doesn't matter if a piece of corn is made in your garden or on a farm. The net effect on the corn supply is identical.

It takes orders of magnitude more input to grow a piece of corn in a garden than on a farm. That had better be offset by the personal enjoyment of the gardener.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#174

Post by devit »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #144

The article actually has four solutions at the bottom. Compared to the severity of the problem, all four solutions are surprisingly simple. Not necessarily easy, but simple and straightforward. 1. Stop using so much corn to make ethanol. 2. Stop using so much seed oil to make biodiesel. 3. Stop feeding so much food to livestock. Bonus: reducing the livestock population provides short term calories! 4. Break the Black…

If they can ship the food to Odessa (presumably by truck or train), it seems like they would be able to ship it to a port in a non-blockaded foreign country instead (e.g. Turkey, Greece, Italy, Poland).

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#175

Post by corrral »

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.

Rice will be full of pest insect eggs. They'll hatch after a while (smallish count of months, likely).

You've got to freeze it (to kill the eggs) and then seal it (to keep more pests from getting in) and/or add stuff that'll kill anything that hatches very fast (IIRC diatomaceous earth is popular for this)

Other grains have similar pest problems, plus if it's wheat or similar and ground into flour (not e.g. whole wheat berries), it'll get worse over time from air exposure. Anything with the germ still on/in it will go rancid after a while, and the germ's full of nutrients so you really want that part if you can keep it.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#176

Post by mbg721 »

jahewson wrote: post #163
mbg721 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I also have Victory Squirrels taking one bite out of each tomato and moving on...

You need to get a Victory Cat.

I actually have two, but the terms of their adoption require that the full extent of the victory be confined indoors. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for a kneading cat-doughnut on a cold day.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#177

Post by mrdoe »

dang wrote: post #97
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.

> 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.

Really? Whats wrong with calling someone a Karen?!

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#178

Post by husainfazel »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #143
husainfazel wrote: post #81

You would think that with a food catastrophe on the way - the current administration's finest minds wouldn't be encouraging even higher corn prices (already at a 10 year high in April) with this mix of legislative action: > Washington announced the EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-based biodiesel and ethanol fuel mix for the summer. On April 12 the Secretary of Agriculture announced a “bold” initiative by the US…

Because Union Pacific is out to destroy food production? Riiiiight... Or because the government didn't prevent a stupidity from a private company? Never attribute to malice...

The man at the very top has warned us about food shortages:

https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2022/03/its-going-to-be-...

So why are CF Industries needing to beg the administration to intervene and allow shipments.

https://strangesounds.org/2022/04/fertilizer-giant-cf-indust...

Also ask yourself why Union Pacific is imposing these restrictions?

Maybe it might have something to do with the latest rage in the world financial markets? Blackrock and the WEF set up ESG certifying companies that award ESG ratings and punish those that don't comply. So you have companies forced to push for completely bonkers restrictions and policies because they're mandated to top down:

https://www.up.com/aboutup/esg/index.htm

If sometimes their incompetence lead to a winning situation for us, we could say it's just pure incompetence. But this is anything but incompetence.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#179

Post by mrtksn »

Comevius wrote: post #172
mrtksn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't argue against the research but to me, the "global food system" is much more robust than I imagined. We stayed in our homes for months en mass without prep time and prior warning and the food availability barely changed. We are creatures that need to eat multiple times a day and yet we can stay in our homes for months and get fed just as well. Therefore I'm not very worried about the management of the food…

We are extremely good at it is your take when 900 million people don't get to eat even in times of abundance? If our food system can't take a little bit of war and drought imagine how will it fare when production starts falling. Climate change is happening at global scale, and we must be able to coordinate and innovate on a similar scale to be able to handle it. Instead we have a spontaneously formed a shitty system.…

The system is unfortunately exclusionary of some parts of the world due to extreme conditions at those places - which are much worse than a single war. It's more like decades of never ending wars and extreme droughts. Africa's problem isn't that they don't know how to code and as a result make less money and can't afford food, the troubles there are much much bigger and as a result they are outside of the supply chain we have.

And yes, by global event that scares me is exactly the climate change.

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