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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#181

Post by Johnny555 »

wyager wrote: post #173
Johnny555 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Yes, I tried to be clear:

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.

No one's backyard garden in the USA is going to help feed someone in Africa, but even if the global food shortage doesn't mean food shortages in the USA, it's going to drive up prices, and a backyard garden can help offset that household expense.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#182

Post by UnFleshedOne »

paganel wrote: post #162
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…

Re 4., that's doable if the West renounces some of its existing economic sanctions against Russia, the Russians themselves have said as much recently. It probably won't happen because the West doesn't like to see itself as being involved in the war (in a way similar to what Russia thinks about itself) and will try to resort to "Russia should unlock the blockade purely on humanitarian grounds!", which, of course, is t…

Another option for #4 is supplying enough long range anti-ship rockets to sink whole russian fleet in black sea. They can't bring in more ships, because turkey is blocking the entrance.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#183

Post by wyager »

Scoundreller wrote: post #156
wyager wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Where do other beans/pulses fit in vs meat?

Black beans, for example, have a PER of 0 (unrealistically low) and a PDCAAS of 0.75 (unrealistically high, vs 1 for egg). A realistic comparison can't be reduced to a single scalar, but for my own personal dietary requirements, I would probably want to eat 5-10x as many grams of nominal protein from black beans as from beef. This would be very challenging.

I think some other beans like kidney beans fare somewhat better, although I don't recall numbers. Still not close to mammal meat.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#184

Post by jakewins »

paganel wrote: post #162
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…

Re 4., that's doable if the West renounces some of its existing economic sanctions against Russia, the Russians themselves have said as much recently. It probably won't happen because the West doesn't like to see itself as being involved in the war (in a way similar to what Russia thinks about itself) and will try to resort to "Russia should unlock the blockade purely on humanitarian grounds!", which, of course, is t…

Hypothetically, if the west actually wanted to give up sanctions in return for clearing the blockade.. why, in what universe, could they possibly expect Russia to stand by its word?

Russia said for six months they were simply conducting exercises and had no intention of invading whatsoever. Why should anyone believe they would clear the blockade if sanctions lift?

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#185

Post by timst4 »

bell-cot wrote: post #28

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

Here’s another tip: Grow a Biointensive Garden

-Use raised beds or Hugelkulture to increase yields. -Use sq foot gardening to plant more in less space -Develop a three stage compost pile. Import food waste from others in your neighborhood if needs be. -Grow year round with cold frames -Use cover crops to enrich soil over winter

Thats how you garden to eat my friends

https://www.amazon.com/How-Grow-More-Vegetables-Possible/dp/...

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#186

Post by lucas_membrane »

Johnny555 wrote: post #94
wyager wrote: post #74

Earlier 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.

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 harve…

Commercial production of vegetables, particularly those not considered essential, was artificially low during the war, constrained by government control of allocation of things like materials for packaging and freight cars for transportation, and by no draft exemptions for male workers from the farm to the market.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#188

Post by kiawe_fire »

dang wrote: post #164
jasonlotito wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, that's the user dang. He pretty much runs HN. I'd assume anything he says in these regards as fact and trust him.

I certainly hope not. People need to push back when we get things wrong. Luckily for me they are not shy about doing so.

This comment is what leadership looks like.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#189

Post by wyager »

Johnny555 wrote: post #181
wyager wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You seem to be thinking about this from a personal finance angle instead of an economy-wide production angle. Yes, I tried to be clear: 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. No one's backyard garden in the USA is going to help feed someone in Africa, but even if the global food shortage doesn't mean food shorta…

You took specific objection to my comment that victory gardens were to make people "feel like they were helping". I meant this to imply some kind of externalized effect beyond just saving money.

It's also probably wrong that a home garden will net save you money unless you make like $3/hr. Again, unless you're extracting pleasure from gardening.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#190

Post by sva_ »

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 recently looked into how much rice I'd need to survive for a year. The results were fairly surprising. A kilogram of uncooked rice only provide you with about 3500 kcal, less than you'd use in 2 days of time (for the average human). So you'd need quite a lot of rice. Beans are similar, they just have more protein (not a complete protein though).

I concluded that while it is definitely advisable to have some number of days/weeks in storage, it doesn't seem feasible to store enough food to last a prolonged period of time (unless you go all-in on prepping, which has its limits). We humans are as successful as we are because we cooperate with other humans, and on our own we're pretty powerless. So fostering community might be the best way to advert crisis.

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