The Coming Food Catastrophe

Post by namdnay » Thu, May 19, 2022, 8:42 PM UTC

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…

Post by sva_ » Thu, May 19, 2022, 8:42 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #175

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 whe…

Post by wyager » Thu, May 19, 2022, 8:42 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #169

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.

Try talking to some older folks - who at least heard many first-hand accounts from relatives who both had WWII Victory Gardens, and also gardened food during the Great Depression, out of economic necessity. With a few years' experience doing that, sharing tips and seeds with neighbors also doing it, and memories of being pretty hungry at times in the winter...ordinary people can get pretty damn good at growing a lot…

Post by paganel » Thu, May 19, 2022, 8:43 PM UTC

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #182

paganel wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 19, 2022, 8:43 PM UTC

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.