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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#271

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#272

Post by giantg2 »

corrral wrote: post #248
sva_ wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm ignorant of this, but it was my impression that vacuum-sealed white rice should pretty much last indefinitely?

I'd expect a couple years at least. A quick Google gives common wisdom that you still want anti-weevil measures (bay leaves in the bag, the aforementioned diatomaceous earth) with that method. My point with that part was just that you have to do the vacuum sealing (unless you're buying a product with all this taken care of, which I'd assume is expensive) and such, at least, which means more equipment and material tha…

"What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, and gardening (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man, were they ever into canning vegetables."

Ditto

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#273

Post by countvonbalzac »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #148
roflyear wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Much of the land cattle are raised on is not suitable for growing crops.

We're not talking about land that cattle graze on, we're talking about land that is used to grow grains that are then fed to cattle.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#274

Post by aksss »

wyager wrote: post #195
bell-cot wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Getting good at gardening doesn't allow you to exceed agribusiness land efficiency levels, so we can put a pretty tight cap on how much small home gardens actually helped.

Isn’t this a bit of a false dichotomy though - solving a (potential) world food shortage or not; being more efficient than industrial farming or not; feeding one’s self/family completely via gardening or not gardening at all?

It seems to me that the more people who supplement their food supply with goods that don’t depend on imported supply (home or community gardens) lessens demand fractionally on the general supply, which fractionally helps with local pricing and household budgets, both of which are positives.

I’m not sure it’s ever been a requirement of victory gardens to be completely autonomous unless ur a hardcore prepper.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#275

Post by MrFantastic »

mbg721 wrote: post #131
bell-cot wrote: post #28

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

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

It's probably slugs and not squirrels.

Slugs will eat 1/2 a tomato in a night.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#276

Post by jandrese »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #250
Scoundreller wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the grid tied systems don’t even support off-line use, but you could always bodge something together during prolonged outages.

I was just researching this and the new Enphase IQ8 microinverters will run without grid power. You are correct though it is common for microinverters to require grid power to operate, which seems pretty surprising!

It's for two reasons.

1. Not killing linemen by backfeeding power

2. Your appliances don't like brownouts and voltage dips whenever a cloud passes overhead. Try to run a house without a power buffer and you'll burn up power controllers all over your house.

Unfortunately the battery market is extremely tight due to so many car manufacturers trying to switch to BEVs ASAP and stressing the raw materials markets. That and COVID shortages. Prices are very high and availability is usually "8-12 month waitlist".

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#277

Post by xdennis »

paganel wrote: post #192
jakewins wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If they don't stand by their word then they can re-impose the sanctions, it's as simple as that. > Why should anyone believe they would clear the blockade if sanctions lift Because at some point the West will have to sit at the negotiating table with Russia.

> Because at some point the West will have to sit at the negotiating table with Russia.

The whole point is that you can't negotiate with Russia. Ukraine gave away it's nukes by negotiations and Russia isn't keeping its end of the bargain. Russia has to be defeated like the Japanese did or collapse like it tends to do from time to time.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#278

Post by lazide »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #266
lazide wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually a safety feature. If there is a downed power line and you lose grid connection, energizing your (otherwise dead) side of the downed lines could easily kill the lineman who comes to fix it.

Oh certainly it is important to have some kind of cut-off to prevent back-feeding the power lines, but I thought that would just be part of the system design.

It is! The easiest design is to require existing grid stable power and supplement it. :)

Anything else is difficult to do reliably, and would generally require some kind of smart monitoring system, electrically actuated mains rated switch (not easy, cheap or durable it turns out), additional sensors, etc.

The design we're talking about just doesn't output power unless there is an existing sine wave to follow. Pretty foolproof, since anything that provided it would also be the one responsible for electrocuting the worker.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#279

Post by xdennis »

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…

> 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)

Ridiculous equivalency. Your boogeyman "the West" didn't attack Russia and doesn't have troops in Russia.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#280

Post by wott »

Merad wrote: post #216
sbf501 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

100%. Growing up my parents were hardcore gardeners (arguably smalltime farmers) with about 2 acres of farmland and an additional 2 acres of fruit trees. We'd eat pretty heavily out of the garden from the late spring through the fall, and would have potatoes, apples, canned/frozen goods through much of the winter... but it was an enormous amount of work. In the spring and summer basically any time that it was viable…

> about 2 acres of farmland

That's huge; I haven't seen anything like that, even in the deep country where I grew up, where people (farmers) almost didn't buy anything but grew and processed most of their stuff. Their gardens hardly ever went over a 1/4 of an acre, I'd say, that was already pretty large and provided for filling quite a number of jar of tomatoes and beans and stuff.

Didn't your parents sell anything?

Using 400-500 sq ft, I get enough potatoes for a family of 3. Not that potato is our only staple food, but...

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