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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

321–330 of 634 posts

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#321

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.

Corn for ethanol production isn't preferred for eating.

Indeed, there is probably no existing supply chain for whatever is necessary to make this corn fit for human consumption

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly the US, with some UK mixed in. > A better term would be liberal democracies If you think "liberal democracies" still carries the same positive vibe across the world that it used to some years ago you are in for a big surprise. > "both sides are the same" ring to it They are definitely not the same, they have obviously different values. Again, Putin has said as much, he's the one fighting for a multi-polar worl…

> Mostly the US, with some UK mixed in. That's the opposition to Russia? Hardly, Ukraine's neighbours are doing far more than anyone in London or Washington. > They are definitely not the same, they have obviously different values Yes one of them is democracy, the other is dictatorships. One is good, the other is bad. Refreshingly, some things in life are simple. > he's the one fighting for a multi-polar world with m…

Again, the Russians have said as much what they want. What they understand by "multi-polar world" is the US (and its allies), Russia, China, maybe India, maybe some other regional thingie, like South America/Mercosur maybe (I think by this point they're already branding the EU under "US and its allies", that wasn't always the case, especially around 2003-2005 when Germany and France were against the US intervention in Iraq).

Yes, they would want Ukraine under their sphere of influence, that one has been also made pretty clear by them ever since the USSR was broken up.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#323

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.

Corn for ethanol production isn't preferred for eating.

The idea would be to reapportion the acreage, not the crop itself.

Doing that mid-season is of course something of a challenge.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#324

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#325
Grain is at the root of our dietary and other consumption problems. Much of farmland is given over to growing corn for —-corn syrup and variations to put in processed, artificial ‘food’.

We can live better, healthier lives without grain.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#326
post #97

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.

> 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.

I think that may be an overly heated response.

Given that I have seen the term used as a pronoun applied to multiple genders, sex preferences, races, ethnicities, etc, I see the term as speaking to behaviors, rather than being a pejorative unique to a group. Here are good examples of it being applied across multiple ethnicities and genders [1] & [2] . There is even a transgender karen [3] .

Normally it is applied to people acting improperly, hall-monitor type of behaviors where it is not warranted. Someone maliciously reporting food growing in a backyard meets the definition.

Please don't make decisions based off Wikipedia [4] or dictionary.com [5] redefining a word to meet a specific agenda.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gncDv1GNF4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0msiW0mEVo

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5Wj9GqsmAI

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)

[5] https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/karen/

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#327
post #315

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…

I am surprised there are not more calls to end the corn to ethanol subsidies given the cost of food.

There is scope for substitution. About 10% of all grains are used to make biofuel; and 18% of vegetable oils go to biodiesel. Finland and Croatia have weakened mandates that require petrol to include fuel from crops. Others should follow their lead.

From the article.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#328

It is clear that Putin needs to go. By any means necessary.

And? What’s the rest of the plan? I hear people saying that, but this is very short term with no sustainable strategy. Just genuinely pointing out he could be replaced by worse options, and you need to plan against it as well. There is the guy, the system he built, the persons he chose to put in place, all incentivised to continue.

I'm pretty sure this fear of change at the helm is something all dictators will happily project out ("look, without me there will be chaos or worse"). It's likely not true. It's really impossible to predict what will happen once Putin is gone.

He'll die anyway sooner or later, and there will be a struggle for power regardless. Russia has a constitution, and article 81 describes how to get a new president via elections.

Current paranoid leader is waging major war and isolating the country, so it's hard to say what could be worse for the world. Maybe mobilization in Russia, but that may be a tough call for any newcomer.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#329

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…

>1. Stop using so much corn to make ethanol. >2. Stop using so much seed oil to make biodiesel. Easier said than done when there's a global fuel shortage too!

Depends on how much energy you put into producing those vs. what else you could have done.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#330
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't really make any sense though. It changes nothing about the geopolitical reality of what's going on. If the US sends a merchant ship and a cruiser, what is russia going to do exactly? Try to bomb the ships? They will lose, and get shot down. Why would it suddenly be WWIII? Is russia really going to say "Well, they shot down our plane so its global thermonuclear war time".

Russia might respond with conventional cruise missile strikes against US forces in the region.

Shrug. We're shipping $40B of shit to ukraine. It really doesn't matter.
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