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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

151–160 of 634 posts

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#151

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 reiterate my comment from a few weeks ago as applicable to this new context.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31181311

In this case, the slack is obvious. And it has once again been wrung from the supply chain in the name of efficiency (aka more profits), under the grand delusion that there will never be bad lean times.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#153
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't know if the comment was edited or not, but I hope you're not claiming "vigilante" is a slur. I looked up the definition of slur just to be sure and you are technically correct, but I'd say you're abusing language far more than the person you're responding to.

It said "Karen" and the commenter edited it.

Edit: I've added the context back by quoting what the GP originally said. I guess one good passive-aggressive stealth edit deserves another.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#154
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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).

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#156
post #86

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.

> 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?

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#157

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…

What you're missing is that the global food system is under attack by bad actors.

1. The US Treasury drew up the list of economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus. Then they pressured the compliant EU to follow. The sanctions no surprises had a predictable impact on global grain/fertilizer and energy supply prices. The US basically sanctioned themselves and the global economy.

2. Meanwhile China was hit by terrible flooding last year and faces record low yields for crops so they are now desperately converting baseball courts and roads because their farmers can't get seeds and fertilizers. Do you know why? Because they're stuck on cargo ships sitting off the coast of Shanghai which has been locked down under the bizarre "Zero Covid" quarantine. This is conveniently being done during planting season when they're already facing a huge shortfall. End result - they are importing more and increasing the global grain/food price further.

3. Whilst China gets hit by flooding, the reverse weather pattern (La Nina) is causing droughts in places like Argentina and Paraguay which produces the majority of the food in South America. So thanks again to our sanctions against Belarus and Russia, we can't get fertilizer to those countries. Similarly 35 African countries get food from Russia/Ukraine and 22 of them get fertilizer from there so the end result is famine in S America and Africa.

4. In Europe, the EU's "Green Agenda" deal means the Italian government can't provide more state aid to the farmers. In Germany, they want to phase out agriculture because of greenhouse gas emissions so they've stopped farmers who want to grow more food. At the same time, the sanctions are making covid-induced food shortages dramatically worse.

So you have well timed global food disasters which are amplified by our sanctions whilst back home:

a) "On Friday, April 8, 2022, Union Pacific informed CF Industries without advance notice that it was mandating certain shippers to reduce the volume of private cars on its railroad effective immediately. The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers. Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers’ harvests and increasing the cost of food for consumers."

Not only are they preventing urea and UAN from getting to farmers during the crucial planting season but they're also stopping DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid). DEF is used to control emissions in diesel trucks, without it engines can't run. So they're ensuring a complete shutdown of the supply chains across the United States at the same time.

b) "EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-based biodiesel and ethanol fuel mix for the summer"

Before Covid even began, we had the "Renewable Fuel Standards Act" which mandates annually RISING targets for the production of corn for ethanol fuel blends. This add major price inflation for food. Now the EPA is mandating another increase in corn ethanol for fuel at the same time as when we have astronomical fertilizer prices due to sanctions we imposed AND we're blocking domestic fertilizers being shipped by rail... that's going to send corn prices through the roof and the government knows this very well.

and I'm not even going to touch on all the poultry that USDA are ordering to be destroyed because of "Bird Flu".

As I said in my other comment, it's not by accident or pure back luck - it's by design.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#158

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...

Wasn’t there an HN discussion recently about how rail operators were running extremely long trains which are more economically efficient for the operators, but much more likely to derail (causing physical and pollution damage to communities)?

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#159

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#160
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…

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.

Once again, you are trying to compare units which are not fungible.

There is more land on which you can make meat than land on which you can make plants. Animals can graze on non-arable scrubland, grassland, etc.

Growing staple crops is harder on the land than raising animals. Staple crops deplete soil nitrogen and other nutrients.

Raising crops typically requires massive importation of fertilizer from petrochemical plants, whereas cattle grazing (for example) does not require significant additional petrochemical input.

A classic tale of how animals unfairly take the heat for plants: we often hear about how the amazon is being cut down "for cattle". If you actually look into it, what's happening is that farmers are cutting down the amazon to grow soy for around 3 years, until the soil is totally depleted, at which point they will put some cattle on the land because the cattle can extract value from land destroyed by soy and helps the farmers maintain land claims.

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