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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#311

Post by aksss »

carom wrote: post #171
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.

The whole reason I wanted to take up camping was to understand what I can eat in an emergency situation. Now I own a camping stove, a few fuel canisters, some boil in bag rice, and a few large cans of plain freeze dried chicken and beef. Add in the charcoal BBQ and I'll have a feast the day the power goes out.

The benefit of backpacking as a hobby is not only testing gear and learning how to use it, but also having a means/excuse to rotate through an emergency freeze-dried food supply or MREs and/or learn how to forage and hunt/prepare small game. MREs are reasonably cheap, high calorie, long lasting, and if you strip them down to essentials can be reasonable weight. They don’t last forever on the shelf, but again, camping/backpacking/kayaking can give you an excuse to cycle out the oldest stuff.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#312

Post by corrral »

komadori wrote: post #300
corrral wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original word (which: I can't keep up, is that really bad now? When did that happen, last week?) made more sense, really. "Vigilante" is way off from it.

I don't think it's right to co-opt and despoil that name of doubtless many real people, so if there is a pushback against using "Karen" as an insult then I'm in favour of it. That said, this is first time I've seen anyone else say anything against it. Perhaps I also can't keep up? ;-)

Yeah, I'm not, like, put out by that one becoming verboten, I'm just surprised at the sudden change.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#313

Post by dotopotoro »

88840-8855 wrote: post #255
vorpalhex wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No society is ideal, but it is better to help a flawed country than to let a war monger who is violating sovereignty norms act freely. Real life is not a series of choices between good and bad - it is a series of choices between bad and worse.

We had the chance to open up and help substantially during the crazy 90s when the post-Soviet economies dropped GDPwise to the 1960s/1970s levels, average male life expectancy dropped by 10-12 years, life-savings were destroyed, criminals became ultra-rich and were welcomed in Zurich, New York and London with open arms. We did not. We had the chance to open the EU and NATO towards the Russian in the 00s, even when th…

> the war should end asap, no matter who wins

One part of me agrees with this. War is the worst (as far as i know from books and tv).

The other part of me thinks: That is how Germany expanded half a century ago, getting resources for ww2. (thug perceives the pacifist as a weakling and an easy opportunity to profit). Ukraine has a lot of natural resources, part of the reason for the war.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#314

Post by corrral »

sva_ wrote: post #310
corrral wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe the misunderstanding stems from a geographic difference. The rice I buy seems to come in an under a co2-atmosphere vacuum sealed bag that costs around $2 (or less on sale) per kg. > What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, My grandmother did this too, after living her childhood through WW2 (in Germany), she used to have a repository of canned vegetables in the cellar. I sometimes talked to her abo…

Interesting. Our (my part of the US) rice is mostly sold in small plastic bags (perhaps 1-2kg), or for some brands hard plastic containers; larger amounts come in either a much heavier opaque plastic bag (like pet/livestock feed, when it's not in a lined paper bag of some kind), or a thin clear plastic bag inside a rough cloth bag. If there are already-vacuum-sealed options here, I've not noticed them.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#315

Post by tmaly »

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…

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

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#316

Post by dredmorbius »

HappyDreamer wrote: post #264
mmarq wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian government has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that it is not a good faith interlocutor. Nobody should take anything they say seriously.

> Nobody should take anything they say seriously It's almost amazing that the newspapers reprint what Putin says, as if it was something to take seriously. Without explaining to the readers that Putin is trying to manipulate them. -- They're sometimes letting themselves be a megaphone he can use, I think.

It took years for the media to reach that point with a recent would-be tyrant.

Though Putin's been headed that way for far longer.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#317

Post by the_third_wave »

blowski wrote: post #13
daenz wrote: post #6

The sky is falling and we're all going to die! Get to the end of the story Subscribe today for just $19.90 $10/first month. Cancel at any time

Is there any topic on which we’re not currently facing a catastrophe? In the last few months I’ve been warned about impending doom for insects, food, nuclear weapons treaties, democracy, the economy, the internet, space, the environment, the arctic circle, abortion rights.

Not really, no. Panic sells so panic is what is being sold. This is not a new thing as a stroll through the archives (in any language I can read at least - Dutch, English, German, French, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish) will quickly show, especially weather scares have a long and rich history.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#318

Post by gus_massa »

bequanna wrote: post #294
Gordonjcp wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. If you can figure out how to eat grass, you'll be rich.

1. and 3. are the same thing: Corn. The trouble is that it is pretty damn tough to pivot from corn to some crop meant for direct human consumption. The machinery and infrastructure we have in place to grow, transport, and process corn is almost unimaginable in size. A pivot like this would require incredible gov't subsidies and take decades.

I like polenta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polenta (yellow corn hot porridge).

Also, my family is from the north of Argentina, so during the holidays there during one or two weeks fresh corn was very cheap. So we ate sweet humita and spicy humita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humita, sweet corn pie and spicy corn pie, also whole fresh corns, and other stuff. We joked that we ate some dish with corn for lunch and some dish with corn for dinner for a week.

Tamale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamale , Corn Tortilla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_tortilla . I guess someone from Mexico can add more recipes. (I think they prefer white corn and we prefer yellow corn.)

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#319

Post by sva_ »

corrral wrote: post #314
sva_ wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the misunderstanding stems from a geographic difference. The rice I buy seems to come in an under a co2-atmosphere vacuum sealed bag that costs around $2 (or less on sale) per kg. > What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, My grandmother did this too, after living her childhood through WW2 (in Germany), she used to have a repository of canned vegetables in the cellar. I sometimes talked to her abo…

Interesting. Our (my part of the US) rice is mostly sold in small plastic bags (perhaps 1-2kg), or for some brands hard plastic containers; larger amounts come in either a much heavier opaque plastic bag (like pet/livestock feed, when it's not in a lined paper bag of some kind), or a thin clear plastic bag inside a rough cloth bag. If there are already-vacuum-sealed options here, I've not noticed them.

Reading some other comments, it is also possible that these bags aren't actually vacuum sealed. It is hard for me to tell how much of a barrier you need to get a good sealing, in particular to protect from rice weevils (bugs), which appear to be the biggest issue.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#320

Post by dredmorbius »

shadowgovt wrote: post #29
jeremyjh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like asking how fungible are calories. People with the means to mill and cook with wheat flour can probably manage with corn too if the alternative is starvation.

I don't mean on the consumption side. I mean on the production side. Do they grow in the same soil? Do they take the same nutrients? Do they have the same water / sunlight / temperature band tolerances? Looks like that rotation is pretty common but there are some details to concern oneself with. https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/considerations-whe...

Much of it boils down to water and/or irrigation. Maize (corn) likes wetter, wheat can stand dryer. In the US the corn belt starts in Ohio and includes eastern Nebraska, wheat is grown largely on the far western plains.

Wheat is also a viable winter crop --- fall planting / spring harvest for "winter wheat". That typically means 2 crops a year (winter + summer), and possibly more.

Rice is the third staple crop, though it wants a lot of water, and tends to be grown in subtropical climates as with China and India.

Other substitutes include barley, oats, millet, etc., though those are far less prevelant than wheat & maize.

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