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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#341

Post by greenglass »

devit wrote: post #174
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…

If they can ship the food to Odessa (presumably by truck or train), it seems like they would be able to ship it to a port in a non-blockaded foreign country instead (e.g. Turkey, Greece, Italy, Poland).

Why would they be motivated to do that?

If I were Ukraine, I would do all I could to exacerbate global food shortages.

If I were the United States, I might consider how massive aid packages interact with various incentives along these lines.

Supposedly the aid is help get around the sea blockade. Every cost is a negotiation.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#342

Post by thghtihadanacct »

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #304
trhway wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has already struck the Zatoka bridge south/west of Odessa, the best/shortest route from Odessa to Danube river and Black Sea ports in Romania. Most of the trains in Ukraine is electric-pulled. Russia has already struck most of the railway power transforming stations. Ukraine has very limited number of diesel trains. It can't use European ones because of different wheelbase. (correction thanks to the commenter…

> Russia has already stolen about 500 000 tons of wheat from Ukraine and delivered it to Assad Well, no hunger for good people of Syria then

Right? Check that one off the list (if this actually happened ... Russia cant get anything done right anymore so I dont see that grain making it anywhere).

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#343

Post by dredmorbius »

londons_explore wrote: post #78
codefreeordie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy is having an even greater supply crunch than food (indeed part of the food shortage is that agricultural inputs can't get delivered in adequate quantities because the energy to transport them doesn't exist). The energy market is willing to outbid the food market, so I wouldn't expect the conversion of agricultural inputs into fuel outputs to decelerate.

When people run out of money, they prioritize eating over electricity for the TV. Eventually, that effect should bring down the amount that energy companies want to pay for corn. But lots of people might starve first...

OP is speaking to the market level effective demand.

Someone who's poor and starving will direct their own very limited economic purchasing power toward food. But the marketas a whole includes those who are wealthy (far fewer in number, but individually having vastly greater purchasing power), who might prioritise energy purchases generally.

It's not the poor's own food-vs-energy deceisions, but poor-food vs. rich-energy, which are in play.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#344

Post by trhway »

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #304
trhway wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has already struck the Zatoka bridge south/west of Odessa, the best/shortest route from Odessa to Danube river and Black Sea ports in Romania. Most of the trains in Ukraine is electric-pulled. Russia has already struck most of the railway power transforming stations. Ukraine has very limited number of diesel trains. It can't use European ones because of different wheelbase. (correction thanks to the commenter…

> Russia has already stolen about 500 000 tons of wheat from Ukraine and delivered it to Assad Well, no hunger for good people of Syria then

>for good people

yep, as long as you're "good" according to Russia&Assad. Russia is weaponizing the food the way it has weaponized natural gas and oil. In some sense that is a weapon of mass destruction posed to be used in the next few years with casualties going into millions or even tens of millions ballpark if one to look at various predictions of the food price rises and shortages in the next few years.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#345

Post by giantg2 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #269
giantg2 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is russia really going to say "Well, they shot down our plane so its global thermonuclear war time"." That is what they have been threatening...

They threaten everyone and change their mind all the time. It's mostly irrelevant to what they actually do.

The question was would they really "say" it.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#346

Post by Scoundreller »

vorpalhex wrote: post #228
sva_ wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently looked into how much rice I'd need to survive for a year. The results were fairly surprising. A kilogram of uncooked rice only provide you with about 3500 kcal, less than you'd use in 2 days of time (for the average human). So you'd need quite a lot of rice. Beans are similar, they just have more protein (not a complete protein though). I concluded that while it is definitely advisable to have some number…

You don't need 2k calories a day in an emergency. You can survive on 1200-1500 calories a day. I still don't advise going in 100% on rice as beri-beri is an issue (or heavy metal issues if you go all brown rice). A good mix of canned goods, dried goods and reliable water will help. Even in a shortage you will probably have some access, but limited access. I strongly advise against bottled water for emergencies. It is…

Speak for yourself! I’m biking distance from a lake, so I’m going to focus on having enough bleach around. Bottled water is great… for bottles to do solar disinfection with. Though I guess I should really be worried about an algal bloom… ugh.

220gal IBCs should be $100 too, but maybe they’re more now.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#347

Post by OrvalWintermute »

Scoundreller wrote: post #156
wyager wrote: 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…

Where do other beans/pulses fit in vs meat?

Some beans can be large sources of anti-nutrients [1] . Because over consumption of anti-nutrient foods can seriously impact your overall health, it is important to think about when getting a balanced diet.

Another example is soy, which has been studied some [2] . The problem is with longterm vegans that consume a huge amount of soy over a long term.

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/anti-nutrients/

[2] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#348

Post by jiggawatts »

filoleg wrote: post #263
paganel wrote: post #203

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…

> 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. I mean, I agree that it doesn't carry the same positive vibes that it used to, but it still carries much better vibes than "corrupt authoritarian semi-dictatorships". To those who might try going "muh western propaganda" on this, save your time. I am speaking as some…

Yeah, the gaslighting cracks me up. I too escaped a former Soviet bloc country that Russia invaded in exactly the same way it is invading Ukraine right now.

I now live in one of those “horrible” western democracies where I can tell the Prime Minister that he’s an idiot to his face and the worst that’ll happen is that he’ll laugh at me in a dismissive way.

But these countries are “all the same”, right? Right?

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#349

Post by messe »

namdnay wrote: post #210
simonh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s probably mainly due to low shipping costs due to proximity (in the grand scheme of things). There is scope for substitution with supplies from elsewhere in the world, if those supplies can be freed up from their usual end use. Biodiesel, cattle feed, etc. Here in the UK restrictions on labelling sunflower oil now mean it’s acceptable to adulterate it with other oils. My family has switched to using rapeseed oi…

I'm not sure why sunflower oil is so popular. Olive oil is much nicer for anything that isn't going to be deep-fried, and peanut oil is much better for frying (more saturated fats = more crispiness).

I'm not sure about where you are, but here in Ireland sunflower oil is about half the price of peanut oil in most supermarkets.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#350

Post by dredmorbius »

ketzo wrote: post #339
dredmorbius wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think GP means more calls outside this article, particularly in the U.S. where 1) rising food prices are a hot topic 2) we grow a LOT of corn.

Fair point.

Though my understanding is that ethanol as a fuel additive is largely an anti-knock lead substitute. Alcohol was the originally-proposed solution, before the creation and adoption of tetraethyl lead. Apparent cost advantages drove the adoption of the latter. True costs proved somewhat greater.

My read is that the "biofuel" branding of fuel ethanol is actually a misdirection, though I don't have a good source on that.

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