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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#391

Post by gexla »

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 live ridiculously frugal in a emerging economy country. It's not that I actively look to drop out of consumption, it's just that I lifestyle seemed to settle on this way of being. My entire cost of living is probably less than the cost of ownership of my small truck back home.

I don't consume things which use corn as an ingredient. I don't use seed oils. My food is mostly wild fish (local markets.) If Russia were unleash nuclear war, I probably wouldn't get hit.

I guess I would still be screwed if there were a global food catastrophe because it would affect me somehow.

No reason for this comment other than it's strange to see that the solutions on this list wouldn't apply to me.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#392

Post by dredmorbius »

etempleton wrote: post #385
dredmorbius wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sou…

I think it can be used for that, but it is also used to cut gasoline and therefore make a single barrel of oil go further. Normally ethanol is less than 10 percent, but I think it can be as high as 15 or 20 percent at the pump right now. Modern engines can handle it just fine, but it does slightly reduce fuel economy.

It's also an oxygenation agent, and replaces MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether) which ... oh, also substituted for tetraethyl lead. (I thought MTBE was an anti-smog treatment.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBE_controversy

MTBE turned out to leach into groundwater quite readily and there was a pretty widespread outcry about it in the early aughts. Again, ethanol is a replacement (mentioned in the Wikipedia article above).

And yes, since anti-knock agents effectively slow combustion (and ethanol has lower energy-density than petroleum), net fuel efficiency is slightly reduced on a volumetric basis. Net effect remains better overall engine performance.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#393

Post by Iwan-Zotow »

thghtihadanacct wrote: post #342
Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Make up your mind - it is either in Syria or ... where? 500kt is not a small amount

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#394

Post by cameronh90 »

wyager wrote: post #160
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.

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…

This is misleading.

We raise very few animals purely through grazing on non-arable land. If nothing else, they need feeding through part of the year in many climates, and more typically, supplementary feed to increase intensity. Pure free range non-arable grazing ruminants constitute a relatively low percentage of total meat produced.

A somewhat more common thing is to raise cattle on arable fallow land between crop cycles. This is better than keeping permanent pastures, but nowadays we still often supplement the feed or intensively finish.

Battery farms, which is purely fed on crops grown where humans could grow food, accounts for about 70% of beef and 99% of pork and chicken. Often the soy being grown in the rainforest is to support these animals.

The other thing is a lot of "non-arable" and fallow land is actually a lot more arable with modern agriculture than it used to be, it's just more profitable to grow animals. A lot of the plant matter that used to be considered as only usable for animal feed can also now be processed for further use in human food.

Meat production isn't quite as bad as people sometimes suggest, but it's still pretty bad. There are some cases where it is still a good option (e.g. low intensity lamb grazing on rocky/hilly terrain) and if we scaled our meat production to only these cases, we'd be in a much better situation, but there's also be way less meat.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#395

Post by Iwan-Zotow »

trhway wrote: post #344
Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Assad (even with extended family) cannot eat 500kt of grain. It means general population of the country would be fed.

Looks like win-win to me

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#396

Post by FpUser »

axiosgunnar wrote: post #333
postalrat wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triggering world war 3 would also help reduce the population which could reduce co2 emissions and food requirements. Killing a few birds with one stone.

I‘d rather die trying, than live in a non-free world. And fyi, whatever arrangement of characters your reply to this statement will consist of, it will not change my stance, so do not bother.

>"I‘d rather die trying, than live in a non-free world."

Well many people went to Ukraine to fight on their side. If that is what you do why would anyone bother "changing your stance". Just go and do it.

But if you expect other people to perish in WWIII for the sake your stance they might hold a different opinion about that part.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#397

Post by humanistbot »

gexla wrote: post #391
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 live ridiculously frugal in a emerging economy country. It's not that I actively look to drop out of consumption, it's just that I lifestyle seemed to settle on this way of being. My entire cost of living is probably less than the cost of ownership of my small truck back home. I don't consume things which use corn as an ingredient. I don't use seed oils. My food is mostly wild fish (local markets.) If Russia were u…

Global markets impact local prices everywhere

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#398

Post by selectodude »

tjr225 wrote: post #371
LordDragonfang wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, favoring public transport (which includes a good deal of walking) and bicycling is negatively impacted by the global calorie shortage , bringing us full circle.

Idk man I could lose 80 pounds. I’m optimistic.

Heh if you include the spare tire around most American men, we could do with a few years of calorie shortage.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#399

Post by leereeves »

pvarangot wrote: post #386
exploding_water wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third solution doesn’t make much sense since livestock consumption is mostly made up of inedible foods that we can’t eat like husks, stems, leaves, etc. of plants. Livestock is effective for up-cycling foods we can’t digest and turning it into foods that we can such as meat and dairy. Also there is a lot of food waste in the US. Good food that is suitable for livestock…

Soooooooo "Roughage Products" which is fiber, that humans also need to eat BTW, is usually something like 25% of pelleted food. The main ingredient in pelleted food is usually digestible by humans and between 6% to 15% protein, it's like 25% to 30% depending on the pelleted food. Pound by pound going by the estimates that "eat cow advocates" use you need 12 pounds of food per pound of beef produced, if half of that i…

> In San Francisco right now there's no "entire life on farm" meat on the market. If I want to eat your "ideal cow" that eats _mostly_ inedible foods I have to buy land and raise it myself or get it alive from a farm. It's not a product one buys for human consumption. Cows in the US eat mostly human edible foods.

Search for "100% grass fed beef". There are many ranches that sell it around the country, even in California. Some deliver, some sell in farmer's markets, and a few products are even available in markets like Sprouts.[1]

The fact that it's not available in most supermarkets could be fixed.

1: https://www.sprouts.com/healthy-living/sprouts-butcher-shop-...

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#400

Post by bryanlarsen »

exploding_water wrote: post #363
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…

The third solution doesn’t make much sense since livestock consumption is mostly made up of inedible foods that we can’t eat like husks, stems, leaves, etc. of plants. Livestock is effective for up-cycling foods we can’t digest and turning it into foods that we can such as meat and dairy. Also there is a lot of food waste in the US. Good food that is suitable for livestock…

The bulk of cattle feed is roughage but the majority of the calories is usually palatable, at least in the winter.

Pigs and chickenz eat almost completely palatable food.

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