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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#451

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

Scoundreller wrote: post #346
vorpalhex wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you can buy handheld, portable, battery-powered, solar-recharging devices that electrolytically produce bleach from salt and water

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#452

Post by elgenie »

atchoo wrote: post #365
tmaly wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This makes me think of The West Wing back in 2005 with Josh and Santos arguing about whether to pander to Iowa about ethanol subsidies. Josh won, Santos pandered. I guess if you want this to change, you've first got to stop Iowa being so ludicrously influential in the presidential election cycle.

Iowa has been doing a solid job of making the Iowa caucuses significantly less relevant all on their own. The state and its registered Dem and GOP cohorts have become much less representative of the nation as a whole over the last two decades.

The last time the winner mattered was, perhaps, Obama 2008. The contested races since have yielded the following winners: Huckabee, Santorum, Clinton, Ted Cruz, and Buttigieg/Sanders.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#453

Post by _8j50 »

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.

Bottles water takes up too much space and is a logistic nightmare. Just get brita filters instead.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#454

Post by lmm »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #309
kazinator wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, we must know how to do this. I mean, we know how grass-eating ruminants break down the cellulose to obtain energy with various enzymes and whatnot. We could probably invent some kind of exo-stomach to pre-digest grass into an edible state. :)

I guess if you really wanted to, you could take cellulase in the way that people can take lactase to mitigate the effects of lactose intolerance. How you'd actually get your stomach to brew that up into anything useful in time is anyone's guess, and what it would do to the rest of you is an exercise for the keen experimenter. We are basically too active and too large to eat grass, even if we had lactase.

I think they were imagining something more like a bakery / brewery / chemical plant that would turn grasses into edible bread / porridge / slop.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#455

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

sva_ wrote: post #319
corrral wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you would know if your rice was vacuum sealed because the grain jamming would make the bag inflexible

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#457

Post by rdtwo »

yucky wrote: post #441
greenglass wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quite the opposite. The best move for the US would be to let Ukraine fall, which would re-stabilize food and fuel prices.

If the goal were to lower prices which I’m sure it’s not. Us oil production is only economical at 60-80$ a barrel

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#458

Post by giantg2 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #428
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...

in that case, it would be russia starting ww3, and I don't think they will.

I agree, but they will spin it from their prospective to say Han, I mean we, shot first.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#459

Post by goodluckchuck »

tmaly wrote: post #315
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.

There’s a place for strategic food reserves and ethanol does a good job of maintaining excess capacity without tanking commodity prices (and thus killing future supplies)

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#460

Post by Terry_Roll »

> Russia and Ukraine supply 28% of globally traded wheat, 29% of the barley, 15% of the maize and 75% of the sunflower oil

It sounds a lot, it sounds "scary" if you dont know the global crop production figures.

China, India & Russia are the largest producers. Ukraine is down in 8th place and only represents something like 3% of global production figures of Wheat, so any shortage will be countries refusing to buy from Russia.

Russia will be demanding their payments are made in Roubles. If there is any civil unrest in your country it will be because your media outlets are fuelling you with propaganda. I noted how easily the BBC started a UK fuel shortage last year by abusing their state broadcaster position to misreport and exaggerate the severity of a situation.

Don't fall victim to media lies, Trump was right when he said Fake News! LOL

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