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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#461

Post by dreamcompiler »

Xylakant wrote: post #373
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…

> 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. Ok top of that, there is a gauge change when crossing over from Ukraine to the west and the infrastructure towards the west is hardly at the level required. For example, train crossing…

Side note: This gauge difference worked in Ukraine's favor in one respect. Russia's military logistics infrastructure is heavily train-based, but Russia's trains had to stop at the Ukrainian border because of the gauge difference. This meant they had to switch to trucks which are old and unreliable and they got bogged down in mud, which meant they had to stick to roads where they were easy for the Ukrainians to attack. And those transshipment points where the Russians had to unload all their cargo from trains and reload it onto trucks also became fat juicy targets.

Yet another example where Russia didn't think carefully enough before invading.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#462

Post by rebuilder »

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.

I really don’t think the USA can afford to let Ukraine fail. They are basically committed to destroying the Russian economy now, and having them lose the war in Ukraine is an important part in that.

If Russia is able to defeat Ukraine, end the war and stabilise the situation, they will be in a better position to convince countries to work around the sanctions they are facing, which would amount to an end-run around the dominanc e of the US dollar.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#463

Post by madengr »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #307
corrral wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rice will be full of pest insect eggs. They'll hatch after a while (smallish count of months, likely). You've got to freeze it (to kill the eggs) and then seal it (to keep more pests from getting in) and/or add stuff that'll kill anything that hatches very fast (IIRC diatomaceous earth is popular for this) Other grains have similar pest problems, plus if it's wheat or similar and ground into flour (not e.g. whole whe…

What are you talking about? I've kept bags of rice for years without any issues.

No post body was provided.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#464

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

qpqpqpq wrote: post #243
jtbayly wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear dang, A Karen is no more an inappropriate slur than many other useful words and phrases that are negative, such as goody-two-shoes, busybody, bully, crank, etc. I don’t see how it helps to ban negative words.

It's a misogynistic slur, used in place of calling a women the b-word or a c-word. Dang is totally in the right to scold people for saying this.

No post body was provided.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#465

Post by t-3 »

trhway wrote: post #419
Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>It means general population of the country would be fed. Nothing indicates that. If anything, what we know about Russia and Assad allows to reasonably suspect that it is only pro-Assad regions will be fed while others will be subjected to the rising prices and shortages. >Looks like win-win to me That win for Russia, Assad and pro-Assad population comes at the cost of increased prices and shortages for the Middle Ea…

It's a non-issue. The US alone can produce enough to supply the world, but we pay farmers to let fields fallow to keep prices up. Africa is full of fertile land and could be feeding the world, if we weren't actively destabilizing countries. Canada produces millions of tons, and looks like they are also growing extra.

https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ca&commodity...

https://theintercept.com/2022/03/09/intercepted-podcast-afri...

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#466

Post by wyager »

otikik wrote: post #245
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…

> I would rather have 1lb beef than 10lb nominally edible soy extractives The argument is not "eat soy extractives instead of meat". It's more like "lunch on veggies 2 or 3 days per week instead of having meat on every meal, including breakfast". It obviously includes repurposing some of the land used to raise cattle into other things more suitable for direct human consumption. No one is talking about making you eat…

Vegetables also have horrendous nutritional profiles. For the most part, the only parts of plants with anything approaching good nutritional qualities are fruits. Human resistance to various poisons also makes certain root vegetables like potatoes acceptable, but they are not great. I will continue extracting the preponderance of my nutrition from meat.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#467

Post by MikePlacid »

Xylakant wrote: post #373
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…

> 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. Ok top of that, there is a gauge change when crossing over from Ukraine to the west and the infrastructure towards the west is hardly at the level required. For example, train crossing…

dreamcompiler wrote: “Russia's trains had to stop at the Ukrainian border because of the gauge difference.”

There is no gauge difference between Russia and Ukraine.

In fact, even some (small) parts of Polish railways use Russian gauge - remnant of the times when Soviet raw materials were delivered in bulk to Polish metallurgic plants.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#468

Post by wyager »

cameronh90 wrote: post #394
wyager wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Battery farms, which is purely fed on crops grown where humans could grow food

They are mostly fed on the byproducts of human food production. Human-edible material has higher margins than cattle feed, so cattle feed either comes from human ag byproducts (like soy meal) or from land that probably isn't good for much except hay.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#469

Post by t-3 »

boardwaalk wrote: post #384
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree Putin is some kind of dictator, but are you really calling Ukraine democracy? Then you can also call North Korea democracy.

Uhm, yes? They elected a comedian with no political experience or ties for f's sake. But I suppose that was some sort of rigged election or he's just a figurehead or something?

Uh, he's banned all opposition parties. Where's the democracy? He was a direct employee of a Ukrainian billionaire oligarch, plenty of ties, just check the Pandora Papers...

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#470

Post by ip26 »

MrFantastic wrote: post #270
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…

My friends were talking about his. If a food shortage hits the plan is to consume the perishable stuff while massively cutting calories. The goal is to reduce excess muscle and reduce the metabolism. Rip off the bandaid and then the food rationing won't be as uncomfortable. After a few days of fasting you lose a lot of your hunger.

Muscle is protective against injury & against angry humans.
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