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The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

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Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#551

Post by greenglass »

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 was not suggesting the opposite, by any means. But I am not sure I agree with your statement either. I won’t even get into hunter Biden’s Ukrainian business dealings and I agree the blame is technically all on Putin, who is an evil madman, maybe even literally going insane from cancer or paranoia or something.

But flooding Ukraine with cash and weapons, with zero oversight or public debate should concern people. It all seems a bit poorly managed, something that most intelligent people now agree is the overarching theme of the current administration. Dropping buckets of cash aid and weapons — 20 billion here, 40 billion there — will probably do more than intended. It usually does. We love regime changing the world, spreading American style peace and democracy, typically with an unwarranted optimism about the outcome. Let’s hope things go better this time.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#552

Post by Jensson »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #520
Jensson wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen anything like that and I've kept rice around for years as well. Do you live in a poor country where they don't have proper food protection agencies? If things like that hatched in food people bought from stores that would make the news, I've seen it in the news before so it can't happen that often.

The eggs don't hatch right away, can take months or years, but most people buy rice to eat right now, not to stockpile, so it's mostly consumed before the weevils hatch. And when they do, it's just a known nuisance, not worth reporting.

I cannot find anyone talking about rice weevils in my language online, so I really doubt finding them is a common thing everywhere. If it is that impossible to get rid of them then it is probably a climate thing, they are common in your climate but not in my climate.

So the advice would be to look at local pests and how to avoid having those in your storage. We still have other kinds of weevils but they are not everywhere like you say rice weevils are, you are unlikely to have them in packages meant for humans so storing things long term is fine.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#553

Post by TaylorAlexander »

trafficante wrote: post #413
jandrese wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for two reasons. 1. Not killing linemen by backfeeding power 2. Your appliances don't like brownouts and voltage dips whenever a cloud passes overhead. Try to run a house without a power buffer and you'll burn up power controllers all over your house. Unfortunately the battery market is extremely tight due to so many car manufacturers trying to switch to BEVs ASAP and stressing the raw materials markets. That an…

I wonder if it’s possible to retrofit a Tesla to work as a bootleg Powerwall in tandem with residential solar - should brownouts become a common thing. My Google-fu isn’t strong enough to find anything on the topic that isn’t on the level of “tremendously sketchy YouTube video” and I’m not about to risk my car and house experimenting off the back of that sort of thing.

I don’t know about Tesla specifically but this is a thing that some EVs can do. The new Ford F-150 lightning can do it. This is generally called vehicle to grid, vehicle to load, or bidirectional charging. A quick search shows maybe Tesla hasn’t added it yet. But here’s some details on the Ford lightning setup:

https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/electric-vehicles/home-...

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#554

Post by yywwbbn »

Guthur wrote: post #493
thematrixturtle wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia's official forecasts are for inflation north of 20%, GDP down 8% in 2022, and factories are offering free plots of land so people can grow their own potatoes. No shortage of fuel though, since they're having a hard time exporting it now. Although all industry in Russia is heavily dependent on spare parts from the West, meaning things will start breaking down quite soon.

Quite sure the whole world is at similar inflation levels, pretty sure it's about 30% considering the drop in profits from Western retailers, same revenue, massive drop in profits, the retailers took the inflationary hit but it will be passed on eventually. Just look at your fuel prices (supply issues there as well as monetary inflation). Will this affect russia, of course, but if their level of inflation is rampant…

You’re missing that Russia started this with a much lower base. Increasing prices and decreasing growth for an average North American or West European would mean that they would have to go somewhere cheaper for vacation this year and slightly adjust their consumption habits. When your net monthly income is ~$500 or less you might have slightly different concerns if you see prices rising by more than 20%.

> and even more so if Russia turned off the gas tomorrow.

Energy exports are the only thing keeping the Russian currency afloat, unless they want to go into full autarky mode this would hurt them more than the west (i.e. 40% of all gas in Europe comes from Russia, which is huge 80-90% of all Russian exports are fossil fuels and metals and most go to Europe).

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#555

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

radu_floricica wrote: post #528
closedloop129 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You would truly need to be starving That's what the debate is about.

I don't think we had a famine in the last half century that was caused purely by production. The beauty of a working free market is that starving people are willing to pay quite a lot for cheap food, and so it's virtually impossible to starve just by being poor. The problem was always that the food couldn't get to them. I'd bet on a half-half mix of regulatory issues and fighting. But yeah, production issues can incr…

> starving people are willing to pay quite a lot for cheap food, and so it's virtually impossible to starve just by being poor.

I think you're missing out some key facts about poor people.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#556

Post by sph »

the_gastropod wrote: post #499
abandonliberty wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen one of these that takes major factors into account. Tires and pet food contain animals. Animal by-products are used everywhere. Switching away would require replacements. Replacements would become more efficient with economy of scale, but initial switching costs will be high. Some replacements, like food for our obligate-carnivore cats, might not be possible. Simplest example: Beyond meat is 2-4x the p…

Which do you suppose is the bigger problem in food information: dishonest vegans—0.5% of the US population, btw—evangelizing or the lion’s share of the meat-eating public doesn’t like to hear and acknowledge that their favorite dishes are harmful to the planet? I suspect the latter is a more widespread issue…

> Which do you suppose is the bigger problem in food information: dishonest vegans—0.5% of the US population

Being a small share of the population doesn't mean they're invisible or silent. Here on the UK my leftist self that far too often reads the Guardian, one of the biggest newspaper in the nation, there's many times a week an article advocating the vegan diet. One of the two resident recipe writers only prints vegan recipes. I'm pretty sure it's newspaper policy never to print any diet related news that's not vegan-favourable, I guess it's their way of "changing the world". It's conquered a large part of the popular opinion, even though as you suggest the percentage of actual vegans might be very small.

As a meat eater that is non indifferent to the ecological issues we're facing, and believes the vegan diet NOT to be the answer, I would appreciate a more educated and reasoned approach to a hairy question than the constant evangelizing and ignorant repetition of meat bad, vegan good.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#557

Post by Jensson »

corrral wrote: post #489
Jensson wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen anything like that and I've kept rice around for years as well. Do you live in a poor country where they don't have proper food protection agencies? If things like that hatched in food people bought from stores that would make the news, I've seen it in the news before so it can't happen that often.

> Do you live in a poor country where they don't have proper food protection agencies? USA. So, I mean, kinda. But, unless they're irradiating or freezing your rice before it gets to the store, there are rice weevil eggs in it. They're inside the rice grains. If you've eaten much rice, you've eaten rice weevil eggs.

Probably comes from grain storage locations in warmer climates then. I can't find anyone talking about these online in my local language which is to the north, we have no native pests like these so they all only live inside houses. There are other weevils, but they are very rare and mostly comes from other sources and starts eating your bread etc, they don't come from packages you get in the store. Nobody said there is a problem storing these things long term, instead you get rid of them by getting rid of all their eggs in your kitchen.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#558

Post by bell-cot »

dang wrote: post #526
Tao332 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, "passive-aggressive stealth edit"? You got what you wanted. They took out the mean word. Don't get pissy about it and start gaslighting people.

Editing a comment after the fact in a way that deprives a reply of its original context and makes it look stupid is, in most cases, a dick move. I think most users understand that. It doesn't make a difference whether the reply was by a moderator or not.

It would be nice if there was a way to display text in a strikethrough font.

Though, in this specific context, appending something like "Edit: 's/Karens/vigilantes/g'" would be the unambiguous way to document the edit.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#559

Post by throwaway0x7E6 »

megous wrote: post #334
throwaway0x7E6 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what then?

http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-05.htm Article 81

no shit, but who do people expect to come after Putin?

what would taking out Bush Jr. in the early phase of operation Iraqi Freedom accomplish? would the next guy immediately withdraw from Iraq and apologize to the world for the past wrongdoings?

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#560

Post by _kbh_ »

einpoklum wrote: post #537
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this seems like nebulous FUD that attempts to downplay that one of the actors here is literally engaging in a genocide will the world (NOT the U.S., as the opposition to Russia's genocidal war is global) accrue enough countries out of 200 or so which engage in genocidal invasions of conquest of their neighbors in the 21st century? sounds implausible

> is literally engaging in a genocide You know, the US (and people who drink its kool-aid) has been leveling several such false accusations lately, another one being about the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. As a person whose family was decimated by genocide I'll tell you that it's quite insulting on the personal level; but beyond this - that kind of rhetoric has a "boy who cried wolf effect", and that's really bad…

Russia intentionally targets civilians in Ukraine, because they are Ukrainian, how does that not meet the definition of genocide? which is.

`Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people — usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group — in whole or in part`.

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