[HN Gopher] The Coming Food Catastrophe
___________________________________________________________________
The Coming Food Catastrophe
Author : mastazi
Score : 159 points
Date : 2022-05-19 19:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| zanethomas wrote:
| I hope no one is surprised that going all-in against Russia is a
| major contributor to the situation. The US needs adults to be in
| charge. Adults still in possession of their faculties.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Seems like you don't know the meaning of "all-in"?
|
| That said, if you're desperate for someone to point fingers at,
| might I suggest Putin's Russia and her war of aggression?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Tip from an old geezer: Plant Your Victory Garden Now!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden
| EddieDante wrote:
| Your local zoning board might object. I live in PA, and one of
| the neighborhood _vigilantes_ immediately ratted me out to the
| local government when I started growing corn, squash, and beans
| in my backyard while raising a couple of chickens for eggs.
| dang wrote:
| > one of the neighborhood Karens
|
| Please keep that sort of slur off HN. We don't need it here,
| and you don't need it to make your substantive points.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > Please keep that sort of slur off HN. We don't need it
| here, and you don't need it to make your substantive
| points.
|
| I think that may be an overly heated response.
|
| Given that I have seen the term used as a pronoun applied
| to multiple genders, sex preferences, races, ethnicities,
| etc, I see the term as speaking to behaviors, rather than
| being a pejorative unique to a group. Here are good
| examples of it being applied across multiple ethnicities
| and genders [1] & [2] . There is even a transgender karen
| [3] .
|
| Normally it is applied to people acting improperly, hall-
| monitor type of behaviors where it is not warranted.
| Someone maliciously reporting food growing in a backyard
| meets the definition.
|
| Please don't make decisions based off Wikipedia [4] or
| dictionary.com [5] redefining a word to meet a specific
| agenda.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gncDv1GNF4
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0msiW0mEVo
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5Wj9GqsmAI
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)
|
| [5] https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/karen/
| jtbayly wrote:
| 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.
| qpqpqpq wrote:
| 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.
| mrdoe wrote:
| Really? Whats wrong with calling someone a Karen?!
| dang wrote:
| It doesn't take much googling to answer that.
| BigBubbleButt wrote:
| I don't know if the comment was edited or not, but I hope
| you're not claiming "vigilante" is a slur. I looked up the
| definition of slur just to be sure and you are technically
| correct, but I'd say you're abusing language far more than
| the person you're responding to.
| [deleted]
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Also, that's the user dang. He pretty much runs HN. I'd
| assume anything he says in these regards as fact and
| trust him.
| dang wrote:
| I certainly hope not. People need to push back when we
| get things wrong. Luckily for me they are not shy about
| doing so.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| This comment is what leadership looks like.
| dang wrote:
| It said "Karen" and the commenter edited it.
|
| Edit: I've added the context back by quoting what the GP
| originally said. I guess one good passive-aggressive
| stealth edit deserves another.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It also takes well over an acre to support a single person,
| and that's if you know what you're doing and have the time to
| manage a garden of that size.
| thangalin wrote:
| > well over an acre to support a single person
|
| Source?
|
| https://www.thespruce.com/how-many-vegetables-per-person-
| in-...
|
| > To grow all the food for one person's needs for the whole
| year requires, for most people, at least 4,000 square feet
| --though some diet designs are possible that can use a
| smaller area.
|
| https://permaculturism.com/how-much-land-does-it-take-to-
| fee...
|
| > A 0.44 acre of land can produce enough vegetables and
| fruits to meet up with the daily calories needed for one
| person to feed for a year.
|
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
| 1993:
|
| > It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of
| arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a
| hectare-and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land
| degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest
| waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to
| plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/local-farming-
| hurt...
|
| > The minimum amount of agricultural land necessary for
| sustainable food security, with a diversified diet
| similar to those of North America and Western Europe
| (hence including meat), is 0.5 of a hectare per person.
| This does not allow for any land degradation such as soil
| erosion, and it assumes adequate water supplies.
|
| Cut out meat and it gets better, but not _that_ much
| better.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| Only if you use traditional farming. Hydroponics,
| Aeroponics, and Aquaponics use far less resources (more
| startup capital but far less inputs), can grow year round
| (assuming indoor grows), and has 5-10x the yield per sq
| ft.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| You don't have to grow 100% of your food to benefit from a
| home garden.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure, but "the coming food catastrophe" implies something
| more than "I grow some tomatoes in a corner of my yard"
| as a necessary response.
|
| A garden is great, but it's not gonna solve a global food
| crisis.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| The post you're replying to suggests a Victory Garden.
| While a personal victory garden may not have a big effect
| on global food supplies, it can absolutely help
| supplement food for households that are squeezed by
| higher food prices (which is another side effect of
| global food shortages).
|
| _Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food
| gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit, and herb
| gardens planted at private residences and public parks in
| the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and
| Germany during World War I and World War II. In wartime,
| governments encouraged people to plant victory gardens
| not only to supplement their rations but also to boost
| morale. They were used along with rationing stamps and
| cards to reduce pressure on the public food supply._
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's why I grow for value and flavour. Base calories are
| cheap, making them taste good (in a healthy way) costs a
| lot more.
| adolph wrote:
| An acre seems excessive. An acre is 43,560 square feet.
|
| "One 4 x 4 Square Foot Garden box (16 square feet) will
| supply enough produce to make a salad for one adult every
| day of the growing season." [0]
|
| 0. Bartholomew, Mel. All New Square Foot Gardening, 3rd
| Edition, Fully Updated: MORE Projects NEW Solutions GROW
| Vegetables Anywhere (p. 61). Cool Springs Press. Kindle
| Edition.
|
| https://squarefootgardening.org/
| EddieDante wrote:
| I just wanted to look out my window and see something more
| useful than _grass_ , OK? If I got to enjoy a couple meals
| out of what I grew, so much the better.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I've zero objection to "I like gardening" and "I love a
| home-grown tomato" as reasons to have a garden. I simply
| don't think it's a meaningful part of a fix to a collapse
| of the supply chain.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Did she object to the chickens or the garden? I suspect just
| the chickens, rather than your back yard garden.
| EddieDante wrote:
| She griped about both, the zoning board demanded I get rid
| of the chickens.
|
| I was tempted to leave their corpses on her doorstep and
| egg the municipal building as a petty sort of revenge, but
| that would have been too obvious.
|
| Those chickens were good eating, though, especially with
| some homegrown corn on the cob and baked beans. The squash
| didn't work out so well, unfortunately.
| gcheong wrote:
| What was she griping about with the garden? Chickens I
| can understand if there are smell complaints. In San
| Francisco you are allowed to keep them but there are
| rules about the number you can have and the minimum
| distance their enclosure can be to any neighbors window,
| etc. But squash? That's really an odd thing to complain
| about.
| toolz wrote:
| backyard chickens don't have a smell, that's only once
| you start mass producing them in a factory. The same way
| yours or your neighbors dogs, that produce substantially
| more feces than a chicken, don't cause neighborhood wide
| odor.
| gcheong wrote:
| I was probably just interpreting the ordinance
| requirements of a minimum distance of 20 feet from any
| neighbor's door or window as having to do with smell when
| I read it.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| My biggest problem with my neighbor's chickens was that
| they kept getting out an coming over to my property and
| he'd have to ask me to let him in the back yard so he
| could take them back home. Never noticed any smells near
| their coop which was near the property line.
|
| Never really bothered me since they mostly just hung out
| around the back fence far from my house, but finally
| another neighbor complained to the city and they had to
| get rid of the chickens. Chickens are allowed here (up to
| 10 per property), but have to be kept confined and on
| your own property.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| > I was tempted to leave their corpses on her doorstep
| and egg the municipal building as a petty sort of revenge
|
| But she's the vendictive over-reacter... Go back and read
| your entire narative in a day and see if your viewpoint
| has shifted at all.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Quite true, and the potential for gardening is quite
| situational. OTOH, current forecasts of mega-scale hunger,
| famines, & death look pretty useful, if you wanted to paint
| such, ah, busybodies, in a rather negative light, and try to
| get some rules changed.
| barbazoo wrote:
| What an outdated policy but I've heard of that happening here
| too, Stratas not allowing people to use their outdoor space
| to grow any kind of food.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| At least the FCC protects your ability to put up a
| satellite dish (and "An antenna that is designed to receive
| local television broadcast signals.")
|
| If they hated my garden and chickens, they're really gonna
| hate my 40' Rohn and guidewires!
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| > 40'
|
| Is it for shortwave or ham radio?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| If they can't have chickens pigs are totally out.
|
| _I 'm sorry_
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Growing a garden and raising livestock are pretty different
| in practice & impact from my experience. Assuming you
| voluntarily moved into the zoning and "Karen" objected to you
| violating them, it's all on you.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > one of the neighborhood vigilantes immediately ratted me
| out to the local government
|
| Better than your previous phrasing, but try again; if the
| action that they took was to report you to the government
| then they are the opposite of a vigilante by definition.
| corrral wrote:
| The original word (which: I can't keep up, is that _really_
| bad now? When did that happen, last week?) made more sense,
| really. "Vigilante" is way off from it.
| filoeleven wrote:
| It was always a bad shorthand. The word you are after is
| "busybody," perhaps with some preceding adjectives to
| indicate malicious intent.
| komadori wrote:
| I don't think it's right to co-opt and despoil that name
| of doubtless many real people, so if there is a pushback
| against using "Karen" as an insult then I'm in favour of
| it. That said, this is first time I've seen anyone else
| say anything against it. Perhaps I also can't keep up?
| ;-)
| corrral wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not, like, put out by that one becoming
| _verboten_ , I'm just surprised at the sudden change.
| sbf501 wrote:
| This is really hard, I had four 8x4 raised beds (all I could
| fit) for 5 years. The amount of space and time it takes to
| produce enough food to replace actual meals for more than just
| a few times in the summer is absolutely astonishing (unless you
| like squash all the time). I grew tomatoes, kale, squash,
| onions, lettuce and peppers. It tasted great, and got some
| salads and side dishes out of it, but that was about it. And it
| only yielded from July to August, I had nothing in the winter
| (except some canned tomatoes that were really good). It really
| takes a community effort to make this work. Like, plots of land
| that multiple people tend to. I've seen some cities do this and
| think it is fantastic.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > And it only yielded from July to August
|
| Where are you?
|
| I'm near Toronto, started my seedlings indoors ~6 weeks ago,
| and already eating small kale leaves and lettuce that's
| somehow growing in the grass.
|
| A dying apple tree gave me more than I could eat for 2-3
| months last year. Gonna plant a pear tree in the front yard.
| sbf501 wrote:
| Middle of Washington state, off I5.
|
| The last few years I planted I got my starts going real
| early in my basement and we had an early spring and I was
| over the moon. But I had a few cold springs that didn't
| warm up until June and had to replant multiple times.
| Rookie mistakes and bad luck. :)
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| My parents have a pear tree that came with the lot.
| Straggly looking creature with barely any signs of life all
| year, then for a month or two it produces more pears than
| my parents can eat for the rest of the year.
|
| I love visiting my parents while it's going apeshit. Crisp
| pears all day.
| TheMerovingian wrote:
| Consider canning and fermenting some of your food. Also, grow
| things that can last throughout winter, such as potatoes,
| carrots, beets, etc. They can last in a cool dark place for
| months. Broccoli and Okra can be blanched and flash-frozen.
| Cucumbers can make pickles.
|
| There are tons of good ideas out there about preserving your
| own food. But, I agree, that a small garden won't take a big
| bite out of your food needs. You're not trying to become
| self-sufficient, you're trying to lower your reliance on
| store-bought food.
| wott wrote:
| You don't need a community effort or astonishingly vast land
| to grow potatoes :-) What I mean by that is that the choice
| of stuff you grow matters. Lettuce, peppers (and one might
| add tomatoes) won't feed you much indeed. They are however
| indeed interesting in small spaces when you don't expect them
| to feed you but to provide you nice, fresh extras.
|
| I mean, I produce about 800 lbs of vegetables by spending 20
| mn a day on it (average on 365 days, which means more at
| times and nothing at other times). Surely it requires more
| space that you had. But no motorised tool involved, no
| fertiliser but a tiny bit of manure (no fancy permaculture
| tricks either, just traditional beds), no pesticide except in
| case of emergency like once a year on 10% of the garden, no
| watering except in case of emergency again, no search of any
| optimisation (time, space, yield, ...). It isn't a bid deal
| to get a partial yet significant autonomy; it just gets
| harder and harder as you want to get close to 100%.
|
| There are stuff you can keep across winter in storage without
| transformation, like potatoes or cereals (onions, shallot
| don't do bad either); and stuff that can be kept where they
| lie, in the ground, like parsnip, sunchoke, and a few other
| root vegetables; cabbage can stay too, leeks as well. (Of
| course, it depends on the geographical location.)
|
| Yeah, a base of potatoes + cabbages + onions get you a long
| way; and they are quite versatile as far as cooking is
| concerned.
| sbf501 wrote:
| Agreed! I was just getting into it and trying various
| things. If I had grown up with family that did it I
| probably would have had better odds. Also, I've always
| wanted to try a root cellar, too, but alas, no space for
| that.
| Merad wrote:
| 100%. Growing up my parents were hardcore gardeners (arguably
| smalltime farmers) with about 2 acres of farmland and an
| additional 2 acres of fruit trees. We'd eat pretty heavily
| out of the garden from the late spring through the fall, and
| would have potatoes, apples, canned/frozen goods through much
| of the winter... but it was an enormous amount of work. In
| the spring and summer basically any time that it was viable
| to work in the garden on the weekends or in the evenings, we
| were out working in the garden.
| wott wrote:
| > about 2 acres of farmland
|
| That's huge; I haven't seen anything like that, even in the
| deep country where I grew up, where people (farmers) almost
| didn't buy anything but grew and processed most of their
| stuff. Their gardens hardly ever went over a 1/4 of an
| acre, I'd say, that was already pretty large and provided
| for filling quite a number of jar of tomatoes and beans and
| stuff.
|
| Didn't your parents sell anything?
|
| Using 400-500 sq ft, I get enough potatoes for a family of
| 3. Not that potato is our only staple food, but...
| excalibur wrote:
| Been practicing since 2020. Never ceases to amaze me how LONG
| it's taking society to fall apart.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| How did society fall apart? "Gradually, then suddenly".
| ezekg wrote:
| In my experience, it takes a couple years to get a decent
| garden going. If you're reading and you haven't yet -- start
| now.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I scored free topsoil for my 5gal buckets 2 weeks ago. Good
| luck scoring that in a decade!
| mbg721 wrote:
| But I also have Victory Squirrels taking one bite out of each
| tomato and moving on...
| sophacles wrote:
| The squirrels are generally not in it for the tomato, what
| they really want is the water in the tomato. A lot of people
| (myself included) have eliminated or reduced the problem by
| having a birdbath or water display near the garden.
| [deleted]
| jahewson wrote:
| You need to get a Victory Cat.
| corrral wrote:
| The country folk solution's a Victory .22 and a bored child
| who can aim OK.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I actually have two, but the terms of their adoption
| require that the full extent of the victory be confined
| indoors. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for a
| kneading cat-doughnut on a cold day.
| aksss wrote:
| Or literally a Victory air rifle..
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B9bMqnjv2RE
| MrFantastic wrote:
| It's probably slugs and not squirrels.
|
| Slugs will eat 1/2 a tomato in a night.
| SaintGhurka wrote:
| That's your livestock.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I call those sauce or soup tomatoes.
| namdnay wrote:
| If you're fast enough you can get the ingredients for
| tomato sauce and meatballs at the same time :)
| mellavora wrote:
| edit. sauce or soup meat.
| wyager wrote:
| These are part of a propaganda strategy to make people feel
| like they're "helping". They are not an effective or efficient
| way of improving food availability. If you enjoy gardening as a
| hobby, that's great, but these are not practical bulwarks
| against food shortages.
|
| The economies of scale in industrial farming are insane. The
| ROI on a personal garden is abysmally low, except for herbs and
| other low-volume plants.
| corrral wrote:
| It keeps your variety and options up if rationing kicks in,
| and lets you stretch the rations farther. It's not a
| replacement for raw calories.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Try talking to some older folks - who at least heard many
| first-hand accounts from relatives who both had WWII Victory
| Gardens, and also gardened food during the Great Depression,
| out of economic necessity. With a few years' experience doing
| that, sharing tips and seeds with neighbors also doing it,
| and memories of being pretty hungry at times in the
| winter...ordinary people can get pretty damn good at growing
| a lot of food in a fairly modest-sized garden.
| wyager wrote:
| Getting good at gardening doesn't allow you to exceed
| agribusiness land efficiency levels, so we can put a pretty
| tight cap on how much small home gardens actually helped.
| aksss wrote:
| Isn't this a bit of a false dichotomy though - solving a
| (potential) world food shortage or not; being more
| efficient than industrial farming or not; feeding one's
| self/family completely via gardening or not gardening at
| all?
|
| It seems to me that the more people who supplement their
| food supply with goods that don't depend on imported
| supply (home or community gardens) lessens demand
| fractionally on the general supply, which fractionally
| helps with local pricing and household budgets, both of
| which are positives.
|
| I'm not sure it's ever been a requirement of victory
| gardens to be completely autonomous unless ur a hardcore
| prepper.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| > The economies of scale in industrial farming are insane.
| The ROI on a personal garden is abysmally low, except for
| herbs and other low-volume plants.
|
| So I read this book called "How Asia Works" which documented
| the economic transformations of a few different Asian
| countries.
|
| I was shocked to learn that in a lot of cases, the industrial
| farming not the huge boon that was expected efficiently a few
| people can grow things with intensely you can plant small
| plot farms.
|
| Countries that promoted small-scale household farming instead
| of moving too soon to large scale farming were more
| successful, but this was largely because the labor pool can't
| transition that fast to going from farmers being everyone one
| in ten overnight.
|
| We live at a time where very few people work in farming, the
| smallest amount in history. Why can't it slide back the other
| way?
| wyager wrote:
| > Countries that promoted small-scale household farming
| instead of moving too soon to large scale farming were more
| successful
|
| Promoting small-scale farming and industry lead to
| widespread poverty and famine in cultural revolution China.
|
| > very few people work in farming, the smallest amount in
| history. Why can't it slide back the other way?
|
| It _could_ , but this would probably be a pretty bad thing.
| I guess it depends how many people who currently have fake
| bullshit jobs transition to being farm workers. My guess is
| that almost everyone who would go into an expanded ag labor
| base is currently doing some actually useful work, and we
| would suffer a severe net decrease in labor output, if we
| tanked farming efficiency.
| mellavora wrote:
| > Promoting small-scale farming and industry lead to
| widespread poverty and famine in cultural revolution
| China.
|
| In this specific example, there might have been other
| causes.
|
| In general I agree with you, getting the entire US to "go
| Amish" isn't viable. Just picking on your example which
| leaves out some of the details about how the transition
| was "promoted".
| rmah wrote:
| It can't slide back because 99%+ of people don't want to
| live like peasants of 100 years ago. I hope I don't need to
| explain why having a lot more people spending a lot of
| their time farming small plots leads to a substantially
| lower standard of living than an industrial or post-
| industrial economy.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _These are part of a propaganda strategy to make people feel
| like they 're "helping"._
|
| Depends whether you're gardening for a global food shortage,
| or to supplement your own use, which I suspect is why most
| people have home gardens.
|
| A home garden can supply a significant fraction of your food
| - especially if you do canning or otherwise preserve for
| winter use.
|
| From the link in the parent post:
|
| _Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community
| plots was estimated to be 9,000,000-10,000,000 short tons
| (8,200,000-9,100,000 t) in 1944, an amount equal to all
| commercial production of fresh vegetables_
| rmah wrote:
| That's great and all. I think home gardens are great. But
| the topic is about food shortages in poor nations due to
| increases in grain prices. Home gardens does literally
| nothing to help anyone in poor nations who will be going
| hungry later this year.
| ben7799 wrote:
| You need to compare 1944 commercial yields vs 2022... the
| commercial/industrial farmers in 2022 have massive
| advantages that they didn't have in 1944.
| wyager wrote:
| > Depends whether you're gardening for a global food
| shortage, or to supplement your own use
|
| No, the effect on supply is the same.
|
| > A home garden can supply a significant fraction of your
| food
|
| It takes 5+ acres in a decently arable region with
| fertilizer to feed one person. By the time you're providing
| for a significant fraction of your caloric intake, it
| ceases to be a "garden".
|
| > an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh
| vegetables
|
| I guarantee this is some misleading bullshit statistic.
| They've probably selected "fresh vegetables" to mean some
| very small subset of industrial agriculture, like
| vegetables that are never canned or frozen.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _No, the effect on supply is the same._
|
| well, no, if you're growing for personal use you can make
| a notable effect on your own supply/food costs. You don't
| have to solve the global food shortage to benefit from a
| personal garden and since the global food shortage will
| drive up prices, the financial benefit is even greater
| (as long as price increases in things like fertilizer
| don't eat up your cost savings).
| wyager wrote:
| You seem to be thinking about this from a personal
| finance angle instead of an economy-wide production
| angle.
|
| It doesn't matter if a piece of corn is made in your
| garden or on a farm. The net effect on the corn supply is
| identical.
|
| It takes orders of magnitude more input to grow a piece
| of corn in a garden than on a farm. That had better be
| offset by the personal enjoyment of the gardener.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _You seem to be thinking about this from a personal
| finance angle instead of an economy-wide production
| angle._
|
| Yes, I tried to be clear:
|
| _Depends whether you 're gardening for a global food
| shortage, or to supplement your own use, which I suspect
| is why most people have home gardens._
|
| No one's backyard garden in the USA is going to help feed
| someone in Africa, but even if the global food shortage
| doesn't mean food shortages in the USA, it's going to
| drive up prices, and a backyard garden can help offset
| that household expense.
| wyager wrote:
| You took specific objection to my comment that victory
| gardens were to make people "feel like they were
| helping". I meant this to imply some kind of externalized
| effect beyond just saving money.
|
| It's also probably wrong that a home garden will net save
| you money unless you make like $3/hr. Again, unless
| you're extracting pleasure from gardening.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _You took specific objection to my comment that victory
| gardens were to make people "feel like they were
| helping". I meant this to imply some kind of externalized
| effect beyond just saving money._
|
| Yes, that's why I quoted it specifically and clarified
| that I was talking about a home garden.
|
| _It 's also probably wrong that a home garden will net
| save you money unless you make like $3/hr. Again, unless
| you're extracting pleasure from gardening. _
|
| The people that benefit the most financially from a home
| garden are already low paid - those are the people that
| aren't going to struggle to afford food as prices rise.
| My sister has been gardening for years, a couple years
| ago she kept a spreadsheet and added up her savings based
| on retail prices of produce and her "revenue" from her
| garden (which covers most of the back yard of her 1/2
| acre lot plus one apple tree) was over $2500 after
| deducting expenses (excluding labor).
|
| She estimated around 2 hours/day tending the garden for a
| 6 month growing season, so that's around 360 hours of
| work, or around $7/hour, which is better than she'd take
| home working a minimum wage job and in exchange they get
| all of the organic produce they can eat in the summer,
| plus a lot of frozen or canned food in the winter. And
| she ends up giving a lot of it away to friends/family.
|
| For a lot of people here, putting in 360 hours of work to
| earn "only" $2500 worth of food sounds like a terrible
| bargain, but for many people in this country, that's a
| great bargain.
| namdnay wrote:
| > It takes 5+ acres in a decently arable region with
| fertilizer to feed one person. By the time you're
| providing for a significant fraction of your caloric
| intake, it ceases to be a "garden".
|
| I'm sorry, but I just can't believe that. Is that fudged
| to account for livestock or waste or something? A single
| acre is what, 40*100m? That's huge, you could feed a
| whole family all year on potatoes, peanuts, greens,
| squash etc
| Kerrick wrote:
| Here's a good guide from 1917 -- after the Haber process
| was invented, but before its widespread use in the Green
| Revolution.
| https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/ORC00000242/PDF
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| >>> It takes 5+ acres in a decently arable region with
| fertilizer to feed one person. By the time you're
| providing for a significant fraction of your caloric
| intake, it ceases to be a "garden".
|
| This is incorrect, it takes around 1/2 an acre if it's
| vegetarian or 1.5 acres including chickens/ducks for meat
| and eggs. That's using a traditional organic farming. If
| you use Hydroponics (Plants grown in water with no soil)
| or Aeroponics (Hydroponics grown in towers) or Aquaponics
| (Hydroponics with aquaculture, where the fish provide
| both protein and the fertilizer for the plants) the yield
| is dramatically higher (5x-10x per sq ft) can be done
| year round and indoors. It's not a perfect solution, it
| takes knowledge to setup and run, a very small capital
| investment for startup, and a constant power source. That
| said it IS commercially viable, you can already today buy
| produce produced this way in almost any grocery store,
| and it's viable for home production. I personally have
| several systems running in my apartment ranging from off
| the shelf commercial systems (AeroGarden Back to the
| Roots...) to custom built aquaponics systems. On a pure
| dollar level it's more expensive per lb of food, no doubt
| but within reason I don't care about that. I grow better
| and fresher food and most importantly I control the
| supply chain.
|
| We can and should use these kind of technologies to
| replace as much of the modern agriculture system as we
| possibly can. No of the this mentions the MASSIVE
| environmental improvement that switching to these systems
| would make, which is reason enough to do it.
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| Commercial production of vegetables, particularly those not
| considered essential, was artificially low during the war,
| constrained by government control of allocation of things
| like materials for packaging and freight cars for
| transportation, and by no draft exemptions for male workers
| from the farm to the market.
| timst4 wrote:
| Here's another tip: Grow a Biointensive Garden
|
| -Use raised beds or Hugelkulture to increase yields. -Use sq
| foot gardening to plant more in less space -Develop a three
| stage compost pile. Import food waste from others in your
| neighborhood if needs be. -Grow year round with cold frames
| -Use cover crops to enrich soil over winter
|
| Thats how you garden to eat my friends
|
| https://www.amazon.com/How-Grow-More-Vegetables-Possible/dp/...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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 Sea blockade.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >1. Stop using so much corn to make ethanol.
|
| >2. Stop using so much seed oil to make biodiesel.
|
| Easier said than done when there's a global fuel shortage too!
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Depends on how much energy you put into producing those vs.
| what else you could have done.
| einpoklum wrote:
| So,
|
| 5. Stop using private vehicles so much in favor of public
| transport + bicycles.
|
| Et voila, no more fuel shortage.
|
| ... of course, this is even more easier-said-than-done for
| the US :-(
| paganel wrote:
| Re 4., that's doable if the West renounces some of its existing
| economic sanctions against Russia, the Russians themselves have
| said as much recently.
|
| It probably won't happen because the West doesn't like to see
| itself as being involved in the war (in a way similar to what
| Russia thinks about itself) and will try to resort to "Russia
| should unlock the blockade purely on humanitarian grounds!",
| which, of course, is the type of declaration which has no
| effect during a direct economic war (like the one the West and
| Russia are now waging against each other, on top of the
| military proxy war).
| namdnay wrote:
| What is "the west" exactly? Japan? New Zealand? Finland?
| Tunisia? A better term would be liberal democracies, but that
| wouldn't have quite the same "both sides are the same" ring
| to it, would it?
|
| Russia isn't waging an economic war against anyone. A
| dictator tried to invade his democratic neighbour, he failed,
| and now the other democraties are cutting him out of their
| club
| paganel wrote:
| 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 world with multi-polar
| values, so to speak. I think the same holds for Xi, in
| China.
| filoleg wrote:
| > _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 someone who grew
| up in one of those "corrupt authoritarian semi-
| dictatorships" and eventually immigrated to a "liberal
| democracy".
| corrral wrote:
| "Two cheers for democracy", as usual, to borrow Forster's
| words.
|
| As he noted, it doesn't merit three cheers. Two, though?
| Maybe two.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| 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?
| xdennis wrote:
| > Again, Putin has said as much, he's the one fighting
| for a multi-polar world with multi-polar values, so to
| speak. I think the same holds for Xi, in China.
|
| Great pole there! /s The West may have it's problems, but
| Putin is trying to resurrect the same pole that was led
| at one point or another by Hitler, Stalin, Mao. The world
| doesn't need that again.
| mistermann wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Agree, I would state it as "liberal" "democracies" - this
| is an opinion of course, but I think if one was to fairly
| but critically perform an in-depth evaluation, things are
| not as lovely as they are described to the masses.
| namdnay wrote:
| > Mostly the US, with some UK mixed in.
|
| That's the opposition to Russia? Hardly, Ukraine's
| neighbours are doing far more than anyone in London or
| Washington.
|
| > They are definitely not the same, they have obviously
| different values
|
| Yes one of them is democracy, the other is dictatorships.
| One is good, the other is bad. Refreshingly, some things
| in life are simple.
|
| > he's the one fighting for a multi-polar world with
| multi-polar values
|
| if he wanted a multi-polar world he'd have let ukraine be
| a pole. no, he wants a russian world, with himself at the
| top of it
| paganel wrote:
| Again, the Russians have said as much what they want.
| What they understand by "multi-polar world" is the US
| (and its allies), Russia, China, maybe India, maybe some
| other regional thingie, like South America/Mercosur maybe
| (I think by this point they're already branding the EU
| under "US and its allies", that wasn't always the case,
| especially around 2003-2005 when Germany and France were
| against the US intervention in Iraq).
|
| Yes, they would want Ukraine under their sphere of
| influence, that one has been also made pretty clear by
| them ever since the USSR was broken up.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _The Economist_ is cagey about the definition, but by
| context it works out to "America and its allies" (where
| "America" is "The United States of America".
|
| See e.g., "How the West should respond to China's search
| for foreign outposts"
| (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/05/07/how-the-west-
| sh...), which uses the phrase "America and its allies"
| three times.
|
| The US, NATO, NORAD, ANZUS, SEATO, and specific alliances
| such as the US-Japan alliance, Mutual Defense Treaty
| between the United States and the Republic of Korea, and
| the like, would likely be included. In the context of
| Ukraine and this article, probably the Common Security and
| Defence Policy (CDSP) of the EU as well.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| I agree Putin is some kind of dictator, but are you really
| calling Ukraine democracy? Then you can also call North
| Korea democracy.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| >are you really calling Ukraine democracy
|
| Isn't it strange how Russian money kept trying to prevent
| it from becoming so and yet, it kept becoming one?
| jandrese wrote:
| There is some speculation that the liberal democratic
| rumblings from Zelenski are what forced Putin to act. I
| have no illusions that a country with deeply rooted
| corruption issues like Ukraine can turn on a dime, but he
| was at least voicing support for the idea. If he managed
| to root out some of the corruption then Putin would lose
| the ability to puppet the state entirely, and that's a
| slippery slope to becoming part of Europe and being lost
| to Russia forever.
| mmarq wrote:
| The Russian government has demonstrated beyond any reasonable
| doubt that it is not a good faith interlocutor. Nobody should
| take anything they say seriously.
| HappyDreamer wrote:
| > Nobody should take anything they say seriously
|
| It's almost amazing that the newspapers reprint what Putin
| says, as if it was something to take seriously. Without
| explaining to the readers that Putin is trying to
| manipulate them. -- They're sometimes letting themselves be
| a megaphone he can use, I think.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It took years for the media to reach that point with a
| recent would-be tyrant.
|
| Though Putin's been headed that way for far longer.
| xdennis wrote:
| > It probably won't happen because the West doesn't like to
| see itself as being involved in the war (in a way similar to
| what Russia thinks about itself)
|
| Ridiculous equivalency. Your boogeyman "the West" didn't
| attack Russia and doesn't have troops in Russia.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Another option for #4 is supplying enough long range anti-
| ship rockets to sink whole russian fleet in black sea. They
| can't bring in more ships, because turkey is blocking the
| entrance.
| paganel wrote:
| And then you have Russian aviation attacking and sinking
| Ukrainian merchant ships, plus a couple of submarines.
| nradov wrote:
| Ukraine doesn't have much of a merchant fleet. Most of
| their exports travel on foreign bottoms. And foreign ship
| owners are unwilling to risk entering an active conflict
| zone, especially because they can't obtain affordable
| insurance.
| [deleted]
| postalrat wrote:
| 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.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| This doesn't really make any sense though. It changes
| nothing about the geopolitical reality of what's going
| on.
|
| If the US sends a merchant ship and a cruiser, what is
| russia going to do exactly? Try to bomb the ships? They
| will lose, and get shot down.
|
| Why would it suddenly be WWIII? Is russia really going to
| say "Well, they shot down our plane so its global
| thermonuclear war time".
| giantg2 wrote:
| "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...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| They threaten everyone and change their mind all the
| time. It's mostly irrelevant to what they actually do.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The question was would they really "say" it.
| nradov wrote:
| Russia might respond with conventional cruise missile
| strikes against US forces in the region.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Shrug. We're shipping $40B of shit to ukraine. It really
| doesn't matter.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > Why would it suddenly be WWIII? Is russia really going
| to say "Well, they shot down our plane so its global
| thermonuclear war time".
|
| Because Vladimir Putin is currently very very defective.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| More like incompetent
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| 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.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| That's not much different than supplying other kinds of
| weapons (and anti-ship missiles are on the list anyway,
| if not from US then from UK).
|
| Also everybody is mostly over nuclear threat I think.
| When a nuclear country keeps annexing land and threatens
| you with nukes if you object, you have two options --
| keep giving up or call the bluff (or assassinate the
| leadership I guess).
| chrsig wrote:
| I really wish the last few years didn't make me
| desensitized to the notion.
| jakewins wrote:
| Hypothetically, if the west actually wanted to give up
| sanctions in return for clearing the blockade.. why, in what
| universe, could they possibly expect Russia to stand by its
| word?
|
| Russia said for six months they were simply conducting
| exercises and had no intention of invading whatsoever. Why
| should anyone believe they would clear the blockade if
| sanctions lift?
| paganel wrote:
| If they don't stand by their word then they can re-impose
| the sanctions, it's as simple as that.
|
| > Why should anyone believe they would clear the blockade
| if sanctions lift
|
| Because at some point the West will have to sit at the
| negotiating table with Russia.
| yakak wrote:
| > Because at some point the West will have to sit at the
| negotiating table with Russia.
|
| I hope not. I've really taken to the idea that China
| should manage their connections to the West and hopefully
| take a lot off the top until Putin is dead.
|
| China not being a democracy doesn't seem to be a problem
| when it comes to institutional stabilities for managing
| NK. The US has done a lot worse with some of its dictator
| client states.
|
| Sure if the Russians want to have another revolution and
| run new elections or something that's great but trying to
| get Russia to do something is like pushing against a
| horse. Lets let China push Russia and see what happens.
| Krasnol wrote:
| There is no "negotiating table with Russia".
|
| There is a "negotiating table with Putin" but it's far
| from sure if they'll really have to sit on that table or
| how long that table will even exist.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Because at some point the West will have to sit at the
| negotiating table with Russia.
|
| The whole point is that you can't negotiate with Russia.
| Ukraine gave away it's nukes by negotiations and Russia
| isn't keeping its end of the bargain. Russia has to be
| defeated like the Japanese did or collapse like it tends
| to do from time to time.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Russia has to be defeated like the Japanese did or
| collapse like it tends to do from time to time_
|
| This is a dangerous line of play. Subverting Moscow to
| Beijing seems more realistic and prudent. For all their
| craziness, North Korea is merely menacing. Not
| belligerent.
| lovich wrote:
| > Because at some point the West will have to sit at the
| negotiating table with Russia.
|
| Do they? What does Russia have that will force them to
| the negotiating table? The damage to this years harvest
| is already done and the supply chains will likely have
| figured themselves out by next year
| waiseristy wrote:
| > If they don't stand by their word then they can re-
| impose the sanctions, it's as simple as that.
|
| That does not work with the current Russian regime. The
| only thing removing sanctions will do is allow them time
| to come up with solutions to mitigate future sanctions.
| They are not good-faith actors, and only use good-faith
| solutions to improve their leverage in future deals
|
| For everyone who wants to downvote, go and look how well
| the sanctions after the 2014 invasion worked. The primary
| reason why the invasion of 2022 went forward was due to
| their confidence that they could mitigate the same style
| of sanctions that went into effect then
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| 3. If you can figure out how to eat grass, you'll be rich.
| dhc02 wrote:
| 1. Feed it to a grazing animal. 2. Eat that animal, or use
| its milk to make food.
| kazinator wrote:
| 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. :)
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| 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.
| bequanna wrote:
| 1. and 3. are the same thing: Corn.
|
| The trouble is that it is pretty damn tough to pivot from
| corn to some crop meant for direct human consumption. The
| machinery and infrastructure we have in place to grow,
| transport, and process corn is almost unimaginable in size.
|
| A pivot like this would require incredible gov't subsidies
| and take decades.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Yes, but feeding cows corn is silly. They can't digest it
| and you end up with bland greasy inedible meat, and corn is
| quite hard to grow.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I like polenta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polenta
| (yellow corn hot porridge).
|
| Also, my family is from the north of Argentina, so during
| the holidays there during one or two weeks fresh corn was
| very cheap. So we ate sweet humita and spicy humita
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humita, sweet corn pie and
| spicy corn pie, also whole fresh corns, and other stuff. We
| joked that we ate some dish with corn for lunch and some
| dish with corn for dinner for a week.
|
| Tamale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamale , Corn Tortilla
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_tortilla . I guess
| someone from Mexico can add more recipes. (I think they
| prefer white corn and we prefer yellow corn.)
| tmaly wrote:
| I am surprised there are not more calls to end the corn to
| ethanol subsidies given the cost of food.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _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.
| ketzo wrote:
| 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.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 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.
| devit wrote:
| 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).
| corrral wrote:
| It'd take _a lot_ of trucks and train cars to move one ship
| 's worth of grain. Consider that highways, train lines, and
| ports don't necessarily have a ton of extra capacity
| available, for reasons of economy, that upgrading those takes
| time, and can be hard to finance if the situation is
| perceived to be temporary (so, may take significant
| government intervention to make it happen).
|
| Plus, you go to all the effort and expense of doing that,
| then Russia hits a few important bridges on the Ukraine side
| of your routes, and now you're back to nearly-zero capacity.
| trhway wrote:
| 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.
|
| Russia has already stolen about 500 000 tons of wheat from
| Ukraine and delivered it to Assad, its ally in Syria.
| Russia runs very intensive propaganda campaign representing
| European help to Ukraine wrt. wheat export as basically
| Europe stealing the wheat. Its propaganda also celebrates
| the food prices rising in the "collective West" countries
| as supposed result of the sanctions, and Russia will do
| anything to stimulate the rise of the prices in order to
| foment public push against the sanctions.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| > 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
| thghtihadanacct wrote:
| 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).
| trhway wrote:
| >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.
| greenglass wrote:
| 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.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" 1. Stop using so much corn to make ethanol."_
|
| Unfortunately the US is moving aggressively in the opposite
| direction, to ameliorate the political reaction to fuel prices.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-epa-issues-waiver-allow-...
|
| (It's almost the exact inverse of that ancient proverb:
| societies collapse when elderly men chop down trees for short-
| term convenience).
| lordnacho wrote:
| Sounds like there's a big potential for upheavals similar to the
| Arab Spring. A fair number of countries subsidize food for their
| citizens, and if they can't get their hands on any, there's going
| to be issues.
|
| I wonder which countries are most at risk? I read somewhere that
| the Arab countries get a lot of Ukrainian wheat.
| elEpHantiaSis wrote:
| https://www.iceagefarmer.com
| mullingitover wrote:
| This guy has a vested interest in convincing people we're in
| for a rough year or two.
| christkv wrote:
| Any country not self sufficient and with no capital to outbid
| the other starving nations.
| lawn wrote:
| Africa and the middle east.
| simonh wrote:
| 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 oil where we can (except for deep
| frying, it stinks). I'd recommend eating less meat even if that
| means eating more grain products, it's a more efficient use of
| the resource. For the well off we can weather this just fine,
| but we can still help by reducing our use of the scarcest
| resources.
| jtbayly wrote:
| It's not really as much about freeing up the supplies as much
| as it is about whether or not the supply chain can _ship_
| that food from someplace else. From what I 've read, we don't
| have nearly as much of a food problem as we do a food
| _shipping_ problem.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Rapeseed soil is much worse for you.
| leni536 wrote:
| > Here in the UK restrictions on labeling sunflower oil now
| mean it's acceptable to adulterate it with other oils.
|
| Do you have a source for this claim? I'm interested since I'm
| using sunflower oil here in the UK.
|
| Tesco labels its sunflower oil as "pure sunflower oil", it
| also has an ingredient list of "sunflower oil" [1].
|
| Asda only labels it "sunflower oil", it doesn't have an
| ingredient list (at least on the website), but it states that
| the "regulated product name" is "sunflower oil" [2]
|
| From the two the Asda one looks more suspicious, but I don't
| know what the regulation is. My suspicion is that regulation
| is for the label "sunflower oil", and Tesco goes out of its
| way to clarify that it doesn't contain other oils, or
| otherwise why risk putting "pure" there?
|
| [1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/271168790
|
| [2] https://groceries.asda.com/product/cooking-oil/asda-
| sunflowe...
| namdnay wrote:
| 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).
| messe wrote:
| 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.
| shagie wrote:
| Its not (only) a low shipping cost but also includes a
| "government keeps food prices low".
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-02/war-
| choki...
|
| > A subsidized flatbread loaf in Egypt sells for the
| equivalent of about 1 U.S. cent. The country allocates five
| loaves a day to people in the program and uses the public
| treasury to compensate bakers for their losses.
|
| > An attempt in the late 1970s by then-President Anwar Sadat
| to end subsidies on basic foodstuffs triggered riots that
| left more than 80 people dead, so the government since has
| resorted to workarounds such as shrinking the size of loaves.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/egypt-eyes-
| bread-s...
|
| > CAIRO, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Egypt is considering replacing a
| popular bread subsidy with cash payments for the poor to
| protect the budget from soaring global wheat prices, but
| domestic inflation and a history of protests could make the
| government opt for a less ambitious reform.
|
| > Under the existing program, more than 60 million Egyptians,
| or nearly two thirds of the population, get 5 loaves of round
| bread daily for 50 cents a month, little changed since
| countrywide "bread riots" prevented a price hike in the
| 1970s.
| SemanticStrengh wrote:
| crops rate can be doubled by using the antioxidant skq1. It's
| time for humanity to sync with science.
| frank_bb wrote:
| ProAm wrote:
| Isn't this one of the reasons why farm subsidies exist in the US?
| Paying farmers not to farm so in time of need or emergency we can
| produce more? (In addition to not over farming soil and depleting
| it permanently, keeping the price of food in a range to support
| farmers livelyhood)
| wollsmoth wrote:
| yeah, we could possibly engage some of that latent capacity.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Not a bad article but this is just a short term problem in a
| world with potentially much bigger long term food issues. Mega
| factory farming of monoculture crops covered without rotation or
| though for the health of the soil and environment and the insects
| and birds that support it all is going to really screw us long
| term.
| cabirum wrote:
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| Or maybe dictator-Putin shouldn't have started a savage attack
| on a sovereign nation?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Now, Europe tries to buy out all grain stock that's left
|
| No. Europe is pretty much self-sufficient for vital crops. The
| problem is China [1] and the fact that Africa doesn't have much
| of its own once famous agricultural power left after decades of
| European and American "donations" - hard to compete against
| donated products...
|
| [1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Datawatch/China-hoards-
| ove...
| morsch wrote:
| The EU is mostly self sufficient in terms of grains. In most
| years, there's a trade surplus, in some years a small deficit.
|
| https://circabc.europa.eu/sd/a/a1135630-e8e9-4531-a522-23670...
| 2021/2022 despite the file name
| [deleted]
| wavesounds wrote:
| We should stop growing corn for ethanol since it's worse for the
| climate than gasoline[1] and instead use all that land and
| machinery to grow wheat instead.
|
| 1. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-corn-
| based-e...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Corn produces 4-6 times the calories per acre as wheat, not to
| mention farmers and distribution networks would have to spend a
| whole lot to switch.
|
| Many people are suggesting eating less meat to help potential
| food shortages, switching corn to wheat actually loses about as
| much food as feeding corn to cattle. (i.e. a cornfield switched
| to wheat and a cornfield fed to cattle would result in a
| similar number of calories)
|
| We indeed should stop producing ethanol, but plenty of hungry
| people around the world could be just as happy eating corn as
| wheat.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I think it's more like we grow wheat where corn won't grow
| well.
|
| Saskatchewan isn't going to support a big corn crop, but
| wheat, pulses and oats do very well.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Won't happen unless the fear of food shortage becomes an actual
| food shortage.
|
| Ethanol subsidies let farmers already invested in corn grow
| more corn than they might otherwise sell for food, and
| politicians get to say they're doing something for renewable
| energy.
|
| As with so many other things in politics, the good of society
| isn't the driving factor. Money and talking points are king.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Given the outsized impact the Iowa Caucuses have in
| presidential primaries, being pro-corn and ethanol is a
| necessity for any viable candidate.
| sosull wrote:
| Aren't the Iowa Caucus' days numbered? They've been a
| complete disaster the last few cycles - it seems to take
| days/weeks to determine a winner. Their last competently-
| run caucus was in 2008.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| How fungible are wheat and corn crops?
| jeremyjh wrote:
| This is like asking how fungible are calories. People with
| the means to mill and cook with wheat flour can probably
| manage with corn too if the alternative is starvation.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't mean on the consumption side. I mean on the
| production side. Do they grow in the same soil? Do they
| take the same nutrients? Do they have the same water /
| sunlight / temperature band tolerances?
|
| Looks like that rotation is pretty common but there are
| some details to concern oneself with.
|
| https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/considerations-
| whe...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Much of it boils down to water and/or irrigation. Maize
| (corn) likes wetter, wheat can stand dryer. In the US the
| corn belt starts in Ohio and includes eastern Nebraska,
| wheat is grown largely on the far western plains.
|
| Wheat is also a viable winter crop --- fall planting /
| spring harvest for "winter wheat". That typically means 2
| crops a year (winter + summer), and possibly more.
|
| Rice is the third staple crop, though it wants a _lot_ of
| water, and tends to be grown in subtropical climates as
| with China and India.
|
| Other substitutes include barley, oats, millet, etc.,
| though those are far less prevelant than wheat & maize.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Corn is a whole lot more productive, if you can grow it,
| you do. Wheat grows in places you can't grow corn.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I had read somewhere that the varieties of corn grown for
| ethanol are not the same as the varieties grown for food
| but can't find the article now.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There are special varieties of corn you can grow for
| ethanol, but you don't have to, the ethanol plants do not
| require it.
|
| There _are_ required varieties and practices for growing
| corn intended for direct human consumption (i.e. making
| cornmeal or breakfast cereal).
|
| Most corn though goes to animal feed, industrial uses
| (corn starch, syrup, etc), or export.
|
| (source: am a 5th generation corn farmer)
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| Hi! Just wanted to ask, are the cultivars or varieties
| for corn for human food, ethanol and corn for cattle feed
| different?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Each seed company provides a large number of options,
| some of them for specific uses, some of them not so much.
|
| The main differences are days to maturity, resistances to
| a variety of things, and nutrition content.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| Haven't ethanol fuels been introduced to have a buffer for this
| situation? If we don't turn grain and corn into petrol then there
| should be some reserves.
|
| Additionally, if we stop rising live-stock, where roughly 10
| units of plant create one unit of meat, there should be even more
| calories available.
| elzbardico wrote:
| If you are not able to digest cellulose, it doesn't matter if
| it takes 100, 1000 units of plant calories to create one of
| meat. This criticism against meat only works for grain-fed
| beef, for grass-fed animals it makes no sense at all.
| throwaway821909 wrote:
| I suppose it gets more complicated though because in at least
| some cases, we could plant human-edible food where the grass
| is and still come out ahead (after taking into account that
| it's harder to grow pretty much anything than grass)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Iunno, I really don't do anything to the apple tree other
| than trim branches (which I sell or give away to bbqers
| depending on my mood). Every couple years it yields a huge
| crop (and some years gets completely defoliated by disease,
| but I'm lazy and just let nature take its course).
|
| People love non-commercial applewood.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| 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.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 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.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| Yes, but rich westerners will keep paying higher prices for
| gasoline while people in poor places get outbid for basic
| survival ration.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Corn for ethanol production isn't preferred for eating.
| cardamomo wrote:
| Indeed, there is probably no existing supply chain for
| whatever is necessary to make this corn fit for human
| consumption
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The idea would be to reapportion the acreage, not the crop
| itself.
|
| Doing that mid-season is of course something of a challenge.
| wyager wrote:
| > 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 grass, or inedible soy meal, or other
| inputs to cattle production).
| roflyear wrote:
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Much of the land cattle are raised on is not suitable for
| growing crops.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| We're not talking about land that cattle graze on, we're
| talking about land that is used to grow grains that are
| then fed to cattle.
| wyager wrote:
| 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 plants, whereas cattle
| grazing (for example) does not require significant
| additional petrochemical input.
|
| A classic tale of how animals unfairly take the heat for
| plants: we often hear about how the amazon is being cut
| down "for cattle". If you actually look into it, what's
| happening is that farmers are cutting down the amazon to
| grow soy for around 3 years, until the soil is totally
| depleted, at which point they will put some cattle on the
| land because the cattle can extract value from land
| destroyed by soy and helps the farmers maintain land
| claims.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Where do other beans/pulses fit in vs meat?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| 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/
| wyager wrote:
| Black beans, for example, have a PER of 0 (unrealistically
| low) and a PDCAAS of 0.75 (unrealistically high, vs 1 for
| egg). A realistic comparison can't be reduced to a single
| scalar, but for my own personal dietary requirements, I
| would probably want to eat 5-10x as many grams of nominal
| protein from black beans as from beef. This would be very
| challenging.
|
| I think some other beans like kidney beans fare somewhat
| better, although I don't recall numbers. Still not close to
| mammal meat.
| otikik wrote:
| > 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 grass.
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| Might also be worth examining the amount of crop grown, then
| subsequently burned in the U.S. Somewhere between 25% to 40% of
| corn in the U.S., up to 20% of agriculture land is devoted to
| ethanol production. If food production is a growing concern, it
| seems strange that so much agricultural production is spent on
| non-food producing activities.
| namdnay wrote:
| Why "also"? Ethanol production is the number one cause
| identified in the article..
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I think it's something like 75% of soy and corn go to ethanol
| and animal feed (which loses most of the nutrients in the
| process just to inefficiently concentrate some bits).
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Considering that the US alone could feed another 800M people
| with just the grains that go to feed cattle - the idea that
| we're going to run out of food any time soon is strange.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Great opportunity for local businesses.
| alecco wrote:
| This article is partisan garbage, as usual lately for The
| Economist. Sure, the war had an impact but most of the problems
| were months BEFORE the war.
|
| Search for "AgInflation" articles from 2021. I know farmers who
| skipped this season due to razor thin profits, suppressed prices
| by governments and major supermarkets, and risk of water
| controls. Would you put $50k of your money for a 10% return with
| a very, very high risk of failure?
|
| The farmers that did plant, say wheat, are not benefiting from
| the price surge because to minimize risk they sold their harvest
| in advance or sold futures. SPECULATORS that are making a
| killing. Usually hedge funds like Citadel, ETFs by BlackRock, and
| others.
|
| And in several countries farmers are being blamed for higher
| prices. Governments should've given the sector a bit of help and
| control risks. Help with water management. Help with shrinking
| labor base and increasing costs. But nothing is being done.
|
| There is a perverse system right now and action needs to be taken
| to heal the sector. But I bet they'll just keep blaming farmers
| and impose price controls or suppression of some kind. Fixing
| farming would take years and populist politicians want magic
| immediate results and shift-blame. So buckle up.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I am not sure _how_ to do it, but some futures-plus arrangement
| might improve incentives - say sell your crop as a future, but
| with a (gov supported) price cap - so if the price goes through
| the roof the farmer gets a share of the overage.
|
| Not sure how much difference it will make but agriculture is
| kind of important
| daenz wrote:
| The sky is falling and we're all going to die! Get to
| the end of the story Subscribe today for just $19.90
| $10/first month. Cancel at any time
| [deleted]
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Don't forget:
|
| "We're all going to die" is the default state of reality. What
| matters is "when" and "how".
| daenz wrote:
| And "how much money can I make off of telling others about
| it"
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| In the past decade I've also noticed the word 'crisis' being
| used a lot more in less inappropriate ways. I just found, in
| today's DDG news stories, headlines about a US border crisis, a
| baby formula crisis, Sri Lanka having a fuel crisis, the
| Israeli govt. in crisis, a covid crisis in N. Korea, a mental
| health crisis in Alabama, a gun violence crisis, a cost of
| living crisis.... and _many_ more.
|
| Methinks journalists need to buy a thesaurus.
| colechristensen wrote:
| And they're really using the word "crisis" wrong. It's
| supposed to mean something like a fork in the road, a
| situation that forces change. Not just "shit is bad right
| now".
| daenz wrote:
| They'll use whatever words increase their revenue in the A/B
| tests unfortunately.
| blowski wrote:
| Is there any topic on which we're not currently facing a
| catastrophe? In the last few months I've been warned about
| impending doom for insects, food, nuclear weapons treaties,
| democracy, the economy, the internet, space, the environment,
| the arctic circle, abortion rights.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Most all of them. As people have gotten safer they have
| gotten progressively more afraid of the remaining danger.
|
| Doom sells, don't buy it.
|
| Economic cycles, political unrest, diseases, on and on and
| on, these things always have existed and constantly will ebb
| and flow, while people will pretend what's happening now is
| the worst its ever been because grabbing your attention is
| profitable and gives people the sense that their life has
| meaning.
|
| We weren't living in an idyllic world _n_ years ago, we 're
| not living in one now, we won't be living in one in the
| future. The things that suck just kind of rotate from time to
| time. Things remain pretty ok.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Don't forget drought, flooding, gasoline, job bubbles, job
| collapse, censorship, housing, chip shortages, etc.
|
| Nothing can be just 'news'. Its all framed as a signal of
| collapse.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Not really, no. Panic sells so panic is what is being sold.
| This is not a new thing as a stroll through the archives (in
| any language I can read at least - Dutch, English, German,
| French, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish) will quickly show,
| especially weather scares have a long and rich history.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| There once was a boy keeping watch. He cried out "Wolf!
| wolf!" And the villagers came, and saw the wolf was quite far
| away, and not a danger yet.
|
| The next night, the boy cried out "Wolf! Wolf!" And while the
| wolf was at the gate, it didn't seem to be hurting anybody.
| After all, the boy and his village were fine still, and there
| could be benefits to the wolf.
|
| The third night, the boy did not cry wolf. The villagers
| discovered him dead the next morning next to the village
| free-range wolf. A great meeting was held, and it was decided
| that since most people were safe and secure and able to live
| their lives normally, we must all adapt to the new normal and
| learn to live with the wolf.
| daenz wrote:
| Except that story doesn't exist. People felt the need to
| record the other story (the one you repurposed) instead,
| and for good reason.
| chaps wrote:
| The point stands equally true for those catastrophes as well.
| pupppet wrote:
| Article photo is pretty badass.
| SKILNER wrote:
| If you follow The Economist they consistently have very clever
| artists.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| The Economist is the only news publication I pay for, I do
| wish they were more economics focused (as opposed to
| politics, though of course the two are fundamentally
| intertwined).
|
| Any other publications (paid or free) I should be looking at?
| namdnay wrote:
| really? at least 50% of any given issue is concentrated on
| business/eocnomics. A few weeks back half the magazine was
| a deep dive into the expanding role of central banks
| systemvoltage wrote:
| https://www.spectator.co.uk/
|
| Also UK-based.
| xwdv wrote:
| At first I merely skimmed and didn't think much of it, then
| after reading your post I looked closer. The horror.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| I am refusing to agree that it is all "Putin's fault". The war is
| his decision and is not to understand from the normal Western
| position. However, it is the decision of the West to sanction
| Russia and to
|
| 1) accept increasing energy prices
|
| 2) accept a lower fertilizer production
|
| 3) break up supply chains even further
|
| 4) accept the refugee crisis, the costs of entering this war as a
| proxy combatant, sending tens of billions to not let the enemy
| win
|
| 5) ... and ultimately win and accept the even worse consequences:
| pouring billions into a corrupt Ukraine to rebuild it, deal with
| a terrible unbalanced post-war society (women who came to the
| West will stay, men will find no women in UA after the war; young
| people will stay in Europe, while UA population will be much
| older on average after the war) and finally a Russia crisis that
| could be something like the "crazy 90s 2.0" or a Russia that
| broke into many unstable post-Russian republics.
|
| I am saying this as a person with UKRANIAN ROOTS.
|
| The West has decided to fight for some "Western values" and now
| all people living here have to accept the costs and long-term
| consequences.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| No society is ideal, but it is better to help a flawed country
| than to let a war monger who is violating sovereignty norms act
| freely.
|
| Real life is not a series of choices between good and bad - it
| is a series of choices between bad and worse.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| We had the chance to open up and help substantially during
| the crazy 90s when the post-Soviet economies dropped GDPwise
| to the 1960s/1970s levels, average male life expectancy
| dropped by 10-12 years, life-savings were destroyed,
| criminals became ultra-rich and were welcomed in Zurich, New
| York and London with open arms. We did not.
|
| We had the chance to open the EU and NATO towards the Russian
| in the 00s, even when the Russian came crawling to the Berlin
| Bundestag and suggested to draw a path towards this direction
| and were rejected hardly.
|
| We had the chance for a compromise, e.g. through the Normandy
| format when ALL relevant parties agreed more or less except
| the Americans.
|
| This all does not make the invasion right, but it is not as
| one-sided as the propaganda is showing it here right now. And
| this is why agree with your statement that real life is not
| not as simple as "good" and "bad", it is all just bad - on
| all sides.
|
| And just another anecdote. As we are originally from Ukraine,
| I went down to the border with friends, money and cars and
| helped people at the border to make the right decisions. We
| mainly focussed on people withough language skills, old
| people and people with very very very little money. I had the
| chance to speak to hundreds of Ukranians crossing the border
| to the EU. 90% DO NOT CARE who "rules" them. They have their
| dreams, hopes, they have their apartments, their jobs, their
| pets, friends, homes... they just want this war to be over -
| even if Putin "wins".
|
| When watching Western news and reports I dont see those
| opinions represented in the same way I experienced them when
| talking to people. I see stories about values and democracy
| and other philosophical stuff - and when they show Ukranians
| then it is not those who I have met.
|
| Where is the opinion of the normal folks that I have met: the
| war should end asap, no matter who wins. Instead I feel
| spoon-fed that we HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE for $VALUES. And then
| you speak to people who have absolutly NO CLUE and NO
| RELATION to either Ukraine or even Russia and they are so
| opinionated and SOOOO SURE about the things that must be done
| and the price that has to be paid.
|
| I feel very frustrated and I stopped telling people about my
| experience at the border or here when volunteering and
| ACTUALLY speaking to the REAL people.
| dotopotoro wrote:
| > the war should end asap, no matter who wins
|
| One part of me agrees with this. War is the worst (as far
| as i know from books and tv).
|
| The other part of me thinks: That is how Germany expanded
| half a century ago, getting resources for ww2. (thug
| perceives the pacifist as a weakling and an easy
| opportunity to profit). Ukraine has a lot of natural
| resources, part of the reason for the war.
| [deleted]
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| It is clear that Putin needs to go. By any means necessary.
| perardi wrote:
| I am a Putin hater through and through...
|
| ...but be reallllll careful thinking through the consequences
| of "any means necessary", because a lot of those means end in a
| huge escalation of the conflict which further reduces access to
| minerals and food. (And, like, human lives.)
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| what then?
| megous wrote:
| http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-05.htm Article 81
| MaanuAir wrote:
| And? What's the rest of the plan?
|
| I hear people saying that, but this is very short term with no
| sustainable strategy.
|
| Just genuinely pointing out he could be replaced by worse
| options, and you need to plan against it as well.
|
| There is the guy, the system he built, the persons he chose to
| put in place, all incentivised to continue.
| megous wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this fear of change at the helm is something
| all dictators will happily project out ("look, without me
| there will be chaos or worse"). It's likely not true. It's
| really impossible to predict what will happen once Putin is
| gone.
|
| He'll die anyway sooner or later, and there will be a
| struggle for power regardless. Russia has a constitution, and
| article 81 describes how to get a new president via
| elections.
|
| Current paranoid leader is waging major war and isolating the
| country, so it's hard to say what could be worse for the
| world. Maybe mobilization in Russia, but that may be a tough
| call for any newcomer.
| dotopotoro wrote:
| You are right. Add to that, the constant and persistent info
| flow from russian media and incentives to "say the right
| things", which raised whole generation.
| [deleted]
| wmeredith wrote:
| "All we have to do is put a bell on the cat's neck."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_Cat
| xwdv wrote:
| If you have gluten intolerance there's nothing you should be
| worried about? Or are these grains necessary for growing meat?
| kn0where wrote:
| If there's a wheat shortage, people will be eating more rice
| than usual.
| Miner49er wrote:
| First off, the people that mainly will be affected are the poor
| in poor countries. Most in developed countries will probably be
| fine.
|
| That said, the rise in these grains will likely spill over to
| other foods, as people turn to substitutes for their calories.
| notacoward wrote:
| Don't forget substitution effects. As it turns out, grains are
| pretty fungible. (Yes, it's nice to be able to use that word in
| its normal context for once.) As wheat becomes too expensive,
| demand for others will increase and their prices will spike as
| well. So yes, gluten intolerant folks will be significantly
| affected as well.
| kpennell wrote:
| I think shortage of grain makes for a global food shortage,
| which causes tons of problems.
| Comevius wrote:
| What nobody understands is that this is not happening strictly
| because of the war or the drought, but because of the fragility
| of the global food system, which simply cannot bear any shocks.
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/2/02...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1712-3
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/19/banks-...
|
| We either fix this or we simply won't have a global food system.
| rjbwork wrote:
| I reiterate my comment from a few weeks ago as applicable to
| this new context.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31181311
|
| In this case, the slack is obvious. And it has once again been
| wrung from the supply chain in the name of efficiency (aka more
| profits), under the grand delusion that there will never be bad
| lean times.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| ... but the only fix is going to mean higher prices.
| Zenst wrote:
| Though that's not going to fix it, just burry those who are
| already on the edge financially.
| husainfazel wrote:
| What you're missing is that the global food system is under
| attack by bad actors.
|
| 1. The US Treasury drew up the list of economic sanctions
| against Russia and Belarus. Then they pressured the compliant
| EU to follow. The sanctions no surprises had a predictable
| impact on global grain/fertilizer and energy supply prices. The
| US basically sanctioned themselves and the global economy.
|
| 2. Meanwhile China was hit by terrible flooding last year and
| faces record low yields for crops so they are now desperately
| converting baseball courts and roads because their farmers
| can't get seeds and fertilizers. Do you know why? Because
| they're stuck on cargo ships sitting off the coast of Shanghai
| which has been locked down under the bizarre "Zero Covid"
| quarantine. This is conveniently being done during planting
| season when they're already facing a huge shortfall. End result
| - they are importing more and increasing the global grain/food
| price further.
|
| 3. Whilst China gets hit by flooding, the reverse weather
| pattern (La Nina) is causing droughts in places like Argentina
| and Paraguay which produces the majority of the food in South
| America. So thanks again to our sanctions against Belarus and
| Russia, we can't get fertilizer to those countries. Similarly
| 35 African countries get food from Russia/Ukraine and 22 of
| them get fertilizer from there so the end result is famine in S
| America and Africa.
|
| 4. In Europe, the EU's "Green Agenda" deal means the Italian
| government can't provide more state aid to the farmers. In
| Germany, they want to phase out agriculture because of
| greenhouse gas emissions so they've stopped farmers who want to
| grow more food. At the same time, the sanctions are making
| covid-induced food shortages dramatically worse.
|
| So you have well timed global food disasters which are
| amplified by our sanctions whilst back home:
|
| a) "On Friday, April 8, 2022, Union Pacific informed CF
| Industries without advance notice that it was mandating certain
| shippers to reduce the volume of private cars on its railroad
| effective immediately. The timing of this action by Union
| Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers. Not only
| will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but
| additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications
| may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this
| arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union
| Pacific is jeopardizing farmers' harvests and increasing the
| cost of food for consumers."
|
| Not only are they preventing urea and UAN from getting to
| farmers during the crucial planting season but they're also
| stopping DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid). DEF is used to control
| emissions in diesel trucks, without it engines can't run. So
| they're ensuring a complete shutdown of the supply chains
| across the United States at the same time.
|
| b) "EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-based biodiesel and
| ethanol fuel mix for the summer"
|
| Before Covid even began, we had the "Renewable Fuel Standards
| Act" which mandates annually RISING targets for the production
| of corn for ethanol fuel blends. This add major price inflation
| for food. Now the EPA is mandating another increase in corn
| ethanol for fuel at the same time as when we have astronomical
| fertilizer prices due to sanctions we imposed AND we're
| blocking domestic fertilizers being shipped by rail... that's
| going to send corn prices through the roof and the government
| knows this very well.
|
| and I'm not even going to touch on all the poultry that USDA
| are ordering to be destroyed because of "Bird Flu".
|
| As I said in my other comment, it's not by accident or pure
| back luck - it's by design.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Any article with the term "Global Production Ecosystem (GPE)",
| financialization, sustainability, biotic homogenziation (!) and
| translational corporations should not qualify to be published
| in nature. They mean so many things that they don't mean
| anything (tm).
|
| This article has _all_ of them. This is topical doom-mongering,
| which always works for clicks, but speaks nothing to substance.
| beardedetim wrote:
| I think it is but it's worth asking ourselves: is a global fold
| system worth the trouble we have to go through?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I wouldn't argue against the research but to me, the "global
| food system" is much more robust than I imagined.
|
| We stayed in our homes for months en mass without prep time and
| prior warning and the food availability barely changed. We are
| creatures that need to eat multiple times a day and yet we can
| stay in our homes for months and get fed just as well.
| Therefore I'm not very worried about the management of the food
| production and distribution, we are extremely good at it.
|
| Thanks to the global nature of it, things move quickly and even
| though a problem in one location can be felt everywhere we
| don't end up with millions of deaths in that location. I'm
| really not onboard with "localize everything" motto because
| everything being local means catastrophic consequences at local
| issues.
|
| What scares me is something biological or ecological happening
| at global scale. Something that takes at least 6 months to fix
| for example.
| Comevius wrote:
| We are extremely good at it is your take when 900 million
| people don't get to eat even in times of abundance?
|
| If our food system can't take a little bit of war and drought
| imagine how will it fare when production starts falling.
| Climate change is happening at global scale, and we must be
| able to coordinate and innovate on a similar scale to be able
| to handle it.
|
| Instead we have a spontaneously formed a shitty system. Most
| people are ignorant of this. Some pretends that isolation is
| the solution, let's Brexit it, some are blaming ethanol
| apparently. There is no shortage of bad takes on this, but
| the fact remains that we suck at this.
| rmah wrote:
| The people who go hungry are the ones who are NOT well
| connected to the global supply chain.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The system is unfortunately exclusionary of some parts of
| the world due to extreme conditions at those places - which
| are much worse than a single war. It's more like decades of
| never ending wars and extreme droughts. Africa's problem
| isn't that they don't know how to code and as a result make
| less money and can't afford food, the troubles there are
| much much bigger and as a result they are outside of the
| supply chain we have.
|
| And yes, by global event that scares me is exactly the
| climate change.
| namdnay wrote:
| > What nobody understands is that this is not happening
| strictly because of the war or the drought, but because of the
| fragility of the global food system, which simply cannot bear
| any shocks.
|
| Your logic seems strange: "he didn't die because of a car
| crash, he died because his car didn't resist being smashed into
| a tree"
|
| Sure, any system could be made more or less fragile, and you
| could argue that making it less fragile would have lessened the
| impact, but you can't say that "this is not happening because
| of the war" - of course it is
| bell-cot wrote:
| _Literally_ , untrue - LOTS of people understand. But like the
| people who understood that launching a space shuttle when the
| ambient temperatures were running far, far below the absolute
| minimum spec. for the SRB's...
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| This is Soylent's time to shine.
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| One of Soylent's primary ingredients is sunflower oil, for
| which the world's largest producer is (drumroll please)
| Ukraine.
|
| Guess who's #2, and under major international sanctioning?
| Between them, they're about 50% of worldwide production.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I assumed parent was referring to the Green variety. The
| primary ingredient is... abundant.
| [deleted]
| PebblesRox wrote:
| I have never been able to understand how Soylent has taken
| off given the name. And I haven't even watched the movie!
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| You should probably avoid seed oils anyway.
| DANK_YACHT wrote:
| Why? I've heard olive oil is pretty good.
| samatman wrote:
| Olive oil comes from the fruit of the olive.
| TillE wrote:
| This aversion to "seed oils" (a totally made-up, arbitrary
| category) is one of the weirdest health fads I've seen in
| recent years, and that's saying something.
| Fargoan wrote:
| We can probably up production here in North Dakota
| windowsrookie wrote:
| I'm looking at my bag of Soylent right now and sunflower oil
| is not a listed ingredient. Canola oil is the second
| ingredient. This is the powder.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| From doom-scrolling the Ukraine/Russia war it is pretty obvious
| that Ukrainian farmers have not been idle. Battles are being
| fought in the treelines and along rivers next to plowed and
| planted fields. Hopefully some of these crops are harvested and
| make it to market.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Hopefully some of these crops are harvested and make it to
| market.
|
| There are unfortunately a lot of problems here which make me
| seriously pessimistic:
|
| - Ukraine will need a lot of the harvest for itself, given how
| Russians raided crop silos [1] and what they can't raid they
| bomb to pieces [2]
|
| - No one knows if Russian operatives didn't poison crop silos -
| there are a number of poisons that are very stable in the
| environment and very hard to detect if you don't know what you
| are looking for, and Russians have proven over and over that
| they have an awful lot of skill in dealing with poisons
|
| - Russians looted a lot of agricultural machinery, and a lot
| more got destroyed or seriously damaged - and the Ukrainians
| repurposed a lot of stuff either to tow off Russian tanks or to
| convert into technicals
|
| - fertilizer is made of natural gas which is in short supply,
| which in turn will massively impact yields
|
| - similar to the post-war situation in Yugoslavia, fields will
| need to be de-mined extensively, and they need to be cleansed
| off of shrapnel and fuel
|
| - even _if_ there are quantities to export, you need a way to
| transport them. The railroad track width is different in
| Ukraine (Russian wide-gauge) and Europe (standard), there aren
| 't many re-trackable cargo wagons, a lot of rail equipment and
| bridges got blasted by Russians or by Ukrainians for sabotage.
| God knows in what state the sea ports are, there has been heavy
| fighting, not to mention the sea mines that are already causing
| chaos [3]
|
| All in all it will be years if not decades until Ukraine can be
| a serious player on the crop market again.
|
| [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/05/europe/russia-ukraine-
| gra...
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/exclusive-photos-show-
| russian-...
|
| [3] https://www.dw.com/en/experts-warn-black-sea-mines-pose-
| seri...
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| it would be a crime against Ukrainian people to export that
| grain though
| morsch wrote:
| I heard an interview with a farmer in Western Ukraine today.
| His area isn't immediately affected by the war (as in, no
| bombs, no mines, no occupation). His stores are still full with
| the 2021 harvest. The regular route would be via the black sea,
| but that's blockaded. He has a contract to ship some of the
| stored grain via train to Poland. But there's very little
| capacity to store his 2022 harvest.
| codezero wrote:
| I don't know if it was just propaganda, but I saw several
| videos of grain being looted by Russian troops and supposedly
| brought back to Russia.
|
| Even if that's not the case, a live war has to decrease
| productivity immensely.
| c-smile wrote:
| > videos... grain being looted by Russian troops...
|
| Oh, that's new. How exactly do they do that?
| usrusr wrote:
| Last week Russia announced a record harvest for '22. Maybe
| this is completely unrelated.
| smm11 wrote:
| We have an economy that uses food for vehicular fuel.
|
| We've also politicized a baby formula shortage. Hang onto your
| hats.
| husainfazel wrote:
| You would think that with a food catastrophe on the way - the
| current administration's finest minds wouldn't be encouraging
| even higher corn prices (already at a 10 year high in April) with
| this mix of legislative action:
|
| > Washington announced the EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-
| based biodiesel and ethanol fuel mix for the summer. On April 12
| the Secretary of Agriculture announced a "bold" initiative by the
| US Administration to increase the use of domestically-grown corn-
| ethanol biofuels
|
| Or with what I can only call absolutely diabolical sabotage of
| food production:
|
| CF Industries of Deerfield, Illinois, the largest US supplier of
| nitrogen fertilizers as well as a vital diesel engine additive,
| issued a press release stating that:
|
| "On Friday, April 8, 2022, Union Pacific informed CF Industries
| without advance notice that it was mandating certain shippers to
| reduce the volume of private cars on its railroad effective
| immediately."
|
| "The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a
| worse time for farmers. Not only will fertilizer be delayed by
| these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to
| complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at
| all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of
| shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers' harvests and
| increasing the cost of food for consumers."
|
| CF has made urgent appeals to the government for remedy, so far
| with no positive action
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/cost-of-living-bank-of-england-go...
|
| Remember when the apocalyptic food crisis happens, it wasn't an
| accident OR bad luck, it was planned.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| martincmartin wrote:
| TFA talks about that. Before the food crisis was in the news,
| the energy crisis was in the news.
| vimy wrote:
| It's even worse when you realize biofuel is bad for the
| environment.
|
| > Third-generation biofuels do not represent a feasible option
| at present state of development as their GHG emissions are
| higher than those from fossil fuels. As also discussed in the
| paper, several studies show that reductions in GHG emissions
| from biofuels are achieved at the expense of other impacts,
| such as acidification, eutrophication, water footprint and
| biodiversity loss. The paper also investigates the key
| methodological aspects and sources of uncertainty in the LCA of
| biofuels and provides recommendations to address these issues.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7735313/
|
| > Our study examined data from 2005-2013 during this sharp
| increase in renewable fuel use. Rather than assuming that
| producing and using biofuels was carbon-neutral, we explicitly
| compared the amount of CO2 absorbed on cropland to the quantity
| emitted during biofuel production and consumption. Existing
| crop growth already takes large amounts of CO2 out of the
| atmosphere. The empirical question is whether biofuel
| production increases the rate of CO2 uptake enough to fully
| offset CO2 emissions produced when corn is fermented into
| ethanol and when biofuels are burned. Most of the crops that
| went into biofuels during this period were already being
| cultivated; the main change was that farmers sold more of their
| harvest to biofuel makers and less for food and animal feed.
| Some farmers expanded corn and soybean production or switched
| to these commodities from less profitable crops. But as long as
| growing conditions remain constant, corn plants take CO2 out of
| the atmosphere at the same rate regardless of how the corn is
| used. Therefore, to properly evaluate biofuels, one must
| evaluate CO2 uptake on all cropland. After all, crop growth is
| the CO2 "sponge" that takes carbon out of the atmosphere. When
| we performed such an evaluation, we found that from 2005
| through 2013, cumulative carbon uptake on U.S. farmland
| increased by 49 teragrams (a teragram is one million metric
| tons). Planted areas of most other field crops declined during
| this period, so this increased CO2 uptake can be largely
| attributed to crops grown for biofuels. Over the same period,
| however, CO2 emissions from fermenting and burning biofuels
| increased by 132 teragrams. Therefore, the greater carbon
| uptake associated with crop growth offset only 37 percent of
| biofuel-related CO2 emissions from 2005 through 2013. In other
| words, biofuels are far from inherently carbon-neutral.
| https://theconversation.com/biofuels-turn-out-to-be-a-climat...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Because Union Pacific is out to destroy food production?
| Riiiiight...
|
| Or because the government didn't prevent a stupidity from a
| private company?
|
| Never attribute to malice...
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Wasn't there an HN discussion recently about how rail
| operators were running extremely long trains which are more
| economically efficient for the operators, but much more
| likely to derail (causing physical and pollution damage to
| communities)?
| husainfazel wrote:
| The man at the very top has warned us about food shortages:
|
| https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2022/03/its-going-to-
| be-...
|
| So why are CF Industries needing to beg the administration to
| intervene and allow shipments.
|
| https://strangesounds.org/2022/04/fertilizer-giant-cf-
| indust...
|
| Also ask yourself why Union Pacific is imposing these
| restrictions?
|
| Maybe it might have something to do with the latest rage in
| the world financial markets? Blackrock and the WEF set up ESG
| certifying companies that award ESG ratings and punish those
| that don't comply. So you have companies forced to push for
| completely bonkers restrictions and policies because they're
| mandated to top down:
|
| https://www.up.com/aboutup/esg/index.htm
|
| If sometimes their incompetence lead to a winning situation
| for us, we could say it's just pure incompetence. But this is
| anything but incompetence.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Union Pacific is acting to try to improve their "operating
| ratio" according to the current management fad that they've
| fallen prey to.
|
| CF Industries is begging the administration, not because
| the administration is in a plot to _cause_ this, but
| because Union Pacific isn 't listening. (And also because
| the government just had hearings about the incompetence of
| railroads under the current management fad.) CF is just
| looking for _some_ lever that will keep UP from damaging CF
| 's business.
|
| No, I don't think Blackrock or the WEF have anything to do
| with it. It has to do with Canadian National, and then
| Canadian Pacific, adopting Precision Scheduled Railroading,
| and improving their operating ratios by doing so, and every
| other major railroad (except maybe BNSF) jumping on the
| bandwagon. But in doing so, UP is driving away some traffic
| ( _not_ just food- or fertilizer-related), in the hope that
| net profit will go up.
|
| This has all been building for a decade or so. It's nothing
| related to the current geopolitical and economic situation.
| daenz wrote:
| Meta rant: You know a thread is compromised by sock-puppets when
| "Article photo is pretty badass" is one of the top comments in
| the thread, ahead of criticisms about the article.
| waffle_ss wrote:
| That's just a typical high noise comment that no longer gets
| downvoted into oblivion like it used to. It was a top comment
| due to HN's comment ranking system weighting new comments
| towards the top for a while.
| [deleted]
| h2odragon wrote:
| I think its twitter refugees. Give 'em a few days, they'll
| figure out the differences.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Give 'em a few weeks, this happens every September and it
| won't last forever. /s
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| So we have a President Joe, war, food crises, and plague. And
| Google has announced a generalized learning agent.
|
| Am I the only one starting to think it might be useful to examine
| David Bowie's "Saviour Machine" as cautionary prophecy we're
| actively on track to fulfill?
|
| Expecting downvotes from those who don't understand this
| neurodivergent approach to life. I invite curiosity as a followup
| to any dismissive feelings arising in the reader.
|
| ----- "Saviour Machine" lyrics -----
|
| [Verse] President Joe once had a dream
|
| The world held his hand, gave their pledge
|
| So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine
|
| They called it the Prayer, its answer was law
|
| Its logic stopped war, gave them food
|
| How they adored till it cried in its boredom
|
| "Please don't believe in me
|
| Please disagree with me
|
| Life is too easy
|
| A plague seems quite feasible now
|
| Or maybe a war
|
| Or I may kill you all"
|
| [Chorus] Don't let me stay, don't let me stay
|
| My logic says burn, so send me away , Your minds are too green, I
| despise all I've seen
|
| You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine
|
| [Bridge] I need you flying, and I'll show that dying
|
| Is living beyond reason, sacred dimension of time
|
| I perceive every sign, I can steal every mind
|
| [Chorus] Don't let me stay, don't let me stay
|
| My logic says burn, so send me away
|
| Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen
|
| You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine
| [deleted]
| troymc wrote:
| "Farmers have nowhere to store their next harvest, due to start
| in late June, which may therefore rot."
|
| In Saskatchewan (where I grew up on a farm), when the grain bins
| get full, some farmers put their grain in shops or sheds normally
| used for storing farm machinery. Others put it in long giant
| plastic bags out in their fields. Others build makeshift plywood
| cylinders on some bare land (such as an already-harvested field).
| In short, farmers will do what they can to protect their
| harvests.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Ad hoc storage in Saskatchewan is for fall harvest and over
| winter storage. Rot isn't a concern when it is cold and dry.
|
| In contrast Ukraine plants a higher percentage of fall crops
| harvesting in the summer and has about twice as much rainfall.
| Ad hoc storage is much more challenging. They'll try, but
| they'll lose a lot more crop than a Saskatchewan farmer would.
| leozoucomms wrote:
| abrichr wrote:
| Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/hobUN
| leozoucomms wrote:
| mbg721 wrote:
| 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.
| sva_ wrote:
| 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 of days/weeks in storage, it doesn't seem feasible to
| store enough food to last a prolonged period of time (unless
| you go all-in on prepping, which has its limits). We humans are
| as successful as we are because we cooperate with other humans,
| and on our own we're pretty powerless. So fostering community
| might be the best way to advert crisis.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| 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 the worst possible solution for cost/size/availability.
| You can buy 6 gallon aquatainers and fill them with tap water
| for an easy (and useful for camping) solution. Rotate every
| six months and you don't need secondary treatment.
|
| Otherwise a food grade 55 gallon drum is $100 and you can
| fill it from your tap. You will want secondary treatment
| options if you plan to rotate just every 2 years, and you
| still need a smaller intermediary vessel.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| 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.
| mbg721 wrote:
| My assumption is that if I'm trying to survive more than
| about two weeks, "possessions" are a cute theoretical idea.
| MrFantastic wrote:
| 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.
| walleeee wrote:
| Right, its always a good idea to have short term reserves but
| it's way more important to build out local and regional
| resilience and a less vulnerable, more robust, diverse food
| supply
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I wanna add a solar panel. Having 50 or 100w is going to make
| my life _a lot_ better than 0w.
| mbg721 wrote:
| If you have the setup where you've got that connected and
| make it work, that's a great idea. The neighbors next to my
| building have some on their roof--it's not too different from
| having batteries for your radio.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You can get 100-ish watt solar panels on Amazon
| surprisingly cheaply, and they're small enough to take car-
| camping.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/PROGENY-Portable-Kickstand-
| Flashfish-...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-SolarSaga-Portable-
| Explorer-F...
| psd1 wrote:
| I've just specced up a system to deliver 1-2 KWh per day
| off-grid, and there are a lot more parts in the system
| than just the panels.
|
| Apart from anything else, if you save on costs by
| sticking at 12v, you run quite high current. That 100w
| panel can fuck you up.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| A lot of the grid tied systems don't even support off-line
| use, but you could always bodge something together during
| prolonged outages.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I was just researching this and the new Enphase IQ8
| microinverters will run without grid power. You are
| correct though it is common for microinverters to require
| grid power to operate, which seems pretty surprising!
| lazide wrote:
| It's usually a safety feature. If there is a downed power
| line and you lose grid connection, energizing your
| (otherwise dead) side of the downed lines could easily
| kill the lineman who comes to fix it.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Oh certainly it is important to have some kind of cut-off
| to prevent back-feeding the power lines, but I thought
| that would just be part of the system design.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| To the breaker on your solar (or genset) the resistance
| of the neighborhood is gonna look indistinguishable from
| a short circuit so you'll need to at least disconnect
| from the grid if you want to power your house. From there
| your next problem is that solar panels don't handle being
| overloaded very well so you either need a ton of them ore
| batteries.
| lazide wrote:
| It is! The easiest design is to require existing grid
| stable power and supplement it. :)
|
| Anything else is difficult to do reliably, and would
| generally require some kind of smart monitoring system,
| electrically actuated mains rated switch (not easy, cheap
| or durable it turns out), additional sensors, etc.
|
| The design we're talking about just doesn't output power
| unless there is an existing sine wave to follow. Pretty
| foolproof, since anything that provided it would also be
| the one responsible for electrocuting the worker.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| That makes sense! I guess being new to this it is just
| counter intuitive to think that you could install a big
| solar panel system and still suffer power outages. But I
| see what you mean.
| jandrese wrote:
| 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 and
| COVID shortages. Prices are very high and availability is
| usually "8-12 month waitlist".
| MrFantastic wrote:
| Rice will keep you full but our body requires protein and fat
| to live. Carbs are optional.
|
| I Olympic lift so I always have whey.
| nosianu wrote:
| Buy some MREs. They are made to last and to have everything
| essential for survival.
|
| Shelf life is about 5 years, depending on how it's stored:
| https://www.mreinfo.com/mres/mre-shelf-life/
| lazide wrote:
| Make sure to pack some fiber though too! They'll plug you up
| something fierce if you eat them a lot.
| carom wrote:
| The whole reason I wanted to take up camping was to understand
| what I can eat in an emergency situation. Now I own a camping
| stove, a few fuel canisters, some boil in bag rice, and a few
| large cans of plain freeze dried chicken and beef. Add in the
| charcoal BBQ and I'll have a feast the day the power goes out.
| aksss wrote:
| The benefit of backpacking as a hobby is not only testing
| gear and learning how to use it, but also having a
| means/excuse to rotate through an emergency freeze-dried food
| supply or MREs and/or learn how to forage and hunt/prepare
| small game. MREs are reasonably cheap, high calorie, long
| lasting, and if you strip them down to essentials can be
| reasonable weight. They don't last forever on the shelf, but
| again, camping/backpacking/kayaking can give you an excuse to
| cycle out the oldest stuff.
| corrral wrote:
| 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 wheat berries),
| it'll get worse over time from air exposure. Anything with the
| germ still on/in it will go rancid after a while, and the
| germ's full of nutrients so you really want that part if you
| can keep it.
| sva_ wrote:
| Small (1kg) vacuum-sealed bags should be fine though.
| corrral wrote:
| Correct--it's doable, it just takes more material and
| planning than "buy bag of rice, stick bag in dry place in
| basement". Do that, you'll be sad when you try to use it in
| a year or three.
|
| The alternative is maintaining a stock but constantly
| drawing it down & replenishing it, but it gets difficult to
| maintain a _substantial_ reserve that way, unless you
| already eat your "apocalypse" diet most of the time, so go
| through a lot of the same things you've got in storage even
| during normal times--say, if you already eat rice & beans
| 5+ dinners a week. You're capped by the rate at which you
| go through those things in non-emergency times. Plus it
| takes some planning and ongoing monitoring/inventorying,
| which is a non-zero amount of work.
| sva_ wrote:
| Maybe I'm ignorant of this, but it was my impression that
| vacuum-sealed white rice should pretty much last
| indefinitely?
| lazide wrote:
| If you vacuum seal it with mylar lined bags and some
| oxygen absorbers, it can last up to 5 years, which is a
| long time.
|
| Oxygen will get through normal plastic vacuum sealing
| bags and ruin the taste and eventually nutritional
| content otherwise after a year or two. Mylar lining stops
| most of that and the oxygen absorber gets the rest.
|
| The thick bags will also stop rice moths from getting
| through (they are able to get through most cardboard and
| thin plastic bags), and the lack of oxygen will stop
| their eggs from hatching.
| corrral wrote:
| I'd expect a couple years at least. A quick Google gives
| common wisdom that you still want anti-weevil measures
| (bay leaves in the bag, the aforementioned diatomaceous
| earth) with that method.
|
| My point with that part was just that you have to do the
| vacuum sealing (unless you're buying a product with all
| this taken care of, which I'd assume is expensive) and
| such, at least, which means more equipment and material
| than simply buying sealed (but not _vacuum_ sealed) bags
| at the store and putting them on a shelf. Getting grains
| ready for long-term storage means more than just keeping
| mice and bugs and water out--you 've gotta worry about
| oxygen, and about insect eggs already present in the
| grain, too. Just stuff one might not think of if one were
| to make the wrong assumptions.
|
| [EDIT] Incidentally, trying to store _all_ one 's
| calories, at least more than enough for a week or two,
| might not be the right idea anyway, short of a truly
| horrible catastrophe like nuclear war--my great-
| grandparents and grandparents, who lived through the
| depression and World War II, respectively, didn't seem to
| be all that in to storing lots of grain. What they _were_
| into, big time, was _canning vegetables_ , and gardening
| (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man, were they ever
| into canning vegetables. I'd _guess_ that 's the result
| of some hard lessons about how to make it through hard
| times--plus, just, times before modern shipping and
| refrigeration when food availability dropped a whole
| bunch in Winter.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables,
| and gardening (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man,
| were they ever into canning vegetables."
|
| Ditto
| corrral wrote:
| I became aware of the world _just_ as seasonal food
| availability was becoming a thing of the past--I remember
| significantly more seasonal variation, but only when I
| was pretty young--so this really stuck with me growing
| up. All those colorful jars lined up on shelves, all the
| gardening, all the boiling-of-jars, et c. All that work,
| and a can of the same thing was $0.29 at the store.
|
| So I assume they _all_ developed these super-similar
| habits for really great reasons. And since the ~1960s and
| earlier were just _normally_ pretty similar to what a
| significant food shortage would probably look like now
| (at least in countries that will almost certainly be able
| to maintain adequate supplies of staples, like the US) it
| seems to me that might be a good first place to look.
| Stock up on canned veggies, worry less about the rest of
| it. Maybe get some chickens and plant some berry bushes
| (they also _all_ loved keeping a line or two of berry
| bushes, and it seems like in their generations you just
| _alway_ kept chickens, if you weren 't smack in the
| middle of town)
| sva_ wrote:
| Maybe the misunderstanding stems from a geographic
| difference. The rice I buy seems to come in an under a
| co2-atmosphere vacuum sealed bag that costs around $2 (or
| less on sale) per kg.
|
| > What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables,
|
| My grandmother did this too, after living her childhood
| through WW2 (in Germany), she used to have a repository
| of canned vegetables in the cellar. I sometimes talked to
| her about her rural live in the war-torn country, and she
| told me about soldiers, and all kinds of people, who
| would come by in war-time, where food was very sparse.
| And I think she maintained that sort of hoarding behavior
| throughout her life, based on the experiences she made as
| a child.
| corrral wrote:
| 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.
| sva_ wrote:
| 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.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "diatomaceous earth"
|
| This is also a suspected carcinogen. I'd be careful about
| putting it on food, even if you do wash it.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| What are you talking about? I've kept bags of rice for years
| without any issues.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| What he said is generally true [1], so you must have either
| stored your rice in an environment that prevented them from
| hatching, or got lucky.
|
| [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_weevil
| stakkur wrote:
| Grain is at the root of our dietary and other consumption
| problems. Much of farmland is given over to growing corn for
| ---corn syrup and variations to put in processed, artificial
| 'food'.
|
| We can live better, healthier lives without grain.
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