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When I was in Iceland I was told it's a kind of food supply insurance plan. Both Iceland and Japan are small, and in the even of a war, blockade, or other trade
by lxmorj 11y ago
When I was in Iceland I was told it's a kind of food supply insurance plan. Both Iceland and Japan are small, and in the even of a war, blockade, or other trade limitations access to whale meat is necessary.
The skills required to successfully hunt whale are only learned through whaling, and therefore it's necessary to keep doing it on a small scale to have the ability to spin it up in the future.
It's a good narrative, but I can't say whether or not it's accurate...
- daniel-cussen 11y agoThere's truth to this. After the famine in Germany during and after WW1, the German high command decided running out of butter (as in "guns and butter", it's both, not one or the other: you want guns you need butter) would not happen again. Even before Hitler became chancellor, the military prepared for WW2 by buying whale oil at low prices to stockpile and building up a whale factory fleet with assistance from the (largely unemployed) Norwegian whaling fleet. As a direct result, during WW2, Germany was well fed. Given large enough whale stocks, it's a very viable strategy for wartime or blockade.
- pvaldes 11y agoThis is a myth; we forget the more logical option. Krill shrimps are edible also, there is plenty in the sea and you just need a net. Is by far much less dangerous option for sea workers and human consumers. In famine times you need to save as many energy as you can, and use the precious fuel wisely. In any case, not enough strong fishermen would be available to go to a dangerous and demanding fishing trip, because the men will be at thousand km of home, doing war.
- w00kie 11y ago> Both Iceland and Japan are small Really? Iceland is small will 300k people, yes. But might I remind you Japan is 127 million people...
- smcl 11y agoMaybe it was poorly phrased - land available for agriculture is small relative to their population. Iceland is huge but largely barren, Japan is even bigger but feeding 127m people is probably not possible with the land they have available
- ekianjo 11y agoIt would be more easy to do if they stopped promoting single farmer work, and actually made an industry of their agriculture. One person taking care of a small piece of land is ridiculously expensive and that shows in the price of fruits and vegetables here - way more expensive that about anywhere else in the world. (also because the restrict importations severely, thanks to the JA Mafia).
- jmadsen 11y agoExcept that it is. Japan is self-sufficient for food. Land marked for growing rice is essentially "eternally locked" to growing rice; you cannot sell it or use it for other purposes, and are required to plant it.
- kalleboo 11y agoUntil the TPP puts them all out of business and they retire (the average age of farmers in Japan is 66)
- emodendroket 11y agoThere are a lot of subsidies for Japanese rice growers too but I think this is primarily because without them they would not be competitive with American imports.
- jmadsen 11y agohmmm...yes to the first part, but the rice grown in NA is of a different variety they don't particularly like here.
- melling 11y agoJapan is the 10th largest country in the world by population. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
- 1stop 11y agoI think they meant geographically
- elcapitan 11y agoWhat's wrong with cannibalism?
- jschwartzi 11y agoFrom a practical perspective, tons of parasites. From a moral perspective it becomes much harder to trust someone who no qualms about eating you.
- elcapitan 11y agoThe fact that this is being downvoted so heavily shows that the food industry is next to be disrupted.
- laumars 11y agoEven that's not entirely accurate. Japan is larger than the UK. That's England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. Japan is actually closer to the size of Germany - which isn't a large country but certainly isn't small either.
- gozur88 11y agoFrom a food perspective the problem is so much of Japan isn't arable - 11.6% compared to Germany's 34.1%.
- 11y ago
- vilhelm_s 11y agoIf they were blockaded and could no longer import food, would they really be able to send factory ships to the arctic?