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Quite a bit of US food production is going to produce animal feed, and some is exported. It'd take an amazing blow to cause actual starvation, given that could

Quite a bit of US food production is going to produce animal feed, and some is exported. It'd take an amazing blow to cause actual starvation, given that could be diverted to feeding the population. The main threat to agriculture in time of war used to be dependence on foreign oil, but the US has largely solved that.

r00fus 8y ago
How has the US "solved" foreign oil dependence?
- shard972 8y ago
  By becoming the largest oil producer.
- brycelark 8y ago
  https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-becomes-world-s-largest-crude-oil-producer-and-department-energy-authorizes-short-term https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-becomes-world-s-largest-c...
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  By producing more oil domestically than we use.
- tomcam 8y ago
  By producing more oil than anyone else on the planet.
- lsc 8y ago
  My understanding is that it was hydraulic fracking that made the difference. See, the 'peak oil' people were wrong; turns out that if you are willing to pay more, there's a lot more oil you can extract (albeit at a higher cost) I actually think it was a self-defeating prophecy in a way. The peak oil folks actually had some mindshare for a while, and there was a lot of investment in more expensive ways to get oil out of the ground that had the assumption of long term oil prices being over a hundred bucks a barrel. This, I think, caused over-investment in new ways of extracting oil, which drove up production and drove down prices. (I mean, there was also a lot of investment in renewables, and I imagine that is also putting downward pressure on oil prices.)
  - heavenlyhash 8y ago
    > turns out that if you are willing to pay more, I don't think that actually refutes "peak oil" suggestions that there's a price curvature that's going to keep going up.
    - lsc 8y ago
      I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that oil is a limited resource and will become more rare and thus assuming continued demand, more expensive as time goes on? That's not what 'peak oil' was about. Peak oil was this idea that both supply and demand were largely inelastic. In that case, when those curves crossed, you'd have the figurative unstoppable force and the immovable object; the price of oil would climb out of control, the economy would grind to a halt. The primary thesis of 'peak oil' was that we couldn't extract more oil from the ground than we already were extracting. Through fracking and the exploitation of oil shale and oil sands... we did, in fact, extract more oil. Turns out, the supply of oil is, to some extent, elastic. Yeah, we're going to run out some day, but with our current tech... it's starting to look like we might have trouble dealing with the atmospheric carbon output before we have serious trouble with the supply of hydrocarbons.
GlenTheMachine 8y ago
“Quite a bit of US food production is going to produce animal feed, and some is exported. It'd take an amazing blow to cause actual starvation, given that could divert that back to feeding the population.” Well, not really. Yes, it's true that a substantial fraction of current US food production goes to animal feed. Yes, it's true, theoretically, that you could turn all of that into human food production instead. Of course, that would mean we'd all need to become vegetarians, but of course that's better than starving. But this elides two important points. First, humans can't survive on what is currently being grown. In other words, we can't just stop feeding all of that corn and soybeans to animals and give it to humans instead. We can't live off of a diet that is 75% field corn and industrial soybeans. We would have to change what is being produced, and that would be like turning a battleship. It's doable, but it would take time. And second, without animals in the loop it's very hard to have a sustainable nutrient cycle. Animals, especially ruminants like cattle, sheep, and goats, can turn otherwise inedible vegetation on unarable land into manure which can be used as fertilizer. So if we do away with the animal agriculture, and turn entirely vegetarian, then we are as a side effect reinforcing our dependence on industrial fertilizers. Of course, you can argue that that nutrient cycle is already broken in our current system, and you'd be right. But if you want to look at what a truly sustainable, environmental agricultural system would look like, it almost has to have ruminants. Look, for example, at how Amish farms work. Those guys do it right. Their crop yields are on par with the best yields in big ag. It's a sustainable model.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  > We can't live off of a diet that is 75% field corn and industrial soybeans. Why not? Beans and rice, potatoes and milk, bread and peanut butter. Those are all nutritionally complete diets, as in you won’t get any deficiency diseases eating nothing else for a year. Feed corn and soybeans has carbs and protein. It might be nutritionally complete by itself. Add cabbage or some other leafy green vegetable and 100g of meat a week and you’ve got a monotonous, bland, healthy diet. I’m not saying this is pleasant, feed corn tastes pretty awful but you absolutely could live off a diet that was mostly beans and corn.
  - 8y ago

r00fus 8y ago

How has the US "solved" foreign oil dependence?

shard972 8y ago
By becoming the largest oil producer.
brycelark 8y ago
https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-becomes-world-s-largest-crude-oil-producer-and-department-energy-authorizes-short-term https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-becomes-world-s-largest-c...
toasterlovin 8y ago
By producing more oil domestically than we use.
tomcam 8y ago
By producing more oil than anyone else on the planet.
lsc 8y ago
My understanding is that it was hydraulic fracking that made the difference. See, the 'peak oil' people were wrong; turns out that if you are willing to pay more, there's a lot more oil you can extract (albeit at a higher cost) I actually think it was a self-defeating prophecy in a way. The peak oil folks actually had some mindshare for a while, and there was a lot of investment in more expensive ways to get oil out of the ground that had the assumption of long term oil prices being over a hundred bucks a barrel. This, I think, caused over-investment in new ways of extracting oil, which drove up production and drove down prices. (I mean, there was also a lot of investment in renewables, and I imagine that is also putting downward pressure on oil prices.)
- heavenlyhash 8y ago
  > turns out that if you are willing to pay more, I don't think that actually refutes "peak oil" suggestions that there's a price curvature that's going to keep going up.
  - lsc 8y ago
    I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that oil is a limited resource and will become more rare and thus assuming continued demand, more expensive as time goes on? That's not what 'peak oil' was about. Peak oil was this idea that both supply and demand were largely inelastic. In that case, when those curves crossed, you'd have the figurative unstoppable force and the immovable object; the price of oil would climb out of control, the economy would grind to a halt. The primary thesis of 'peak oil' was that we couldn't extract more oil from the ground than we already were extracting. Through fracking and the exploitation of oil shale and oil sands... we did, in fact, extract more oil. Turns out, the supply of oil is, to some extent, elastic. Yeah, we're going to run out some day, but with our current tech... it's starting to look like we might have trouble dealing with the atmospheric carbon output before we have serious trouble with the supply of hydrocarbons.

GlenTheMachine 8y ago

“Quite a bit of US food production is going to produce animal feed, and some is exported. It'd take an amazing blow to cause actual starvation, given that could divert that back to feeding the population.” Well, not really. Yes, it's true that a substantial fraction of current US food production goes to animal feed. Yes, it's true, theoretically, that you could turn all of that into human food production instead. Of course, that would mean we'd all need to become vegetarians, but of course that's better than starving. But this elides two important points. First, humans can't survive on what is currently being grown. In other words, we can't just stop feeding all of that corn and soybeans to animals and give it to humans instead. We can't live off of a diet that is 75% field corn and industrial soybeans. We would have to change what is being produced, and that would be like turning a battleship. It's doable, but it would take time. And second, without animals in the loop it's very hard to have a sustainable nutrient cycle. Animals, especially ruminants like cattle, sheep, and goats, can turn otherwise inedible vegetation on unarable land into manure which can be used as fertilizer. So if we do away with the animal agriculture, and turn entirely vegetarian, then we are as a side effect reinforcing our dependence on industrial fertilizers. Of course, you can argue that that nutrient cycle is already broken in our current system, and you'd be right. But if you want to look at what a truly sustainable, environmental agricultural system would look like, it almost has to have ruminants. Look, for example, at how Amish farms work. Those guys do it right. Their crop yields are on par with the best yields in big ag. It's a sustainable model.

barry-cotter 8y ago
> We can't live off of a diet that is 75% field corn and industrial soybeans. Why not? Beans and rice, potatoes and milk, bread and peanut butter. Those are all nutritionally complete diets, as in you won’t get any deficiency diseases eating nothing else for a year. Feed corn and soybeans has carbs and protein. It might be nutritionally complete by itself. Add cabbage or some other leafy green vegetable and 100g of meat a week and you’ve got a monotonous, bland, healthy diet. I’m not saying this is pleasant, feed corn tastes pretty awful but you absolutely could live off a diet that was mostly beans and corn.
- 8y ago