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Yes. In the pre-industrial era, civilizations tended to balance precariously on a Malthusian knife-edge, growing right up to whatever maximum population their f
by smacktoward 7y ago
Yes. In the pre-industrial era, civilizations tended to balance precariously on a Malthusian knife-edge, growing right up to whatever maximum population their food supplies could support. So all it took was one freak climactic event to tip them over into famine, and famine has always been a fertile breeding ground for political unrest.
- postingawayonhn 7y agoIsn't the issue more that they had limited means of long-term food storage so there was little point in growing more food than you could eat in a year?
- ip26 7y agoCanning, dehydrating, pickling, curing, making alcohol...
- VBprogrammer 7y agoAlso, smoking. Worth bearing in mind that salt, one of the primary means of storage was a precious commodity often shipped to the north of Europe from salt pans in the med.
- JackFr 7y agoAnother issue is that when labor is cheap and plentiful one is less likely to invest in technology. There is a thesis that the Black Plague broke Europe out of a 'Matlthusian Deadlock' that size of the population made labor cheap enough that investing in agricultural technology had low returns, at the same time that same size led to everyone constantly being on the razors edge of famine.
- Amezarak 7y agoPeople have regularly stockpiled multi-year food supplies going back thousands of years. It's just a matter of whether or not there's a political will to do so. That said, obviously, thanks to refrigeration and freezing, we have the capability of storing a much broader range of foods in a healthier way for longer periods of time, assuming that whatever disaster we face doesn't cause the electrical supply to become transient. I am extremely skeptical that we'd deal with a similar event any better. We've optimized too much for efficiency and just-in-time delivery.
- PeterisP 7y agoStoring grain for multiple years was possible for a long, long time. The Bible story of Joseph is perhaps an exaggeration or an extraordinary event, but storing grain from "good" years in order to consume it in "bad" years is something we've been doing since prehistoric times, we have archeological evidence that this has been done in Egypt before writing was used.
- vkou 7y agoAnd the reason that this doesn't happen anymore is that governments, through farm subsidies, now pay people to grow more food than we need, and to let fertile agricultural land lie fallow.
- Reelin 7y agoWe also managed to start mass-producing canned goods with effectively indefinite shelf lives at some point, and figured out freeze drying, and figured out nitrogen flushing, and industrial autoclaves became standard, and ...
- germinalphrase 7y agoI would love to read about the actual safe shelf life of common foods. Being from a diary region of the. US, I have no faith in the stamped on dates
- wbl 7y agoFar longer then the dates! Food spoilage is often aesthetic before it becomes a health risk.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoYou should be able to eat most canned goods multiple years after whatever their date is. A good rule of thumb is if the can isn't deformed as a result of the volume of its contents changing as result of a chemical reaction then you're good to go. As far as rules of thumb go this is a pretty good one because a chemical reaction is a necessary perquisite of food spoilage (if the food doesn't change it doesn't spoil) and said chemical reaction will almost certainly alter the volume (at STP) of the contents of the can thereby deforming it. You can also use your nose which has millions of years of incremental improvement making it good at telling you what is and isn't edible.
- darkarmani 7y agoI wouldn't compare dairy dates with canned good dates. There is a significant difference there.
- hoseja 7y agoAnd right now we're really busy catching up to the new limit! Won't take long now.
- hyperpallium 7y agoCarrying capacity is the natural limit on all life. Lower birth rates (due to birth control, affluence) is the fundamental change.