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An event like this, or anything else with a significant impact on food production is something many people should be absolutely prepared for. A bulk of countrie
by waihtis 6y ago
An event like this, or anything else with a significant impact on food production is something many people should be absolutely prepared for. A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. What do you think will happen if the net exporters experience a global supply crisis?
Always be cognizant of events that are improbable but have a high impact on survival.
- jbay808 6y ago> What do you think will happen if the net exporters experience a global supply crisis? The way that countries that manufacture PPE halted exports last year is a good reminder that the same can happen with food!
- waihtis 6y agoI was not acutely aware of this, but is a perfect example of what will happen in severe crisis scenarios: countries will ensure their own survival over others'.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoYou cannot eat money therefore exporting only works for as long as those supplies are not needed.
- paxys 6y agoThe fact that so many developing countries are massive exporters of food and goods while their own citizens are lacking easily disproves this.
- Joker_vD 6y ago"Not needed" by the people of doing the large-scale economical decisions, obviously. There is, of course, some level of poverty where the non-deciding people get fed up (heh) and revolt, but you have to just keep slightly above it, and things will be fine, as the most of the human history shows.
- macintux 6y agoDuring the potato famine, English landowners in Ireland were exporting food to Britain while the Irish starved to death.
- zelos 6y agoIs it feasible for many countries - particularly small, densely populated ones - to be self-sufficient in food? In the UK, at least, I'm not sure there's physically enough space to farm enough food to supply the population. About 50% of food is imported and basically all the agricultural land is already used.
- CalRobert 6y agoMost of it is just a giant outdoor meat factory, though. Same for Ireland. Meat, fortunately, is unnecessary and very inefficient.
- dijit 6y agoEvery time this comes up I have to remind people that not all land that farms meat can be made arable. There is a lot of arable land in England itself that can be used, (and, currently used for meat production); however this is not true for many parts of wales and most of Scotland. (which combined make up a about 100,000 sqkm vs Englands 130,000 sqkm)
- gambiting 6y agoCows and sheep happily graze on moors and other rocky areas that could not be suddenly used to grow any kind of plants for food. Harry Metcalfe has a good video[0] about it - he keeps cows on the fields that are just too steep and too rocky to grow anything else - but it doesn't bother animals. Same applies to sheep. I imagine animals like chickens will have different considerations, because farm buildings do take land that can be used for something else. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feSBsLSRkWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feSBsLSRkWs
- CalRobert 6y agoTrue, though in some cases (The Burren in Ireland for instance) it was sheep that stripped the land of vegetation, then topsoil, and left it rocky, in the first place. Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty, is a good read on this.
- vkou 6y ago> A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. Which countries are those? Because I'm pretty sure that no developed country is dependent on importing food to meet the basic caloric needs of its population. Also, a fair amount of food gets fed to animals, which are incredibly inefficient at turning grain calories into meat calories.
- waihtis 6y agoMany will be, since you have to factor that it is not only the raw produce of food that needs to be calculated in the equation, but also all inputs needed in producing that food, e.g. fuel, fertilizers, equipment, energy. Take Finland as an example (where I live.) In pure food output terms, we produce 80% of our consumption within the country, and import 20%. However, the means of production are very much dependent on importing - for example, energy from Russia. As a comparison, the import to export ratio for pure food output is only 50% in Sweden. It is quite more complex than just looking at the output, and it wouldn't be uncommon to be caught with your pants down in a crisis situation. We had a minor scandal over here during COVID where the government National Emergency Supply Agency claimed to be 'all good' with the highly increased need for medical equipment - except turns out a lot of the protective equipments such as masks had been rotting in the various warehouses to the point they were unusable.
- hypertele-Xii 6y agoMany governments (including Finland) subsidize national farming for the express purpose of maintaining emergency food production capability regardless of markets. That is, governments pay people to keep farming.
- waihtis 6y agoWell aware. Fun fact: farming subsidies and military spending are pretty much 1:1 over here. (Around 2,7 billion €)
- vkou 6y agoIt's true, no country is fully self-sufficient in producing all the inputs for food. The thing is, you're unlikely to be in a food, and fertilizer, and a heavy machinery, and an energy crisis all at the same time. Putin cuts off the gas? Just buy apples from Poland, etc, etc. Generally, the failure modes for trade in all of these are not correlated. Some foodstuff that goes into animal feedstock, or into wasteful refinement processes (say, beer) can also be eaten directly. Now, I'm not saying that the government should do nothing about food security... It should encourage domestic production.
- dragonelite 6y agoImaging countries generating a big percentage of their energy with solar panels it will be chaos in those nations.
- octygen 6y agoFood... or fresh/unpolluted water. For food, I think it's a little easier but societies that have a hard time producing would have to adjust what they eat and how they eat it. Also, less meat, less red wine, more beer and more potatoes. The latter are much more sustainable. E.g., In Canada, we'll have to accept we can't have bananas, pineapple, kiwis, mangos any time. We'll have to stick to locally grown apples, way fewer (but higher quality) blueberries and probably eat all the things Icelanders eat like smoked fish. There's a course on Coursera called The Nordic Diet which is about Scandinavia as a whole adjusting its national diet to eat more local produce. Talk about foresight! That's just one of the principles at least. It's a Danish-run program. E.g., They eat more lingonberries since they grow all over the place?
- waihtis 6y ago> The Nordic Diet Need to check this out. There is definitely a possibility to go much more local by just foraging. I ate probably tens of kilograms of golden chanterelle, bilberries (local equivalent of blueberry)& lingonberries last fall - the forests are spilling with food and a lot of it rots because people don't take advantage of it. Healthy, free, very tasty food - and you get exercise and fresh air while foraging. Clears your head very nicely too if you do computer work. Almost makes me wish summer was over already and I could be in the woods picking mushrooms and berries.
- adrianN 6y agoForaging can't sustain the current population levels. People in Europe were foraging after WW2. Population was much lower than today, people still starved.
- waihtis 6y agoNor did I claim it can
- fogihujy 6y agoIf you're in a situation where you would need alternative ways to feed current population levels then foraging will be required even if it's not enough on it's own. It's a matter of adding whatever can be added to the total pool of resources, and not about finding a single source. Post WWII, didn't just forage, they also rationed food, bred rabbits in parks, went fishing, planted potatoes in their backyards and so on. If any of those options hadn't been available things would have been much worse.
- rob74 6y agoWell, if an event like this happens, even agriculturally self-sufficient countries won't be self-sufficient anymore. The only advantage we have compared to our ancestors 1500 years ago is that we could import food from the Southern Hemisphere (because the ash clouds will mostly stay in the hemisphere they are produced in). But still, there would be drastic food shortages everywhere...
- chrisco255 6y agoProblem is there's a lot less arable land in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. Not likely enough for world pop.