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We might have reached the highest price of wheat in history. A lot of historical things happening as of late.
by PestoDiRucola 5y ago
We might have reached the highest price of wheat in history. A lot of historical things happening as of late.
- Shadonototra 5y agoDark days ahead of us.. money won't be enough if everyone is fighting for the same resources.. then we'll have water issues very soon, things are changing at a very fast pace, it's scary
- 7373737373 5y agoI don't get how and why water could ever be an existential problem for humanity, other than in extremely remote drought regions. Yes, desalination plants and other infrastructure investments may make it more expensive, but it doesn't seem to be a fundamentally scarce resource.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y agothere is a whole Wikipedia entry dedicated to the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity
- calvinmorrison 5y agoat .01 cents a gallon or less, yeah it's not scarce at all...
- bcrosby95 5y agoYou can use desalination for drinking water, but growing food requires way too much water for it to be feasible.
- pfdietz 5y agoIn Israel, use of desalination made more effluent suitable for irrigation. Before that, the effluent contained too much salt. This isn't desalinating specifically for irrigation, but it is a source of water for irrigation that wouldn't exist without desalination. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-study-water-desalination-advances-lends-to-dramatic-boost-for-farmers-1.5848554 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-study-water-des... Israel is not self-sufficient though; they import 80% of the grain they consume.
- jeffbee 5y agoLiterally billions of people rely on glacial meltwater which will eventually run out. Yes it is technologically feasible to provide the whole world with desalinated water, but it is also technologically feasible to provide the whole world with renewable energy and for some reason we haven't done that either.
- adam_arthur 5y agoAlso pipelines are already proven via oil and natural gas. You can transport oil from remote areas in Canada to western Texas with little effort. Very trivial to extend the idea to routing water from any of the thousands of lakes in Canada. Vegas had a plan to do just that (though from Reno). These ideas aren't pursued because water is not scarce enough for them to be economically justified yet. If the time comes, they will do it and likely cheaper than you think. If renewables eventually take over, we can even repurpose the existing oil pipelines. Likely need to widen them, but much cheaper than land use/zoning legal battles.
- arbitrary_name 5y agoNot trivial at all. It's billions of dollars, huge amounts of energy to pump water up and down mountain ranges, many years of construction, many more years of litigation... And why on earth would Canada give us their water? There was a plan to pipe water to California from the Pacific north west, and the projected costs for that were insane. By the time the high price of water justifies projects on this scale, there will be blood in the streets, not water in aqueducts.
- FredPret 5y agoThese problems will tend to evaporate when water starts running low enough to impact people's daily lives. Civilization adapts quickly once somebody pokes the bear.
- 7373737373 5y agoI would love to see a historical survey of what circumstances and processes made large scale projects like these happen
- HPsquared 5y agoMost shortages of water are caused by an inability to build and maintain infrastructure, not an inherent scarcity of water.
- phatfish 5y agoClean water in the right location can certainly be scarce. If a large population is close to the limit and unusual weather or some other event causes a shortage, I'm not sure how long a quick fix like trucking it in would be sustainable.
- nostrademons 5y agoIt's not an existential problem for humanity, but it could be an existential problem for individual humans. Settlement patterns grow up water availability. There's a reason India and eastern China are densely populated while the Sahara has virtually nobody. The U.S. Southwest (LA, Vegas, Phoenix, and smaller cities in SoCal/AZ/UT/NV/NM) urbanized when we developed the technology to dam & control the Colorado River. In 100 years, it's likely they'll be thriving communities in the Sahara, Canadian Shield, Siberia, etc. to make up for the increasing inhabitability of Northern Europe, the U.S. South & Southwest, Indian subcontinent, Middle East, etc. But that's cold comfort for the people who already live in the affected regions, who will have to migrate, die, or spend most of their resources on water infrastructure.
- pfdietz 5y agoThis is a great time to be on a low carb diet.
- base698 5y agoBeef is up too.
- dan1234 5y agoGreat time to be on a plant based gluten free diet!
- giantg2 5y agoFertilizer costs are skyrocketing, and Russia is saying not to export to western nations now too.
- ragingrobot 5y agoEverything's on the up. I'm an omnivore, and use tofu for meals on occasion. On my trip to the Asian market yesterday (cheapest price around), tofu was 50% higher than what I paid last trip two or three months ago (was $1.39 for House Foods 10oz - a common brand around here, now $1.99). Nothing's safe.
- giantg2 5y agoNot so much if you buy it direct and avoid the store/middlemen markups.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoBeef is often counter-cyclical with grain prices, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it drop. When the price of feed goes up, cattlemen sell cattle depressing its price. When the price of feed goes down, cattlemen expand their herds, temporarily decreasing the number of cattle for sale.
- immibis 5y agoWhat do you think the low carbs eat?
- rruark 5y agoWe may be seeing the highest nominal price for wheat in US history, but we are nowhere near the highest inflation adjusted price. The price of wheat in 1866 was $2.06/bu [0]. That is $36.43/bu in 2022 prices. In times of famine, prices have of course been higher. Just for fun, the rider of the black horse in the book of revelations prices a quart of wheat at one denarius (a typical days wage at the time). If you go by the 4.4g silver content of the coin, that comes out to $3.64 per quart or $135/bu. [0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/wheat-data/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/wheat-data/