10 ms·

Looming food shortages is the next ‘slow-moving disaster’ to hit world

75 points by Bostonian 5y ago

n4r9 5y ago
I've been reading Matt Stoller over the last couple of years, discussing how weak anti-trust enforcement is leading to consolidation and concentration in the market and a reliance on foreign exports in the name of efficiency. Mostly he focuses on the US but I suspect that similar things are happening in the UK. It leads to a fragile supply chain rife with bottlenecks and "just in time" links, overly reliant on imports and not robust to unexpected events like COVID or war in Europe. If you're interested here is some further reading: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/america-supply-chain-shortages https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/americ... https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/national-champs-or-national-chumps?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/national-champs-or-nation... https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/counterfeit-capitalism-why-a-monopolized?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/counterfeit-capitalism-wh...
- actionfromafar 5y ago
  That may be, but the massive corn subsidies in the US maybe can finally ful-fill their original purpose - protect against starvation in case of war.
  - drekk 5y ago
    Or we could just... make sure people don't starve? Subsidizing corn is the worst, least direct way to do that. People don't need more high fructose corn syrup and most of that corn is going to feed or ethanol anyways. US produces enough raw food to satiate 10 billion people. The cost is not the issue
    - ben_w 5y ago
      The argument in favour of subsidies is not to generally reduce the cost to the consumer, it is to deliberately encourage overproduction most of the time so that even in bad years you’re still OK. I don’t have the domain knowledge to know if this is or isn’t the reality of any actual subsidy that really exists, all I can say is that the argument seems plausible.
      - yakak 5y ago
        Grain reserves store grain in adequate quality for at least a year so subsidizing massive overproduction doesn't make a lot of sense if a bad year is the only concern. IMO a lot of food security policy around overproduction is related to poverty, domestic hunger and international starvation in normal years. (Driving prices down is making food a smaller percentage of the economy, making it more affordable directly to people in poverty and easier to support food programs from charity/tax.)
        Nasrudith 5y ago
        Stores don't help if someone else is willing to pay more for the grain as infamously demonstrated in famines in productive regions (Irish Potato Famine and Holodomor). Just reserves lead to speculation dynamics in shortages. There is always an expectation of the reserve running out and panics turn it self-fuffilling as infamously demonstrated by supply chain issues or possibility of snowfall. Increased production kills the expected future price.
        yakak 5y ago
        You seem to be talking about long term underproduction. In the Irish case, the subsistence farmers would have been devastated by a US overproduction even before a famine, similar to subsistence farmers in Africa and India today. Holodomor includes perpetual mismanagement and a political decision not to accept food help or really do anything. No amount of overproduction before Stalin would have prevented food being seized and then rotting in transit. Certainly it's the case that you need at least enough overproduction to drive prices down marginally and to restock a reserve if it is actually used, and make speculation not a sure bet.. I think current subsidies go beyond that and arguably don't work because all that overproduction drove innovations in making food fungible to energy (i.e. as ethenol) and energy is now a more retainable wealth as the major input to proof of work.
    - jkubicek 5y ago
      Subsidized corn has a massive effect on decreasing food prices. People may not need high fructose corn syrup, but they need food and a lot of food has corn syrup in it. Cheaper feed leads to cheaper meat. Cheaper ethanol leads to cheaper fuel which makes everything a little less expensive. I can't vouch for corn subsidies being the best way to lower prices, but it's certainly a powerful lever that decreases food prices across the board.
      - orthecreedence 5y ago
        > a lot of food has corn syrup in it Trash food. > Cheaper feed leads to cheaper meat. Great, don't eat meat. It's incredibly expensive, and not just monetarily. If we're facing a food shortage, corn seems like a really bad place to dump money.
        ouid 5y ago
        In terms of calories per acre, corn is absolutely king. Chickens and pigs turn corn calories into meat calories at a ratio unreasonably close to 1:1, and feeding people without meat is very difficult.
        Isinlor 5y ago
        You have it backwards. Feeding people with meat is difficult. This is why meat is expensive and why people in less developed countries can't afford as much meat as Americans.
        ouid 5y ago
        Cow meat is expensive. Chicken costs about as much as potatoes.
        lesuorac 5y ago
        How close do numbers need to be as much and what country? But I also imagine it can't be cheaper to buy X food and feed it to chicken to then eat the chicken compared to just eating X food. https://www.globalproductprices.com/Thailand/ https://www.globalproductprices.com/Thailand/
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      "Making sure people don't starve" means there has to be food. That doesn't just happen; someone has to grow it. The corn subsidy isn't about high fructose corn syrup, not really. It's fundamentally about growing more food than we need, so that, if something bad happens, we still have enough. > US produces enough raw food to satiate 10 billion people. I'm skeptical of that claim. Source?
      - Retric 5y ago
        I would also like to see that estimate it seems close, but not quite enough. “Overall production of corn in the U.S. was 15.1 billion bushels for 2021“ * 56 lb per Bushel / 10 billion people = 84.6 lb of corn per person is about 23% of the minimum calories needed per year. But corn is about 37% of all crop land. Fishing, cattle on grassland, and hunting etc might bump that a little, but ~5 billion seems like a better theoretical estimate and presumably lower in practice.
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      I wonder how much of our government's deep embrace of corn subsidies might have something to do with the fact that the Iowa Caucuses play such an outsized impact on our presidential elections. That, and how the Midwest has become more and more of a purple battleground region. I know it's not the biggest factor, but I can't help but think it has something to do with it.
      - actionfromafar 5y ago
        I always assumed as much. Constant fear of nuclear war is not what has made the corn subsidies constant.
    - kristjansson 5y ago
      I get that you're being a bit glib, but this sort of thinking is pervasive and bothersome so I'll choose to take it seriously. 'make people not starve' is a laudable _goal_. It's a state of the work we want to reach. 'Subsidize corn farming' is a _policy_, it's an intervention that has all sorts of intended and unintended effects on the state of the world. Under that policy, fewer people starve, but also there's more HFCS, some farmers make more money than the would, some make less in inequitable ways, etc. Regardless, if one thinks a policy isn't doing a good job achieving its intended goal, one can't just suggest achieving the goal as an alternative. If it was trivially attainable, why do we have government intervention and policies in pursuit of it? One has to articulate an alternative policy, or at least acknowledge that an alternative is necessary. Why, after all, is it the case that the US produces as much food as it does. Is it in spite of the prevailing farm policy? </rant>
      - colinmhayes 5y ago
        > One has to articulate an alternative policy Food stamps are the best way to ensure people don't starve, not specific crop subsidies.
        chucksta 5y ago
        That helps feed people who can't afford food, but doesn't make food available. Subsidies are insurance for farming risk, you can't use stamps on food they didn't grow.
        colinmhayes 5y ago
        > but doesn't make food available Yes it does. If people spend more money on food, food prices will go up, and more food will be grown.
        chucksta 5y ago
        It could make food available later. That is retroactive though, to use the stamp the food has to exist in the first place. It also doesn't relieve any risk to the farmer which is the point of the subsidy.
  - danans 5y ago
    There are also lifestyle shifts that can be made that are far less severe than starvation, like the Woodrow Wilson's WW1 proclamation for meatless Tuesdays and one meatless meal every day [1]. That would reduce pressure on supplies of basic cereal grains. It will also be interesting (if it happens) to see how substitutable other cereal grains are for wheat. One impact of globalization is that people are far less provincial in what they will eat than they used to be, so they could substitute more rice for wheat, for example. The thing there is no substitute for today is fertilizer, which is used at similar rates by all 3 main stable cereal crops, but rice and corn produce several times more calories per hectare than wheat [2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday#History 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-corn-the-worlds-most-important-food-crop/2015/07/12/78d86530-25a8-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-...
    - i_am_proteus 5y ago
      With some variance across cultivars, wheat has 50% more protein than maize and nearly double the protein of rice. Further, "feed corn" (maize) isn't really suitable for humans. Best way to turn it into calories for human consumption is to feed it to egglayers, after that it's broilers, then dairy cattle, then swine and beef cattle. Finally, changing a crop mixture is something that has a long lead time. Got to sow the fields a season in advance, at least. Rising price of wheat means that some of the land used for maize for this season will be wheat for next harvest. Market will take care of that. Won't have any food shortages in the USA, but could be rough in less agriculturally-capable parts of the world.
      - Isinlor 5y ago
        Why it isn't suitable for humans? To me it seems perfectly fine. It is certainly not the best food source, but it a subsistence. During famines in Finland people used to eat even bark, especially inner bark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_bread
        5y ago
  - jandrewrogers 5y ago
    Grains raised for animal feed or producing ethanol are commonly unfit for human consumption. Every crop is highly optimized for its intended end use. You can't take existing corn stocks beyond what is currently used in food and convert it into food, the varieties planted are not meant to be eaten by people. The supply chain that supports these crops is also optimized with assumptions about the end purpose. It would be possible to re-plant that land with edible crops but it is not fast or simple.
    - yellow_lead 5y ago
      Exactly. During covid, foods destined for restaraunts couldn't even be sold to consumers since the supply chains didn't exist in many cases.
      - Isinlor 5y ago
        If we were faced with famine even army could provide sufficient logistical support. The only problem during COVID was that it was not profitable. It was cheaper to dispose it than to try to sell it.
    - tomatotomato37 5y ago
      The biggest exporter of meat products is Brazil, which conversely also makes them a really big importer of feedstock. The amount of scenarios in which a European/Asian war could somehow affect trade between the Americas without also involving the apocalypse are very few.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    The corn is inedible it’s mostly for biofuel and feed stock
- spacebanana7 5y ago
  Anti-trust measures wouldn't necessarily help with supply chain fragility. If our markets were perfectly competitive with many participants, they'd have an even more 'efficient' supply side and the pressure to rely on the lowest cost - or highest quality - source would be even stronger. In such markets, a competitor whose source of goods is slightly cheaper that yours will almost instantly capture all of your market share, so there's little room to pick a high cost local producer (unless you have the capital buffer to sustain losses until your competitors suffer a supply chain shock). A monopolist would accrue greater short term profits by having a hyper efficient fragile supply chain. However, it's not obvious that the profit incentive of the monopolist is higher than the survival incentive of the competitive agent. Tariffs, quotas and local-bias regulation could help to localise supply chains in either market structure.
  - n4r9 5y ago
    Monopolies can implement efficiency gains and lock-in strategies that companies with less market share can't. For example, imagine grain being shipped across an ocean. Initially there are multiple shipping companies providing transport services, with their own models of ships and way of doing things. Over time, GrainMove Co buys out the other big players and becomes the main provider. In a bid for dominance, they buy up the ports on both sides so that competitors either have to pay exorbitant fees to dock, or build their own ports. They introduce a fleet of ships of the same model & capacity in order to streamline their logistics management. Then they start manufacturing container crates and modify the ships so that only their containers fit on them, forcing customers to also hire their containers in order to ship grain. There are now a number of weak points making the industry less robust. An unexpected fault or parts shortage for that specific type of ship. A sudden increase in demand for containers because a toxin from a disease of the grain means they can only be used once. All these are suddenly not just inconveniences that the market can adapt to, but major disruptions to the food chain.
- cogman10 5y ago
  This was a topic of a few Asimov books. In describing the big cities of earth, the more complicated and JIT nature of getting food where it needs to be meant that where previously an hour delay was tolerable, that minute delays could severely impact everyone with massive ripple effects. It seems like what we are seeing WRT the supply chain is the equivalent of putting more and more traffic on a road and gradually increasing the speed limit to deal with delivery bottle necks (rather than making new roads/routes). Of course, the issue is that whenever someone cuts someone else off or whatever, you create massive shockwaves which can pull everything from 90mph to 10mph. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M
- mhh__ 5y ago
  In the UK we also have a government which has absolutely zero interest in rigidity and plasticity of systems. Everything is done to the lowest bidder, even if that bidder has demonstrated no credible ability to do the job. This sets the standard for the whole nation in my opinion.
lnsru 5y ago
My granny was a statistician during Soviet times. She knows a lot about food supply chain on Europe. It didn’t change a lot during last decades. Now every day during our daily call she talks about bread and coming starvation. As article mentions wheat an fertilizers come from this conflict area. If Europe will not stop a war in Ukraine in coming 2-3 weeks… then doubling energy prices will look like a funny joke. There will be no bread and everything related in European supermarkets for a long time. Sounds really apocalyptic and sadly it is.
- NotOscarWilde 5y ago
  > If Europe will not stop a war in Ukraine in coming 2-3 weeks As a European (living in Poland), I have to take offense to your phrasing. How is it our war to stop? There is one big country that can stop this war, and it is not called "Europe". Everyone here in Central/Eastern Europe is trying to mitigate the damages, with donations, hospitality, volunteering. Of course, the possibility of a peace treaty being signed also remains, and there is a long debate whether this would be good for Ukraine, good for Europe as a whole, etc., but yet again -- this is not "Europe" that will sign it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Europe may starve if you don't. Not all duties are moral. Some are merely practical.
    - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
      Most of the EU will probably weather it just fine; some of the neighbors not so much. I think declaring war on Russia would have started to look fairly tempting by now, except for the fact that Russia is a nuclear power. Perhaps some sort of red-lining might yet be possible. ("Ok, ok, you've had your fun. We frankly don't care what your actual problem is, but this needs to be over before planting season. And no contaminating the soil either. Figure it out or else"). Before you do that though, you have to figure how much pain you're willing to tolerate before you take that risk-of-nuclear-apocalypse; just because a nuclear state leader is being stupid. I don't envy the people who need to make that particular call. :-/
downrightmike 5y ago
In the last 20 years, we've also added about four billion new people to the world, sitting at about 10b right now. 11b is the predicted max.
- dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 5y ago
  The UN estimates that there are about 7.9 billion people, up from about 6 billion in 1999. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard
- hervature 5y ago
  In the last 20 years, we've also added about two billion new people to the world, sitting at about 8B right now. 10B is the predicted max [1]. There, fixed it for you. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
sAbakumoff 5y ago
This article is a right-wing/russian propaganda that checks all the right boxes: - government spending is bad - sanctions are bad - china is our enemy
- Bostonian 5y ago
  The New York Post is right-wing (just at the New York Times is left-wing), but it is certainly not pro-Putin.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    The new york times is not left wing lmao. Liberal at most but even that is inconsistent. The american left is so weak and far from the centers of power y'all don't even know what it looks like anymore.
    - sAbakumoff 5y ago
      Agreed, NYT is a corporate puppet, and certainly not a left-wing actor.
  - sAbakumoff 5y ago
    right-wing is in love with putin. Trump openly praised putin. MTG openly criticized Biden for sending help to Ukraine. Right-wing lunatics DREAM about turning the USA to the oppressive state similar to putin's regime. Putin in love with right-wing. Russian propaganda shows fox news on the state TV. Why didn't putin invade Ukraine when trump was the president? John Bolton says that's because Trump was a useful idiot for Putin and that's so true. Trump did a lot to weaken NATO. Right-wing means WEAK America. And putin looves it.
    - eigenrick 5y ago
      Blindly attacking one side or the other, further creating a rift between the left and the right (or any groups within America) is the thing that Putin really wants. So congratulations. I'm not a right-winger, but I live in a very right-wing county, and talk to a lot of folks who are hardcore conservatives. Aside from Tucker Carlson, nobody on Faux News is pro Russia. Most of my conservative friends have labelled Carlson a traitor to America for his pro-Russia views and have proposed boycotting Faux News until he's removed. (sad overreaction, IMO, but whatever) They are so pro-Ukraine it's not even funny. And they point to Russia and China as the #1 reason why everyone in America should be investing in assault rifles. As far as they're concerned, the left is responsible for: * Wrecking the supply chain (via reactionary, and overly aggressive anti-work measures during the pandemic) * Causing rampant inflation (via ridiculous spending and quantitative easing) * Ruining our ability to manufacture goods domestically (by making it literally impossible to manufacture many necessary components such as fertilizer) * Driving widespread monopolization and centralization of industries (by making it impossible for small businesses to remain solvent during the pandemic (or previously)) * Making it impossible for people to defend themselves for no good reason (banning assault rifles, when they are responsible for 1/1000th of the deaths of handguns) So according to them, Left-wing means weak America, and Putin loves it. I think I wrapped up their current platform in a nutshell. I think most of those bullets are over simplifications, but my point is that is that both the left and the right have legitimate concerns and they both want what is best for America. It is important to remember that before blindly attacking a group of people.
whoomp12342 5y ago
so open a vege garden. If everyone does their part to grow more and buy less, no shortage, no problem. Even if you have an apartment, you can grow some simple things in pots if you have a window
- kbelder 5y ago
  >If everyone does their part to grow more and buy less, no shortage, no problem. I think that's understating the problem. Still, a very good idea. Victory gardens are always a good idea during wartime.
t0bia_s 5y ago
It is great opportunity for local food shops growing and supermarket stagnation. Well... Same like it was before corpo food chains. Just notice how pictures show empty supermarkets, not small shops. Those catastrophic news are quite annoying. No water, hot and fire everywhere, plagues, nuclear threats, war, no food... Give me a break, please. We are clever enough to deal with any problems that eventually come. Just do not give me simple soulutions for living.
taylodl 5y ago
A professor of law from the University of Tennessee pens an article about global economics with a lot of snide and insinuation but little in the way of anything actionable and it appears in the NY Post? Okay. What would this professor have us do instead? They never paint an alternative solution and contrast that alternative's pros and cons with the ones we have now. It's fair to ask whether the economic sanctions are worth it but that question is never asked and certainly not analyzed. I guess that would require too much work and so we're left with a hefty helping of snide instead.
tharne 5y ago
I don't if it's due to actual improvements in quality, or just the fact that every other media outlet is getting worse, but it seems like the quality of the reporting in the NY Post has been getting better in recent years. My own personal theory is that they're benefit from the fact that they don't need or even appear to want, the approval of polite society.
karmakurtisaani 5y ago
I find it somewhat annoying that the article comes off as hostile towards "green" policies, but fails to even mention the (technically) trivial solution: stop eating meat. How much farmland and resources does it take to raise a cow again?
- drukenemo 5y ago
  A grass-fed cow certainly consume fewer resources than most of the vegetables you eat, that generally requires diesel-based machines to crop, and lots of irrigation. Not to mention soil management that includes fertilizers and pesticides.
  - karmakurtisaani 5y ago
    And how many percentages of all cattle are of this grass fed type that consumes less resources than "most of the vegetables you eat"? Do they feed on grass pastures all year long or do they need, say, soy from Brazil during some time of the year?
    - drukenemo 5y ago
      More cows could be grass-fed. Because the percentage isn’t high, it does not mean we need to stop eating meat, but demand grass-fed cows. In the Netherlands it is pretty common to grain feed cattle, but there are also 100% grass-fed operations. It’s like saying let’s stop driving cars, because the majority run on petrol. No, let’s make cars electric then.
      - karmakurtisaani 5y ago
        The percentage of grass fed cows is probably low just because it's more expensive. This means it will stay low and the problem with eating meat will always be there. There simply is no way around it. Furthermore, it is intellectually more honest to focus on what is rather than what should be. Same problem with the cars: we will run out of rare battery materials before every car is electric. If you're one of the lucky ones who can buy their conscience clean, that's great. The rest will have to keep polluting. I'm not saying you should stop eating meat by the way. All I ask is accepting the facts.
carapace 5y ago
Kind of tangential but there's a group called "Ecology Action" that have developed what they call GROW BIOINTENSIVE® Sustainable Mini-Farming "that when practiced correctly, nurtures healthy soil fertility, produces high yields, conserves resources and can be used successfully by almost everyone." http://growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html http://growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html The system uses 5000ft² (465m²) per person, provides a nutritionally-complete diet, and builds topsoil volume and fertility over time. They're selling it but there's more than enough information to grok the system w/o paying (if you're broke or just cheap.) Quoting from the above link, the key points are: - Double-Dug, Raised Beds - Composting - Intensive Planting - Companion Planting - Carbon Farming - Calorie Farming - The Use of Open-Pollinated Seeds - A Whole-System Farming Method > Most life in nature occurs at the interface of soil, water, air and sun. GROW BIOINTENSIVE soil preparation practices create growing beds with more surface area to maximize the effect of nature’s life processes. Double-dug beds, with soil loosened to a depth of 24 inches, aerate the soil, facilitate root growth, and improve water retention. The health and vigor of the soil are maintained through the use of compost. Close plant spacing is used to protect soil microorganisms, reduce water loss, and maximize yields. Companion planting facilitates the optimal use of nutrients, light and water, encourages beneficial insects and creates a vibrant mini-ecosystem within the garden. A focus on the production of calories for the farmer and carbon for the soil ensures that both the farmer and the soil will be adequately fed and that the farm will be sustainable. The use of open-pollinated seeds helps to preserve genetic diversity and enables gardeners to develop their own acclimatized cultivars. All of the components of this system must be used together for optimum effect and to avoid depleting the soil.

75 points by Bostonian 5y ago

n4r9 5y ago

I've been reading Matt Stoller over the last couple of years, discussing how weak anti-trust enforcement is leading to consolidation and concentration in the market and a reliance on foreign exports in the name of efficiency. Mostly he focuses on the US but I suspect that similar things are happening in the UK. It leads to a fragile supply chain rife with bottlenecks and "just in time" links, overly reliant on imports and not robust to unexpected events like COVID or war in Europe. If you're interested here is some further reading: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/america-supply-chain-shortages https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/americ... https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/national-champs-or-national-chumps?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/national-champs-or-nation... https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/counterfeit-capitalism-why-a-monopolized?s=r https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/counterfeit-capitalism-wh...

actionfromafar 5y ago
That may be, but the massive corn subsidies in the US maybe can finally ful-fill their original purpose - protect against starvation in case of war.
- drekk 5y ago
  Or we could just... make sure people don't starve? Subsidizing corn is the worst, least direct way to do that. People don't need more high fructose corn syrup and most of that corn is going to feed or ethanol anyways. US produces enough raw food to satiate 10 billion people. The cost is not the issue
  - ben_w 5y ago
    The argument in favour of subsidies is not to generally reduce the cost to the consumer, it is to deliberately encourage overproduction most of the time so that even in bad years you’re still OK. I don’t have the domain knowledge to know if this is or isn’t the reality of any actual subsidy that really exists, all I can say is that the argument seems plausible.
    - yakak 5y ago
      Grain reserves store grain in adequate quality for at least a year so subsidizing massive overproduction doesn't make a lot of sense if a bad year is the only concern. IMO a lot of food security policy around overproduction is related to poverty, domestic hunger and international starvation in normal years. (Driving prices down is making food a smaller percentage of the economy, making it more affordable directly to people in poverty and easier to support food programs from charity/tax.)
      - Nasrudith 5y ago
        Stores don't help if someone else is willing to pay more for the grain as infamously demonstrated in famines in productive regions (Irish Potato Famine and Holodomor). Just reserves lead to speculation dynamics in shortages. There is always an expectation of the reserve running out and panics turn it self-fuffilling as infamously demonstrated by supply chain issues or possibility of snowfall. Increased production kills the expected future price.
        yakak 5y ago
        You seem to be talking about long term underproduction. In the Irish case, the subsistence farmers would have been devastated by a US overproduction even before a famine, similar to subsistence farmers in Africa and India today. Holodomor includes perpetual mismanagement and a political decision not to accept food help or really do anything. No amount of overproduction before Stalin would have prevented food being seized and then rotting in transit. Certainly it's the case that you need at least enough overproduction to drive prices down marginally and to restock a reserve if it is actually used, and make speculation not a sure bet.. I think current subsidies go beyond that and arguably don't work because all that overproduction drove innovations in making food fungible to energy (i.e. as ethenol) and energy is now a more retainable wealth as the major input to proof of work.
  - jkubicek 5y ago
    Subsidized corn has a massive effect on decreasing food prices. People may not need high fructose corn syrup, but they need food and a lot of food has corn syrup in it. Cheaper feed leads to cheaper meat. Cheaper ethanol leads to cheaper fuel which makes everything a little less expensive. I can't vouch for corn subsidies being the best way to lower prices, but it's certainly a powerful lever that decreases food prices across the board.
    - orthecreedence 5y ago
      > a lot of food has corn syrup in it Trash food. > Cheaper feed leads to cheaper meat. Great, don't eat meat. It's incredibly expensive, and not just monetarily. If we're facing a food shortage, corn seems like a really bad place to dump money.
      - ouid 5y ago
        In terms of calories per acre, corn is absolutely king. Chickens and pigs turn corn calories into meat calories at a ratio unreasonably close to 1:1, and feeding people without meat is very difficult.
        Isinlor 5y ago
        You have it backwards. Feeding people with meat is difficult. This is why meat is expensive and why people in less developed countries can't afford as much meat as Americans.
        ouid 5y ago
        Cow meat is expensive. Chicken costs about as much as potatoes.
        lesuorac 5y ago
        How close do numbers need to be as much and what country? But I also imagine it can't be cheaper to buy X food and feed it to chicken to then eat the chicken compared to just eating X food. https://www.globalproductprices.com/Thailand/ https://www.globalproductprices.com/Thailand/
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    "Making sure people don't starve" means there has to be food. That doesn't just happen; someone has to grow it. The corn subsidy isn't about high fructose corn syrup, not really. It's fundamentally about growing more food than we need, so that, if something bad happens, we still have enough. > US produces enough raw food to satiate 10 billion people. I'm skeptical of that claim. Source?
    - Retric 5y ago
      I would also like to see that estimate it seems close, but not quite enough. “Overall production of corn in the U.S. was 15.1 billion bushels for 2021“ * 56 lb per Bushel / 10 billion people = 84.6 lb of corn per person is about 23% of the minimum calories needed per year. But corn is about 37% of all crop land. Fishing, cattle on grassland, and hunting etc might bump that a little, but ~5 billion seems like a better theoretical estimate and presumably lower in practice.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I wonder how much of our government's deep embrace of corn subsidies might have something to do with the fact that the Iowa Caucuses play such an outsized impact on our presidential elections. That, and how the Midwest has become more and more of a purple battleground region. I know it's not the biggest factor, but I can't help but think it has something to do with it.
    - actionfromafar 5y ago
      I always assumed as much. Constant fear of nuclear war is not what has made the corn subsidies constant.
  - kristjansson 5y ago
    I get that you're being a bit glib, but this sort of thinking is pervasive and bothersome so I'll choose to take it seriously. 'make people not starve' is a laudable _goal_. It's a state of the work we want to reach. 'Subsidize corn farming' is a _policy_, it's an intervention that has all sorts of intended and unintended effects on the state of the world. Under that policy, fewer people starve, but also there's more HFCS, some farmers make more money than the would, some make less in inequitable ways, etc. Regardless, if one thinks a policy isn't doing a good job achieving its intended goal, one can't just suggest achieving the goal as an alternative. If it was trivially attainable, why do we have government intervention and policies in pursuit of it? One has to articulate an alternative policy, or at least acknowledge that an alternative is necessary. Why, after all, is it the case that the US produces as much food as it does. Is it in spite of the prevailing farm policy? </rant>
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      > One has to articulate an alternative policy Food stamps are the best way to ensure people don't starve, not specific crop subsidies.
      - chucksta 5y ago
        That helps feed people who can't afford food, but doesn't make food available. Subsidies are insurance for farming risk, you can't use stamps on food they didn't grow.
        colinmhayes 5y ago
        > but doesn't make food available Yes it does. If people spend more money on food, food prices will go up, and more food will be grown.
        chucksta 5y ago
        It could make food available later. That is retroactive though, to use the stamp the food has to exist in the first place. It also doesn't relieve any risk to the farmer which is the point of the subsidy.
- danans 5y ago
  There are also lifestyle shifts that can be made that are far less severe than starvation, like the Woodrow Wilson's WW1 proclamation for meatless Tuesdays and one meatless meal every day [1]. That would reduce pressure on supplies of basic cereal grains. It will also be interesting (if it happens) to see how substitutable other cereal grains are for wheat. One impact of globalization is that people are far less provincial in what they will eat than they used to be, so they could substitute more rice for wheat, for example. The thing there is no substitute for today is fertilizer, which is used at similar rates by all 3 main stable cereal crops, but rice and corn produce several times more calories per hectare than wheat [2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday#History 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-corn-the-worlds-most-important-food-crop/2015/07/12/78d86530-25a8-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-...
  - i_am_proteus 5y ago
    With some variance across cultivars, wheat has 50% more protein than maize and nearly double the protein of rice. Further, "feed corn" (maize) isn't really suitable for humans. Best way to turn it into calories for human consumption is to feed it to egglayers, after that it's broilers, then dairy cattle, then swine and beef cattle. Finally, changing a crop mixture is something that has a long lead time. Got to sow the fields a season in advance, at least. Rising price of wheat means that some of the land used for maize for this season will be wheat for next harvest. Market will take care of that. Won't have any food shortages in the USA, but could be rough in less agriculturally-capable parts of the world.
    - Isinlor 5y ago
      Why it isn't suitable for humans? To me it seems perfectly fine. It is certainly not the best food source, but it a subsistence. During famines in Finland people used to eat even bark, especially inner bark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_bread
      - 5y ago
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  Grains raised for animal feed or producing ethanol are commonly unfit for human consumption. Every crop is highly optimized for its intended end use. You can't take existing corn stocks beyond what is currently used in food and convert it into food, the varieties planted are not meant to be eaten by people. The supply chain that supports these crops is also optimized with assumptions about the end purpose. It would be possible to re-plant that land with edible crops but it is not fast or simple.
  - yellow_lead 5y ago
    Exactly. During covid, foods destined for restaraunts couldn't even be sold to consumers since the supply chains didn't exist in many cases.
    - Isinlor 5y ago
      If we were faced with famine even army could provide sufficient logistical support. The only problem during COVID was that it was not profitable. It was cheaper to dispose it than to try to sell it.
  - tomatotomato37 5y ago
    The biggest exporter of meat products is Brazil, which conversely also makes them a really big importer of feedstock. The amount of scenarios in which a European/Asian war could somehow affect trade between the Americas without also involving the apocalypse are very few.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  The corn is inedible it’s mostly for biofuel and feed stock
spacebanana7 5y ago
Anti-trust measures wouldn't necessarily help with supply chain fragility. If our markets were perfectly competitive with many participants, they'd have an even more 'efficient' supply side and the pressure to rely on the lowest cost - or highest quality - source would be even stronger. In such markets, a competitor whose source of goods is slightly cheaper that yours will almost instantly capture all of your market share, so there's little room to pick a high cost local producer (unless you have the capital buffer to sustain losses until your competitors suffer a supply chain shock). A monopolist would accrue greater short term profits by having a hyper efficient fragile supply chain. However, it's not obvious that the profit incentive of the monopolist is higher than the survival incentive of the competitive agent. Tariffs, quotas and local-bias regulation could help to localise supply chains in either market structure.
- n4r9 5y ago
  Monopolies can implement efficiency gains and lock-in strategies that companies with less market share can't. For example, imagine grain being shipped across an ocean. Initially there are multiple shipping companies providing transport services, with their own models of ships and way of doing things. Over time, GrainMove Co buys out the other big players and becomes the main provider. In a bid for dominance, they buy up the ports on both sides so that competitors either have to pay exorbitant fees to dock, or build their own ports. They introduce a fleet of ships of the same model & capacity in order to streamline their logistics management. Then they start manufacturing container crates and modify the ships so that only their containers fit on them, forcing customers to also hire their containers in order to ship grain. There are now a number of weak points making the industry less robust. An unexpected fault or parts shortage for that specific type of ship. A sudden increase in demand for containers because a toxin from a disease of the grain means they can only be used once. All these are suddenly not just inconveniences that the market can adapt to, but major disruptions to the food chain.
cogman10 5y ago
This was a topic of a few Asimov books. In describing the big cities of earth, the more complicated and JIT nature of getting food where it needs to be meant that where previously an hour delay was tolerable, that minute delays could severely impact everyone with massive ripple effects. It seems like what we are seeing WRT the supply chain is the equivalent of putting more and more traffic on a road and gradually increasing the speed limit to deal with delivery bottle necks (rather than making new roads/routes). Of course, the issue is that whenever someone cuts someone else off or whatever, you create massive shockwaves which can pull everything from 90mph to 10mph. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M
mhh__ 5y ago
In the UK we also have a government which has absolutely zero interest in rigidity and plasticity of systems. Everything is done to the lowest bidder, even if that bidder has demonstrated no credible ability to do the job. This sets the standard for the whole nation in my opinion.

lnsru 5y ago

My granny was a statistician during Soviet times. She knows a lot about food supply chain on Europe. It didn’t change a lot during last decades. Now every day during our daily call she talks about bread and coming starvation. As article mentions wheat an fertilizers come from this conflict area. If Europe will not stop a war in Ukraine in coming 2-3 weeks… then doubling energy prices will look like a funny joke. There will be no bread and everything related in European supermarkets for a long time. Sounds really apocalyptic and sadly it is.

NotOscarWilde 5y ago
> If Europe will not stop a war in Ukraine in coming 2-3 weeks As a European (living in Poland), I have to take offense to your phrasing. How is it our war to stop? There is one big country that can stop this war, and it is not called "Europe". Everyone here in Central/Eastern Europe is trying to mitigate the damages, with donations, hospitality, volunteering. Of course, the possibility of a peace treaty being signed also remains, and there is a long debate whether this would be good for Ukraine, good for Europe as a whole, etc., but yet again -- this is not "Europe" that will sign it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Europe may starve if you don't. Not all duties are moral. Some are merely practical.
  - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
    Most of the EU will probably weather it just fine; some of the neighbors not so much. I think declaring war on Russia would have started to look fairly tempting by now, except for the fact that Russia is a nuclear power. Perhaps some sort of red-lining might yet be possible. ("Ok, ok, you've had your fun. We frankly don't care what your actual problem is, but this needs to be over before planting season. And no contaminating the soil either. Figure it out or else"). Before you do that though, you have to figure how much pain you're willing to tolerate before you take that risk-of-nuclear-apocalypse; just because a nuclear state leader is being stupid. I don't envy the people who need to make that particular call. :-/

downrightmike 5y ago

In the last 20 years, we've also added about four billion new people to the world, sitting at about 10b right now. 11b is the predicted max.

dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 5y ago
The UN estimates that there are about 7.9 billion people, up from about 6 billion in 1999. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard
hervature 5y ago
In the last 20 years, we've also added about two billion new people to the world, sitting at about 8B right now. 10B is the predicted max [1]. There, fixed it for you. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

sAbakumoff 5y ago

This article is a right-wing/russian propaganda that checks all the right boxes: - government spending is bad - sanctions are bad - china is our enemy

Bostonian 5y ago
The New York Post is right-wing (just at the New York Times is left-wing), but it is certainly not pro-Putin.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  The new york times is not left wing lmao. Liberal at most but even that is inconsistent. The american left is so weak and far from the centers of power y'all don't even know what it looks like anymore.
  - sAbakumoff 5y ago
    Agreed, NYT is a corporate puppet, and certainly not a left-wing actor.
- sAbakumoff 5y ago
  right-wing is in love with putin. Trump openly praised putin. MTG openly criticized Biden for sending help to Ukraine. Right-wing lunatics DREAM about turning the USA to the oppressive state similar to putin's regime. Putin in love with right-wing. Russian propaganda shows fox news on the state TV. Why didn't putin invade Ukraine when trump was the president? John Bolton says that's because Trump was a useful idiot for Putin and that's so true. Trump did a lot to weaken NATO. Right-wing means WEAK America. And putin looves it.
  - eigenrick 5y ago
    Blindly attacking one side or the other, further creating a rift between the left and the right (or any groups within America) is the thing that Putin really wants. So congratulations. I'm not a right-winger, but I live in a very right-wing county, and talk to a lot of folks who are hardcore conservatives. Aside from Tucker Carlson, nobody on Faux News is pro Russia. Most of my conservative friends have labelled Carlson a traitor to America for his pro-Russia views and have proposed boycotting Faux News until he's removed. (sad overreaction, IMO, but whatever) They are so pro-Ukraine it's not even funny. And they point to Russia and China as the #1 reason why everyone in America should be investing in assault rifles. As far as they're concerned, the left is responsible for: * Wrecking the supply chain (via reactionary, and overly aggressive anti-work measures during the pandemic) * Causing rampant inflation (via ridiculous spending and quantitative easing) * Ruining our ability to manufacture goods domestically (by making it literally impossible to manufacture many necessary components such as fertilizer) * Driving widespread monopolization and centralization of industries (by making it impossible for small businesses to remain solvent during the pandemic (or previously)) * Making it impossible for people to defend themselves for no good reason (banning assault rifles, when they are responsible for 1/1000th of the deaths of handguns) So according to them, Left-wing means weak America, and Putin loves it. I think I wrapped up their current platform in a nutshell. I think most of those bullets are over simplifications, but my point is that is that both the left and the right have legitimate concerns and they both want what is best for America. It is important to remember that before blindly attacking a group of people.

whoomp12342 5y ago

so open a vege garden. If everyone does their part to grow more and buy less, no shortage, no problem. Even if you have an apartment, you can grow some simple things in pots if you have a window

kbelder 5y ago
>If everyone does their part to grow more and buy less, no shortage, no problem. I think that's understating the problem. Still, a very good idea. Victory gardens are always a good idea during wartime.

t0bia_s 5y ago

It is great opportunity for local food shops growing and supermarket stagnation. Well... Same like it was before corpo food chains. Just notice how pictures show empty supermarkets, not small shops. Those catastrophic news are quite annoying. No water, hot and fire everywhere, plagues, nuclear threats, war, no food... Give me a break, please. We are clever enough to deal with any problems that eventually come. Just do not give me simple soulutions for living.

taylodl 5y ago

A professor of law from the University of Tennessee pens an article about global economics with a lot of snide and insinuation but little in the way of anything actionable and it appears in the NY Post? Okay. What would this professor have us do instead? They never paint an alternative solution and contrast that alternative's pros and cons with the ones we have now. It's fair to ask whether the economic sanctions are worth it but that question is never asked and certainly not analyzed. I guess that would require too much work and so we're left with a hefty helping of snide instead.

tharne 5y ago

I don't if it's due to actual improvements in quality, or just the fact that every other media outlet is getting worse, but it seems like the quality of the reporting in the NY Post has been getting better in recent years. My own personal theory is that they're benefit from the fact that they don't need or even appear to want, the approval of polite society.

karmakurtisaani 5y ago

I find it somewhat annoying that the article comes off as hostile towards "green" policies, but fails to even mention the (technically) trivial solution: stop eating meat. How much farmland and resources does it take to raise a cow again?

drukenemo 5y ago
A grass-fed cow certainly consume fewer resources than most of the vegetables you eat, that generally requires diesel-based machines to crop, and lots of irrigation. Not to mention soil management that includes fertilizers and pesticides.
- karmakurtisaani 5y ago
  And how many percentages of all cattle are of this grass fed type that consumes less resources than "most of the vegetables you eat"? Do they feed on grass pastures all year long or do they need, say, soy from Brazil during some time of the year?
  - drukenemo 5y ago
    More cows could be grass-fed. Because the percentage isn’t high, it does not mean we need to stop eating meat, but demand grass-fed cows. In the Netherlands it is pretty common to grain feed cattle, but there are also 100% grass-fed operations. It’s like saying let’s stop driving cars, because the majority run on petrol. No, let’s make cars electric then.
    - karmakurtisaani 5y ago
      The percentage of grass fed cows is probably low just because it's more expensive. This means it will stay low and the problem with eating meat will always be there. There simply is no way around it. Furthermore, it is intellectually more honest to focus on what is rather than what should be. Same problem with the cars: we will run out of rare battery materials before every car is electric. If you're one of the lucky ones who can buy their conscience clean, that's great. The rest will have to keep polluting. I'm not saying you should stop eating meat by the way. All I ask is accepting the facts.

carapace 5y ago

Kind of tangential but there's a group called "Ecology Action" that have developed what they call GROW BIOINTENSIVE® Sustainable Mini-Farming "that when practiced correctly, nurtures healthy soil fertility, produces high yields, conserves resources and can be used successfully by almost everyone." http://growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html http://growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html The system uses 5000ft² (465m²) per person, provides a nutritionally-complete diet, and builds topsoil volume and fertility over time. They're selling it but there's more than enough information to grok the system w/o paying (if you're broke or just cheap.) Quoting from the above link, the key points are: - Double-Dug, Raised Beds - Composting - Intensive Planting - Companion Planting - Carbon Farming - Calorie Farming - The Use of Open-Pollinated Seeds - A Whole-System Farming Method > Most life in nature occurs at the interface of soil, water, air and sun. GROW BIOINTENSIVE soil preparation practices create growing beds with more surface area to maximize the effect of nature’s life processes. Double-dug beds, with soil loosened to a depth of 24 inches, aerate the soil, facilitate root growth, and improve water retention. The health and vigor of the soil are maintained through the use of compost. Close plant spacing is used to protect soil microorganisms, reduce water loss, and maximize yields. Companion planting facilitates the optimal use of nutrients, light and water, encourages beneficial insects and creates a vibrant mini-ecosystem within the garden. A focus on the production of calories for the farmer and carbon for the soil ensures that both the farmer and the soil will be adequately fed and that the farm will be sustainable. The use of open-pollinated seeds helps to preserve genetic diversity and enables gardeners to develop their own acclimatized cultivars. All of the components of this system must be used together for optimum effect and to avoid depleting the soil.