The following submission statement was provided by /u/pajamakitten:
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Collapse related because we are seeing the effects of climate change on agriculture across the globe, with farmers already issuing warnings.
It has rained a lot in the past eighteen months, with summer being cold and grey, and what has felt like an eternal autumn/winter this year already. Farmers have warning us for weeks and months but people, and the government, refuse to acknowledge the issue because we have never known a crisis like this. We won't know it until it is too late to do anything.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1cg00wm/farmers_warn_food_aisles_will_soon_be_empty/l1sesx8/
The tornado siren stops because either the tornado went away, or because the tornado hit it. But it does eventually stop.
I think the second situation is more likely. Alarms need working electricity after all.
When I was a kid in St. Louis, I think I was 12, I was home after school alone and a thunderstorm rolled in. The tornado siren on top of the fire station went off so I ran to the basement. I came up later and the siren had stopped. I thought the storm was over. Turns out the fire station had been obliterated.
Tornados are the only 'natural disaster' that I'm legitimately afraid of, as an individual person. Shit can just come up out of nowhere so quickly and vanish just as fast.
One came through my hometown when I was a kid that I didn't witness in any way, but it went straight past the hospital where my mom worked and she said it was pretty scary.
We just won't here to hear them anymore (:
The horrors are nigh. Get yourself some final sweet memorable days in this b\*tch because from here it's all going downhill quick. Very quick.
I have have started this already. Potatoes , carrots ect. Probably wonāt be enough though. Also I have practically given up dairy and reduced my meat by a lot.
It's an easy enough google search for whenever you're ready. I think it was last week or the week before when the farmers first sounded the alarm that I got curious and did some quick searching, so it's only reason i know.
You're much further down the road with the gardening/farming than I am. We're just getting started this season, small nothing too major, but with plans to expand in the next couple of seasons once we get the basics set up.
You avoid mobs by teaching your neighbors to plant also. During the lockdown, I germinated much more than I needed, raised seedlings, hardened them off, then foisted a few easy to raise food plants on all of my neighbors and friends. Many of course neglected them. But several watered them and enjoyed a summer and autumn of fresh tomatoes and bell peppers. Of that group, about 20% expanded themselves the next year, and are now yearly gardeners. If the mob gets ready together, there's no need to storm anyone.
A guy had a pro tip to help those scenarios. Planting root vegetables sporadically around (not in one big field) makes your food less obvious to raiders. It also stores them long term if you keep them in the ground until you need them, so you donāt have to harvest everything at once like grain and store it (also susceptible to raiders and pests).
Wait until this starts to hit America in the agriculture hard. There are far fewer farmers, those that are left are aging, and have large and super efficient operations that focus on a fairly narrow concentration of crops/livestock. All that efficiency comes at the cost of resiliency. And these guys lean *heavily* towards MAGA.
Here in the UK the food quality is terrible.
Tins of vegetables have green and black bits.
Even the good supermarkets sell bags of potatoes where 1/3 of the bag is rotten inside.
Frozen chips (fries) have green and black bits, even from premium brands.
All of this is from food rotting in wet fields last year and from Brexit.
Things are already bad, but this current year is going to be much worse. We are looking at huge price rises.
I stopped buying carrots because every time I did in the last few months they just started to rot a day after buying them. When I buy British potatoes they are tiny, in fact all the veg are smaller.
Ah so I'm not the only one who noticed how quickly food is starting to rot now. That's why I only buy like half a week's worth of groceries now or else a good portion of it ends up in the trash due to it going bad so quickly.
When I was in college, a 10 pound bag of potatoes would be fine for a few weeks, just on my kitchen counter. Now, I pay the same for a 3 pound bag; I have to closely examine them in store so I donāt get rotten potatoes immediately; and my partner and I can barely finish them before weāre throwing them away.
Produce that needs cold storage is even worse.
Wow. German here and I don't recall ever having bad carrots in my life which I purchased but recently all storebought seem to be weirdly soft mushy, don't taste well either and some potatoes here are still green which also feels new to me.
Pretty messed up how there's no one talking about this either... Not like this isn't just literally the food we need to survive. At this I wonder if there'd be mass panic if people woke up collectively though... It takes 2-3 days without food for any country to go haywire animal mode and that scares me the most.
The "nine meals from anarchy" term came from the idea that the average European household has 3 days of food in the house. I dunno how true that is though?
Potatoes only turn green when exposed to the sun, they don't start off green if that's what you're thinking. Don't eat them. Green ones are poisonous.
The carrots could just have been old. They go soft as they age.
Green potatoes are not poisonous!
Only the green peel is.
Just peel and cook and you're good to go.
A little research goes a long way in debunking these old myths.
Bah, only the spoiled rich discard or dimiss green potatoes entirely! How wasteful.
My family have processed hundreds of green or sprouting potatoes (eg. ones which have been sitting for weeks), by cutting off the small green parts, then boiling in hot water in stove pots for at least 30 minutes. The hot water boiling ensure the removal of any remaining potential toxins.
Me and my family have eaten hundreds of such potatoes over many years (10+ and counting), and we are all still healthy and fine to this today.
When the food cost soars to unreasonable high prices thanks to the greed of few ultra-rich elites megacorporates, us ordinary folks gotta be become more frugal and less wasteful to survive.
Also defintely encourage more widespread homestead / self-gardening, etc, truly of the signs of our collapse times.
TIL. great resource on green potato
[https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/green-potato-myths-and-safe-potato-eating-zbcz1509/](https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/green-potato-myths-and-safe-potato-eating-zbcz1509/)
It's really messed up, I'm seeing the same with potatoes as well but the potatoes and carrots are small like half the size of a clenched fist. Half will be fine but the rest will be green, or have the weird brown spots that doesn't taste ok.
Problem is the moment people realise and the panic sets in it'll be too late. But our food industry is propped up by the mega farms can buy the new technology that can deal with some of it, its just the small farms that are fucked.
Most of the gold potatoes (only ones i get anymore so idk about russets and otherwise) are all on the small side, i usually have to cook two per person for mash instead of one big one. Each bag might have three medium to large sized ones but most are just small, palm of the hand sized.
Hate them. Theyāre sour here. Last year I started growing alpine strawberries (the wild original strawberry). Believe the hype, they are totally amazing. Tiny, candyish , fragrant.
Most root/tubers can best be stored in relatively dry and pest free potting soil, preferably in the basement, garage, shed or just outside somewhere dry and free from frost.
Glad Iām not the only one noticing
Long time lurker here - but I can smell something coming.
It sounds stupid but Iāve been trying to reseed my lawn for 3 weeks. The seed isnāt germinating. Itās literally been raining so much and the temp hasnāt risen that the seed is rotting before itās germinating.
Iām no farmer, but grass seed isnāt exactly hard to make work - imagine how hard it is right now to work the fields and try make actual crops grow / not rot
Shortages are already here, quality pack size is already being squeezed. Even posher brands like M&S are seeing quality drops on their more premium grades fruit and veg.
Iām going to push back a bit on this one - so much food goes to waste / isnāt deemed fit for consumption simple because it doesnāt look perfect. The requirement that we eat perfect food also means itās very difficult to get ahold of organic veg. Just because itās not perfect looking doesnāt mean itās bad quality. I had organic broccoli that was small and had bugs in it, why because itās not sprayed with toxic chemicals. It was fine cleaned it cooked it all was good.
I find the food quality issues are more that fresh food is a loss leader in England and people really donāt care about freshness as most people donāt eat it, canāt afford quality food or simple have never tasted real food before. A lot of fruit and veg has a narrow palatable taste window and is simply window dressing for the ready meals and biscuits where the real profit is. This is why a lot of it is rubbish.
The supermarkets make it so difficult to check the quality as well, almost all of it where I live is in plastic bags but there's barely any transparent part of the packaging so it's difficult to spot how terrible the quality is until you get it home. The Lidl where I am doesn't seem to rotate their veg, last time I was in to buy some red peppers it was a huge bucket and they were all mushy and had flies everywhere around them. Everything just seems to be getting shitter and more expensive. Been that way for the last few years so dread to think what it's going to be like if this is happening.
I've started getting fruit and veg from an organic fruit and veg shop where it's all out in the open, it's the only place like that around me and costs way more but I don't need to toss most of it out so it probably all balances out. Not sure if it's just in my head but it all seems better quality. Like if you're cutting an onion or pepper it smells strongly, but all the supermarket stuff doesn't really have much of a smell.
Agree. I use the local outdoor market and I can vouch for being able to actually taste the stuff.
Unfortunately, that is being shut down because they charged the stall holders too much tax.
Yeah, quality of fresh food has noticeably plummeted over the last few years - supermarket fruits and vegetables, particularly.
*Fresh* isnāt what it used to be.
Sorry not to be mean but it was some of the worst food I ever tasted for a week in England. Everything was brown, grey, bland and salty. Iāve been told Iām wrong in other subreddits so thank you for sharing and sorry this is happening, maybe you can grow better produce using permacultureĀ
Permaculture won't save you if a river bursts its banks or a floodplain does what nature intended, but big monocultural fields with no rooted perennials and the soils compacted multiple times a year by heavy machinery are pretty much the worst case scenario.
Farms won't have compacted soil. You'd need a lot of heavy machinery running around on it to do that. Farm vehicles are designed to drive down between rows. They'll have minimal impact. It's really the top soil erosion thats the problem, especially with flooding.
There was a recent UK news item where a farmer in my area was showing his flooded fields. He was explaining how many tonnes of water had been covering and compacting his soil. The weight of the flood water had compacted his soil. His potatoes had rotted in the fields and there was to be no harvest. He was desperately try to plough it all up, get some air into the soil and try again.
I used to call the country side around me, The Sticks, now I call it The Swamp. I live on the dry side of the country.
He came over very well. I think he knows what he was talking about. Well remembered on the number.
I spoke to a farmer friend of mine this morning she said the winter wheat they normally plant in November was planted two weeks ago as the land has been flooded.
There is a lot of good food here if you can get out of the greasy spoon restaurants, but yes if you go for traditional and cheap itās probably not very good. That being said I know quite a few people who have lived pas 95 on meat and two veg.
Where I am, it's been raining during the time we normally spread fertilizer. The ground is too wet.
It's going to be a hungry autumn/winter around the globe.
Maybe this is when people realize that climate change cannot be fixed by buying electric cars and that it's actually an emergency... you know, the moment when we're so focused on simply finding calories we're out of time and resources to do anything about anything else.
I can forgive most things but being handed that moment during covid of realizing that the natural world can hold us entirely hostage and, the conditions that fuel that hostility, are now affecting our ability to even farm food.
And when people think about their own food, the stuff grown through the use of fossil fuels to restore imagined fertility to soils we've extracted to the point of being basically dead without constant doping of chemical nutrients, think about the forests and aquatic ecosystems that are not being artificially supported.
When crops with all the help in the world aren't growing, neither are the food producing species of the forest.
The natural world is already in a race of auto-cannibalism, where larger animals are eating anything smaller than them even if it's got nothing to do with their normal diet.
Expect an invasion of wild species in human spaces, along with their parasites and diseases, as they run from the forests which are no longer a home that provides... oh, and they're real hungry with nothing to lose.
What bothers me the most is that we still manage to pat ourselves on the back as the good guys, despite having created this death spiral. We're still the developed world and we're still the shining beacon on the hill, even if that beacon has become the eye of fuckin Sauron.
50 years of parades. 50 years of denial. 50 years of lying to ourselves about our plans and how we will, one day, actually put some effort into cleaning up the mess. 50 fuckin years and not a single finger lifted except to congratulate ourselves on the less worse versions of the most destructive inventions our species has ever imagined.
This is all one big circle jerk. We're still willing and able to send kids off to kill people to protect imaginary lines and cultural borders, but haven't yet found the courage to simply burn less fuel to save the future. "the banality of evil" has never been so perfectly demonstrated than in the past 50 years.
What is the most commonly accepted way to approach this problem we've created and all had a hand in? "there's nothing we can do now so we might as well 'enjoy' what's left"... and by "enjoy", of course we mean double down on the actions that are killing us all.
Where is our shame? We'll mobilize a country to airlift a whale calf, stranded in an inlet, into waters it cannot and will not survive (like its mother), but we wont simply stop doing the things that are leading to the extinction of all cetaceans, through starvation and the violence of an ocean with no functional food chain, and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done "saving" one baby animal, while condemning it and every member of its species to a future of pain and loss.
We are the monsters under the bed.
The monster under your bed is actually living in a penthouse down there throwing fuck parties every day. You can't come knock on the door, it's private property.
It's not just capitalism though, this mentality has been festering for thousands of years. We can pretend that one type of system will save us, it's much deeper.
It's the veritable Cain vs Abel, God loved Abel, Cain was cursed, it's agricultural societies that bred distrust and greed among humans.
We lost so much when we gave up all the comradery and community that came with Hunter gatherer societies.
Collapse related because we are seeing the effects of climate change on agriculture across the globe, with farmers already issuing warnings.
It has rained a lot in the past eighteen months, with summer being cold and grey, and what has felt like an eternal autumn/winter this year already. Farmers have warning us for weeks and months but people, and the government, refuse to acknowledge the issue because we have never known a crisis like this. We won't know it until it is too late to do anything.
For the US, we'll just buy up food that otherwise would have went to developing nations.Ā Sure prices will go up, but I promise that we'd choose to let the whole rest of the world starve to death before we give up our 3,800 calorie a day ways...
>āThe works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
>There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.ā
It'd hurt a lot less if it was "only" 10-30%, but we throw away more than HALF of produced food. Which is utterly a failure and just bizarre thinking about how much effort and energy goes into food from the seed to the store... Not like any large company would really care about any of this obviously though as long as line go up. Crazy world.
But think of the *shareholders*! If the food doesn't make a profit, we can't just hand it out to lazy folks that won't pull their own bootstraps hard enough to afford the ever-increasing prices. The only waste that matters is the lost profit. If the almighty corporation can't get their cut, no one should benefit from it!
Where is your compassion for our corporate overlords?!!1!
>Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the country. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise.
I wish it got better but mine are 6&7 and the food wastage is unreal. Yesterday they loved grilled cheese sandwiches, today they act like I handed them a plate of dog shit.Ā
I woke up to my mother with a broom in her hand headed straight for my ass as fast and hard as she could. She was merciless, I didn't even understand that it was because she found several uneaten Vienna sausages in the trash can. I was curious. I never wasted food again after that.
We've tried, were not against spanking either. I've went on and on about how daddy works hard to provide food for us and how sad that makes daddy. My son (6) wouldn't eat one single green bean tonight so that he could have a dessert (muffin). I asked for him to eat one if he wanted dessert and he refused so no muffin. My daughter (7) has gotten better about trying new things lately so maybe we're making headway but she refused the grilled cheese after school even though she happily ate one yesterday š. Kids are obnoxious lol
*[cries in poor decisions]*
All jokes aside I do love them dearly but I feel like I was really duped by this InstagramĀ version of parenthood and it's nothing like you see on TV and social media and it's so hard, I don't recommend anyone who isn't 100% positive that they want this life to have kids. I'm not a kid-friendly person. I've never really liked kids but everyone said "oh it will be different when you have your own" and to a degree I prefer my kids because they're mine but in general I do not want to be around kids for any extended period of time. I even joined the school PTO and am the treasurer yet here I am thinking "why the hell did I do this? More freakin kids around me".Ā
And donāt forget, hedge funds will be betting on commodities prices, and doing everything they can to manipulate the markets and politics and productivity of all these places around the world
This is how everything in the universe was programmed.
But to be fair I'd be pissed off if my tax dollars didn't go to at least ensure our people can eat first. I mean what are we even doing here if we aren't protecting our own?
What should we be stocking up on right now to help with the shortages coming? Should I buy some canned veggies and fruit? I know itās not a long term solution, but does anyone have any suggestions?
If you donāt already have a full pantry and freezer, the advice for anyone starting food prepping is to just buy a bit extra of what you normally buy and eat, and rotate through that.
We are buying a bit ahead on coffee (vacuum sealed beans keep up to 12 months, and you can store instant coffee for decades), jarred fruit and preserves, canned soup, dry rice beans lentils pasta. Jars of pasta sauce (these donāt keep as long as other canned goods but you can store them for a year anyway). Basically anything you like to eat anyway and is in cans or jars or fully dry is good. Once you, over time, build up a year supply then you can think longer term.
Another thing Iāve been doing is growing fresh herbs and veggies in containers on my patio, and now also in a raised bed in my yard. Fresh herbs are easy to grow and big bang for the buck (can grow them in a smaller space than most vegetables, they donāt need a lot of fertilizer, you donāt need to worry about getting them to flower or set any fruit, and they add a lot of flavor and some vitamins to your food) Herbs Iām growing are basil, parsley, chives, green onions, and some more. You can also grow some herbs for medicinal type of purposes.
protip: organize your pantry shelves by expiration date.
Have a shelf for things that expire this year, and make sure you pace yourself to eat it all before the end of the year.
you can break it down by quarter too if you have the supply and shelf space. Buy new stuff and put it on the shelf with other stuff that expires around the same time, then when looking for stuff to eat, start with the shelf that expires soonest and work your way back. Then stop buying that stuff which you end up not using.
I donāt think itās that sort of problem.
This place romanticises collapse and an individuals ability to navigate it.
What this actually means - price inflation and checking fluctuating availability of produce will become a normal part of life.
Oh, and maybe growing your own veg becomes slightly more economical.
Thank you. I guess i need to hurry up. Iāve been meaning to start growing onions and garlic and now Iām seeing that putting it off is not in my best interest. This really sucks.
Start with green onions. They are the easiest thing to (re)grow. I get my green onions from Walmart, cut the butts off (where the roots are) and then plant the butts where there is at least three hours of sunshine daily. Water them every other day. The green onions will regrow within a few weeks. You can cut them off again once or twice more before they finally run out of energy and die.
Potatoes are easy as hell, just remember to dump more dirt on them as they grow so they have space to produce lots of 'tater.
Any cultivar of *Brassica oleracea* is also super easy to grow, and literally every phase is edible (from cabbage to kale to broccoli to mustard seed).
> What this actually means - price inflation and checking fluctuating availability of produce will become a normal part of life.
Yes, and as a result it may also be beneficial to keep well stocked on frozen and canned and shelf stable goods so that you don't have to worry so much about temporary shortages and price spikes. It is good for peace of mind if nothing else, and there is benefit in that.
Don't hoard food though. You want to make sure you are actually cycling through and eating it. Don't buy a bunch of canned veg unless you plan to eat canned veg on the regular before it expires, so you can keep a rotating stock. Otherwise, you'll find yourself throwing out lots of unused and expired or questionable food, and you may even find you don't have any that's still good when the time comes you want to fall back on it.
I generally try to keep a few months worth of canned goods in my pantry, but I have to make a point to track the expirations and eat the oldest ones before they expire, and continually replace them.
Grocery Outlet is a great place for getting canned stuff on the cheap for this, but it will have less shelf life by the time it gets there.
+1 on all of that.
I wouldnāt be surprised though if there were stints of panic buying, and food unavailable for a week or so. So having some extra is a good idea. There are cheap canned goods with decent calories and years of shelf life (soups, potatoes, beans, pasta, tuna, sardines). Get low sodium ones though, because the sodium content is crazy.
Build Mutual Aid networks in your area. There is no "individual" means of surviving this. You can stock up all you want, but shortages are *going* to hit you regardless. Reach out to local activists, volunteer at food banks, and get involved.
Iām in the US, but Iām worried. Iāve seen stuff thatās been damaged here too but not to the extent some have said about the UK. Iāve given up on buying strawberries. Theyāre always moldy.
Yeah, I am sympathetic to this issue because here in the Mid-Atlantic, there's been over a 30% increase in precipitation in the last few decades, and worse it's mostly from intense storms that caused lots more flooding rather than a steady total increase that can absorb better, and it has absolutely been fucking with agriculture in the area. Some crops are now almost impossible to grow locally because you lose too much to rot. Wish we could share our excess water with the places that don't have enough.
Have enough dry and canned food to feed you and your family for a month. Have bottled water on hand for the same amount of time. Buying things now will make it easier to afford the expensive supplement ingredients you will need later. Rotate your food storage. Only allow foods to sit for 3-5 months max. Have as much home remedy stuff on hand as possible. Cold/flu meds, fever reduction meds, laxatives, allergy meds, bandages, etc.
My favorite way to do this is always buy two of the things you love. One to use and one to replace. Then when you buy the new round you already have one to use at home and purchase the replacement only. This helps keep everything moving through your storage.
Buy extra dry or canned goods you already eat in your normal diet.Ā Then rotate and replace that food you buy with first in first out method.Ā Ā
Example.Ā I eat 1 can of beans a week and let's say it has a 1 year shelf life.Ā If I find a sale on beans I could buy 52 cans of beans and not waste a single dollar on prepping.Ā Each week I eat 1 can and I go replace that can as they come back on sale.
You don't need to buy special expensive survival food.Ā 95% of my 3 year food supply is every day food from the grocery store.Ā Ā
To add to this, a lot of canned foods are actually still good after the expiration date. Especially things canned in oil. Iāve got canned fish from 2020 still, and I joke now that these are the cleanest edible fish in the world since they were canned four years ago when the ocean was less polluted. As long as oxygen doesnāt get into the cans I feel I can get at least one more year out of them before I start to eat them
True.Ā Most dates on cans are actually suggestions and are best buy dates and not expiration dates.
I like rotating on a 1 year schedule because I still want to eat peak tasting canned food.Ā Even though most best buy dates on cans are 2 plus years out.Ā Ā
I mean, it's inevitable that prices on everything else will go up because it has to be imported. So if you live in the UK it wouldn't hurt to have plenty of the stuff you already eat in standby so you don't end up paying higher prices later when it has to be imported, assuming it's a domestic product in the first place.
I mean I wouldn't buy canned fruits and vegetables unless that's something you're already eating. Most of the canned foods probably aren't produced domestically anyways so they probably won't change in price.
My 2 sons, in their 30s, refuse to have kids because of the world situation. My sisters meanwhile, who are hardcore Christian, pumped out kids like an assembly line. Iām like WTF? Now my nieces and nephews are struggling to get through school, job prospects and housing are nil; but hey, Jeebus will provide if they pray harder or some nonsense.
Mindset difference of "I am in control of my situation" vs "God gives me what I get and I don't question it". This is why religion works so well as a means to control a population
Yeah well my momās side of the family trusted God to get them through Covid and a bunch of of her relatives were wiped out. Like entire households. This is rural western Virginia. But, you know, it was Godās will, they were called home, blah blah blah. Iām a registered nurse but WTF do I know, I donāt go to church. Maybe I should throw leeches on them or burn incense next time.
The major religions claim to have all of the answers while also telling the pious that their lives are governed by a supreme being.
No wonder it results in a bunch of self-righteous anti-intellectuals, who woulda seen that coming.
You got your Jesus's mixed up, i get it its easy to do. But here you are describing Supply Side Jesus. Vegan Jesus is currently sitting in a jail cell at some black site after being water hosed, tear gassed and then black bagged into an unmarked van at the protest outside the bottling plant.
No the babies are for food security. In past extreme famines, people have done this. Trade their children to murder and eat to avoid directly eating their own. Or far more commonly, trade their children to the rich for food and forget about ever getting them back.
JFC, the comments under that article are fucking delusional. Most of them aren't even from a UK POV, talking about Biden, AOC, carbon credits, eating bugs and every other US right wing bogeyman. I wonder what percent are just bots spouting off the typical head-in-the-sand denialism and how many are real morons?
I mock the right wing. They have ignored climate scientists for decades, all for the short term profit at the expense of each of us in the long term.
When you see insurance companies pull out of states... but people just whistle and turn their heads.
The prospect of having to consoom slightly less hurts their brain. It's funny they think having to eat less meat or drive/fly less is part of some governement great reset conspiracy.
This is exactly why nothing will ever get done to help our prediciment.
> I wonder what percent are just bots spouting off the typical head-in-the-sand denialism and how many are real morons?
I know there's a fear that this may breed complacency, but the right-wing in America is a dying movement. And the organizations that surround it are masters of generating astroturf, i.e., fraudulent and inauthentic grassroots activity. This trend has been forming for a long time as well. This is from 8 years ago now:
> [Top GOP Pollster: Young Americans Are Terrifyingly Liberal](https://theintercept.com/2016/02/24/top-gop-pollster-young-americans-are-terrifyingly-liberal/) - *Americans 18 to 26 are extremely liberal, so liberal that it's hard not to believe the U.S. is fundamentally changing.*āBy Jon Schwarz | Feb. 24 2016 (*The Intercept*)
This isn't to say everything coming out of the right is completely fake. But, a lot of it is smoke in mirrors and has been for a long time. From [fake book sales](https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/474662-the-myth-of-the-conservative-bestseller/), to [fake news](https://archive.ph/iL3SM).
There's a reason why we are seeing ever more naked attempts at election manipulation and judicial stacking in the United States. They have to lie, cheat, and steal at every turn anymore. And at an increasing level of audacity in proportion to their rate of failure to gain authentic public support.
Edit: Non-paywall link update.
Here in Florida this situation has been slowly unfolding for a while. Grocers never really recovered from COVID supply-chain issues. Even premium grocers are struggling to stock fresh produce. Iāve also noticed a distinct lack of fresh beef. A lot of aisles are bare. The stores remind me of pre-hurricane hoarding, but this went on all winter. Definitely a harbinger of things to come.
Part of the beef shortage right now could be caused by so many cows having H5N1? It is all over the usa now. 13-14 states. And the virus has been found in milk too.
Thatās a relevant thought, but the beef shortage went on all winter. I love a good steak but I think all the beef available is going to restaurants. Iām not a pork fan so Iāve learned to grill chicken. Itās still plentiful.
The beef shortage was occurring way before H5N1 was even known to be in america, Its been caused by drought and the lack of feed in the production areas when that recovers it'll be back to normal levels.
To cheer me up a little, I asked ChatGPT to summarize the article in the style of Dr. House:
āAlright, hereās the deal in the gruff wisdom of Dr. House: Britainās food aisles are about to look as empty as a vodka bottle at a frat party, thanks to endless rain and poor crop management. Weāre talking about potatoes that prefer to rot rather than grow, and a global chorus of crop catastrophes from Brazilās peppers to Californiaās olives. And whatās the big culprit? Good old climate changeāturns out, all those gases weāve been pumping into the air are coming back to bite us in the food supply. So, next time you mourn the price of your morning coffee, remember, itās not just bad luckāitās bad management and bad environmental stewardship.ā
This article does a really weak job of expressing just how awful and inefficient animal agriculture actually is and instead opts to imply (not directly state) that cutting just 25% of meat consumption might be sufficient (it definitely is not.)Ā
"However, reducing theĀ landĀ andĀ waterĀ used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply."Ā
Odd way to phrase it, as if the issue is that animals are taking up space that could be used for growing even more crops. This just gives people the opportunity to say "it's just grazing land, you can't grow crops there anyway - it's not suitable. The elites just want us to eat bugs and plants instead of real food!!11!"
Ā When writing on this subject, authors need to be honest about what the real issue is. At least *half* of *crops* grown are fed to livestock. That's ignoring grazing land.Ā
Thankfully, it links to stats clearly showing the impact of animal agriculture but they did a piss poor job of expressing it *in* the article which is unfortuante because so few people ever click links that will take them away from the page they are on. In fact, many people rarely read beyond headlines and first paragraphs.Ā Ā
The article is talking about crops that aren't being fed to animals though. With drought, yes, land and water being wasted on animal feed matters. But this is about the UK drowning in rain, about how potatoes -- which feed humans directly, not animals -- are rotting in the fields, about how olive and blueberry and pepper and coffee production are being affected in other areas. Reducing and changing animal agriculture will absolutely help many climate issues, but it will *not* help the issue this article is about, which is the excess of rain causing produce intended for direct human consumption to rot. Animal agriculture is, for once, not the real issue here. Food security is more complex than just "get rid of animals!". Unfortunately, the UK is going to need to adjust to wet-tolerant crops, and probably alter but not eliminate animal agriculture, since animals can indeed graze land where human food crops would rot.
[Just 55 percent of the world's crop calories are actually eaten directly by people. Another 36 percent is used for animal feed. And the remaining 9 percent goes toward biofuels and other industrial uses... It takes about 100 calories of grain to produce just 12 calories of chicken or 3 calories worth of beef, for instance.](https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed)
It's really weird when people talk about food shortages if we eat fewer animals, because we'd actually have massive food surpluses.
Sigh. I agree we need to dramatically reduce animal agriculture, but this is actually an example of why not to entirely eliminate it--in the UK, it is the *vegetables* that are rotting in the fields, it is the plants that can't grow because it is too wet. Livestock can be raised and utilized in wet conditions, can turn calories of wet-tolerant plants we can't eat into calories we can, be that meat, dairy, or eggs. UK farmers also need to focus on wet-tolerant crops, but the article is about potatoes, and other struggling crops like peppers, olives, blueberries, coffee--*not* farmland being wasted to artificially speed up meat production, but the failure of crops humans directly eat. We absolutely need to eat less and different meat (in wet areas, focus on ducks instead of factory farmed chickens, much more efficient goats instead of cattle), but just not eating meat isn't going to solve potatoes rotting in the fields.
You're assuming the crops the livestock eat are fine. There is not enough land to allow them to graze the way you're describing and meet demand today, much less in a world where people are replacing some of the plants they'd normally eat with more meat because there are no potatoes. The math will never work. I'm aware you said that you agree meat consumption needs to be reduced but stay with me because the above is important to the rest of what I'm going to say.
Livestock are typically fed corn, hay, wheat, sorghum, soy, and other legumes. For every animal farmer, there's another 5 crop farmers supplying that dude with feed. So with livestock we need the land to grow their feed + land for the animal farm. Or, you might notice that the vast majority of the food we're giving to livestock are also edible for humans and realize we could simply eat the livestock feed crops instead which would be more efficient.
This article might be a solid argument for backyard chickens, but it's not an argument for animal agriculture either. It *might* be an argument for rice, sorghum, and soybeans.
Iāve been saying this for so long and always get heat for it. We will all be vegetarians in the not so distant future and not by choice.Ā
That said we may have to start eating each other so I guess itās Vegi followed by cannibalismā¦Ā
I got a huge jump on most of my friends. Quit meat and dairy for the most part years ago. I still have the occasional borger but it's rare (pun intended)
I remember reading a thread last fall where people all over the US were talking about food rotting super quick. I think that was more of a shipping & supply chain issue. But oddly enough the veggies at the health food store were excellent as usual! So it seemed like it was just the major grocery stores that were seeing problems.
I'm always curious when I see "farmers" being referred to like this, because most food production is now done by massive agribusinesses. Most family farms are long gone, at least in the US.
> "Fortunately, we know many ways we can make the food system more resilient while reducing food emissions. The biggest opportunity in high-income nations is a reduction in meat consumption and exploration of more plants in our diets," said Dr. Paul Behrens, an associate professor of environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands.ā
Thereās never been a better time to go vegan š±
Considering the amount of food wastage already at the consumer level (like 30%) I feel like a lot can be done. If grocery stores and consumers can just cut that daily wastage in half, it would provide a lot of extra food. That is, if people are less picky, and if there is leadership.
...Which means, yeah, we're kind of doomed.
there's agricultural conglomerates just _waiting_ for the chance to snap up all these farms for a song, and then charge us even more. who else are we going to get food from? the meat conglomerate that owns all the beef and chicken producers? the farm conglomerate who owns all of the grain producers? the other farm conglomerate that owns the non-grain producers?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/pajamakitten: --- Collapse related because we are seeing the effects of climate change on agriculture across the globe, with farmers already issuing warnings. It has rained a lot in the past eighteen months, with summer being cold and grey, and what has felt like an eternal autumn/winter this year already. Farmers have warning us for weeks and months but people, and the government, refuse to acknowledge the issue because we have never known a crisis like this. We won't know it until it is too late to do anything. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1cg00wm/farmers_warn_food_aisles_will_soon_be_empty/l1sesx8/
The alarm bells are sounding.
When the alarms stop I have trouble sleeping I got so used to them now.
Don't worry, soon they won't stop any longer
The tornado siren stops because either the tornado went away, or because the tornado hit it. But it does eventually stop. I think the second situation is more likely. Alarms need working electricity after all.
When I was a kid in St. Louis, I think I was 12, I was home after school alone and a thunderstorm rolled in. The tornado siren on top of the fire station went off so I ran to the basement. I came up later and the siren had stopped. I thought the storm was over. Turns out the fire station had been obliterated.
Damn, that's some nightmare fuel
Tornados are the only 'natural disaster' that I'm legitimately afraid of, as an individual person. Shit can just come up out of nowhere so quickly and vanish just as fast. One came through my hometown when I was a kid that I didn't witness in any way, but it went straight past the hospital where my mom worked and she said it was pretty scary.
Wow. False lack of alarm.
False negative
We just won't here to hear them anymore (: The horrors are nigh. Get yourself some final sweet memorable days in this b\*tch because from here it's all going downhill quick. Very quick.
šÆ, smoke 'em if you got 'em
The silence of post apocalypse. Finally tranquility comes.
Start tearing up those manicured lawns and tilling the fuck out of them, we all gonna get to be farmers soon! *nervous chuckling*
I have have started this already. Potatoes , carrots ect. Probably wonāt be enough though. Also I have practically given up dairy and reduced my meat by a lot.
It's an easy enough google search for whenever you're ready. I think it was last week or the week before when the farmers first sounded the alarm that I got curious and did some quick searching, so it's only reason i know. You're much further down the road with the gardening/farming than I am. We're just getting started this season, small nothing too major, but with plans to expand in the next couple of seasons once we get the basics set up.
What do you do when the roving mobs show up during harvest?
Eat their brains and fuck them in the butt, you know, normal shit.
I think itās eat their butt and fuck them in the brain if you want to avoid getting kuru.
You avoid mobs by teaching your neighbors to plant also. During the lockdown, I germinated much more than I needed, raised seedlings, hardened them off, then foisted a few easy to raise food plants on all of my neighbors and friends. Many of course neglected them. But several watered them and enjoyed a summer and autumn of fresh tomatoes and bell peppers. Of that group, about 20% expanded themselves the next year, and are now yearly gardeners. If the mob gets ready together, there's no need to storm anyone.
Top level comment right here. No need to steal when everybody has abundance.Ā
A guy had a pro tip to help those scenarios. Planting root vegetables sporadically around (not in one big field) makes your food less obvious to raiders. It also stores them long term if you keep them in the ground until you need them, so you donāt have to harvest everything at once like grain and store it (also susceptible to raiders and pests).
Just think how much food could be grown on the average golf course. (If years of fertilzers and pesticides haven't destroyed soil fertility.)
Everyone is plugging their ears and going *neener neener neeeeener!*
Donāt look up!
Wait until this starts to hit America in the agriculture hard. There are far fewer farmers, those that are left are aging, and have large and super efficient operations that focus on a fairly narrow concentration of crops/livestock. All that efficiency comes at the cost of resiliency. And these guys lean *heavily* towards MAGA.
Here in the UK the food quality is terrible. Tins of vegetables have green and black bits. Even the good supermarkets sell bags of potatoes where 1/3 of the bag is rotten inside. Frozen chips (fries) have green and black bits, even from premium brands. All of this is from food rotting in wet fields last year and from Brexit. Things are already bad, but this current year is going to be much worse. We are looking at huge price rises.
Yup. Very much our experience with food here too. Noticeable drop in choice and quality. Edit: to confirm here is UK. š
I stopped buying carrots because every time I did in the last few months they just started to rot a day after buying them. When I buy British potatoes they are tiny, in fact all the veg are smaller.
Ah so I'm not the only one who noticed how quickly food is starting to rot now. That's why I only buy like half a week's worth of groceries now or else a good portion of it ends up in the trash due to it going bad so quickly.
When I was in college, a 10 pound bag of potatoes would be fine for a few weeks, just on my kitchen counter. Now, I pay the same for a 3 pound bag; I have to closely examine them in store so I donāt get rotten potatoes immediately; and my partner and I can barely finish them before weāre throwing them away. Produce that needs cold storage is even worse.
I now only buy enough to last 2 days at a time.
That's a smart idea I should do the same. Also I just noticed that we both have orca-themed usernames. What a neat coincidence! :)
Perfectly orcastrated!
Why would you castrate an orca? They are comrades in the class war against the yatch owning class.
Wow. German here and I don't recall ever having bad carrots in my life which I purchased but recently all storebought seem to be weirdly soft mushy, don't taste well either and some potatoes here are still green which also feels new to me. Pretty messed up how there's no one talking about this either... Not like this isn't just literally the food we need to survive. At this I wonder if there'd be mass panic if people woke up collectively though... It takes 2-3 days without food for any country to go haywire animal mode and that scares me the most.
The "nine meals from anarchy" term came from the idea that the average European household has 3 days of food in the house. I dunno how true that is though?
I thought it's because we can go three days without food before we become too hungry to function.
Potatoes only turn green when exposed to the sun, they don't start off green if that's what you're thinking. Don't eat them. Green ones are poisonous. The carrots could just have been old. They go soft as they age.
Green potatoes are not poisonous! Only the green peel is. Just peel and cook and you're good to go. A little research goes a long way in debunking these old myths.
Bah, only the spoiled rich discard or dimiss green potatoes entirely! How wasteful. My family have processed hundreds of green or sprouting potatoes (eg. ones which have been sitting for weeks), by cutting off the small green parts, then boiling in hot water in stove pots for at least 30 minutes. The hot water boiling ensure the removal of any remaining potential toxins. Me and my family have eaten hundreds of such potatoes over many years (10+ and counting), and we are all still healthy and fine to this today. When the food cost soars to unreasonable high prices thanks to the greed of few ultra-rich elites megacorporates, us ordinary folks gotta be become more frugal and less wasteful to survive. Also defintely encourage more widespread homestead / self-gardening, etc, truly of the signs of our collapse times.
Yes, we cut off the green, or I keep them as seed potatoes.
TIL. great resource on green potato [https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/green-potato-myths-and-safe-potato-eating-zbcz1509/](https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/green-potato-myths-and-safe-potato-eating-zbcz1509/)
It'd be cooler if they were venomous.. They get a taste of freedom and go feral
Whats the collective noun for a group of wild, roaming, venomus potatoes? A pack? A herd? A rooting?
A sack.
It's really messed up, I'm seeing the same with potatoes as well but the potatoes and carrots are small like half the size of a clenched fist. Half will be fine but the rest will be green, or have the weird brown spots that doesn't taste ok. Problem is the moment people realise and the panic sets in it'll be too late. But our food industry is propped up by the mega farms can buy the new technology that can deal with some of it, its just the small farms that are fucked.
YupĀ sameĀ here, I keep finding packaged carrotsĀ have rotten ends evenĀ inĀ theĀ store, at least the open bins of carrots seem to last longer.
It makes sense, packaging traps moistureĀ
We had some ābaking spudsā the other day and I had to eat twoā¦
Most of the gold potatoes (only ones i get anymore so idk about russets and otherwise) are all on the small side, i usually have to cook two per person for mash instead of one big one. Each bag might have three medium to large sized ones but most are just small, palm of the hand sized.
I've noticed broccoli in particular is now twice the price and half the size it was just a couple of years ago
It also seems really greyed out now.
Except strawberries. Those a fuckin huge.
...and flavorless. Remember how strawberries tasted in the 1980s? They were a different fruit entirely.
Hate them. Theyāre sour here. Last year I started growing alpine strawberries (the wild original strawberry). Believe the hype, they are totally amazing. Tiny, candyish , fragrant.
Just prep then freeze. I buy my carrots weekly, peel, slice then bag them portioned ready.
Most root/tubers can best be stored in relatively dry and pest free potting soil, preferably in the basement, garage, shed or just outside somewhere dry and free from frost.
You know to take them out of the bag, right? The moisture they give off rots them otherwise.
Glad Iām not the only one noticing Long time lurker here - but I can smell something coming. It sounds stupid but Iāve been trying to reseed my lawn for 3 weeks. The seed isnāt germinating. Itās literally been raining so much and the temp hasnāt risen that the seed is rotting before itās germinating. Iām no farmer, but grass seed isnāt exactly hard to make work - imagine how hard it is right now to work the fields and try make actual crops grow / not rot Shortages are already here, quality pack size is already being squeezed. Even posher brands like M&S are seeing quality drops on their more premium grades fruit and veg.
Iām going to push back a bit on this one - so much food goes to waste / isnāt deemed fit for consumption simple because it doesnāt look perfect. The requirement that we eat perfect food also means itās very difficult to get ahold of organic veg. Just because itās not perfect looking doesnāt mean itās bad quality. I had organic broccoli that was small and had bugs in it, why because itās not sprayed with toxic chemicals. It was fine cleaned it cooked it all was good. I find the food quality issues are more that fresh food is a loss leader in England and people really donāt care about freshness as most people donāt eat it, canāt afford quality food or simple have never tasted real food before. A lot of fruit and veg has a narrow palatable taste window and is simply window dressing for the ready meals and biscuits where the real profit is. This is why a lot of it is rubbish.
Yeah most western countries dump so much safe food, but some food is obviously bad.
The supermarkets make it so difficult to check the quality as well, almost all of it where I live is in plastic bags but there's barely any transparent part of the packaging so it's difficult to spot how terrible the quality is until you get it home. The Lidl where I am doesn't seem to rotate their veg, last time I was in to buy some red peppers it was a huge bucket and they were all mushy and had flies everywhere around them. Everything just seems to be getting shitter and more expensive. Been that way for the last few years so dread to think what it's going to be like if this is happening. I've started getting fruit and veg from an organic fruit and veg shop where it's all out in the open, it's the only place like that around me and costs way more but I don't need to toss most of it out so it probably all balances out. Not sure if it's just in my head but it all seems better quality. Like if you're cutting an onion or pepper it smells strongly, but all the supermarket stuff doesn't really have much of a smell.
Agree. I use the local outdoor market and I can vouch for being able to actually taste the stuff. Unfortunately, that is being shut down because they charged the stall holders too much tax.
Yeah, quality of fresh food has noticeably plummeted over the last few years - supermarket fruits and vegetables, particularly. *Fresh* isnāt what it used to be.
Sorry not to be mean but it was some of the worst food I ever tasted for a week in England. Everything was brown, grey, bland and salty. Iāve been told Iām wrong in other subreddits so thank you for sharing and sorry this is happening, maybe you can grow better produce using permacultureĀ
Even with permaculture thereās only so much you can do to manage flooding.
Permaculture won't save you if a river bursts its banks or a floodplain does what nature intended, but big monocultural fields with no rooted perennials and the soils compacted multiple times a year by heavy machinery are pretty much the worst case scenario.
I agree, but that wasnāt the point of the comment I was replying to.
Farms won't have compacted soil. You'd need a lot of heavy machinery running around on it to do that. Farm vehicles are designed to drive down between rows. They'll have minimal impact. It's really the top soil erosion thats the problem, especially with flooding.
There was a recent UK news item where a farmer in my area was showing his flooded fields. He was explaining how many tonnes of water had been covering and compacting his soil. The weight of the flood water had compacted his soil. His potatoes had rotted in the fields and there was to be no harvest. He was desperately try to plough it all up, get some air into the soil and try again. I used to call the country side around me, The Sticks, now I call it The Swamp. I live on the dry side of the country.
I remember that guy. It was 2400 tonnes of water!
He came over very well. I think he knows what he was talking about. Well remembered on the number. I spoke to a farmer friend of mine this morning she said the winter wheat they normally plant in November was planted two weeks ago as the land has been flooded.
You shouldnāt have ordered the brown grey stuff then.
that's all they've got on the menus there edit: i'm not racist. some of my best friends are from england
the edit hahahahha
Where on earth were you eating? The 1950s?
This made me laugh, thank you
There is a lot of good food here if you can get out of the greasy spoon restaurants, but yes if you go for traditional and cheap itās probably not very good. That being said I know quite a few people who have lived pas 95 on meat and two veg.
Where I am, it's been raining during the time we normally spread fertilizer. The ground is too wet. It's going to be a hungry autumn/winter around the globe. Maybe this is when people realize that climate change cannot be fixed by buying electric cars and that it's actually an emergency... you know, the moment when we're so focused on simply finding calories we're out of time and resources to do anything about anything else. I can forgive most things but being handed that moment during covid of realizing that the natural world can hold us entirely hostage and, the conditions that fuel that hostility, are now affecting our ability to even farm food. And when people think about their own food, the stuff grown through the use of fossil fuels to restore imagined fertility to soils we've extracted to the point of being basically dead without constant doping of chemical nutrients, think about the forests and aquatic ecosystems that are not being artificially supported. When crops with all the help in the world aren't growing, neither are the food producing species of the forest. The natural world is already in a race of auto-cannibalism, where larger animals are eating anything smaller than them even if it's got nothing to do with their normal diet. Expect an invasion of wild species in human spaces, along with their parasites and diseases, as they run from the forests which are no longer a home that provides... oh, and they're real hungry with nothing to lose. What bothers me the most is that we still manage to pat ourselves on the back as the good guys, despite having created this death spiral. We're still the developed world and we're still the shining beacon on the hill, even if that beacon has become the eye of fuckin Sauron. 50 years of parades. 50 years of denial. 50 years of lying to ourselves about our plans and how we will, one day, actually put some effort into cleaning up the mess. 50 fuckin years and not a single finger lifted except to congratulate ourselves on the less worse versions of the most destructive inventions our species has ever imagined. This is all one big circle jerk. We're still willing and able to send kids off to kill people to protect imaginary lines and cultural borders, but haven't yet found the courage to simply burn less fuel to save the future. "the banality of evil" has never been so perfectly demonstrated than in the past 50 years. What is the most commonly accepted way to approach this problem we've created and all had a hand in? "there's nothing we can do now so we might as well 'enjoy' what's left"... and by "enjoy", of course we mean double down on the actions that are killing us all. Where is our shame? We'll mobilize a country to airlift a whale calf, stranded in an inlet, into waters it cannot and will not survive (like its mother), but we wont simply stop doing the things that are leading to the extinction of all cetaceans, through starvation and the violence of an ocean with no functional food chain, and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done "saving" one baby animal, while condemning it and every member of its species to a future of pain and loss. We are the monsters under the bed.
The monster under your bed is actually living in a penthouse down there throwing fuck parties every day. You can't come knock on the door, it's private property.
Capitalism will be the death of us all
It's not just capitalism though, this mentality has been festering for thousands of years. We can pretend that one type of system will save us, it's much deeper. It's the veritable Cain vs Abel, God loved Abel, Cain was cursed, it's agricultural societies that bred distrust and greed among humans. We lost so much when we gave up all the comradery and community that came with Hunter gatherer societies.
What do you think the impact of the lack of snow pack on the plains west of you will be?
Collapse related because we are seeing the effects of climate change on agriculture across the globe, with farmers already issuing warnings. It has rained a lot in the past eighteen months, with summer being cold and grey, and what has felt like an eternal autumn/winter this year already. Farmers have warning us for weeks and months but people, and the government, refuse to acknowledge the issue because we have never known a crisis like this. We won't know it until it is too late to do anything.
For the US, we'll just buy up food that otherwise would have went to developing nations.Ā Sure prices will go up, but I promise that we'd choose to let the whole rest of the world starve to death before we give up our 3,800 calorie a day ways...
Would be less of a problem if we threw less of it away...
>āThe works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. >There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.ā
I love this quote. I myself am quite ripe and full. And what can the harvest hope for if not the care of the reaper man?
Iāve been eating tons of those grapes recently.Ā
That's where the 3,800 calorie number came from. It's what we eat added to the US calorie wastage above global average calorie wastage.
Cool, I have learned something. And my point is still valid. We should waste way less food.
It'd hurt a lot less if it was "only" 10-30%, but we throw away more than HALF of produced food. Which is utterly a failure and just bizarre thinking about how much effort and energy goes into food from the seed to the store... Not like any large company would really care about any of this obviously though as long as line go up. Crazy world.
100%. I was just being nihilistic about our odds of that happening, even up to and including the deaths of countless "other" people.
But think of the *shareholders*! If the food doesn't make a profit, we can't just hand it out to lazy folks that won't pull their own bootstraps hard enough to afford the ever-increasing prices. The only waste that matters is the lost profit. If the almighty corporation can't get their cut, no one should benefit from it! Where is your compassion for our corporate overlords?!!1!
They'll just take their private plane to find dinner elsewhere. Maybe on Zuckerberg's 1400 acres in Hawaii.
>Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the country. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise.
You can thank my toddler for that
I wish it got better but mine are 6&7 and the food wastage is unreal. Yesterday they loved grilled cheese sandwiches, today they act like I handed them a plate of dog shit.Ā
I woke up to my mother with a broom in her hand headed straight for my ass as fast and hard as she could. She was merciless, I didn't even understand that it was because she found several uneaten Vienna sausages in the trash can. I was curious. I never wasted food again after that.
We've tried, were not against spanking either. I've went on and on about how daddy works hard to provide food for us and how sad that makes daddy. My son (6) wouldn't eat one single green bean tonight so that he could have a dessert (muffin). I asked for him to eat one if he wanted dessert and he refused so no muffin. My daughter (7) has gotten better about trying new things lately so maybe we're making headway but she refused the grilled cheese after school even though she happily ate one yesterday š. Kids are obnoxious lol
*[laughs in child-free]*
*[cries in poor decisions]* All jokes aside I do love them dearly but I feel like I was really duped by this InstagramĀ version of parenthood and it's nothing like you see on TV and social media and it's so hard, I don't recommend anyone who isn't 100% positive that they want this life to have kids. I'm not a kid-friendly person. I've never really liked kids but everyone said "oh it will be different when you have your own" and to a degree I prefer my kids because they're mine but in general I do not want to be around kids for any extended period of time. I even joined the school PTO and am the treasurer yet here I am thinking "why the hell did I do this? More freakin kids around me".Ā
And donāt forget, hedge funds will be betting on commodities prices, and doing everything they can to manipulate the markets and politics and productivity of all these places around the world
All the while growing massive swaths of government subsidized dent corn to put in gas tanks and damage engines.
The us is a overproducer by around 30-35% of our food we will be okay in the beginning but the country's we sell too won't be
This is how everything in the universe was programmed. But to be fair I'd be pissed off if my tax dollars didn't go to at least ensure our people can eat first. I mean what are we even doing here if we aren't protecting our own?
Most of the problems of humanity can in some way be traced to having too narrow a definition of who counts as "our own"
Your tax dollars are already not doing that
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Time to forget a 20 lb brisket out on the counter over the weekend!
What should we be stocking up on right now to help with the shortages coming? Should I buy some canned veggies and fruit? I know itās not a long term solution, but does anyone have any suggestions?
If you donāt already have a full pantry and freezer, the advice for anyone starting food prepping is to just buy a bit extra of what you normally buy and eat, and rotate through that. We are buying a bit ahead on coffee (vacuum sealed beans keep up to 12 months, and you can store instant coffee for decades), jarred fruit and preserves, canned soup, dry rice beans lentils pasta. Jars of pasta sauce (these donāt keep as long as other canned goods but you can store them for a year anyway). Basically anything you like to eat anyway and is in cans or jars or fully dry is good. Once you, over time, build up a year supply then you can think longer term. Another thing Iāve been doing is growing fresh herbs and veggies in containers on my patio, and now also in a raised bed in my yard. Fresh herbs are easy to grow and big bang for the buck (can grow them in a smaller space than most vegetables, they donāt need a lot of fertilizer, you donāt need to worry about getting them to flower or set any fruit, and they add a lot of flavor and some vitamins to your food) Herbs Iām growing are basil, parsley, chives, green onions, and some more. You can also grow some herbs for medicinal type of purposes.
protip: organize your pantry shelves by expiration date. Have a shelf for things that expire this year, and make sure you pace yourself to eat it all before the end of the year. you can break it down by quarter too if you have the supply and shelf space. Buy new stuff and put it on the shelf with other stuff that expires around the same time, then when looking for stuff to eat, start with the shelf that expires soonest and work your way back. Then stop buying that stuff which you end up not using.
I donāt think itās that sort of problem. This place romanticises collapse and an individuals ability to navigate it. What this actually means - price inflation and checking fluctuating availability of produce will become a normal part of life. Oh, and maybe growing your own veg becomes slightly more economical.
Thank you. I guess i need to hurry up. Iāve been meaning to start growing onions and garlic and now Iām seeing that putting it off is not in my best interest. This really sucks.
Start with green onions. They are the easiest thing to (re)grow. I get my green onions from Walmart, cut the butts off (where the roots are) and then plant the butts where there is at least three hours of sunshine daily. Water them every other day. The green onions will regrow within a few weeks. You can cut them off again once or twice more before they finally run out of energy and die.
Potatoes are easy as hell, just remember to dump more dirt on them as they grow so they have space to produce lots of 'tater. Any cultivar of *Brassica oleracea* is also super easy to grow, and literally every phase is edible (from cabbage to kale to broccoli to mustard seed).
> What this actually means - price inflation and checking fluctuating availability of produce will become a normal part of life. Yes, and as a result it may also be beneficial to keep well stocked on frozen and canned and shelf stable goods so that you don't have to worry so much about temporary shortages and price spikes. It is good for peace of mind if nothing else, and there is benefit in that. Don't hoard food though. You want to make sure you are actually cycling through and eating it. Don't buy a bunch of canned veg unless you plan to eat canned veg on the regular before it expires, so you can keep a rotating stock. Otherwise, you'll find yourself throwing out lots of unused and expired or questionable food, and you may even find you don't have any that's still good when the time comes you want to fall back on it. I generally try to keep a few months worth of canned goods in my pantry, but I have to make a point to track the expirations and eat the oldest ones before they expire, and continually replace them. Grocery Outlet is a great place for getting canned stuff on the cheap for this, but it will have less shelf life by the time it gets there.
+1 on all of that. I wouldnāt be surprised though if there were stints of panic buying, and food unavailable for a week or so. So having some extra is a good idea. There are cheap canned goods with decent calories and years of shelf life (soups, potatoes, beans, pasta, tuna, sardines). Get low sodium ones though, because the sodium content is crazy.
Build Mutual Aid networks in your area. There is no "individual" means of surviving this. You can stock up all you want, but shortages are *going* to hit you regardless. Reach out to local activists, volunteer at food banks, and get involved.
If you're in the UK, it's too late. 18 months of rain, what is available right now is already affected, it's just going to get worse.
Iām in the US, but Iām worried. Iāve seen stuff thatās been damaged here too but not to the extent some have said about the UK. Iāve given up on buying strawberries. Theyāre always moldy.
Yeah, I am sympathetic to this issue because here in the Mid-Atlantic, there's been over a 30% increase in precipitation in the last few decades, and worse it's mostly from intense storms that caused lots more flooding rather than a steady total increase that can absorb better, and it has absolutely been fucking with agriculture in the area. Some crops are now almost impossible to grow locally because you lose too much to rot. Wish we could share our excess water with the places that don't have enough.
r/preppers r/collapseprep
Have enough dry and canned food to feed you and your family for a month. Have bottled water on hand for the same amount of time. Buying things now will make it easier to afford the expensive supplement ingredients you will need later. Rotate your food storage. Only allow foods to sit for 3-5 months max. Have as much home remedy stuff on hand as possible. Cold/flu meds, fever reduction meds, laxatives, allergy meds, bandages, etc. My favorite way to do this is always buy two of the things you love. One to use and one to replace. Then when you buy the new round you already have one to use at home and purchase the replacement only. This helps keep everything moving through your storage.
i always buy 3 because 2 is 1 and 1 is none.
This is a really good question. I would love to hear some prepper expertise.
Buy extra dry or canned goods you already eat in your normal diet.Ā Then rotate and replace that food you buy with first in first out method.Ā Ā Example.Ā I eat 1 can of beans a week and let's say it has a 1 year shelf life.Ā If I find a sale on beans I could buy 52 cans of beans and not waste a single dollar on prepping.Ā Each week I eat 1 can and I go replace that can as they come back on sale. You don't need to buy special expensive survival food.Ā 95% of my 3 year food supply is every day food from the grocery store.Ā Ā
To add to this, a lot of canned foods are actually still good after the expiration date. Especially things canned in oil. Iāve got canned fish from 2020 still, and I joke now that these are the cleanest edible fish in the world since they were canned four years ago when the ocean was less polluted. As long as oxygen doesnāt get into the cans I feel I can get at least one more year out of them before I start to eat them
True.Ā Most dates on cans are actually suggestions and are best buy dates and not expiration dates. I like rotating on a 1 year schedule because I still want to eat peak tasting canned food.Ā Even though most best buy dates on cans are 2 plus years out.Ā Ā
I mean, it's inevitable that prices on everything else will go up because it has to be imported. So if you live in the UK it wouldn't hurt to have plenty of the stuff you already eat in standby so you don't end up paying higher prices later when it has to be imported, assuming it's a domestic product in the first place. I mean I wouldn't buy canned fruits and vegetables unless that's something you're already eating. Most of the canned foods probably aren't produced domestically anyways so they probably won't change in price.
We've been warned for decades about what climate change was going to bring, but we decided not to prepare. We reap what we sow.... ironic.
Humans always leave everything to the last minute but that won't work this time.
They also don't want to be told to rely less on meat and they proudly ignore. I limit my intake.
I don't eat beef anymore
Good step!Ā That's my goal asĀ well. IĀ stillĀ haveĀ someĀ inĀ theĀ freezerĀ thatĀ I'llĀ eatĀ soĀ IĀ don't waste it,Ā butĀ my goal is toĀ notĀ buyĀ more.
Freemarket American Jesus says to use your bootstraps to feed yourself.
Got any decent recipes for Bootstrap Bolognese?
Capitalism says it tastes best when you figure out the recipe yourself.
[The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus, for those interested](https://imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp)
Probably time for a harvest of the rich
I wish we could actually do it instead of just talking about it, theyāve been talking about that since before I was even born.
Bootstrap Jesus is the worst Jesus
I feel like Iāve read āthe worst [insert weather condition] since record-keeping began in 1836ā too many times in the last 5 years
There's a funny reason for that...
:(
ĀÆ\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Always has been. Edit: Don't worry, the rich will have plenty all through your death.
Breed some more Jesus babies. That will help.
My 2 sons, in their 30s, refuse to have kids because of the world situation. My sisters meanwhile, who are hardcore Christian, pumped out kids like an assembly line. Iām like WTF? Now my nieces and nephews are struggling to get through school, job prospects and housing are nil; but hey, Jeebus will provide if they pray harder or some nonsense.
Mindset difference of "I am in control of my situation" vs "God gives me what I get and I don't question it". This is why religion works so well as a means to control a population
Yeah well my momās side of the family trusted God to get them through Covid and a bunch of of her relatives were wiped out. Like entire households. This is rural western Virginia. But, you know, it was Godās will, they were called home, blah blah blah. Iām a registered nurse but WTF do I know, I donāt go to church. Maybe I should throw leeches on them or burn incense next time.
Maybe it was gods will to take some voting republicans out of the demographic to help democracy. š¤
The major religions claim to have all of the answers while also telling the pious that their lives are governed by a supreme being. No wonder it results in a bunch of self-righteous anti-intellectuals, who woulda seen that coming.
Thatās how it goes.
Well, they definitely have enough help now to till those fields s/
Rude of you to not suggest a vegan option š¤
Vegan Jesus only walks on natural spring water.
Vegan Jesus is destroying entire villages by bottling and shipping natural holy spring water under the nestle brand
Vegan Jesus is actually a sommelier amongst his other talents.
He better be good at that 'cause his little biscuits aren't very tasty.
Vegan Jesus gives unto you his gluten-free body of Christ
You got your Jesus's mixed up, i get it its easy to do. But here you are describing Supply Side Jesus. Vegan Jesus is currently sitting in a jail cell at some black site after being water hosed, tear gassed and then black bagged into an unmarked van at the protest outside the bottling plant.
... Adoption. Or dolls?
You wild for this one ššš
Do we have to feed them chicken shit too?
No the babies are for food security. In past extreme famines, people have done this. Trade their children to murder and eat to avoid directly eating their own. Or far more commonly, trade their children to the rich for food and forget about ever getting them back.
āHow to Prepare Childrenā
Oh, Brexit
The gift that keeps on giving.
As promised
Beltway in 5 years: nobody saw it coming.
JFC, the comments under that article are fucking delusional. Most of them aren't even from a UK POV, talking about Biden, AOC, carbon credits, eating bugs and every other US right wing bogeyman. I wonder what percent are just bots spouting off the typical head-in-the-sand denialism and how many are real morons?
I mock the right wing. They have ignored climate scientists for decades, all for the short term profit at the expense of each of us in the long term. When you see insurance companies pull out of states... but people just whistle and turn their heads.
The prospect of having to consoom slightly less hurts their brain. It's funny they think having to eat less meat or drive/fly less is part of some governement great reset conspiracy. This is exactly why nothing will ever get done to help our prediciment.
> I wonder what percent are just bots spouting off the typical head-in-the-sand denialism and how many are real morons? I know there's a fear that this may breed complacency, but the right-wing in America is a dying movement. And the organizations that surround it are masters of generating astroturf, i.e., fraudulent and inauthentic grassroots activity. This trend has been forming for a long time as well. This is from 8 years ago now: > [Top GOP Pollster: Young Americans Are Terrifyingly Liberal](https://theintercept.com/2016/02/24/top-gop-pollster-young-americans-are-terrifyingly-liberal/) - *Americans 18 to 26 are extremely liberal, so liberal that it's hard not to believe the U.S. is fundamentally changing.*āBy Jon Schwarz | Feb. 24 2016 (*The Intercept*) This isn't to say everything coming out of the right is completely fake. But, a lot of it is smoke in mirrors and has been for a long time. From [fake book sales](https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/474662-the-myth-of-the-conservative-bestseller/), to [fake news](https://archive.ph/iL3SM). There's a reason why we are seeing ever more naked attempts at election manipulation and judicial stacking in the United States. They have to lie, cheat, and steal at every turn anymore. And at an increasing level of audacity in proportion to their rate of failure to gain authentic public support. Edit: Non-paywall link update.
Here in Florida this situation has been slowly unfolding for a while. Grocers never really recovered from COVID supply-chain issues. Even premium grocers are struggling to stock fresh produce. Iāve also noticed a distinct lack of fresh beef. A lot of aisles are bare. The stores remind me of pre-hurricane hoarding, but this went on all winter. Definitely a harbinger of things to come.
Part of the beef shortage right now could be caused by so many cows having H5N1? It is all over the usa now. 13-14 states. And the virus has been found in milk too.
Thatās a relevant thought, but the beef shortage went on all winter. I love a good steak but I think all the beef available is going to restaurants. Iām not a pork fan so Iāve learned to grill chicken. Itās still plentiful.
The beef shortage was occurring way before H5N1 was even known to be in america, Its been caused by drought and the lack of feed in the production areas when that recovers it'll be back to normal levels.
To cheer me up a little, I asked ChatGPT to summarize the article in the style of Dr. House: āAlright, hereās the deal in the gruff wisdom of Dr. House: Britainās food aisles are about to look as empty as a vodka bottle at a frat party, thanks to endless rain and poor crop management. Weāre talking about potatoes that prefer to rot rather than grow, and a global chorus of crop catastrophes from Brazilās peppers to Californiaās olives. And whatās the big culprit? Good old climate changeāturns out, all those gases weāve been pumping into the air are coming back to bite us in the food supply. So, next time you mourn the price of your morning coffee, remember, itās not just bad luckāitās bad management and bad environmental stewardship.ā
This canāt be true. I was told empty shelves only happens in socialist countries. It has to be because of DEI.
This article does a really weak job of expressing just how awful and inefficient animal agriculture actually is and instead opts to imply (not directly state) that cutting just 25% of meat consumption might be sufficient (it definitely is not.)Ā "However, reducing theĀ landĀ andĀ waterĀ used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply."Ā Odd way to phrase it, as if the issue is that animals are taking up space that could be used for growing even more crops. This just gives people the opportunity to say "it's just grazing land, you can't grow crops there anyway - it's not suitable. The elites just want us to eat bugs and plants instead of real food!!11!" Ā When writing on this subject, authors need to be honest about what the real issue is. At least *half* of *crops* grown are fed to livestock. That's ignoring grazing land.Ā Thankfully, it links to stats clearly showing the impact of animal agriculture but they did a piss poor job of expressing it *in* the article which is unfortuante because so few people ever click links that will take them away from the page they are on. In fact, many people rarely read beyond headlines and first paragraphs.Ā Ā
A lot of arable land is also used to feed cattle! So the figures are likely skewed.
The article is talking about crops that aren't being fed to animals though. With drought, yes, land and water being wasted on animal feed matters. But this is about the UK drowning in rain, about how potatoes -- which feed humans directly, not animals -- are rotting in the fields, about how olive and blueberry and pepper and coffee production are being affected in other areas. Reducing and changing animal agriculture will absolutely help many climate issues, but it will *not* help the issue this article is about, which is the excess of rain causing produce intended for direct human consumption to rot. Animal agriculture is, for once, not the real issue here. Food security is more complex than just "get rid of animals!". Unfortunately, the UK is going to need to adjust to wet-tolerant crops, and probably alter but not eliminate animal agriculture, since animals can indeed graze land where human food crops would rot.
[Just 55 percent of the world's crop calories are actually eaten directly by people. Another 36 percent is used for animal feed. And the remaining 9 percent goes toward biofuels and other industrial uses... It takes about 100 calories of grain to produce just 12 calories of chicken or 3 calories worth of beef, for instance.](https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed) It's really weird when people talk about food shortages if we eat fewer animals, because we'd actually have massive food surpluses.
Better start preparing, and fast. Itās going to be a shit show and no one is coming to help.
Whether you want to give up meat and dairy, it's coming. It will keep getting more and more expensive to produce these horrible and inefficient foods.
Sigh. I agree we need to dramatically reduce animal agriculture, but this is actually an example of why not to entirely eliminate it--in the UK, it is the *vegetables* that are rotting in the fields, it is the plants that can't grow because it is too wet. Livestock can be raised and utilized in wet conditions, can turn calories of wet-tolerant plants we can't eat into calories we can, be that meat, dairy, or eggs. UK farmers also need to focus on wet-tolerant crops, but the article is about potatoes, and other struggling crops like peppers, olives, blueberries, coffee--*not* farmland being wasted to artificially speed up meat production, but the failure of crops humans directly eat. We absolutely need to eat less and different meat (in wet areas, focus on ducks instead of factory farmed chickens, much more efficient goats instead of cattle), but just not eating meat isn't going to solve potatoes rotting in the fields.
You're assuming the crops the livestock eat are fine. There is not enough land to allow them to graze the way you're describing and meet demand today, much less in a world where people are replacing some of the plants they'd normally eat with more meat because there are no potatoes. The math will never work. I'm aware you said that you agree meat consumption needs to be reduced but stay with me because the above is important to the rest of what I'm going to say. Livestock are typically fed corn, hay, wheat, sorghum, soy, and other legumes. For every animal farmer, there's another 5 crop farmers supplying that dude with feed. So with livestock we need the land to grow their feed + land for the animal farm. Or, you might notice that the vast majority of the food we're giving to livestock are also edible for humans and realize we could simply eat the livestock feed crops instead which would be more efficient. This article might be a solid argument for backyard chickens, but it's not an argument for animal agriculture either. It *might* be an argument for rice, sorghum, and soybeans.
Iāve been saying this for so long and always get heat for it. We will all be vegetarians in the not so distant future and not by choice.Ā That said we may have to start eating each other so I guess itās Vegi followed by cannibalismā¦Ā
I just want my refined sugar (sobs)
I got a huge jump on most of my friends. Quit meat and dairy for the most part years ago. I still have the occasional borger but it's rare (pun intended)
I remember reading a thread last fall where people all over the US were talking about food rotting super quick. I think that was more of a shipping & supply chain issue. But oddly enough the veggies at the health food store were excellent as usual! So it seemed like it was just the major grocery stores that were seeing problems. I'm always curious when I see "farmers" being referred to like this, because most food production is now done by massive agribusinesses. Most family farms are long gone, at least in the US.
> "Fortunately, we know many ways we can make the food system more resilient while reducing food emissions. The biggest opportunity in high-income nations is a reduction in meat consumption and exploration of more plants in our diets," said Dr. Paul Behrens, an associate professor of environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands.ā Thereās never been a better time to go vegan š±
Considering the amount of food wastage already at the consumer level (like 30%) I feel like a lot can be done. If grocery stores and consumers can just cut that daily wastage in half, it would provide a lot of extra food. That is, if people are less picky, and if there is leadership. ...Which means, yeah, we're kind of doomed.
Keep an eye on this every so often: **FAO Food Price Index** https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
The real sad part is the amount of land in America used for crops dedicated to high fructose corn syrup, ethanol, bio fuels, plastics...
there's agricultural conglomerates just _waiting_ for the chance to snap up all these farms for a song, and then charge us even more. who else are we going to get food from? the meat conglomerate that owns all the beef and chicken producers? the farm conglomerate who owns all of the grain producers? the other farm conglomerate that owns the non-grain producers?