# How long can we survive in the face of massive famine? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 5, 2013, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170 "2013-11-05T19:38:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/41 "2013-11-10T11:12:07Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > While I know that a lot of people still believe that the developing world is populated by peasants, or that peasants are capable of feeding the developing world, neither is true. > > All you need to do is look at a list of countries that are self sufficient in food, or conversely [countries where there is no hunger](http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/2010/british_policy_sucess_images/Original%20Files/e1-FAO_Hunger_Map_2004-2006.jpg). Almost no developing nations at all are on the lists, while almost all developed nations are. By and large [developing nations depend upon the developed world to feed them](http://faostat.fao.org/Portals/_Faostat/documents/pdf/map05.pdf). > > The typical developing nation is not populated by peasant farmers. It is populated by the urban poor, [with~50% of people living in urban areas](http://esa.un.org/unup/pdf/WUP2011_Highlights.pdf), and a majority of the rest living in smaller cities and towns, not living as farmers. > > The idea that millions of people are going to walk out of cities like Hanoi or Calcutta, and the surrounding countryside is somehow going to feed them is ludicrous. The idea that everybody in Hanoi and Calcutta have come from a village, and haven’t been born in the city, is almost as ludicrous. > > Seriously? > > “The West” is pretty much the only part of the world that manages to actually feed its own population, in addition to feeding the rest of the world. > > The idea that people in the developing world are all peasant farmers with a close association to the “land that supports them” is a fantasy. The typical resident of the developing world is a city dweller, just like the typical person in the west. > > The only difference is that the typical westerner can actually be fed by the resources within her won borders. The typical resident of the developing world is dependent on food imports to stay alive. > > I have no idea where you are getting this idea that the developing world is populated by peasant farmers living in self sufficient communities, but while it’s a quaint notion it’s totally divorced from the reality. \ I have no idea about India, but in Thailand the urban poor you mention come from the villages in rural areas, so yes, they will just go HOME. While Thailand imports western processed food for expats and rich Thais, Thailand actually produces all the food it needs, and was till recently the largest rice exporter in the world. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/42 "2013-11-10T11:20:45Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > I wonder how many people keep emergency supplies of food (and water, but it seems we assume that water distribution remains unchanged in this scenario). I have about a month of food set by in case of “the big one” (I’m in SoCal) plus the assorted stuff in my kitchen–canned tomatoes, ramen, stock, those canned chestnuts from two Christmases ago, half a dozen partial bags of rice, etc etc that I’m going to use up–and of course if wheat and other crops disappear I’m going to ration all that food right away. > > In addition, I’m going to plant beets, cabbage, and carrots (seeds I happen to have on hand) everywhere I can to help eke out my supplies, because things are uncertain and I don’t know when US agriculture is going to get on its feet again. I think my family would be all right for, say, four months–beyond that not so much. Someone might try to take what I have, but that’s what the Mossberg is for. > > So, my points–do enough people in places like LA keep enough food on hand to make a difference? Probably not, I suspect. And in places like NYC or London or Hong Kong apartments there’s not enough room to keep a large supply of emergency food on hand anyway. > > Does the global supply of food take into account all canned/dried/preserved food, or is it just fresh produce and meat? > > If maize disappeared, there’d be nothing to eat for a lot of cows–and I guess pigs and chickens. What do sheep eat? I expect many, many animals would be slaughtered very quickly and frozen or otherwise preserved–not sure what the ability of America’s meat processing plants is to handle a massive influx of extra animals–but would the sudden availability of “extra protein” help tide the US/Canada/Australia/Argentina/etc. through? > > Blake, what about kitchen gardens as an adjunct to stored/rationed food? Maybe they’re not the solution long-term, but wouldn’t they help many supplement their diet? Mormons are supposed to store a year’s supply of food, so they’ll be fine as all the others starve, supposing they can either keep the supplies hidden or have weapons and a good supply of ammunition. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/43 "2013-11-10T11:23:43Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > :rolleyes: > > You don’t destroy ALL your edible food. One potato can be turned into a half dozen or more plants, all of which will produce more potatoes. Haven’t you ever had a garden? > But the seed that Joe Public holds can be used to supplement the food supply. > The point isn’t to replace commercial agriculture with victory gardens, it’s to use the gardens as a _supplement_ to whatever the pros are doing. That level of disruption is going to screw up supply chains as well as what particular things are being grown. Having locally grown produce will smooth out some of the bumps. > The scenario isn’t a shortage of potatoes, it’s a shortage of grains. We’d be growing all sorts of things to replace those calories, and potatoes are one of the better choices for that. > > The potato supply is unaffected. Potato _demand_ is likely to go up. > I already grow about 2/3 to 2/4 of my vegetables every year as a casual gardener. If we had such a massive disruption in food supply as envisioned you can be damn sure I’ll expand the backyard garden and get damn serious. > > Hell, I’d set my hydroponics back up and grow fresh food through the winter in such a scenario so I can be assured that MY household will have _something_ to eat. Before the famine Irish peasants lived on an exclusive diet of potatoes. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/44 "2013-11-10T22:54:29Z")
> [@Doggo](#): > > Before the famine Irish peasants lived on an exclusive diet of potatoes. Hence my comment about monocropping - it wasn’t that the potatoes were a bad idea, it was that they imported a single type of potato which ended up with a bad fungal epidemic killing it off. If the English Landlords hadn’t exported everything except the little family truck farming plots, the Irish wouldn’t have been starving. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/45 "2013-11-15T11:30:58Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Hence my comment about monocropping - it wasn’t that the potatoes were a bad idea, it was that they imported a single type of potato which ended up with a bad fungal epidemic killing it off. If the English Landlords hadn’t exported everything except the little family truck farming plots, the Irish wouldn’t have been starving. Don’t have to tell me about the scum British letting the Irish starve while more food was exported than needed to feed the entire population. Also the landlords used the famine to depopulate the land so they could make more money. However, these days same result as the most powerful and best armed factions will seize all the remaining food for themselves. This time there won’t be another America to emigrate to either. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2013, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/46 "2013-11-16T05:37:55Z")
If anyone wants to know what it will be like in the OP’s scenario, look at what is happening in the storm devestated areas of the Phillipines, but without any outside help bringing food supplies in. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2013, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/47 "2013-11-16T11:09:19Z")
Oh, please - a major crop failure is NOT going to knock down buildings, fill the streets with debris, destroy the power grid, and destroy the water and sewage systems. The OP scenario eliminates some major crops but doesn’t touch other food. Not the same thing at all. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/48 "2013-11-18T08:48:59Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Oh, please - a major crop failure is NOT going to knock down buildings, fill the streets with debris, destroy the power grid, and destroy the water and sewage systems. The OP scenario eliminates some major crops but doesn’t touch other food. Not the same thing at all. I’m sure you know I wasn’t referring to the devestation, but to the looting, violence and troops with machine guns patrolling the streets. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170/49 "2013-11-18T20:02:27Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > Is it your contention that in a crisis like this, private citizens ought to turn in their seeds to bigger farmers because of the efficiencies of big agro? And that there are not enough (carrot, cabbage, beet, etc.) seeds in the existing supply chain to kick-start a different agriculture without private citizens contributing seeds to this effort? Not that people should get their little packets of seeds and turn them in to the nearest Department of Agriculture bureaucrat, who will distribute them efficiently to qualified professional farmers. If you have seeds already, or can plant seeds from vegetables you already have, then you should go right ahead. But when you go to the local supermarket or hardware store to get seed packets when the news about the blight becomes public, you’re going to find that all those seed packets are already gone because everyone already had the same idea as you did. So yes there will be a lot of backyard gardening, but 300 million people can’t all do it because there’s only enough seeds in the pipeline for (say) a million people. The seeds you can get for backyard gardening today will all be taken by other people. And the companies that produce seeds for backyard gardening aren’t going to be mailing you your seeds this year, because soldiers are going to be guarding their warehouses and every seed available is going to professional farmers. Obviously lots of seeds and rootstock is going to get into the hands of backyard gardeners who are going to grow as much as they can. But it isn’t going to be like in normal times when you can turn your whole backyard, frontyard and sideyard into vegetable gardens whenever you like, you just need to head to the hardware store and buy as many seeds as you like and every year thousands of $1.99 seed packets are thrown in the trash because nobody bought them. I think there are some crops where methods can be changed to radically increase the yield per seed. We currently try to maximize production per acre, or per fertilizer input, or for water input, and so on. The amount of seed available is effectively unlimited. But if we have to increase production of root vegetables by 10 or 100 fold we are going to be hitting some limits on the amount of seed available. If we had a year or two of warning it would be a painful dislocation and food prices would skyrocket but nobody would have to starve. It’s when the expected harvest withers in the field and there’s no warning and there hasn’t been any ability to prepare for the next growing season that you’ll have a problem. If we’re imagining a magic blight that kills all grains we do have truly massive soybean production that typically doesn’t get fed directly to humans. You might also find yourself glad to be eating alfalfa pellets that normally get fed to livestock. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-can-we-survive-in-the-face-of-massive-famine/673170.md?page=2)