How would the world cope? Perhaps there are major volcanic eruptions in both hemispheres, whatever, but harvests fail worldwide. I imagine that there are enough food stocks to ride out one crop failure in one hemisphere, but things might get very squiffy after crops in the other hemisphere also fail. And again the next year. Let’s say food production is down 80%. I think countries with large arable areas and low populations like the USA and Russia would fare comparatively well. The UK imports half its food and so would be severely hit.
I think a famine is more likely to occur as a consequence of an economic, rather thannatural disaster. The US Great Depression was largely fired by the inability of food producers to borrow money to pay labor to work the fields, and buy seeds, and resolve debt.
Food production takes up-front capital. For example, when Albania became a free market in 1990 or so, it took a long time to get food production off the mark because the investment capital was not there to modernize agriculture. There was land, and able workers, and agri-knowhow, but no money. Basically the same in the whole third world right to this day. There is no available funding for creating more food productivity. That’s why the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh won the Nobel Prize, for helping small producers bypass the global banking cartel which hamstrings access to capital under reasonable terms.
America would do fine as long as we went to a “war economy” fairly quickly, i.e. prohibiting export of food until we know we do not face starvation (which was one of the contributing causes of the Irish Famine), controlling food wastage, and rationing food. Plus we are fatter so we can last longer on reduced calories. We have enough capacity that we can feed everyone in America on 20% capacity if we used it all.
Then, once we have ramped up food production, we can start to feed the rest of the world. If everyone in America is already getting by on starvation rations, there’s no use in trying to help the rest of the world since it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The good news is that our current agricultural system is wildly inefficient. We produce millions of tons of corn and wheat and soybeans that are essentially wasted. So a massive crop failure one year means that instead of corn and soybeans going to fatten up cows, those foods go to humans instead. Yes, people will be fighting over trainloads of field corn and soybeans. The good news is that even with 80% crop failures there will still be a lot left to fight over.
But even if we from a pure technological standpoint we could barely produce enough calories to keep most people from starving, there probably won’t be the political and economic organization to make it happen. Insecure people with stocks of food aren’t going to hand that food over to other people just because the other people are starving. It would have to be done at gunpoint. And food taken at gunpoint isn’t going to be distributed fairly, the people who have the guns then get to decide what happens to that food. And so it isn’t going to the starving people either.
I wonder if there would, ironically, be a short-term increase in the availability of meat as livestock is slaughtered to free up the aforementioned corn and soybeans.
That has certainly happened in the past. Whether the cause was crop failure or simply a spike in the price of fodder.
I disagree with your solution. Prohibiting exports is just a form of rationing, and economic experience shows that rationing anything is a sure-fire way of creating shortages, making the problem worse, not better.
America might find it politic to export to Mexico, for instance, to prevent an invasion.
How about the highly populated Far East, India, and Europe?
What country has the largest stockpile of industrialized, packaged, and artificially-preserved food? That country would fare the best if fresh food crops failed for a couple of years. I guess a serious question is how long our canned and preserved food would last if it were the only source of food for 300M people?
The “Farm-to-Fork” movement would probably go extinct, but the “Spam-to-Fork” movement would thrive!
I know a guy who knows a guy who has 1.2 billion tons of cheese.
Imagine there’s a famine
across the whole wide world.
Folks are getting hungry,
threats are being hurled.
Imagine all the people
eating friends and foes…Mm-Mmm Mmmm
Imagine no potato,
corn or English pea.
Nothing to grill or fry for.
And no leaves for tea.
Imagine all the people
withdrawing from caffeine…We-Hee Eee
We may say that we’re just posting
about a thing that just won’t do.
But know that, should it come to pass
I’ll be the one that’s eating you…
[sub]sincere apologies to John Lennon[/sub]
Coffee spew!!!
Which will lead to a massive slaughter of livestock and meat can be canned. Obviously ranchers will want to keep some of their herd, but I’m unsure how much supplemental feed will be available, and how much grazing land will affected (meaning more land needed for each animal).
Plus a lot of corn goes to biofuel. So we can eat that (or plant other things there - unsure of varieties used), though fuel prices will be affected.
People who know how to grow vegetables in gardens may well do so, but many of us have no clue (especially given new, worse climatic circumstances) and would just be wasting supplies if we tried. Might be worth it to learn - depends on how long we expect the shortage to last.
Side note: I once read that mass slaughter of livestock was one the “warning signs” the USSR looked out for as indicating a planned US first strike. Makes sense.
Millions (Billions?) of city-dwellers have no gardens.
Related story I read somewhere, wish I can remember where: several years ago a company was all set to release a genetically engineered organism that was supposed to turn vegetable waste into ethanol. The idea was farmers could dump their plant waste and turn it to ethanol they could sell. It was all set to be released but was waiting for a few last business related (not regulatory) hurdles when a colleague of one of the company’s scientists asked if she could test some samples out of curiosity. What she discovered is the organisms attacked all plant life, living or dead and turned it to alcohol. The company had never tested it on living plants because that was outside the scope of its use. Obviously they did not release the product but had they, in theory it could have wiped all all plant life on Earth.
Oh, absolutely. I just meant that people who knew how and had the space could supplement that way. Not so much for calories (wheat, corn, etc.), but maybe for variety/vegetables. Those who have food would find themselves with a much more limited diet.
Edit: Corn link from WorldOfCorn.com for those interested.
Pretty clearly a scare-hoax from the anti biotech folks.
Watch The Walking Dead to see how people would act.
