# Imagine a worldwide famine **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 26, 2016, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760 "2016-10-26T07:36:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/21 "2016-10-26T21:22:24Z")
> [@Tzigone](#): > > 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. You can grow a lot of calories of potatoes in not much soil. There’s a reason the Irish diet was close to a monoculture. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/22 "2016-10-26T21:39:04Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > You can grow a lot of calories of potatoes in not much soil. There’s a reason the Irish diet was close to a monoculture. I thought the English were shipping most agricultural products out of Ireland. Apparently no one in Europe wanted potatoes. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/23 "2016-10-27T10:59:34Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > I know a guy who knows a guy who has [1.2 billion tons](http://www.vox.com/2016/10/13/13268980/cheese-glut-united-states) of cheese. Nitpick: 1.2 billion pounds, not tons. (Unless you were talking about the Moon.) ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/24 "2016-10-27T12:00:52Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > 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. Can you please stop making up things and promoting ignorance? You are constantly making incorrect and unfounded assertions. The Grameen microcredit model is not “bypassing” any global banking, it is lending at high interest rate that is unsecured to either the solidarity group or the family for the short term funding. There is no bypassing, it a customer segment that is not bankable in the classic bank structure of the deposit taking bank, for they are too risky and too expensive for such entities to reach. ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/25 "2016-10-27T12:52:27Z")
> [@Ramira](#): > > Can you please stop making up things and promoting ignorance? If you think someone is factually incorrect, then feel free to point it out, civilly. But this type of accusation isn’t going to do anything to promote discussion. Please don’t do this. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/26 "2016-10-27T13:36:08Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Pretty clearly a scare-hoax from the anti biotech folks. [Klebsiella planticola.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klebsiella_planticola#Genetic_modification) Here’s a [Cracked article](http://www.cracked.com/article_18503_how-biotech-company-almost-killed-world-with-booze.html) about the experiment, which was the least woo-ish cite I could find. Take that for whatever its worth. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/27 "2016-10-27T14:00:34Z")
Agree with **Ramira**. Grameen is also an effort that has since been largely discredited as not actually achieving most of the supposedly good outcomes it initially claimed for itself. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/28 "2016-10-27T14:22:29Z")
There was a SF disaster novel about a disease that wiped out all grass species: this would include wheat, rice, corn, oats, barley, sorghum, rye, millet, and other grains. This wouldn’t eliminate all food sources but it would eliminate a substantial portion. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/29 "2016-10-27T14:31:54Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I thought the English were shipping most agricultural products out of Ireland. Apparently no one in Europe wanted potatoes. English absentee landowners had bought up all the good cropland and used it to grow crops like wheat, which was exported out of Ireland. The Irish people ate potatoes which could be grown in the marginal cropland that was left over. This was a major reason the famine had such political consequences. When the potatoes were killed by disease and Irish people were starving, they could see other crops being grown in nearby fields and watch as those crops were harvested and sent to England. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/30 "2016-10-27T14:54:37Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > There was a SF disaster novel about a disease that wiped out all grass species: this would include wheat, rice, corn, oats, barley, sorghum, rye, millet, and other grains. This wouldn’t eliminate all food sources but it would eliminate a substantial portion. [_The Death of Grass_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass), also filmed as _No Blade of Grass_. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/31 "2016-10-27T15:11:09Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Millions (Billions?) of city-dwellers have no gardens. They would after the famines hit. The first places to feel the crisis would be the cities. That would very quickly lead to food riots, just plain riots, looting and massive burnouts of city centers, with the accompanying population crash. The survivors would have plenty of now-available space on which to grow crops. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/32 "2016-10-27T15:39:03Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > They would after the famines hit. The first places to feel the crisis would be the cities. That would very quickly lead to food riots, just plain riots, looting and massive burnouts of city centers, with the accompanying population crash. The survivors would have plenty of now-available space on which to grow crops. You’re assuming control would be lost and that governments have no stocks of food. While I’m sure you’re right about the developing world, are you sure about the developed world? ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/33 "2016-10-27T16:06:01Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I thought the English were shipping most agricultural products out of Ireland. Apparently no one in Europe wanted potatoes. Well, that was _part_ of the problem, but it’s all related to poverty. The Irish were very poor, greatly as a result of an unequal power structure in which the English effectively owned large amounts of land and extracted painful rents. So, any cash crop was primarily grown for export. And the crop the Irish grew for themselves to eat was the one that they could get the most calories out of the least land. Because they didn’t have much land, and any land that wasn’t used for their own consumption could be used to grow those cash crops that they needed in order to buy things that weren’t food. [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on staple food nutrition](http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0207e/T0207E04.htm) Potatoes aren’t the _most_ calorie-dense food you can grow, but they’re way up there among staples (Sweet potatoes are higher). And they have more protein than most as well, which is important because when you’re busy not starving, protein can be harder to come by. And tubers much easier to grow and harvest than grains. Potatoes can be fairly easily planted and harvested by hand, but good luck flooding your backyard for rice or harvesting and processing wheat by hand. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760/34 "2016-10-27T16:26:45Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > You’re assuming control would be lost and that governments have no stocks of food. While I’m sure you’re right about the developing world, are you sure about the developed world? Yep. NYC is toast. Too many people in too small a space. It takes everything a fully-functioning, modern food distribution system can handle _today_. Throw a world-wide shortage of food into the mix and they die. The artificial construct collapses. Of course, the rest of the planet will have it worse. Famine will mean that all the foodstuffs produced in the US and Canada will **stay** in the US and Canada. Although, as noted above, we will probably export quite a bit to Mexico in exchange for cheap labor (just like we do now!) 😃 As a side note, there are a couple of novels out there that deal with just this idea. Look up Harry Turtledove’s **Supervolcano: Eruption** and its sequels. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imagine-a-worldwide-famine/769760.md?page=1)