I’m using the UK as the example here. So there’s been a super-volcanic eruption or a significant meteor impact. You are the leader of your country. Your country was not directly impacted, but the whole world is affected by atmospheric dust. Scientists predict at least several years of very poor harvests world-wide and that the food-exporting nations (e.g. the US) will not be able to export food. Under normal circumstances your country imports half its food. That’s food you need to find for over 30M people. What do you do?
Implementing rationing and other WW2-style measures is the obvious start, plus you don’t have the drain of waging war, though you better keep your military and police well-fed!
You could expel all foreigners (over 7M), or require proof of citizenship for ration cards, but then foreign countries might expel your expats (< 2M), and that would sour relations. Still, you’d have a considerable net gain of 5M or more.
Would you ‘allow’ the sick and the elderly to die sooner rather than later? For example, there are 11.6M people over the age of 65 in the UK.
Slaughter livestock and put the meat into storage. Animals produce fewer calories than the plants they consume. There are a million horses, two million cattle, four million pigs, and twenty-three million sheep in the UK. Slaughter them and you have thirty million fewer large animals eating plants. Combine this freed-up supply of plants with the stored meat supply and a general rationing system and you should be able to save most of your population.
True, but a lot of what is consumed by animals is not suitable for human consumption. We don’t eat grass and hay well. Even the corn used in feedlots to fatten pigs/cattle isn’t the variety we eat, though we might start. The pigs and horses I’d agree, but leave the grass eaters, just don’t feed them food people could be eating.
IDK about the UK, but apparently in the US 40% of food goes to waste. That seems a good place to start.
What growing food? There’s been a major atmospheric disturbance which means late springs and cold summers with crop-killing frosts and snowfalls all through the summer across most of the northern hemisphere, and major weather disruptions all over the globe. Warmer areas are going to be hit hard as well, the 1816 disaster caused crop failures in China and monsoon disruptions causing major flooding in India and Central China.
The good news of course is that there is massive inefficiency in our agricultural systems, measured just in terms of calories produced. The entire American midwest is covered in feed corn and soybeans that are turned into animal feed. Get used to eating cornmeal mush and edamame, and thinking yourself lucky to get it.
I’d work on importing as many goats as possible they are able to eats lots of plants that other animals including humans find inedible and do very well on scrubby hill sides that aren’t suitable for cultivation. Hogs can work the other end of the food stream turning waste into usable food again .
I would absolutely evict all foreigners and try to minimize the population that way. After that the next step is increasing the amount of land that is cultivated through hydroponics in the cities and converting animal feed acreage to human food. More then likely were looking as terrible harvest but if we’re talking about 50% yield then we’re better off just by having more acreage under cultivation not to mention the hydroponics should avoid that issue they just take longer to covert wear houses and meat packing plants to. If we’re talking about severe weather wiping out crops in a area then increasing the acres under cultivation will hopefully decrease the percentage off land lost to natural disasters.
Eta: when matters too. If we’re talking about the Yellowstone Caldera blowing tomorrow then making it through winter at this point is pretty much all on hydroponics and sacrificing the old.if this event happens in the spring or later winter my plan above might work.
You can grow lots of stuff in windowless rooms under artificial lights, just ask any stoner. Convert unused industrial / warehouse / hanger space into grow houses. Work up instructions/kits for indoor victory gardens to distribute to every residential address. Hire above mentioned stoners as consultants.