You forgot all the crazy assholes with guns armed citizens if the invaders do reach a beach. That’s around 100 million right there. And with 120 guns for every 100 citizens those armed citizens have enough to spare to help arm their neighbors. As Ukraine shows, civilians can have an impact in defending against an invasion.
Not our gun nuts. They’d welcome the Russians with open arms. They’ve proven that already.
Just tell them it’s actually the Ukrainian Nazi Jews invading. It’s not like they’d ever be able to tell the difference.
But since corn is gluten-free, it would make life easier for those with celiac disease or gluten intolerance.
Or canned. You’d need a pressure canner, of course. (Note: NOT the same as a pressure cooker.)
You won’t get satisfactory results from canning expensive steak or roast beef, but you can produce some good stews, chili, chicken for potpie or casseroles, spaghetti sauce, meatballs and the like. This will allow you to have more freezer space for steak (and flour, I guess.)
Only if the corn was transported and processed in facilities that hadn’t contained, processed or packaged commodities that contain gluten. Being safely gluten free is trickier than it sounds and requires incredible vigilance.
I have a niece with very serious celiac disease. I have an inkling of how careful she has to be, but there are a lot of cornmeal and cornstarch products that are certified gluten-free.
The problem would likely be in retrofitting processing and packaging facilities that currently treat wheat products to treat corn products. I have no idea how easy that would be to do.
Isn’t a huge percentage of corn devoted to things like animal feed, ethanol production, industrial usage, etc and not to direct feeding of humans? I don’t know about rice or wheat, but I’m guessing it may be the same with them.
In a true food shortage situation, would things like corn be redirected away from ethanol and animal feed and instead go to feeding people directly? Part of the issue is like others have said, the pain of food shortages will be felt by the global poor. The globally wealthy (those of us in first world nations) may notice a few shortages here and there or some price hikes but nothing serious.
I’m guessing food shortages would mean less meat and higher food prices in the west, but revolutions and near famines in the poor parts of the world.
@Broomstick’s post above indicates that it’s not the same – she said that unlike corn, wheat and rice are primarily used as food for humans.
The corn used for ethanol and animal feed (yellow dent corn or “field corn”) makes up the vast majority of corn production but isn’t suited for human consumption. You could potentially grow more corn for human consumption down the line but you couldn’t really redirect the existing crops to feeding people.
The bulk of people feedin’ corn is white corn (used for corn flour products) and I think popcorn actually comes next, outclassing the sweet corn you eat on the cob or buy a can of corn nibblets. That stuff is actually a pretty small percentage of corn production. Then a few oddball things like some corn designed primarily for industrial usage (the starches, etc) and ornamental corn.
Can’t they make corn meal or corn syrup out of field corn? Those are edible.
It’s no good for eating as sweet corn; but it could be ground and used for cornmeal. Might not be the top grade cornmeal for human uses, but would be edible.
Of course, if the USA had to shift abruptly to entirely or almost entirely pasture-raised livestock, there’d be massive shortages of meat, milk, and eggs.
They can and do. HFCS is made from field corn. Apparently some corn meal is as well but it gets a little confusing (to me, anyway) based on what you’re reading because different places break down what’s field/dent corn more granularly than others (whether or not they lump white/blue corn in with yellow, etc). So some places just say “Field corn is used for cornmeal” and others specify that most field corn is used for livestock/ethanol and some minority select types are used for cornmeal, etc.
I started a thread specifically about cat food shortages a couple months ago. I’m too lazy to hunt for a link, but it was definitely before the Ukraine war and related sanctions.
No one could produce a specific cause of that shortage, but my grocery store was running very low and then suddenly had a fully stocked section. That leads me to believe the reason was a delivery issue such as lack of truck drivers.
I’ve seen both white cornmeal and yellow cornmeal sold for human consumption; and I’ve currently got both blue corn tortilla chips and yellow corn tortilla chips in the house.
I don’t think it’s edibility so much as custom for particular areas or particular markets; as well as probably some differences in ease of grinding and/or of particular textures, flavors and degrees of sweetness. Protein levels can also vary; probably other precise nutrients vary to some extent also; but a variety lower in some might be higher in others.
That’s been going on to various degrees for probably about a year now. There are still significant shortages of some varieties, and my grocery had a lot of gaps on the shelves still as of last week, though one type that had been unavailable for months had reappeared.
Many items are also out of stock online at the cat food companies’ own websites, as well as at Chewy, Amazon, etc.; so I don’t think it’s just a delivery issue.
Re: cat food.
The information we peons at my store have received is that it is a combination of a limited number of factories producing this stuff, at least one such factory having to shut down production due to a covid outbreak, and yes, issues with delivery/truck drivers (both drivers getting sick with covid and a simple lack of drivers)
If anyone is curious about the global situation for cereals, this pdf is probably the most up to date summary of the current projections.
Current FAO projections are actually for a minor increase from last year in global wheat production this year, but maybe not as big an increase as is actually needed. That simple number also doesn’t take into account the difficulties of harvest or transporting it to where it’s required; Russia and Ukraine may both wind up with crops that can’t be harvested, can’t be exported, or just get abandoned as non-viable, while shortages are a major issue in poorer countries.
Fertiliser costs have also skyrocketed, as Bump mentioned- a friend mentioned yesterday that prices for a common one here have more than quadrupled in the last decade, with a large part of that increase being in the last year; that’s going to affect growers crop choices, and the yield, both of which will have a knock-on effect on food price. The uncertaincy itself is also going to affect the market, and is likely to increase prices, because everyone needs to think of what’s happening next.
It’s all very complicated…
i wonder if the price of anything Frito lay makes will skyrocket because they get 90 percent of their sunflower oil from Ukraine
Depends on whether or not they can source a different oil/different origin of oil for a similar price they’re already paying.