That's how the world works.
(mander.xyz)
fossilesque
Science MemesA lot of dreamers here who never actually tried to grow something. A lot of YouTube video knowledge but no practical experience.
Its damn difficult to grow your own food. I think buying canned goods and storing them is the best option for almost everyone instead of trying to grow your own.
As someone who has been trying to grow tomatoes in containers for about 10 years, I can confirm that it really is difficult. It took me about 5 years to achieve fairly consistent results and get the hang of properly amending the soil, planting correctly, watering, pruning etc. And I still have years where the production is really low, largely due to fungal diseases.
Yeah. I have the largest respect for people who manage to get that far. It really is not easy.
Grow a garden where? On what fucking land lmao
whatever land you can take.
some cities have programs that allocate park or unused land for community gardens. some even give you a small budget to build infrastructure like beds or buying dirt.
grow staple foods that have long storage life: squash, pumpkins, carrots, rutabaga, potatoes. these can stay on your shelf for 3-8 months if stored properly. personally I have about 12 (3-5lbs each) spaghetti squash sitting since harvest in November that will be fine until about August.
secondary are things you can freeze or dry: squash, peppers, peas, green beans, Lima beans, kidney beans, cabbage, beets. I dry most of these and toss them into soups and ramen.
tertiary are foods you can process and preserved through canning, drying, or freezing: tomatoes (sauce or breaded), okra (breaded), etc..
your diet will change, but you'll feel good about what you're cooking because you grew it.
also, stay away from petroleum based fertilizers. if you add too much or too often you can burn your soil out and kill your crop. if you used naturally derived fertilizers you don't have to be as careful.
good luck!
Plant the 3 sisters (beans, corn, squash/pumpkin) together in a small area to maximize shelf stable production. You will need to do a small amount of research on planting times but the times are fast approaching.
You will need to do a small amount of research on planting times
And climate zone. There are many places where it is too cold.
My partner and I are in conflict about food storage. I buy beans, pasta, and jarred foods when I'm stressed. He doesn't like sacrificing storage space and I think just sees it as clutter.
Anyways, I'm going to pick up more pasta, pasta sauce, and canned soup. Boxed macaroni and cheese. Stuff I know we'll cycle through and doesn't need much effort to cook because I know when things get bad I won't want to brain much.
Oh! LPT: textured vegetable protein is shelf stable dried soy protein and you can rehydrate it to add a ground beefy texture to things, like macaroni and cheese or pasta sauce.
Personally I think it’s worth a little space to have peace of mind. Also depending on where you live having a few week supply of food and drinking water in storage is generally recommended in case of a natural disaster.
That said, if you’re in a western countries that produces most of its own food you’ll probably be fine. Those countries produce such an incredibly surplus that much of it gets diverted towards animal agriculture. If you can afford meat and dairy now you’ll probably be able to afford rice and beans if prices rise.
You should always feel free to grow a garden, but you shouldn’t necessarily expect it to be cheaper than buying food. Especially the first year, if you don’t live in a place where you can just dig up some dirt and chunk seeds in it. Even if you do you should make sure the soil isn’t literally toxic first, especially since it’s common to have a buildup of things like lead or arsenic from now-outlawed fertilizers that can be absorbed by plants.
My grandparents planted maybe half an acre? Of crops for 10 people, and it was supplemental, not a complete replacement. It also takes a lot of work and can go to shit if the weather is bad. You can account for some of this by planting a variety of crops, trying to head off drainage and shade issues before they start, and with supplemental watering. But don’t expect everything to be super productive every year, especially in the age of climate change. My sister had some plants not put out at all last year (peppers).
That's the thing. Gardening is more expensive than buying food, in the United States and Western Europe, now, because the real cost of food production is heavily subsidized by our governments and we guarantee yields by throwing tons of fossil fuels and their derivatives at the soil of corporate megafarms. There's a nonzero chance that's going to change shortly - probably within a generation - for a ton of reasons including but not limited to little Donnie assassinating the supreme leader of Iran for shits and giggles.
Grow a garden even if it's not economically efficient. Do it now, when you aren't relying on it for food, and get the issues with soil and drainage and so on worked out now. Learn to save seeds and select the best growing plants each year so that, as your climate changes, the varieties you grow change with it. That way you'll have the skills to do it later, when you really need it.
It's not just fertilizer:
it takes about 7.3 units of (primarily) fossil energy to produce one unit of food energy
Assessing the sustainability of the US food system: a life cycle perspective
With all the fertilizer, heavy equipment and agricultural practices the food production today is very inefficient from an energy perspective.
Without cheap, abundant energy available the whole food production system is not sustainable
It would be a hell of a lot more sustainable if we ended animal agriculture.
Exactly. The Swedish government or something did some study recently to determine if we'd be able to be self-sufficient under a longer time if we needed to be, as we currently have a lot of food imports. The conclusion was "yes, but there won't be as much food diversity".
However, they completely ignored the fact that we only have a ~90 days strategic reserve of oil, and that basically all the machining used for farming runs on diesel. And there's currently no goals to change that.
If we can't import or refine diesel anymore, we will starve.
plug myself into the power socket for more efficient energy usage.
got it.
brb
I'm surprised to see this truth known on the Internet, I guess Lemmy actually is smarter than most other social media out there :o
One day we’ll learn to structure laws so that fertilised monoculture isn’t the only economically viable form of agriculture.
But agribusiness lobbies won’t allow that so…
You think food prices will come back down after it's all over?
cue the padme meme!
FACT: Capitalism without regulation has a ratcheting effect on high prices.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
As if you'd need to ask that question...
At least the schools aren't teaching WOKE. Priorities. /s
When agricultural processes are invented that allow the population to grow by billions, what's the first thing people do? Rush to fill the extra capacity. Sure would be nice if we had the prudence to maintain a buffer.
Natural gas is used to produce hydrogen, which is then used in the Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia from nitrogen in the atmosphere. Only about 6% of natural gas is used to produce hydrogen, so even if the price were to rise substantially, we could divert natural gas from other uses and have plenty for making ammonia. We also have other ways of producing hydrogen, it's just that natural gas is more established.
PEM electrolyzers paired with cheap solar in countries with high insolation can now produce hydrogen for less than the cost of natural gas, but we're only recently starting to see the construction of the large-scale green ammonia plants needed to accomplish this. Egypt is currently constructing a 100-MW green ammonia plant powered by solar energy. Even if you didn't have enough PEM eletrolyzers you could still just pass current through some salt water and produce hydrogen, albeit much less efficiently.
It's not going to be a catastrophic issue.
Fun fact: Fritz Haber, the German guy that invented the Haber-Bosch process is the same Fritz Haber that developed a way to use the chlorine gas in chemical warfare. He was personally overseeing its effect in the battle of Ypres.
Clara Immerwahr, who was married to Fritz Haber and was a successful chemist in her own right, spoke out against his research as a "perversion of the ideals of science" and "a sign of barbarity, corrupting the very discipline which ought to bring new insights into life." She ended her own life the day before he traveled to the eastern front to oversee the use of chlorine gas against Russian troops.
Dude knew his chemicals
Habe~~r~~n wir einen an der Waffel? Ja
Thank you for explaining the process, because the pro-fuel-cell pact doesn't understand that hydrogen isn't free and production is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
"Oh it comes from ammonia". Alright, where does the ammonia come from???
You're just moving the problem around, not fixing anything.
Farmers almost uniformly over-apply N fertilizer. Having it be more expensive and forcing them to look into more efficient ways of applying fertilizer and managing nutrients is not a bad thing.
Unless it just causes the crop to cost more without any change in behavior.
Farmers are price-takers not price-makers. The prices they receive are driven by speculation on the commodities markets (even for crops not traded on the market).
Since they can't control the price they receive for their crop, they are very sensitive to any change in the cost of inputs. Determining how much to spent on inputs is the part of their profitablity they can control. So widespread behavioral change is usually pretty close to immediate.
we could divert natural gas from other uses and have plenty for making ammonia. We also have other ways of producing hydrogen
We can't do any of those in a scale large enough to replace the destruction and have it online for the next planting season on the North Hemisphere. Or the next one on the South Hemisphere either, btw. Or the following ones for each.
Also, while it's still new, plasma nitrogen has the potential to rapidly scale if the economics stop making sense for Haber-Bosch nitrogen.
What is a pulse?
Lentils too
Beans
A vegetable garden? LOL so you can get one tomato after 6 weeks? What are you going to eat in the meantime?
People are completely clueless and disconnected from reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPfmYNNo-4U
This is what one couple needs to actually grow stuff. And that's just fruits and vegetables.
And what freaking inputs in the form of plastic, fertilizers, pesticides are they using?
There’s a difference between supplemental gardening and full on self sufficient farming.
I had a garden for years that I started in the spring every year, and reduced my grocery bills by about half.
tomatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, potatoes and cucumbers are all staple crops that can be gardened in abundance on basically any 1/4 acre plot in the US. Most of these are either shelf stable for extended periods on their own or can be canned at home for winter use.
Who has a 1/4 acre plot, and the knowledge, tools, and chemicals to grow the food? You have the seeds ready to go? You're confident in the face of a global food shortage you'll just snap your fingers and Disneyfy your way to "staple foods"?
How about buying canned produce, learning to preserve the food you can still buy now, dry beans, rice, etc? And then try to see if the knowledge we've lost as a culture wrt subsistence can be re-learned quickly and painlessly?
I don't think so.
You do not need to replace your entire diet with home grown produce. Supplement the food you buy from the store with whatever you can grow in the small area you have. You can get a surprisingly good haul from 25ft².
aka hobby
In case anyone was wodering how much damage a single idiot in the White House can cause.
Authorities say:
NO!
~(But~ ~actually~ ~its~ ~yes)~
Yes.
Blame Americans.
Don't forget Israel.
whynotboth.gif
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Hey. I quite like Canadians.
I'm partial to the mexicans myself
Deport your southern neighbors, it's the American way.
But they are silent though, like Europe and ROW.
Ah yes it's all my fault you're right whoops
Are you American? Then yes it's your fault. This is because of the USA.
Evem if they voted someone else?
Comments like this are so ironic because this level of ignorance makes you sound like a Trump voter. You'd fit in really well here amongst the 70 million people who voted for this.
"America" is three continents. And even in the USA this regime is deeply unpopular, hence all the protests. I don't think we're all that great at resistance yet, but we are trying.
The wealthy elite in the USA have successfully displaced the blame by convincing the people to fight each other instead of them, and here you are blaming "Americans" instead of the people actually responsible.
When someone says American, they mean a USA resident. I don’t know anyone who would assume they mean a Canadian and/or Mexican, since you use those terms for them.
And if you are you’re just being obtuse or argumentative.
Thank you.
Dude feels like a flat earther about this.
That was only one of the points I made. Since you ignored the rest of my comment, and mentioned my username, it really doesn't seem like you're saying this in good faith.
People assuming "American" means resident of the USA is a problem.
Why? You have North Americans and South Americans to cover the others?
What else would you need to include in the term Americans?
North America is Canada and the USA. And there's also central America, which isn't included in those two terms.
It's a problem because ignorant USians think of themselves as the center of everything, and referring to them as "Americans" further entrenches this selfish world view.
North America is Canada and the USA. And there’s also central America, which isn’t included in those two terms.
Just casually ignoring Mexico as part of North America says everything I need to know about how intelligent you are.
Name checks out, you're obtuse.
What countries have the word "America" in them? How many countries in the Americas are "united States"?
What do you call a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
For the record, The United States of America is the only country with the word America in it's name. Our immediate neighbor, The United Mexican States, is another country you could, but no one would, plausibly call the United States.
The British isles contains two countries, Ireland and the UK. One of these is the home of the British, and the other would be much happier if you didn't call them that.
Insisting that you not refer to the people of a country by the most unique name in the countries name, because the geographic region has that word in common is ... Odd.
In English, the correct demonym for a citizen of the United States of America is "American". There have been others that somewhat are accepted but are not universal like "Yankee" which half the population would take great offense to.
It isn't centering the world on us to call ourselves Americans, it's the only thing that works in the language and is accepted by everyone it applies to. Call a Canadian an "american" and watch how quickly they correct you.
I've seen people propose "United statesian" but there 2 problems with that, first it does not flow well in English, second that doesn't actually fix the problem since there's still be ambiguity with people living in the United Mexican States.
The whole world uses that term, since the other countries are covered by other terms, or other encompassing terms like I explained already.
When someone says American, what country do you think they come from? You just said you know what North Americans are, so you wouldn’t include Canada or single out Canada there.
American has never meant an all encompassing term for north/central/south America, where the hell did you get this idea from?
When someone says American, it's ambiguous what they actually mean. I assume they mean resident of the USA because it's the norm, but technically you could be talk about a Canadian or a Brazilian. Language should be precise. I think that's why I see so many people using the term USian on Lemmy.
Just because the whole world uses the term doesn't mean it isn't harmful.
Your point being you are making up a new definition and calling everyone else wrong? I also didn’t even notice your username, you’re just being bloody obtuse.
Bold move cotton.
American (read by the entire world as USA) culture is the problem.
I don't disagree that the culture in the USA is violent and negativity affects the world. These high fuel prices are actually good for the USA in the long run, as we're far too insulated from all the destruction our evil military causes. USAians are going to suffer from this, hopefully.
America, where there is an actively sitting known pedophile president protecting a group of elite pedophiles
Well, we're not trying that hard. Seriously, it takes one person to put an end to all this misery and yet we don't. Until there's real progress in the US, it's safe to say that each and every American supports our presidents actions if nothing else through refusal to stop him.
Gonna take a lot more than one person to end it. The president is just the cream of the crap. It’ll take dismantling the power of his cronies, their wealth/businesses, and their supporters. From the billionaires to the paycheck-to-paycheckaires that scream bloody murder when you suggest taxing their heroes to fund the welfare they think they’re entitled to but is a theft when someone else receives it, the problem isn’t just in high offices. It’s living next door to you and will vote this hate in again even if the current regime is removed.
Then it would take one more at that point. Solve enough problems and eventually people will realize they need to stop creating them. Or solve your neighbors. As long as someone is ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING against the biggest problem, the rest of them can wait until someone is ready to solve them. When the biggest issue is dealt with, then we can start solving the smaller ones.
Define biggest problem. Is it the figurehead that has been empowered or the culture of hate that empowered it? Removing the head might lessen the impact short term, but not addressing the real issue that is the culture of hate will just send it to ground, breed a sense of victimhood and lost cause, and pass it on until it surfaces again. On the flipside, start killing your MAGA neighbors (which are more easily accessible than the office holders) and you’re just an unhinged lone wolf that won’t get very far before you’re killed or arrested, plus you’re just adding to the narrative that “these are dangerous people that must be eliminated”. It risks everything, gains little, and strengthens them. Scale that up to thousands of people the ing on their neighbors and you’ve moved on to genocide, which even if you win isn’t going to impress the global community. Great, America’s no longer a Christo-fascist oligarchy, all it took was half of them liquidating the other half… And what do you do with the kids? Kill them along with the parents? Send them off to be reindoctrinated? I have a hard time believing someone who watched their parents get murdered over political beliefs is going to have an easy time growing up compliant in the system where their parent’s killers won.
It’s going to be a mix of fighting, lives and livelihoods getting lost, and consequences like being stripped of the rights to hold offices, own businesses, and vote- things that should have happened to those who participated in the Confederacy- to win. A lot more than one person is going to have to get their hands dirty with the knowledge they might not live to see it through, and it even then what they’ve done will be on their conscience for the remainder of their lives. You ever killed anyone? Ever beaten someone so savagely they had to go to the ER? Even if you can live comfortably with having done it because you feel morally justified, still weighs on you when you consider “goddamn, I beat the ever loving fuck out of that person and don’t feel bad”.
I’ve found most people aren’t as comfortable with committing violence as they are talking about it or empowering others to do it for them, so I’m not at all surprised we don’t have a lot of lone wolves murdering their MAGA neighbors, just packs of state sanctioned thugs called cops doing it on behalf of their handlers.
Whatever we do, however we fight back, not one of us alive today is going to get to live in a decent world. We’re here to duke it out for the foundation of what kind of society our grandkids and great grandkids get to live in, and even then they’re going to have to work to preserve their version of it because hate, intolerance, greed, and entitlement always reinvent themselves.
Wasn't the CNN just conducting a poll about the Iran invasion and around 100% of maga was for it, and like 35% of democrats too?
Like insane numbers (am home w bad cold might write errors).
The 100% of MAGA approving of the war is expected, as it's absolutely a cult, but that 35% of Democrats is disturbing if it's accurate.
There are still people who vote democrat who are beholden to the military industrial complex, and they are infuriating. The Schumer voters of this country are every bit as awful as MAGA. The establishment Democrats in Congress are the reason this illegal war hasn't been stopped yet.
Still, this war has the lowest overall approval rating of any war in US history, which suggests there is a large divide between voters and their representatives.
Fertilizer "crisis" is a man made problem.
What are pulses?
Ohhh..
Legumes are plants in the pea family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit or seeds of such plants. When used as a dry grain for human consumption, the seeds are also called pulses.
I'm glad I started growing wolffia globosa. Gonna help supplement a lot of meals. Kinda sucks that I got sick and neglected it and got set back a few weeks, but I have enough to sees other colonies
How worried should I be? And how much should I doom prep?
Edit: doom prep might have been a strong word, meant how much shelf stable food to stock up on but someone already answered that. Just have normal amount for regular emergencies.
just a reminder that none of us can sufficiently "doom prep" and avoid the consequences of large catastrophes like those being discussed
beyond typical disaster preparedness: https://www.ready.gov/
probably the best thing would be to develop community ties - get to know your local weirdo farmers doing a CSA, make friends with EMTs, get to know your neighbors, get connected with a local community garden, etc.
We will survive or die together, individual prepping is not going to save you.
EDIT:
::: spoiler to more directly answer the question of what should be in your emergency kit, and how much food to store:
https://www.ready.gov/kit
The basics:
- Water (one gallon per person per day for several days, for drinking and sanitation)
- Food (at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food)
- Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert
- Flashlight
- First aid kit
- Extra batteries
- Whistle (to signal for help)
- Dust mask (to help filter contaminated air)
- Plastic sheeting, scissors and duct tape (to shelter in place)
- Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties (for personal sanitation)
- Wrench or pliers (to turn off utilities)
- Manual can opener (for food)
- Local maps
- Cell phone with chargers and a backup battery
The extras:
- Soap, hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes to disinfect surfaces
- Prescription medications. About half of all Americans take a prescription medicine every day. An emergency can make it difficult for them to refill their prescription or to find an open pharmacy. Organize and protect your prescriptions, over-the-counter drugs, and vitamins to prepare for an emergency.
- Non-prescription medications such as pain relievers, anti-diarrhea medication, antacids or laxatives
- Prescription eyeglasses and contact lens solution
- Infant formula, bottles, diapers, wipes and diaper rash cream
- Pet food and extra water for your pet
- Cash or traveler's checks
- Important family documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records saved electronically or in a waterproof, portable container
- Sleeping bag or warm blanket for each person
- Complete change of clothing appropriate for your climate and sturdy shoes
- Fire extinguisher
- Matches in a waterproof container
- Feminine supplies and personal hygiene items
- Mess kits, paper cups, plates, paper towels and plastic utensils
- Paper and pencil
- Books, games, puzzles or other activities for children
Probably most people already have a pantry with several days of non-perishable foods - think canned foods, etc. Make sure that you are rotating your food - don't have a separate cache as your "emergency food". Instead, have a backstock of foods you already eat, and continue to rotate and eat from your pantry so you don't create waste by purchasing "emergency food" you never eat and then let go bad in your pantry.
You might ensure that you could feed 2,000 calories per person in your household. White rice is around 1600 calories per pound, so a 10 lb bag is 16,000 calories, so that's 8 days of 2,000 kcal per day (obviously you wouldn't eat just white rice, ideally beans and rice would be paired together). It depends on what you already eat, but I eat plenty of beans and have a decent stock of dry and canned beans, as well as rice. I probably have more than 8 days of food in my pantry, which is sufficient for emergency preparation.
Also note that refined foods store better than "whole" foods - so white rice will last longer than brown rice, bleached white flour will last longer than whole wheat flour, etc. (It's because refined foods tend to just have the carbs extracted from the food; whole foods have more natural components like oils that will go rancid, etc.). So when you buy whole foods, buy smaller amounts and rotate through them faster. Don't buy a 10 lb bag of brown rice for just you and a partner, maybe buy a small 1/2 lb bag or less. :::
Individual prepping is only meant to bridge the gap between distaster and community or national assistance/cooperation.
So have some emergency food, water, but prepping properly is actually things like learning to garden well, save seeds, learn to preserve, learn how to forage, build community connections.
prepping properly is actually things like learning to garden well
A garden is never going to be a primary source of calories. I know someone who has a massive backyard garden with at least 10 pool-table sized raised beds and a bunch of other smaller areas with berries, etc. He loves gardening but he can't keep up on his own and hires help for it. And, even then, it's mostly just extra things for salads. Sometimes he dedicates a full weekend to preserving things, but even then, what he has is just a supplement to his grocery shopping.
Gardening and foraging won't get you anywhere if you live in an urban area. You need an absurd amount of arable land per capita if you want to survive. A vegetable garden is useful in times of war not for raw calorie input but for supplements (either for specific nutrients not commonly found in rationed food supply or for taste).
The good news is that food production is a "solved" issue. Any industrialized country is capable of producing enough calories to feed itself and then some, even without gas imports. Worst case you just stop growing bioethanol and beef to double the amount of available arable land at no tangible human cost.
Those who'll get fucked by Trump's war are not Americans or Europeans, it'll be poor economies that can barely support industrial agriculture in the best of times. Their ability to buy fertilizer is very price-sensitive, which we already saw in 2022, though at the time the US had leadership willing to intercede and guarantee grain shipments.
This time, millions will die, but not in a prepper fantasy kind of way, but in a "they live in a 'shithole country' and we won't care to help because our money finances ICE and bribes now" kind of way.
I think this somewhat ignores the way markets kill people during times of famine - see the Late Victorian Holocausts or the Great Famine, in both of which there was plenty of food available, but the problem was the introduction of markets and artificial austerity measures that failed to distribute food to people dying of famine
so, food production might be a solved issue (I think that's a bit more debatable given soil degradation and the threats to supply chains necessary for the industrial inputs needed to keep those food production systems going in their current, post-Green-Revolution format), but the distribution issue has not been solved and will likely result in many of us dying due to lack of economic power to afford food that will simply expire and rot in storage and then be destroyed and disposed of in a way that denies us access to the waste
Both your examples are pre Haber-Bosch. Not that it entirely invalidates your point, but daily calorie consumption for a Westerner is orders of magnitude cheaper than it was for a Victorian coal miner. In fact what we generally struggle with nowadays in rich countries is an overabundance of (poor quality) food.
It's not out of the question for poor people to lack calories in rich countries, but that's a monumental policy failure. And critically it happens to socioeconomic classes that have neither the time nor the land area to dedicate to things like doomsday prepping (i.e. poor and marginalized communities in urban areas). The only solution to food insecurity is social programs, not doomsday prepping or grain hoarding.
I guess my point was more that in both cases of the Great Famine and the Late Victorian Holocausts, there was sufficient food in storage to feed the people dying of starvation - it was the introduction of markets and the resulting false austerity that prevented the otherwise typical food distribution systems during times of famine from happening, and then lots of deaths occurring. In a sense markets are a policy choice to let the poor die. If you can't afford food, you do not deserve to live. That is the logic of capitalism.
So my point is that even if we see food production as "solved", we shouldn't forget the problems of food distribution - and sure, they're related, to your point over-production (through the development of fertilizer and other industrial methods of food production) under capitalism we can reduce prices and make distribution more accessible, ... but when production occasionally fails, it is the economic system that starves people first (not necessarily the lack of food, which can also happen as in the cases of many other famines).
In pre-capitalist societies when food production failed, stocks of food were usually released and distribution was ensured in ways that marketized & capitalist societies have not done (where for example in Syria around the time of the Arab Spring, we saw grocers dying from starvation because they couldn't make enough money selling food to afford to buy food for themselves).
And yes, starvation when food is abundant is a monumental policy failure - this is something we should be driving home more to people, that the US chooses to have starving and homeless people as a policy choice.
Completely agreed that social solutions are the only way to solve food insecurity, individual action like doomsday prepping is a distraction that primes us to victim-blame people who die for not "preparing" adequately.
Prepping gets a bad rap from the crazy people building bunkers and zombie traps that people saw on reality tv.
I look at what my grandparents had. They had a nice garden and canned quite a bit of what they grew. They had tools and enough stuff on hand to do basic maintenance and repairs on roofs, plumbing and cars. They sewed quilts and baked their own bread regularly. They had enough cash saved to make sudden purchases for anything else. They had a shotgun for emergencies.
That doesn't sound crazy or paranoid, but resilient. I know most people can't do all of that but it would be nice to get closer to the mindset that governments and companies are nice but may not always be able or willing to help you.
I understand the mindset, but civilization hinges on working together. Being resilient enough to survive on your own is rarely going to involve growing some significant portion of your own calories for an urban population. Being handy will certainly help in general, and having a method to repel bad actors are useful in a complete collapse, but relying on gasoline powered vehicles doesn't make sense if you think society is going to fail.
That's the thing, they didn't think society was going to fail, even though they'd been through the depression, a world war, the oil crisis, blizzards etc and it never came to that. They weren't the only ones either, they were essentially in a suburb and they knew their neighbors well
What I'm saying is, either civilization is going to fail or it isn't. If it is, urban centers are going to collapse and a lot of people are going to die and most gasoline cars will be useless in a couple years. If it isn't, utilizing the frameworks of civilization to handle disasters will be as effective as anything else we can do, hence no need for extreme resilience (growing you own food, canning, making your own clothing) or rugged individualism.
The way I look at it is, the easiest 10% of the prep might get you most of the benefits.
A few weeks worth of water, a few days worth of tinned food, that kind of thing.
Preppers will just get robbed.
If you have land it wouldn't hurt to have some survival crops. Something like sunchokes (a.k.a. jerusalem artichokes, bad name because they're not an artichoke and more like a sunflower) can grow well in a sectioned off space where they can't spread. In an emergency the tubers can be dug up and cooked, though they'll probably give you a lot of gas from the high inulin content.
Personally I love raspberries and black raspberries, which are easy to grow just don't plant them where they can spread and run wild. It's nice to have fresh berries!
We do have small hut with few apple trees and some blackberries that we cook from when they grow(we get plenty of apples). Planning to plant something this year but didn't decide yet, probably tomatoes. Not sure what could grow well in soil that has clay and with low maintenance. I did think about planting the sunchoke since it apparently grows in the wild here so might be the easiest to get and maintain.
sunchokes are fairly weedy and hard to get rid of, and don't really produce enough calories to be worth it in a survival situation.
Also, you should grow stuff you already eat - don't expect to grow a bunch of food that you aren't used to cooking or eating and to enjoy it.
tbh, it might make most sense to identify what you spend the most money on and what's easiest to grow that would replace the money you spend with time tending - usually that's fresh herbs. Growing sage, thyme, rosemary, green onions, basil, etc. is usually fairly easy and will save a lot of money (a bundle of fresh herbs can cost like $5 for a very small amount).
Garlic is also fairly expensive per 100 g, and I found it not too hard to grow - I managed to grow enough garlic in one season in a small area on a suburban plot to not have to buy grocery store garlic for over a year.
But on the other hand, you don't tend to buy a lot of garlic by weight, so it may or may not make sense given the amount of time it takes to garden.
People need to understand that gardening is a huge amount of labor and time spent - it's not economical compared to working a job and buying what you need.
So, if you're unemployed and unable to work, but able to garden, it's unlikely to be a great way to spend your time if your concern is saving money.
If your goal is to survive a catastrophe, I think it's delusional to expect gardening to fully provide for your calories, and the same calculus applies: your time will be better spent making yourself valuable to someone who has excess food to give away (like your local CSA farmer friend); even just volunteering on their farm is a better use of time than trying to provide for your own calories by making your small urban or suburban lawn into a food production system.
I feel like you just avoided the subject. If everyone fully relies on someone elses agriculture for all their calories then that's putting all your eggs in one basket for an emergency. A farmer suddenly getting a thousand volunteers doesn't increase the number of potatoes ready for harvest.
Sunchokes are a suggestion because they are perennial, store in the ground, and require no care so long as they are contained.
Something like potatoes would be great for more people if they were perennial and hands off.
Potatoes can be grown sort of as a perennial. I leave potatoes, carrots and parsnips in the ground to be dug when I need them. They stay much fresher that way. You have to mark the rows and mulch the potatoes so they don't freeze and become mushy, especially if there isn't snow cover. I have been doing this for several years. These are also high calorie foods.
hm, I'm not sure in what way you think I avoided the subject 🤔
sunchokes are a low-calorie food, which is why I specifically don't suggest them as a famine food. It would be better to grow sunflowers that produce seeds, as at least those have oils and will provide calories.
Potatoes are a much better option than sunchokes, but require much more attention and effort, to prevent blight and ensure a good crop, etc. - it's not trivial to produce your own calories.
I'm fine with suggesting you can pick up producing some of your own food or calories, but as someone who has actually tried doing this in a suburban context, I want to warn people about the intensive time and labor involved.
Farming is best done on a farm, by farmers; more people should think about whether their time and effort is best spent on farming or not, whether they want to farm full-time or not, etc. We need to be clear-sighted that nobody can achieve self-sufficiency on their own, and that everyone has limited time and energy.
We also need to be clear that having a victory garden is not going to replace the reliance on farmers for calories or prevent famine or save people from catastrophic collapse of food production systems or supply chains.
Which is why I am emphasizing our reliance on farmers rather than telling everyone to become a farmer.
Potatos.
Potatoes <3
Probably not, ammonia production isn’t exactly a huge portion of natural gas usage, it’ll just have to compete on price with other demands, other things with lower value will get priced out of the market long before nitrogen fertilizer. The price for it will probably go up, already has on futures markets, but not by a huge amount, not even the biggest blip in the past decade. And nitrogen fertilizer is a fairly small portion of overall costs for most agriculture, so it won’t be a significant increase in price.
The places it might have an impact are on products with really narrow profit margins already, like commodity corn in the US (actually a lot of commodity corn breaks even or even is grown at a slight loss because reasons ) and a lot of that goes in to non-food uses like ethanol(for gas), chemical production, or even for use in construction materials.
Amazing video link. Makes me want to grow my own organic free range tax breaks!
This will only affect poor countries. Rich, industrialized countries have more than enough capacity to make or buy their own fertilizer. Yes prices will go up again, but it's an economics issue, not anything close to an existential threat. There is simply more than enough calorie production for everyone even with strong perturbations in global shipping. Fertilizer is only a marginal use for methane in terms of volume.
If you live in a poor country however, things are a lot more dire. The price of fertilizer is indexed on the price of gas, of which there is still enough for everyone; but your country will be competing with AI datacenters for the fucking stuff which means millions will have to die so Musk can continue to jerk it to AI child porn.
It's not a gas pricing issue, it's a wealth hoarding issue compounded by the aimless crusade of a demented manlet commanded by religious fanatics.
This will only affect poor countries.
This is a remarkably ignorant statement. Gas in Canada has skyrocketed over 40 cents in the last week. Diesel nearly twice as much. This will absolutely affect grocery prices. I'm a local truck driver for Dairy Farmers of Canada and the fuel prices will limit transportation of goods and we will see not just fuel prices rise but grocery prices across the entire store because of how expensive it is to transport anything now.
I live in Canada and we have a surplus of fertilizer and we supply dozens of nations with it. Guess how much it's gonna cost to transport it even nationally?
If you don't think this will have a catastrophic rippling effect across dozens of industries and factors, you're completely hopeless. Lumber will cost more for construction projects. Food will cost more. It will cost you more to mail a package to a friend. Everything will go up because of this. This is a seismic global economic shift and it's all because the USA elected the dumbest fucking person to lead the USA.
Oh boohoo. Chocolate will be more expensive for westerners. Cry me a river.
What the discussion was centered on is famine. Actual famine. Which will only affect poor countries and will kill millions. Whether or not individual Canadians stockpile grains in their basement (OP's actual suggestion) has literally no bearing on anyone's food security.
I'm sorry but I just can't equate the economic struggle of a few more percent of inflation for mostly middle-class westerners with that of Global South subsistence farmers who are actually going to have to find out how far they can stretch out a grain silo or a fertilizer bag.
If I could, I would make sure it happens. It will do a lot more than screw over food supplies.
Dude, I've been filling my pantry with grains since the pandemic.
But hey, at least both floods and droughts are becoming more common which is great for crops!
America needs to knock off that 200,000,000 citizens from their population.... The last step of project 2025.
