I live in western Canada -- I can assure you there is no lack of arable farmland.
What we lack is western governments that:
- Understand where fertilizer comes from, and how to create billions of tons of it from raw materials available in western Canada.
- Stops crushing small business and farmers, by forcing them to pay 10x to 100x more in total compliance, regulatory and taxation costs than the big businesses that lobby the government and create the compliance, regulatory and taxation laws
- Are forcibly stopped by their citizenry from abusing them for generations.
I'm skeptical. A lot of the land that looks like good land in north America has a poor climate, poor soil, or both. Further, to make soil productive, you have to do a lot of work building irrigation and drainage.
People look at a state like Montana and think that the vast stretches of land are undeveloped, but in reality, unless you went in with a lot of investment and care, the soil would just lift off and you'd end up with another dust bowl.
If Canadian farmers are like farmers in most of the western world, they're great at filling forms, exploiting bureacracy, getting paid to not grow sugar beet or whatever the latest scheme is, then yakking about how it breaks their cowboy hearts that the state can't just let them be free.
Honest question: how much of that poor soil is directly related to the damming of rivers all over the US? I’m curious to know and not really sure how to go about finding an answer.
Well, at least in Montana, it's just a semi-arid climate. It doesn't rain enough for farming techniques developed in western europe.
My general feeling is that a good field is usually the product of generations of work: where I grew up, you had to put drainage channels every two meters, giant ditches, endless effort to get rid of weeds, etc. It wasn't the case you could just move into unmaintained soil, especially virgin soil with shrub on it, and expect it to start producing wheat without a hell of a lot of labour.
That's compounded by the fact that farmers are basically soil-seeking missiles, and always have been. If there's a patch of really good farming land, that's probably been a lot of competition for it in the preceding centuries. If there aren't any farmers on it, there's almost always a reason.
Not sure about Canada, but in the US, this mostly due to deforestation and centuries of aggressively farming the same land: there’s preciously little nutrients and carbon in the soil compared to fields that have living forests right around them.
Sure there would be crop losses to animals in such fields, but those animals also fertilize the soil and keep the microbiome diverse.
30% of world supply of fertilizer (Ka-based) comes from Soligorsk -- city in Belarus, dictatorship country that helps Russia to attack Ukraine (provides it's territory, transportation, railroad services, airport services, fuel services to Russian troops.
I don’t understand… From all I can tell, there’s quite a bit of farming happening in Canada. Are you saying the land is farmed, but inefficiently? Or is there land that should be farmed but is forest/wilderness?
„Regulation“ and „compliance“ are the same, more or less. It’s just florist to keep repeating both.
Taxes rarely prevent some business from existing since almost all taxes are tied to profits, not revenues.
Do you have any examples of regulation in farming that make it so much harder for the 1,000,000 $ farm than one 10 x the size? And, if that is so, why aren’t these large companies making the gains in efficiency you are promising?
> Taxes rarely prevent some business from existing since almost all taxes are tied to profits, not revenues.
* Does one need capital for growth (more tractors, more people)? How do taxes affect the process of saving the capital, do they increase or decrease the pace?
* Having multiple ways to invest someone's capital, would a person prefer the enterprise with higher net profits?
I’m having doubts a lack of capital is stopping Canada from producing vastly more foodstuffs. For one thing, agriculture is (literally) bread-and-butter business for banks. And there’s been sort of a capital glut. Meaning: a semi-solid business plan will get you all the capital you need, for little more than 0 % interest.
Farming isn’t very profitable. High risk venture. I think it’s almost like running a self storage where you are mostly just using the farming to pay for the land.
Try to analyze what you eat in an year and how much land is needed to produce it, then try to interpolate for a global population. Just count how much flower (as flower and as products made with it, from bread to biscuits) you consume in an year and how much grain, corn etc you need, with the relevant quantity of land needed. Than try to go the classic natural way, witch means manure and fertilizer derived from urine, compute how much cows, pigs, sheep etc you need both for milk, cheese, butter, meat and manure and so how much prairie/pasture you need.
Of course industry have made progress, nourishing cows with grains/cereals etc make them grow more, more quickly, taste better etc, irrigation make fields more productive just to stay basic, but most effective technique also pollute, especially those for agriculture than those for animal husbandry.
Yes, there is room to expand productions and ways to do so in less polluting manners, but there is a big issue in the middle: mass distribution is incompatible with a distributed farming model, witch means on one side some big&powerful bodies will fight against such move, and more practically that food prices will jump anyway and food variety will fall much since many long-distance imported products can't be imported at an acceptable cost without mass distribution.
In a way or another, even just for changing to a more sustainable system we face huger, and we the "westerns" face the little impact, populations of vast part of the world face far bigger disasters and very probably will not get them without reacting. Between them there are poor from central Asia that can't really do much but there are also big powers like China that desperately need food for an enormous population having a polluted and industrialized land + no fertile ground around to invade. They need to reach South America to find enough food, and South America is already a feud of USA who will not like having less big but still big food supply problems in the meantime South Americans do not like much nourish nor Chinese nor USA while starving... That means some kind of war, perhaps with proxies to avoid a full scale nuclear conflict, and actually war have side effects, one between them is crushing various productions, food included...
This was already projected to happen due to covid19 restrictions eating away at all of the slack in the system. It's quite convenient that this war has come along and created cover for the problems generated by some of the more ham-fisted policies of the pandemic response. Which isn't to say the war isn't going to make things worse, it certain will but we were already at the tipping point and going over the edge no matter what happened next. Now the trip down is going to be even deeper and climb back out of the hole even more grueling. Too bad we created a situation where there is no slack left to compensate for events like this war.
You’re making the insinuations about how “convenient” it is and how you’re sure the war matters but it really doesn’t… but what are you actually trying to say? Is Putin trying to distract from his previous creation, COVID? No? Is somebody else trying to distract from COVID and forcing Russia to invade its neighbor? Why? How?
And what policies, exactly, have this impact on the food supply you are talking about? Because vaccinations and mask wearing doesn’t stop corn from growing, last I checked.
The way I read GP's post, it's more about plausible deniability.
As in the "ham-fisted Covid response" was going to have a bunch of ill-effects. But now that there's a war, which is going to increase those effects, and would have created them anyway, said governments have a scapegoat: "It's not our measures that have created these problems, it's the war. We can't be blamed!".
It's not a good argument. Both Russia and Ukraine are important wheat producers - without them the world may experience shortages, this is a direct result of the invasion and nothing to do with covid. Same goes for the current shipping crisis, it's caused directly by the economic effect of sanctions and the backlash felt on the supply chains. Maybe those problems were created by covid to some extent, but they were being ironed out already and some restrictions are being lifted right this moment. But the war exacerbated all of those problems.
There's no mention in the article of the vast amount of food diverted to biofuels. Getting rid of all the mandates and subsidies for that is the most obvious thing that could immediately be done to increase food production. (Of course, biofuels make no sense at any time, being entirely a corrupt money-making scheme whose political support comes from misinformed voters who falsely think it has some environmental or energy-production benefit.)
There may not be enough seed to plant alternative crops, rather than corn meant for ethanol production. Presumably corn of the varieties used for ethanol could be used as human or animal food, but it might be necessary to expand infrastructure (eg, milling capacity) to allow this, which ought to be possible given the lead time before harvest, if people start thinking about it now.
It's also possible that more land could be planted with alternative crops (eg, wheat) using the available seed by somewhat reducing the amount of seed used per acre. The lower seed density would often be mostly compensated for by increased growth. (If typical seeding rates are optimized for yield, the derivative of yield with respect to seeding rate will be zero, so a small reduction in seeding rate will have only a slight effect on yield.) Slightly lower seeding rates might come about naturally if the price of seed goes up. It's also possible that grain currently destined for food use could still be diverted for use as seed - checking that out while it may still be true seems like it could be a priority.
Everyone knows about it, and nothing like it has happened since.
(I remember when Bhopal happened, and I am still shocked. I just read up on details last year. It is not over. People are still suffering and dying from it today.)
Just my 2 cents, but seems to me Western society depends a lot on meat, bread, diary as "food" , the fast food for the masses, sugar or glucose syrup made from corn is another huge ingredient as is palm oil... there's a great french film out there called "Demain" or Tomorrow, which is much more succinct... but basically growing vegetables can be done much more intensively by small farmers and generally is...
Obesity epidemic in the US and elsewhere is because sugary products are so much more accessible to the lower income earners ... there's a huge variety of plants we no longer eat such as purslane or nettles which are highly nutritious... agriculture as is currently is imo a form of terrorism on nature, monoculture, x"cides", and heavy machinery which still isn't in this day an age of hype about self driving and gps,automated (because legislation...duh) even pastures could and should be planted with bushes because they provide added shade, roots reaching deeper and leaves the cattle eat....
I could rattle on but just saying in Switzerland apples taste of sugary water, here in Romania we have so many tastes... so I guess good luck you WIERD countries...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right... this article is from 2014. Not only are they actually there and sanctioned by the Ukraine government (part of the official military), they are funded by the U.S. This war was more than 8 years in the making, and our intelligence agencies did all they could to provoke it.
Russia has more than enough interest in provoking the war themselves given they did it twice already in crimea and donbas. As well as provoking the mobilization of Azov and building their reputation, given the latter invasion. Though Azov seems to have no diplomatic arm or representation in government?
It seems to me that US intelligence did to proper thing in loudly declaring the (accurate) plans of russian forces; though at what cost to their future sources remains to be seen.
If we can believe this story[1], some FSB guys were tasked throughout the years with bribing Ukranian military leaders to just lay down their weapons when the invasion begins. The FSB guys thought, "You're giving me cash to prepare for something (Ukranian invasion) that'll never happen, and you don't expect a receipt? Wahey, call the Mercedes dealership, and look up villas on the Black Sea coast!". And when Putin told them the invasion was going to happen, they panicked, and thought how to prevent it from happening and their embezzlement to be caught, "If we leak the plans to CIA, then Putin might get cold feet.". That's why the US seems to have been very well informed about it.
In any case, this whole reply thread is off-topic to the article (which is about hunger, which will be real whoever provoked the war in reality and people's messed up's minds) and it's because top commenter is butthurt about one word...
I agree that there are many holes in the rationales provided. We should be able to say this without being accused of supporting either side.
I'm not sure this would be as controversial if posters considered that it is possible for both 'sides' to be wrong. Of course the article has a way to frame the issue. It exists on one 'side' of the issue.
Similar to how these shortages are largely blamed on the war, rather than the sanctions or the pandemic restrictions.
It isn't just the (perhaps misplaced) controversy that I find interesting here. It is the constant transitioning from one crisis to the next, each one with economic implications. A cynical conspiracy theorist might even wonder if these crises are manufactured to suit these economic ends. Is attributing motive even important? We are here now, dealing with the results.
Just the same, the constant state of emergency demanded by these fear promotions and the short attention span of those who indulge them does remind me of a cat chasing a laser pointer.
Russia can be provoked into the war and the war can still be unjust at the same time. It's not an either or scenario. If someone calls me a name and I summarily execute them, it would be both provoked, and unjust in much the same way.
Seems to me Russia blundered pretty badly. Even if it had been as easy as they were assuming they would always come out of this having paid an extremely heavy toll diplomatically and economically. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand why they couldn't use the same tactics their opposition was using and keep it out of the hot war it's turned into.
That 8 years comes from when Russia annexed Crimea. It was Russia that has been doing all they could to provoke Ukraine into seeking protection from Russia.
This is geo-political version of a wife beater demanding his ex not date better looking men who treat her well then saying it's now her fault she has black eye, a fat lip & broken ribs.
> Apart from NATO expansion contrary to the unwritten undestandings of the 90-s
A war over an “unwritten understanding”? Thats one of the saddest excuses for an argument I’ve ever seen, not even a defunct treaty to wave around as defense, just an “unwritten understanding”. That wouldn’t fly in a contract negotiation, let alone as a casus belli.
Nevermind how Putin’s own words put lies to your post a fucking month ago. Shame on you for repeating such obvious nonsense. Putin made it very clear that this was about him seeing Ukraine as a fake state; I have no idea why you would keep repeating the line that Putin himself cast away before starting an illegal war.
Also, it drives me absolutely nuts that everyone keeps acting like it’s NATO that is expanding into Ukraine. Are we just pretending that Ukraine is a puppet without its agency and agenda? Hint: there is a pretty obvious reason why Ukraine wanted in NATO. It’s pure chauvinism to ignore this.
Incredible how valueless identity politics has become as a phrase, other than as a way to signal disagreement.
> The truth of the matter is the West provoked a war through utter inept diplomacy and they are making things worse every day.
“The world isn’t black and white. Anyways, I am going to blame one party alone for a geopolitical disaster. If you disagree you’re either wrong or doing identity politics”.
> As someone else commented it's like we have children at the wheel. The sad part is even a large part of HN is just towing the party line blindly.
If you can’t restrain yourself from childish insults, you’ll probably get banned. It also makes everyone think you’re a child, and they will ignore your arguments because of it.
Also, it’s “butt hurt”. Please try and at least spell your insults correctly, they lose a lot of their impact when riddled with typos.
> west proceeds to deeply fuck with ukraine for 8 years while russia repeats the above and totally ignores it
There is a reason why I accuse those who take this line of being chauvinists. First of all, for the past 8 years Ukraine has been begging for Western weapons and assistance, because Russia had already invaded their territory. You’re ignoring the fact that Ukraine has their own agenda and own initiative, and they can request assistance legitimately.
Second, “mess with Ukraine and we’ll invade” is not a legitimate stance to take. Ukraine is a sovereign nation, not a Russian puppet state that Putin can put claims on. Especially when that “messing” is in the form of legitimate arms deals between sovereign nations. Russia can complain all it wants, but Ukraine trying to buy Javelins is not a legitimate casus belli.
Third, again, Putin made it very clear in his initial speech that he views Ukraine as a fake state, which is wildly out of line with the argument you’re trying to make, and much more characteristic of Russian chauvinism towards Ukraine.
Putin is evil. What he is doing is not morally acceptable. But it’s possible for Putin to be evil and for the western leadership to be inept and to have helped precipitate the instability. Is one of these more salient than the other? I tend to think so, despite popular opinion.
Let's assume Russia indeed felt threaten by NATO and US and it somehow justifies taking a military action against. Then why Putin instead of dealing with NATO and US bombs women and children of Ukraine? Sieges and shells Mariupol for a month so people have to dig graves right in the yards of residential buildings and along the streets?
Politicians face three major problems with big decisions like war:
1. What should I do?
2. How do I sell it to the people at home?
3. How do I sell it to the rest of the world?
I think that accounts for why some correctly observe Putin claimed Ukraine needed to be "liberated" from all the Nazis (#2 above). It's also why Russia has said repeatedly that NATO caused the war (#3 above).
As for the actual cause (#1 above), like all wars, there are probably multiple factors, like:
1. Former KGB Putin and plenty of others longing for the "glory days" of the USSR.
2. A desire to stop NATO expansion by intimidating anyone else who might want in.
3. Removing the Zolynksy government and replacing with a pro-Russia government.
4. Solidifying access to the Black Sea and claims to Crimea.
...
ETA: also remember, if news reports are accurate, Putin thought this war would be a 5-minute cakewalk. I suspect Russia might not have invaded if they knew the cost in lives and dollars this war would bring.
Because Russia can't wage a par purely based on what's in Putin's head. The assumptions and beliefs of any given leader ends up encoded in both internal policy memos, and in the observed strategic decisions made by the various agencies tasked with executing on said leader's goals. Both are places where external observers can infer what is going on in the upper levels of the government.
Assuming that we won't get our hands dirty and end the war.
Yes that might mean Putin starts jabbering about nukes, but if the west says from the outside that their waraims are limited to freeing Ukraine and ensuring its freedom, Putin isn't going to trade his nice life for nuclear war.
Global Hunger is not caused by actual Ukrainian war, that's just another push toward global huger, but causes are far more broad and large part of them came from our western world, who colonize vast area of the world imposing a development for corporate profit so harmful that on one side push a "quick" straw fire that push up global population in the illusion of infinite growth and on the other destroy large ecosystem to a point they can exists anymore.
Also some thinkers like global hunger as a means to fuel big unrest and countless deaths both to artificially lower the actual human population, after having pushed it too reproduce for equal "business reasons", just to overturn the table to start other the same model again.
I'm just curious about two things: when (not if, reading the history a bit) a sufficient mass of population will comprehend who's it's real enemy and if the human life on Earth will survive... Of course, history say that certain kind of people always survive, as a cohort, but...
What we lack is western governments that:
- Understand where fertilizer comes from, and how to create billions of tons of it from raw materials available in western Canada.
- Stops crushing small business and farmers, by forcing them to pay 10x to 100x more in total compliance, regulatory and taxation costs than the big businesses that lobby the government and create the compliance, regulatory and taxation laws
- Are forcibly stopped by their citizenry from abusing them for generations.