Potential Global Food Shortage?

[egon]

Pat; I have now idea of what kind of Swiss may be involved as High German was the language spoken. There are also relatives that speak low German. Many of the Swiss Canton's have different dialects. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

There is a mountain in Switzerland that has the same name as my Grandmothers surname. An uncle tried to trace family history but failed miserably. Lordy man, there are places in the US where the spoken language is just barely recognizable as English.

My last name supposedly has Greek origins! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

In fact The chances of the US having German as the predominate language was very close! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

As for the decline in agricultural land I very much agree. Food shortages could become critical. Now we must also define critical food supply between what is accepted as normal and what is required for survival as they are very different in nature. We must also take into account the transportation of food supplies. This may be the overriding factor for shortages.

Okay; you called my bluff on protein! [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Now on "No one knows" I'll stand my ground! No one does know what the future will bring. From a song " Whatever will be will be, the futures not ours to see" [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] I'll stand Pat! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

In another aspect ones ancestry and ancestors are really not important as it is "who you are" that tells the tale. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

An old sick man being taken to the limit of his feeble intelect!! [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] It aint fair! [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Fair, who said anything about fair. Egon, If I don't take advantage of you while you are working at diminished capacity I may not be able to do it at all.

Pat

[DUMBDOG]

My heritage is all German, my dad was born in Russia. Guess they all came through there. I do consider myself an American first.

The nomadic image of the Germanic tribes may come in handy when we are forced to live off of the land when the food chain goes down the drain.

[egon]

Fair; heck everyone takes advantage of me when I'm at full capacity whatever that is??? [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] I'm what you call the "Food at the bottom of the chain" [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Yeah, sure. I know that is your story and your sticking to it but some of us just don't buy it for a second!

"Me thinks he does protest overmuch." (Sorry Will, I tried.)

Pat

[midwilshire]

Prof. Amartya Sen won the nobel prize for his investigation of world famine. You know what he found? Famines are NOT caused by a lack of food, but by government restrictions on food distribution. In fact, Sen concluded that there has never been a famine in modern times that was caused by a lack of food.

America is still a food exporter, so we have food to spare. I seriously doubt that the American government will restrict American's access to food through oppressive distribution restrictions, as that would cause chaos in the homeland. People do dangerous things when hungry, you know.

While there may, indeed, be food shortages on earth, they are unlikely to occur in America.

That said, I totally agree with the call to sustainable, self-sufficient living.

[Pat]

Todays "Newsweek" was talking about high and increasing prices of food and things like the tortilla riots in a place south of here.

If enough agricultural land is put to other (non-agricultural) uses and the population continues to grow without bound, how can there always be ENOUGH food, irrespective of transportation and distribution? Eventually at some point the food available per capita will not be satisfactory if those two influences listed above continue unabated. I agree we aren't THERE yet but who will not agree we are headed in that direction?

Pat

Pat

[Bird]

Weren't there news stories about 50 years ago saying that we didn't need to worry because there was enough food in the oceans of the world to feed the entire population for many years into the future? Of course in more recent times, that's changed, too.

[Pat]

Bird, most desirable stocks of fish have been seriously depleted. Shark is delicious but is being seriously over fished. Icelandic cod is getting scarce as are many desirable species. Less desirable species which you never saw in the supermarkets a couple decades ago are now there because the preferred species are not available in sufficient quantities.

Once upon a time I took about a 2 year sabbatical and did marine electronic field service engineering armed with a FCC commercial radiotelephone lisc with ships radar endorsement. I worked on a few yachts and US line cargo ships but well over 90% of my work was on tuna clippers in San Diego and a few in Mexico. The newer ones built in the 70's for about 10 million a copy, the ones with a helicopter landing pad on the top of the pilot house mostly.

These boats went out for longer and longer periods of time and came back with fewer and fewer smaller and smaller tuna. Tuna were seriously over fished. All the canneries in San Diego and the one in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California del Norte closed. There is no San Diego tuna fleet now. This is just one facet of the overall problem that I happened to witness.

Another area of depletion of worldwide stocks is whaling. Short of war there seems to be no way to stop the Japanese from whaling as well as killing thousands of porpoise/dolphin for food because the demand is very high and there are japanese with the $ to spend. The lab where I used to work had lots of oceanographers, some of which were INTO cetaceans (whales and dolphins) so I was close to that situation as well.

Pat

Pat

[Bird]

That's what I was talking about, Pat, when I said that's changed. I went to Alaska in 1972 and my dad, my brothers, and I went fishing for black rockfish (commonly called black bass up there) out of Seward. There were no restrictions on them, and we were catching a fish with each cast; only quit when we got tired and had all we wanted to clean that evening. No telling how many we threw back; probably at least as many as we kept. We had over 100# of fillets that evening. The next year, there was a limit of 25, and when I was there in 1991, the limit was 5.

I used to go to Port Aransas for the week of Thanksgiving every year and fish with my dad. Like most people, we did some fishing for flounder, red drum (redfish), and speckled trout (weakfish to east coast folks), but we fished a lot for sheepshead. Very few people wanted the sheepshead and there were no restrictions on them. They're just as good eating as red drum, but big head, big bones, smaller ratio of meat to whole fish than many others. We'd get 15 to 20 in the morning, go fillet them, eat lunch, and go back and do it again in the afternoon. Now there's a limit of 5 and minimum length of 12" and you're lucky if you ever get that limit of 5.

And yes, shark is delicious and, in fact, is my favorite for smoked fish. But they're scarce enough that there are very restrictive limits for recreational fishermen, and it's very expensive in the grocery store.