Summary of the Summary: We are five years into a severe global food crisis that is very unlikely to go away. It will threaten poor countries with increased malnutrition and starvation and even collapse. Resource squabbles and waves of food-induced migration will threaten global stability and global growth. This threat is badly underestimated by almost everybody and all institutions with the possible exception of some military establishments.Climate Progress
Jeremy Grantham on ‘Welcome to Dystopia’: We Are ‘Entering A Long-Term And Politically Dangerous Food Crisis’
Jeremy Grantham
1 comment:
I always find these discussions in this topic insincere because they almost always (I have never seen one that does at least) leave out another top variable that should be included. Meat and the Western diet.
Much, if not the majority, of the western diet is animal based. Hardly anybody in America eats even a single daily meal that does not have a lot of that meal's calories from an animal product.
And if you do a simple analysis of the amount of grain and plant calories that go into each calorie you get from an animal product, you will find that the ratio is about 4 to 1 to 8 to 1 depending on animal. In other words, it takes about 5 to 8 calories of grains and other plants to raise that animal for each calorie you consume of an animal product.
So as rural Eastern people, who mostly eat plant based diets, move to cities and adopt a Western diet (about 50%+ calories from animal products), that is like adding 2 to 4 more people to the world's population as far as food demand.
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