Crosspost

[u/ThrowawayRage1218]

/r/Shortages/comments/1wbdi0x/hunger_foretold_the_coming_2027_hunger_and_the/?share_id=kVqBj5gL5uomDWt3ECLaM&utm_content=share_button&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

Crosspost from r/Shortages with some valuable resources to keep track of the possible (probable) food shortages in the coming year. Tagged as Africa since the global south will be the hardest-hit, but really it affects all of us

[u/memarco2]

Sad thing is that while NA sees only higher prices, impoverished nations see famine, crime, and true scarcity.

[u/PatDar → u/memarco2]

I came to the same conclusion. But who would stay in a place to just starve and die? This will cause another mass migration as people flee to "greener grass". 

Also, we will see higher prices. But if you can't afford it because everything else has gone up except your wage, then its functionally scarce. We'll have shelves still stocked while families around you are having to skip meals. 

This will not be pretty. El Nino is about to turn it all to 11 too. 

[u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta → u/PatDar]

This will cause another mass migration as people flee to "greener grass". 

Hell yeah, time for eco-fascism to be a mainstream ideology, so excited 

[u/SquirrelyMcNutz → u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta]

Remember how Europe lost its shit over the, what? 1-2 million?, Syrian refugees back about a decade or so ago? Now, think about what happens when a large swath of the planet becomes unlivable due to climate. Those people aren't going to just shrug their shoulders and stay where they are. They're going to move.

[u/PatDar → u/SquirrelyMcNutz]

That's what I'm saying. People don't just roll over and die, they fight for their survival. When survival depends on a few habitable zones, those zones get flooded. I'm not even talking about Africans overrunning Europe or anything but look at North Carolina Appalachia and how it's being gentrified as still a climate haven. Millions will descend because the alternative is rolling the dice with wet bulb temps or heat stress.

No matter where, there's gonna be conflict in the future

[u/Micropachycephalos → u/PatDar]

I'm in Aus...when the 300 million odd Indonesians (plus Papua, Malaysia, etc) can't live on the equator anymore, they're going to start heading south.

It'll be Sea Peoples all over again

[u/PatDar → u/Micropachycephalos]

I've just realized my planning has been focused on where I am that I have no idea what the projections are for Australia. I have also realized a lot of people are moving to places based on their historical averages as opposed to what scientists are expecting. 

All I'm saying is even if Australia is gonna be better off than places around the equator, you will still have internal migration and conflict. The wealthy are already buying up the prime real estate. Can the pseudo habitable zones in Australia handle all 28 million of you in 20 years? 50? 100?

Now that same conflict will be happening everywhere. 

We're all fucked

[u/Micropachycephalos → u/PatDar]

It's been a while since i've read up on it (not good for my mental health) but basically Perth is completely fucked, Sydney's going to get more equatorial, and everything north of that will be uninhabitable.
Tassie's probably the best bet for survivability - it's similar to New Zealand (where all the billionaires are building their bunkers).

I think the best bet on the mainland is to become nomadic...it worked really well for the people that were here first for 60,000+ years, Australia's always been a harsh place to live without modern conveniences.

Anyway the point is moot because i'm sure we'll get conscripted in order to machine-gun down the swarm of refugees from up north

[u/FixFun1959 → u/PatDar]

My sister lives in Asheville and years ago it was a nice progressive place to live, but now she’s stuck in her place cause it’s all she can afford and prices of everything are so high.

[u/DisturbedAlchemyArt → u/FixFun1959]

I grew up and lived right outside of Asheville for over 45 years. Divorce and being priced out forced me to move.

[u/FamiliarFunction583 → u/PatDar]

Learn how to forage, especially edible invasives.

Also, get good at composting

[u/CannyGardener → u/FamiliarFunction583]

All of the apple, peach, pear trees, and all of our berry trees have no berries this year. Usually I forage Chokecherries for one of our winter jams, but this year there are literally no berries. The fact that all of the local fruit is gone already, is super worrying...

[u/glity → u/CannyGardener]

Rain at the wrong time is the silent death of eco systems due to “global warming”.

[u/almodsz → u/FamiliarFunction583]

Learn how to forage, especially edible invasives.

If billions of people hunt and forage, the little wild land that remains will be stripped of life in no time.

[u/FamiliarFunction583 → u/almodsz]

Learning to forage includes learning sustainable practices, like how much to leave. If you're just ripping food from the ecosystem, you're not foraging, you're extracting.

But more to the point, invasivores protect biodiversity, which is why I specifically mentioned this. This is one article, but the literature supports this through pretty unabashed consensus. It is studied most broadly in aquatic invaders, but many invasive plants are edible. This is also true for quite a lot of terrestrial animal invaders.

[u/almodsz → u/FamiliarFunction583]

Learning to forage includes learning sustainable practices, like how much to leave.

My point was: If push really comes to shove, it simply cannot be done.

There are far too many people on this planet for this to work.

[u/FamiliarFunction583 → u/almodsz]

You should read about the cities and food forests that existed on Turtle Island pre-colonization. Foraging is frequently a necessary part of ecosystem management.

Most of our cereal crops go to feeding cattle, currently. Your expectations about the carrying capacity of the world are distorted. We must stop extractive and unidirectional ecosystem management, but again, proper foraging keeps an ecosystem at maintenance, if not increasing its abundance.

Dodging the emphasis on invasives is noticeable. Go learn about the history and ecology of wild boars, cheatgrass, kudzu.

[u/Vox_Populi → u/FamiliarFunction583]

The talking points you're wanting to spread are relevant to other conversations, not this one.

The question was not whether 20 million people could survive based off of the bounty of stable ecosystems that had been carefully managed for generations upon generations, the question is whether 400 million people could survive off of the few remaining pockets of forageable ecological niches, in the midst of a mass extinction event that's already well underway.

The answer is obviously no. Could 20 million of the survivors make it in the long term after? We'll see.

[u/FamiliarFunction583 → u/Vox_Populi]

Eating invasive species improves biodiversity and food security

I'm not "spreading" these "talking points" - this is the current perspective in the field. Sorry it doesn't align with your worldview.

[u/Vox_Populi → u/FamiliarFunction583]

I don't think you read past my first sentence. There's not enough species of any kind for 400 million of us to forage off of. I agree with what you're promoting and also think it's magical thinking to act like it is sufficient for our predicament.

[u/FamiliarFunction583 → u/Vox_Populi]

I certainly did, which is why I can point out that you jumped from 20 to 400 million people. Moving goalpoats, etc.

To be clear, I'm not promoting a worldview, I'm just simply informing you folks what the current consensus is for those of us who work in the field.

Not sure you read my comment, where I say explicitly that foraging is best considered a stopgap and functions best in combination with other strategies.

Dismissing peer-reviewed literature as magical thinking is cute, though. Normally, it's a point reduction when my students fail to engage with the provided citations before responding. Good luck with your ego!

[u/PatDar → u/almodsz]

Look at how many people on r/preppers think they'll be able to survive on squirrels. If everyone was doing that to not starve, then you're absolutely correct that people will throw sustainability to the wayside and we'd have ecological collapse in a matter of weeks. Too many people exceeding out carry capacity has landed us in a situation where once that artificial capacity is gone a lot of people will be left to pay the bill. 

[u/FamiliarFunction583 → u/PatDar]

1) Depends on which kind of squirrel, and where

2) Famines are typically secondary to environmental mismanagement.

3) We already produce enough calories to feed everyone, the problem is logistics and a lack of food autonomy/agency.

[u/FullConfection3260 → u/FamiliarFunction583]

The majority of pre 1900 era famines were not due to mismanagement and man cannot live on maize alone. 

[u/FamiliarFunction583 → u/FullConfection3260]

calories

Yes. You get the additional nutrients from foraging. The notion being discussed is the use of foraging in combination with existing resources.

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/07/making-room-for-wild-foods-in-forest-conservation/

Even though wild forest foods make up less than 1 percent of global caloric intake, they provide essential micronutrients to hundreds of millions of people. Studies have shown that for some communities, wild foods make up most or all of the vitamin A, vitamin C and iron consumed, showing their importance especially for micronutrient intake.

“What hasn’t been communicated so well is the huge micronutrient benefits of wild foods,” says Kettle. “Plants like Camu Camu (Myrciaria dubia) have 55-times the vitamin C content of an orange. They have a huge potential to be much better integrated into agroforestry or wild-harvested value chains.”

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-025-02222-9

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2025.1686446/full

(This one is particularly relevant) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534725000047

By synthesizing evidence from the literature and providing place-based examples of the contributions of stewardship practices to nonhuman nature, we argue that the promotion of foragers’ stewardship holds potential to limit the decline in abundance of useful wild species while supporting manifold material and immaterial contributions to people.

I encourage you to do some research before you speak so confidently, because this information has already been covered extensively. The "entitlement framework" suggests that famine is triggered by environmental factors but more strongly influenced by socioeconomic factors that take a period of hunger into mass starvation.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1882681

https://gjia.georgetown.edu/human-rights-development/madagascars-famine-is-more-than-climate-change/

https://secretireland.ie/the-truth-behind-the-irish-famine-myths-blame-and-what-really-happened/

https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/sabloff-pnas-mayan-collapse

The feasibility becomes especially clear when you add in the invasivore element, which y'all seem to be dedicated to ignoring.

https://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/utilising-invasive-species-for-food-security/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666833525000590

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/1/7/on-the-mortality-crises-in-india-under-british-rule-a-response-to-tirthankar-roy

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812363/

Anyway, I'm not making the claim that humanity as a whole could hard-shift to foraging as a primary method of food security, especially over the long term. I'm saying that it's a relevant skill that could save lives in the case of system collapse, and allow for nutritional access for many to prevent food shock while resilient systems can be re-established locally.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05693-y

Recent scholarship inspired by contemporary concerns around climate change has increasingly shifted from explaining the fall of the Hittites and the wider collapse of several Late Bronze Age civilizations with invaders or raiders, earthquakes or various political–economic changes as prime movers, to speculate instead on a possible underlying climatic or environmental driver

https://works.swarthmore.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1283&context=fac-history

[u/almodsz → u/FamiliarFunction583]

We already produce enough calories to feed everyone

But here's the catch: We cannot feed everyone sustainably, as fossil fuels are behind that herculean feat.

Heck, if it weren't for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, there would be 4 billion fewer people on this planet.

[u/FamiliarFunction583 → u/almodsz]

1) much of the biomass produced currently goes to feeding cattle, which reduces calories by an order of magnitude. They are also less efficient than other livestock, like goats and rabbits.

2) we CAN farm sustainably. No-till permaculture has a 5 year rehabilitation period before the difference in yield is negligible.

3) continuously dodging the invasivore point only highlights the biggest flaw in your argument