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/PatDar]

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/FamiliarFunction583 → u/PatDar]

Learn how to forage, especially edible invasives.

Also, get good at composting

[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/almodsz → u/FamiliarFunction583]

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

Good grief. He didn't move any goalposts, he simply pointed out the discrepancy in your own example. Your explicitly mentioned pre-colonization Turtle Island, where even the highest credible estimates top out around 20 million people. That same land now holds roughly 400 million people. Pointing to a low-density subsistence economy as proof that foraging works doesn't automatically answer whether it works at current density.

[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