Potatoes!!
I have been reading a lot of diaries here about world food shortages, riots, etc. Naturally they are troubling to contemplate and thinking about them in relation to all the other crap this earth has to deal with in the near future can be downright depressing. Toss in the existential pessimism that I think a lot of my fellow liberals were born with, and our global problems seem insurmountable. It can be difficult for me to keep perspective and not underestimate the resiliency of the human race, particularly in the midst of the comfortable daily kvetching I see here everyday. After all, I have an active imagination and have seen The Road Warrior more than once. It's easy for us to imagine Armageddon.
So when I see articles like this one from Reuters, it knocks me back a few pegs and helps me to imagine a less Mad Maxian future for ourselves.
Potatoes!
This is an interesting article, I recommend taking a look.
LIMA (Reuters) - As wheat and rice prices surge, the humble potato -- long derided as a boring tuber prone to making you fat -- is being rediscovered as a nutritious crop that could cheaply feed an increasingly hungry world.
Potatoes, which are native to Peru, can be grown at almost any elevation or climate: from the barren, frigid slopes of the Andes Mountains to the tropical flatlands of Asia. They require very little water, mature in as little as 50 days, and can yield between two and four times more food per hectare than wheat or rice.
I grew up in Maine. Reading this article reminded me about the vast expanse of Northern Maine, which was like a different country to those of us who lived in Southern Maine. The kids in Aroostook county got to take 3 weeks off from school to pick potatoes, the legend went. It was potato country. It's also economically devestated these days, and losing population rapidly. But places like this could someday become a larger part of the global hunger solution. It takes land to grow crops, and mills to convert them to flour. Sometimes, it seems crystal clear to me that the potential for new economies is right beneath our noses and that in time this country (and others) will get their act together.
More from the artice:
"The shocks to the food supply are very real and that means we could potentially be moving into a reality where there is not enough food to feed the world," said Pamela Anderson, director of the International Potato Center in Lima (CIP), a non-profit scientific group researching the potato family to promote food security.
Like others, she says the potato is part of the solution.
The potato has potential as an antidote to hunger caused by higher food prices, a population that is growing by one billion people each decade, climbing costs for fertilizer and diesel, and more cropland being sown for biofuel production.
Pamela Anderson (!) is on the right track. This kind of positivity is essential to our survival going forward in uncertain times.
Even more:
One factor helping the potato remain affordable is the fact that unlike wheat, it is not a global commodity, so has not attracted speculative professional investment.
Each year, farmers around the globe produce about 600 million metric tonnes of wheat, and about 17 percent of that flows into foreign trade.
Wheat production is almost double that of potato output. Analysts estimate less than 5 percent of potatoes are traded internationally, and prices are mainly driven by local tastes, instead of international demand.
The downside is that this less profitable to farmers, but still could be a real solution to basic hunger. Plus, they are delicious. Atkins dieters be damned.