Topic: Methods of Coping with Food Shortages and High Prices - page 2. (Read 401 times)

Agriculture is good and it is almost what everyone would recommend, but let's ask ourselves really, unless you get into commercial or large scale agriculture on time, how long can that your little farm save you from food shortages and high prices if the situation becomes prolonged? I don't think you will go far surviving on that talk less of if you have a family.

for me, the best solution to cope with food shortages and high prices is to get into the food business either directly or indirectly. That is to stop being just a consumer. If you can get into the business, and invest in either wholesaling or retailing, you will always have food and can always adjust your prices according to inflation, such that people who are only consumers offset the effects of the high prices of things for you.

Let me guess, you never been to India.

I dont know, how to put everything infront of you, but the way things work in India can only be experienced by you if you were here.
India is not a small country mate. India houses over 1,403,643,260 peeps. The area is spread over 1,269,219 sq miles.

After Independence India's constitution was drafted by taking into consideration all the cultures, religions, castes and more differentiating factors at the time.

Before independence British made sure that there will always be fight amongst the peeps living in India and they did it by keeping the religion as first breaking factor while castes (lower, middle and upper) as second card in their court.

The pre-independence India was completely torn apart by Mughals, Muslims, Portugees and Britishers. Everyone just fled away with huge assets from India. At the time Gold was most abundant along with arts of fabricating clothes, artefacts, furniture, and most importantly they looted everything precious from the king states at the time.

By the time 1947 came in, Britishers already taught everyone that India is country with different Castes. The castes were made based on the skills they carried.

For example,
Maratha became Warriors,
Brahmin became teachers,
Sonar became Goldsmiths,
Shimpi became Fabricators
and so on.

There are main castes which then divided into 3000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes in India.

When Independence day came in, Britishers with some political influence divided India into Pakistan and India. This was based on the Religion that is Hindu and Muslim.

Why are we going through the History?

Well, during British rule; India fought for its freedom, they changed the whole course of India and mindsets of Indian peeps.
After Independence, The Constitution of India was formed.

It was NOT easy to write a constitution that will give EQUALITY to every person living in India since some foreigners already screwed everything for their benefits!

However, it took 395 articles in 22 parts and 8 schedules to form it and giving Equality, Secularism, Integrity to everyone. Irrespective of Caste and Religion.
This formed worlds largest active Constitution.

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1) India suffered a lot for its freedom.
2) India was left alone with their own decisions after 80+ years of ruling by British.
3) Before British came in, there was proper development, mixed culture, kingly and Princely states working in Harmony.
4) It would have developed India at alarming rate through trades and investment.
5) Foreign rule took the opportunity to shut Indians when it was actually time for them to go modern.

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Slowly Indian Government evolved a lot. But it was hard to connect all the cities and all the states in India.
Due to cultural diversity most of the people started living in their respective cultures, castes and religions. However, the challenge was still accepted to connect all these dots and it took India huge cost.

Setting up the Schooling and higher education system was another great challenge for India.
Due to caste system the Internal fight was still up on who will get the education and who will not. Girls were not allowed to take the education. From the boys only higher casted one were able to get the education.

These kinda roadblocks came in front of India all the time.

The Education is the vital part of everyones life to understand the unity, living standards and power to control the countries growth. However India lacked this in the Initial Days.

HOWEVER,

after 72 years of freedom, India has grown to next level mate.

Yes, I agree there is some difference between distribution system of ...
1)Food
2)Shelter
3)Education

It may not yet even, but that has big history of 150 years! India is still Prospering.

If you can throw an article which states how India is having under nutrition then I can also put up article where they state how India's growth is highest in the world.

FYI: You should have read the article before quoting it. It does say this and matches with the India's path from freedom towards the Prosperity:

From the same Article that you referred, India is already trying its best to overcome these situations by arranging various programs such as School feeding, subsidising of nutritions food.

These are needed because there are differences in the way everyone earn their salary.
Many of the families are still away from education because of various challenges in front of them.

Despite the fact India has already emerged as IT, Mechanical and Pharmaceutical hub and not to mention most of the foreign companies set their businesses in India for its cheap labour, real estate and earn big load from it.

If you live in USA your Government has set out the rules to give minimum wagers on hourly basis however salary system does not work in that format in India.
India still leads the jobs based on the education and skills.

There is huge huge difference between everyone's salary based on what everyone studied.

Before you counter argue, everything above is interconnected and justifies why there are some downfalls in India but things are changing. India is already having working population of 45%. Remaining % constitutes to farmings, businesses, overseas employment etc.

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So yes, there are many easy things but numerous road blocks which I dont think a foreigner would understand if they did not taste the air here.
In short everyone knows how their family situation is behind the wall but no one expresses it in-front of neighbours.

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***Please note that this post is not hatred speech, I mean no harm to any culture, religion, caste, ethnicity. The post is made to understand the history, its relation to the current situation of country and nothing more. All the information above is already available throughout the internet.***

Advance technology such as crops hybridization and biotechnology has proven with effectual use of second felial generation of exotic breeds in plant, whereby you can get a normal tree that takes 5 to 7 years before flowering to start fruiting in not more than 3 years with well developed structures and still arrived with a better results, those plant that are given an intensive management care system tend to do well than the open field crops which got affected with many environmental factors.

A hybrid tree can be grated at 2 years old and by the third years fruiting is initiated, we have different techniques that can be used to induce flowering and this will hasten the productivity schedule and longetivity in bearing fruits.

Unfortunately this is getting out of hand in my nation as well and sad enough we got used to it already. Any simple food is getting super high, it is getting to a level where it is not even worth getting it. The interesting thing is, some stuff are not that high, like potato has always been a cheap thing and it is still a cheap thing, the price didn't even change all that much at all, but for example cabbages became like 20x more expensive, unreal levels, why would you buy cabbages if they are that expensive? Like is there really a reason for it? When there are cheaper options available?

So, this situation made sure that we can eat some foods normally, whereas other foods are totally unrealistic to get, and that makes no sense to me but that's the life we are living like that's normal.

Ok, I don't know about avocados, I'm from Europe and I'm quite sure any avocado tree left outside for a week in winter will be dead with our climate, trees that grow further south do grow faster so it might be possible to graft them at 2. The only trees we've been experimenting with are cherry and plum trees and those don't get the girth thickness so young, not in central europe.


Two major reasons, all because the ones selling it are some cheap bastards.
The first reason would be too much clay, they did too deep when getting their soil or they mix good soil with cheap brown one, which does have a lot of clay and sand, and those things no matter how much they are mixed they wills till format layer. The second is when they throw a ton of replacement for peat moss in the organic ones, and of course, again they rush it, sawdust from hardwood is usually the killer there, tons of carbon no nitrogen, and there are a lot more. If your soil forms that it's better to completely change it, next it will be white fungus starting to grow around.


If things are so easy to do in India, why does the country have the same number of people experiencing food shortages as the whole Africa?
Every time I hear the same, things are so easy to do in India, agriculture is easy to do there, electricity is cheap there because you have sun, manufacturing is easy there because of cheap labor, technological development is easy because you have tons of smart people, every single thing is easy to do there but what a surprise, nothing gets done.


With the biggest 100 cities in the world getting an average of over 4k/sqkm in their urban area and see reaching over 30k, good luck having with the backyard garden plan, reminds me of the bunny plan by Maduro.

Of course, it is not possible to meet all needs, but honestly, each individual's awareness of the role food plays will contribute to reducing poverty in the future. Anyway, people soon realize that sharing love and help is the solution to a good life, competing for self-interest and a controlling mindset will only lead us to destroy our own lives.

This method works only once. You will eat all your grown vegetables during 1 meal Then you will have to wait months till next harvest. And before that wait months before these light will be delivered. lol. Google say human can survive about 10 days without food and water. Good luck with these lamps. All your suggestion are long term investment. It is too late to use them as a method to survive now.

This is way easier in India. Most of the houses have structure where there is terrace. This is according to weather. Since there is no snow, there is always plenty of space on the roof. We need to store the water in over head tank which is delivered by government supply once everday for few hours. This is the way it works here.

So most of them have water tanks, space, and plenty of sunlight. Easy to grow hydro-ponic farms are new trend in here.

The whole thing started in the lock down when peeps had nothing to do but sit at home. There was huge trend on the social media as everyone started taking the pics, making videos of how they are growing the little farm on the terrace.

Like zero investment here may be all because of the way architecture of the house is and weather is.

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This is also widely changes whether you are in the Tier 1 Metro cities or sub-urban cities. The first one has big tower housing so that wont be an option.
But for the rest of India, the houses are mostly with big rooftop so easy to manage for such work.

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May be this would be more cheap in here. However, India being the agricultural country, most of the families here have their own Agricultural land. Not all but most of them!

If the government were only supporting farmers very hard so that they could plant more. Imagine no accessible roads and also farmers are getting paid a very small amount or their produce is only bought for cheap prices. This makes farmers want to quit and just go to the city to find construction jobs. If we can just prevent this because this will lead to food shortages, as an individual, what is really the best way to cope with food shortages is to have our own backyard garden. I know most of the things mentioned here are like fruit trees, but this will take years, right, but in your backyard garden you just need to plant vegetables? This will take only a few weeks or months.

Actually avocados, if you plant them on soil and they gets big over the years, would be a good way to cope with food shortages.

They get very big and you can be eating avocados for about 6 months. They give you high quality fat that will make you go without being hungry (or less hungry) if other foods are scarce. The only thing is that they require a lot of water, if you live in a place where it usually rains a lot it is not a problem, but if not you will have to water them regularly.

I have avocados which are within the 18-36 inch recommended graft height, that are younger than 3 years.

If a small tree is in a bucket, with holes in the bottom, placed on soil. Earthworms will find their way into it to provide castings. There were many earthworms in the pots of things replanted. I supplement my soil with grass cuttings and other organic waste in an effort to provide a variety of nutrients.

"Organic" potting soil I bought in walmart hardens into a concrete like substance if it dries out. It is very necessary to mix other things in with potting soil for it to perform at a bare minimum.

Other brands of soil I got in stores have a strange water repelling trait. Water sprayed on the surface will bead and refuse to be absorbed by the soil. Which also needs supplements mixed into it.

Cope with food shortages and high prices...
Buy a 1000W junk lamp for 50$, wait 5 months for it to be delivered from China, and then ask yourself why are you paying twice more for electricity than buying the food directly.
Better buy an S9, it will definitely make you more money that the plant pot, unless you plant pot. 


Plants follow the light, feeding them light only from one angle is putting additional stress on their growth as sprouting more leaves upside will give them no benefit so they tend to have a thinner trunk, larger leaves, everything abnormal.


Huge costs with equipment, water, electricity, manpower, that's why they all go bankrupt:
https://www.ft.com/content/0e3aafca-2170-4552-9ade-68177784446e


Not really:

This should not even be a discussion. Think about it, the whole world is full of water and land, two of the most important things that you need for farming. If the world wanted to, we have the power to feed everyone twice, like twice more than what we need basically, and literally give everyone ANYTHING they want to eat. Why don't we? Because it is not profitable, why would we do something that would cost a lot of money without a proper return.

Farming is basically dying, even though it looks better in some places, the long story short is the fact that it is not growing as fast as the food needs and right now logistics is getting even worse because of oil prices. So here we are, talking about "coping with food shortages", it should not even be a thing.

What plants are you growing? Parsley? Dill? These light might be fine for vegetation but I can hardly believe that after flowering it may give a decent weight.
If you ever decide to buy new lights then consider buying a good samsung LED quantum board with dimmer. It would be better than both of these Chinese LED combined. Using them is a real pleasure.


It could burn your plants to ashes if these lamps had real 600wt or 1000wt of power.
Did you try to measure the power or lm of these chinese lamps from the 1st pic? I'm curious what is their real power.

I have 2 grow lights, which I've used for years.

The light has to be positioned as close to the plant as possible to be effective.

Many place the light 2 or 3 feet above the plant, which is too great a distance.

These growlights from Hydrogen's screenshot are complete garbage. There are so many people buying them on aliexpress and then wondering what da hell is wrong with their plants

Growing is a great hobby but in case with current situation in the world, most food shortages are happening due to demand deviation, not because humanity is running out of food. Seems like we can't avoid such situations.

Food shortages and high prices are something inevitable. Farming like this not only takes time but you also have to develop the necessary skills . Therefore there are few things that you can do:

1. Instead of then big shops go to the local food markets
2. Go to the local farmers
3. Look for sustainable options, vegan and vegetarian one's can actually help the environment and prices in the long run
4. Curb practices of hoarding food, by the government and the organizations that exploit people using such tactics
5. There are government owned ration shops as well selling at low prices
6. Using the natural crops growing in that area, lowering the Exports as well

farming is an alternative in overcoming food shortages and high prices, but before we start farming, try to apply the existing risks, such as crop failure, pests, bad climate
wouldn't that be a waste of time?
but there is nothing wrong if we try to cultivate properly if it is enough for 1-2 days and the growth cycle can cover our need

hydroponic farming, in my opinion, which is very efficient compared to using land where hydroponic farming can be done in the garden of the house without having to look for vacant land

Another trending economy for food availability and affordability is the Vertical Farming and Semi Autotrophic Hydroponics (SAH), though they are both seminar in techniques and its capital intensive in practice, but promising a high yield of about 98% productivity, it is sometimes referred to as precision farming and done in a screen house.




source

This advance farming techniques were developed to increase food availability and ease of farming practice with maximum result and lessen the use of manual labour, thereby increasing food nutrition and eradicating hunger and diseases.

That's a good point. It normally could be expensive, cost cutting measures are important.

Rather than use plastic nursery pots from home depot, some use 2 liter soda bottles with holes drilled in the bottom. A solo bag of 80 plastic cups costs around $5.00. Those can be used as small planters. For larger sizes a 5 gallon bucket can be used, there are other options. Rather than buy mulch, grass clippings can be used after mowing the lawn. Some fruits like avocados contain good phosphorous content (and assorted minerals) can used as a natural fertilizer. Many items necessary for growing can be repurposed or taken from natural sources.

I think if a single acre of land were covered in tomato plants or something with a rapid production. It is possible to produce a yearly diet. For amateur growers. Professional farmers claim to grow 20 to 30 pounds of tomatos per plant. I am certainly nowhere near approaching those yields. I'm still learning and trying different things with my growing, so perhaps later I'll have a better idea of what the hard limitations are.

Even if its not possible to fully satisfy 365 days per year of diet. Being able to fill a few days or weeks per year can make a difference.