Food as You Know It Is About to Change

The New York Times ^ | July 28, 2024 | David Wallace-Wells, Opinion Writer

[E. Pluribus Unum]

From the vantage of the American supermarket aisle, the modern food system looks like a kind of miracle. Everything has been carefully cultivated for taste and convenience — even those foods billed as organic or heirloom — and produce regarded as exotic luxuries just a few generations ago now seems more like staples, available on demand: avocados, mangoes, out-of-season blueberries imported from Uruguay.

But the supermarket is also increasingly a diorama of the fragility of a system — disrupted in recent years by the pandemic, conflict and, increasingly, climate change. What comes next? Almost certainly, more disruptions and more hazards, enough to remake the whole future of food.

The world as a whole is already facing what the Cornell agricultural economist Chris Barrett calls a “food polycrisis.” Over the past decade, he says, what had long been reliable global patterns of year-on-year improvements in hunger first stalled and then reversed. Rates of undernourishment have grown 21 percent since 2017. Agricultural yields are still growing, but not as quickly as they used to and not as quickly as demand is booming. Obesity has continued to rise, and the average micronutrient content of dozens of popular vegetables has continued to fall. The food system is contributing to the growing burden of diabetes and heart disease and, through new spillovers of infectious diseases from animals to humans as well.

[redfreedom]

The mentioning of the pandemic and climate change were enough to stop the read.

I appreciate the disclaimer that we should know what the enemy is up to.

[zeestephen]

Re: Disrupted by Climate Change...

I refuse to give my email address to the New York Times, so I cannot read the linked article.

What kind of disruptions?

Drought, famine, destructive insects...?

Does the NYTimes know that satellite photos show planet Earth is “Greener” than any time since the satellite era began in the 1960s?

Does the NYTimes know that the Sahara Desert has been literally shrinking for 20 years because of increased rain fall?

[PGR88]

But the supermarket is also increasingly a diorama of the fragility of a system — disrupted in recent years by the pandemic, conflict and, increasingly, climate change.

This is a good example of the overwrought, pretentious, psuedo-intellectual gloop that people at the NY Times excel at. It sounds serious and studied, uses new and strange words like "diorama," but really is just a vehicle for their political and personal fantasies.

[Pollard]

My profile has some useful gardening info including a search with results for all Dianna’s Garden Threads - https://freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;q=quick;s=Garden%20Thread

[Pollard]

But the supermarket is also increasingly a diorama of the fragility of a system — disrupted in recent years by the pandemic, conflict and, increasingly, climate change. What comes next? Almost certainly, more disruptions and more hazards, enough to remake the whole future of food.

If we could keep E Coli off the lettuce, that would be a good start.

[stinkerpot65]

Democrat scum intend to criminalize meat.

[thecodont]

But the supermarket is also increasingly a diorama of the fragility of a system — disrupted in recent years by the pandemic, conflict and, increasingly, climate change. What comes next? Almost certainly, more disruptions and more hazards, enough to remake the whole future of food.

This sounds like the opening paragraph of some high school kid's "science" project paper.

[Vendome]

It’s not rocket surgery.

LOL

[sergeantdave]

Leftists are brainwashed to live in constant fear of everything. They never train or prepare themselves psychologically or spiritually to overcome the ordinary challenges of everyday life.

[higgmeister]

That about sums it up.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“The pandemic caused very few disruptions, it was the government response to the pandemic which caused so many problems”

Exactly right. Government told businesses “shut down” and to those thrown out of work the Government said “Here are trillions of dollars to stay home and do nothing, produce nothing.”

What, exactly, did the “experts” think was going to happen?

[TexasGator]

“Food as I know it is going nowhere.

Learn to garden ... “

We have herbs and a few fruits in our garden but cows and lobsters are not so easy.

[higgmeister]

It seemed legit to me.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Paragraph by paragraph summary

1)  Supermarkets are amazing.
2)  Supermarkets are a diorama of climate change.
3)  Food system micronturients fall. Diabetes goes up.
4)  Food prices go up. Need strategic reserve of olive oil.
5)  The Dark Continent is dysfunctional. Imagine the ghetto at scale.
6)  Climate change, hungry duskies, blah blah — the whole litany.
7)  Climate change Apocalypse.
8)  Climate change food must change. Avocado toast hardest hit.
9)  Renewable energy too cheap to meter.
10) More equitable nutrition.
11) More farmland means fewer trees. Climate change blah blah carbon.
12) Food means too much carbon blah blah.
13) Too much energy for food.
14) Meat is popular with consumers.
15) Dispiriting for Leftists
16) Farming means too much carbon.
17) Climate change blah blah
18) Dust bowl abated, and Green revolution in Asia.
19) Frankenfood is good.
20) Takes time to do this stuff.
21) Need more money for academia.
22) Mr. Jägermeyr says the challenge of our generation”

The END

[higgmeister]

What, exactly, did the “experts” think was going to happen?

The Chaos was intentional.   It was not an untended consequence.

[StAnDeliver]

The author is a schorrer who couldn’t hack it at University of Chicago and flaked off to Brown, the dumbest Ivy school from the very beginning.

[Chuckster]

If you want to live a long, healthy life you are going to have to get creative.

[Salman]

They are preparing the biggest genocide (by several orders of magnitude) in human history.

Their ideal world is the existing elite + just enough peasants to keep it all going.

The ruling class is saving the planet for themselves.

[Inyo-Mono]

Bookmark.

[Texas Fossil]

OH NO!

OH NO!

The Sky is Surely Falling!