Global Bacon Shortage 'Unavoidable' 293
New submitter The name is Dave. Ja debuts on the front page with the most dismal news of our time: "This is truly 'Stuff That Matters'. Where would civilization be today without bacon? I don't mean to be alarmist but ... sound the alarms! This is big — it could lead to civil unrest."
Yes, a bacon shortage. Hopefully what bacon there is will be more delicious after being fed with gummi worms.
What? (Score:5, Funny)
Relax, we've already covered the solution today. (Score:3)
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/25/165256/lab-grown-leather-could-be-a-reality-in-5-years [slashdot.org]
Re:Relax, we've already covered the solution today (Score:5, Funny)
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/25/165256/lab-grown-leather-could-be-a-reality-in-5-years [slashdot.org]
Well, that covers footballs ... <rimshot>
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Noooooooooooo!!
<Professor Frink>
As the Bacon supply declines we approach, what I refer to as the Homer-Simpsonpocralypse event horizon . Hoyvin glavin! Or the end of the world as we know it.
</Professor Frink>
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You should fire your bolter, Captain Titus, instead of just squealing like a piggie.
Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Whatsamatta?
Pigs quit fucking?
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Whatsamatta?
Pigs quit fucking?
Pig condoms.
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Err, let me guess - natural lambskin condoms? ...not sure if that's plumbing the depths of gross, or the idea for one hell of a new haute cuisine dish for 'Bizarre Foods'.
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Actually they're $26.64 for a 12 pack: Lambskin Condoms FAQ [lambskincondoms.org]. Good to see there are still people crafting an all-natural French letter in this 21st century.
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
Considering the size, looks and general intelligence of many of my fellow Americans I see out and about...trudging along, slurping down trash for food, and staring out blankly....
I sadly have to say....no....
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
We could have had *one* thread, ONE thread, a happy fun thread about piggies and bacon and condoms, and NO nation-state based bigotry whatsoever. One thread.
*sigh*
This is why we can't have nice things. Or bacon.
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No, but global warming is threating the viability of the cacao growing areas, messing up the rainfall patterns.
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Uh, no (Score:3)
There will be less cheap bacon to go around, but there will always be bacon.
And so it was written... (Score:2)
"but there will always be bacon."
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This has to be a joke... ... That some brilliant marketeer figured out how to sell. (And trading pork bellies became stuff of legend...)
First, Bacon is a byproduct of other pork products. It's the tough belly meat nobody wanted
this is BAD NEWS for Thinkgeek. Slashdot's FORMER partner in crime. It's a good thing Slashdot got out of Gerkznet when they did. Any interruption in the flow of bacon-based products is gonna shut those guys down. Hard. At least the wont drag Slashdot with them!!!
Re:Uh, no (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, no. A lot of modern items are the result of clever marketing of previously unused material but bacon is not one of them: http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/baconhistory.htm [about.com]
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I don't have an article to point to but one thing that comes to mind is lobsters. Early on they were considered peasant food. At some point (perhaps with some clever marketing) it became an upscale food with a commensurate price.
Re:Uh, no (Score:5, Informative)
chicken wings: used to be offal, good only for thickening soups/stocks; now buffalo wings are even simulated by using the "higher-quality" white meat.
skimmed milk: used to be thrown away or concentrated into whey solids. now also sold for the same price as real milk, while also selling the removed cream at a premium. possibly the greatest scam in culinary history.
nutria/coypu: a predictably failed attempt to market this nuisance rodent [wikipedia.org] as a food product.
canola oil (and some other vegetable oils): formerly only a lubricant, hydrogenated into margarine as a "healthier" butter replacement, which it turned out not to be. trivia fact: canola is a trademark for CANadian Oil, Low Acid; the real name is "rapeseed oil," or sometimes even "rape oil," changed for obvious reasons.
One Point... (Score:3)
"Boneless chicken wings" have none of that, using connective-tissue-free breast meat that overcooks if you so much as look at it funny and no skin.
It should be the law that if someone at a wing joint offers you boneless wings, you can l
Re:Uh, no (Score:4, Informative)
First, Bacon is a byproduct of other pork products. It's the tough belly meat nobody wanted
What Americans call bacon, Aussies call "stringy bacon". It's called "stringy" because of the strings of fat in it, it's rubbish, it's only good for adding flavor to soups and stews. Short cut bacon (common here in Oz) is like lean ham, yes it comes from pork bellies but it won't clog your arteries like American bacon does.
I'm buying stock in freezers (Score:2)
According to one article, on average people consume 42 pounds of bacon a year. I figure a good freezer in the garage should hold enough for 3 or 4 years. Time to start stocking up.
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Actually this would be a fantastic time to hoard. Contrary to the narrative in the article, the price of pork is down right now - not because grocery chains are "paying less per pig" - but because the farmers are all unloading their pigs on the market at once, creating a glut. I don't know how long bacon keeps in a deep freeze, but it probably makes sense to stock up if you are already running the deep freeze anyway... otherwise it's a pretty expensive way to save money :)
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> W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Awww. I used to read that to my daughter. She's too old to read to now. Camel on the ceiling! C C C. Now I'm depressed.
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Mine's too old for that book now, too. But fortunately there's still the boy a few years behind her :)
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No wonder americans are fat and have cardiac problems.
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I have seen people lose great amount of weight, and I lose weight, when sugar and sugary snacks are cut out. For people I have seen who follow high protein diets that is really all this is involved. They stop eating candy and junk
Meh... (Score:5, Funny)
Who's gonna notice when the Earth becomes unliveable due to climate change?
* Tornadoes... Droughts... Floods...
* Bacon Shortage, like OMG???
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Who's gonna notice when the Earth becomes unliveable due to climate change?
* Tornadoes... Droughts... Floods...
* Bacon Shortage, like OMG???
You'll just have to put up with Shakespeare.
I'll get me coat.
Re:Meh... (Score:4)
First the great Maple Syrup heist . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First the great Maple Syrup heist . . . (Score:4, Funny)
. . . and now this. It's like a war on breakfast.
Luckily the Strategic Bacon Reserve is still safe. What? HOW CAN WE NOT HAVE ONE?!?
it's the Canadians, eh. (Score:5, Funny)
First they burn the White House and now this.
What's next, no hockey?
Do these scoundrels have no pity?
This is the end! (Score:5, Funny)
Venkman: Or you can accept the fact that this city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff!
Venkman: Exactly.
Stanz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!
Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!
Winston Zeddmore: The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!
Mayor: Enough! I get the point! And what if you're wrong?
Venkman: If we're wrong, then nothing happens. We go to jail, peacefully, quietly. We'll enjoy it. But if we're right, and we can stop this thing... Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.
National Emergency: One man holds the solution (Score:5, Funny)
I fear that Dennys well be out of business (Score:2)
Where will we get the toppings for the Bacon Shakes? There's no way we can live with synthetic Bacon Flavored toppings on our Shakes!
Strategic Bacon Reserve? (Score:2)
Before investing on lean hogs futures... (Score:5, Informative)
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Tasty Tasty Disaster Porn (Score:2)
Hooray! Finally, disaster porn I can really get worked up about!
Don't listen to those mother hubbards at Chick-fil-a: chicken is not the answer! We need more pork! Porking is the answer. Wait, what type of porn were we talking about again?
Ah, efficient price-setting at work... (Score:3)
So, if I understand this correctly, the price of feeding pigs is rising. However, despite their theoretically being a 'market' for pig products and demand for pig products holding steady, it has not been possible for the price of pork products to reflect the cost of producing them, causing pork production to start shutting down, thus setting us up for a price spike in the near future....
Could somebody summon the invisible hand? I have a beating that needs delivering...
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This reminds me of how the MSM trots out an oil industry "expert" right before they're about to jack up gas prices that we migght be looking at $5/gallon. Then when it only goes to 4 we all act giddy like our weekly shower rape stopped 5 minutes ahead of schedule.
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Yeah, the narrative in the article is pretty bad. The feed got too expensive to make raising pigs at the current market price profitable, and the farmers know that if the price goes up, the demand will go down. So they unload their pigs now to cut their losses. A lot of farmers had this same idea, so there is a glut of pigs on the market and the prices are really low. Soon there won't be as many pigs laying around, and prices will go up. This despite the likelihood of feed going down in price as demand weak
Re:Ah, efficient price-setting at work... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was at a restaurant about a week ago where one of the "specials" was roast baby pig on a spit. The first thing I thought was, wow, the farmers must really be unloading everything. The second thing I thought was, "I'll try that."
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Part of the problem probably relates to the time lag to get pigs market ready and the immediate results of feed price increases. In the very short term the hog farmers may have to harvest their herd early, particularly if they cannot afford more expensive feed. This pushes supply up and that drives prices down, further exacerbating the pricing situation (from the standpoint of the farmer, at least.) The market cannot respond the same way a factory does by simply reducing the number of units produced. The im
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Seems perfectly normal, to me. A temporary shortage of feed (corn), due to weather in the Midwest, has caused an imbalance. There is currently an over-production of hogs, which must be cleared by sending them to market. When the supply of feed returns to normal, input costs will decline, and hog production will return to equilibrium with input costs and demand. The invisible hand seems to be working just fine.
Corn producers and hog producers _can_ hedge their risk (TFA not withstanding). Much of the pr
From a vegetarian point of view ... (Score:2, Insightful)
You can have all the bacon I don't eat.
You're welcome.
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I guess we all get gummy worms.
They're made with gelatin. If there isn't enough pork for bacon, they will also be unable to make gummi worms, wine gums, licorice, jelly babies, gummi bears, etc.
Everybody will have to end up eating... vegan candy.
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The proper response is "You insensitive clods!"
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Crap! And I thought I was doing so well following the food pyramid.
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I had a friend who claimed to be a vegetarian, and that pepperoni becomes a vegetable when applied to pizza. I'm not sure on the science behind that, but I figure he was the vegetarian.
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Of course it is, it's like veal. Veal bush, bacon tree.
Re:From a vegetarian point of view ... (Score:5, Funny)
I love it when vegetarians prove my favorite joke about them right...
'How can you tell a vegetarian... don't worry... they willl ALWAYS tell you.'
misleading headline (Score:2)
There's not going to be a "shortage", there'll just be what always happens when supply and/or demand change: the prices will adjust to a new equilibrium. Over the past 100 years, pork and bacon have sometimes cost more, and sometimes cost less. It's not really a huge deal. If the prices go up, you can choose to pay them, or buy something else instead.
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So basically, there's going to be a reduced supply that will cause prices to increase until demand is reduced to match. Got it. No shortage, it's just a shortage.
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A shortage typically means that you actually can't buy something. Like, a "fuel shortage" is when people are lining up around the block to buy gasoline because most stations are out of fuel. When gas goes up from $2.00 to $3.00, that's not a "fuel shortage".
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I dunno. If I can't afford $3.00 for gas, I can't buy it... and, by your definition, actually being unable to buy something is a shortage.
Just sayin'.
bail-out anyone? (Score:3)
you should read the original press releases [npa-uk.org.uk], a nice little campaign preparing the masses that price increases are in order.
British supermarkets can protect consumers [..] if they pay Britain's loss-making pig farmers a fair price
In its Save Our Bacon campaign, NPA is asking shoppers to make a point of selecting pork and bacon with the British independent Red Tractor logo
Governments are becoming increasingly concerned
And I simply _love_ the phrase "Pig industry leaders" :)
C'mon, You Knew This Was Coming: (Score:2)
it could lead to civil unrest." (Score:2)
Just kidding,
- Sgt. Oink
Good (Score:3)
The environmental toll of hog farming is massive [nrdc.org].
You pigs! (Score:2)
Sæhrímnir (Score:3)
The Norse will be alright - Sæhrímnir will be eaten (providing "the best of bacons") and brought back to life the next day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A6hr%C3%ADmnir [wikipedia.org]
Other effects of a pig shortage... (Score:5, Funny)
Look on the bright side- this also has to mean there will be less spam in the future!
Suddenly, this guy seems prescient (Score:2)
Anyone remember this headline [slashdot.org] from last week? Suddenly that guy seems like he's ahead of the times. Imagine how much 3000 pounds of bacon could buy you, especially if the price of it doubles.
Alternatively, anyone know where he is right now? I might be very willing to barter with him at this point.
Not to worry (Score:2)
Politicians wasting time (Score:2)
So why are politicians wasting valuable time on such trivial nonsense as the economy, jobs, healthcare and the Middle East, when there is a genuine, honest-to-goodness global crisis going on?
This should be one of those rare moments that bring politicians of all ilk together to solve this. We need a bacon Apollo project, or a bacon Manhattan project.
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We had that project. Its benefits to Mankind are delicious. [chancehouse.com]
Gummi worms? Really? (Score:2)
The poster actually believes feeding pigs gummi bears is unusual enough to hotlink? Pigs are omnivores. They are fed grains, vegetable scraps, leftovers from meals, chicken carcasses, and whatever else has protein and may or may not have some amount of rot on it.
Re:Gummi worms? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that from the linked story: "But ruminant animals such as cattle can safely ingest a wide variety of feedstuffs that chickens and hogs can't." The gummi worms story was about feeding cows, not pigs.
Factory fams aren't sustainable (Score:2)
Re:Factory fams aren't sustainable (Score:4, Interesting)
All the problems we are having with food production are directly related to factory farming.
We're not actually having any problems and the price fluctuations that are occurring are not caused by so-called 'factory' farming. The problem is that high yield agriculture is concentrated in too few places.
Consider hogs; 80.9% of all hog production [nationmaster.com] comes from two places; the US and China. One is coping with an outlier drought and the other is dealing with a rapidly growing domestic demand for meat. That leaves the rest of the planet out in the cold.
The solution is rising prices. Nations and people that have complacently relied on a few "bread basket" sources of supply have discovered fresh motivation for producing commodities. There is a boom [geocurrents.info] in S. American agriculture as a result. This phenomenon is planet wide [gatewaytos...wsblog.com].
This is ultimately a good thing. Less reliance on those few traditional "break basket" nations will create supply stability, to say nothing of the self sufficiency of new third world bread baskets.
You, being the rich, comfortable malcontent you've been trained to be, will see this as a tragedy, while you simultaneously accelerate the process with your ill considered policies [guardian.co.uk]. As with the evacuation of our industry, the evacuation of our agriculture to the third world has begun.
So go to work and dream up lots of new regulation for domestic agriculture in your home nation. Don't stop until anything more productive than a hobby farm has been eradicated. The rest of the world will take up the slack because people are going to feed themselves whether you like it or not.
The New World (Score:2)
Finally (Score:2)
A story that won't cause a bad reaction in the middle east.
Alex
Personally ... (Score:3)
Chicken, fish and vegetables (Score:2)
Sorry, but that's just Western POV - most of countries don't have big traditions on bacon. Chicken, fish, vegetables, fruits, seafood, bread - you name it. I have cut my bacon intake almost to minimum and have never felt better. Saying this, having bacon now and there is nice, but I won't revolt if it's suddenly will cost twice. It can push prices of other products eventually though.
With all anti GM craze going around, I wonder what naturalist school of food would offer us practically, taking feeding people
Bacon? That's bad. Everything? That's worse. (Score:2)
A shortage of bacon and other delicious pork products is definitely a bad thing.
However, pig is used in practically anything consumable.
And, by consumable, I don't mean edible. That is, unless you eat bullets and drink paint.
If I may be so bold to suggest... (Score:3)
... just stop eating meat.
I know, I know, you like meat, maybe even a lot. I get it, I'm not trying to convince you of some wacky dogma or spiritual doctrine. But based strictly on the economics of meat production, and its disastrous ecological effects, not to mention the fact that you probably don't need much meat in your diet, might you consider eating meat only a couple of times a week? If everyone in the U.S. did that, there would be far less animal waste, far less consumption of potable water, significant overall health improvements, and attractive cost savings for consumers. BTW, by meat I mean any kind of animal tissue, not just beef or pork. Just to spell it out, that would include fish, poultry, venison, animal flesh of any kind, and maybe eggs.
Certainly it would include bacon.
Just Desserts (Score:3)
I for one am not surprised.
You haven't lived till you've eaten dead pig which was once free-range.
I'll spell it out for the clueless: Eating Grain Fed pork is slightly beter than eating sawdust, if you want your pig-products to be truly tasty they need to have grown up on a varied diet.
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TBH, it is disturbing.
Then again, bacon has been going up in price pretty drastically over recent years.
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Is it a bad thing, though? After my grandfather's first heart attack, the doctor told him "Bacon should come with a skull and crossbones on the label..."
But I do love the stuff. If they could make zero-fat zero-cal bacon, that would more than make up for not having returned to the Moon.
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the doctor told him "Bacon should come with a skull and crossbones on the label..."
Then his doctor is a retarded monkey.
Too much water will kill you, too much oxygen will kill you, too much sugar will kill you.
Anyone with more than half a brain knows that TOO MUCH (of anything) is enough to kill you.
Or perhaps the good doctor somehow believes that for millions of years the ancestors of mankind ate only fish and lean white meat?
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Or the alternative hypothesis, that our primitive ape ancestors consumed pan-fried pig fat on a daily basis AND had a life expectancy of over 50?
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I've got some acreage. Thinking of raising a few hogs, and then charging extortionate prices to the addicts! Gawddamn but I love capitalism!
Re:HOLY SHIT! (Score:5, Funny)
Human meat tastes like pork, so I'm covered.
In a nice honey glaze?
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Really. Who cares about little things like floods and droughts. Something must be done about the Bacon Shortage! What will happen to breakfast?
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Phoenix is a place with terribly hot summers and long droughts on a regular basis.
However the problem is that rainfall has been abysmally low in numerous areas where it normally isn't... Average rainfall is down significantly across the entire country. Where do you propose we get this water from?
Re:Ignorant Agricultural Question (Score:4, Informative)
Oo Ooh! I know!
(Caveat, I live right next to drought stricken corn fields)
The problem with the drought, is three-fold, and soil dryness is only one of them.
1) soil dryness. Irrigation helps in mild drought conditions to alleviate this.
2) prolonged air and soil dryness changes the specific heat of the air and soil. This causes normal solar isolescence to stop being gently warming and beneficial, to being glaring, and root scorching. Hot, dry soil and hot, dry air wither the corn crop even under CONTINOUOUS irrigation.
3) the change in ambient temperatures associated with droughts causes localized fronts to form over agricultural areas, which discourages rain. Even if it does rain in the upper atmosphere, it can completely evaporate before hitting the ground. In addition to that, the cells themselves actively diminish conditions required for rainfall.
Even blasting the ground 24/7 in the most horrible, water-table depleting fashion imaginable would not have saved this year's corn crop.
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Pressure on water supplies is one of the largest issues facing agriculture pretty much everywhere.
There are regularly water conflicts in the US involving agricultural land, because there isn't enough to go around.
There is only a limited amount that can be done by planning, and then only in the most massive reservoirs. If there are multi-year rainfall problems, even they can't plan their way out of problems.
You don't have water access problems because residential water users have priority access. Farmers are
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Why can't farmers just heavily irrigate their fields?
That's what rain is supposed to do.
Don't we have the tech to get it where we need it to be?
We have the technology, we can build it. For billions and billions of dollars.
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If summer dryness (drought) continues to be a recurring theme (a la, climate change), then switching to a different crop on a different growing season could alleviate problems, but not for this year. You can't feed animals IOUs.
My sister and I are planning a winter buckwheat graze crop for her goats, followed by tillage, and a second planting as an eary spring crop.
Grain prices should be out of control by then though. I would expect surplus elmer's glue, and various other animal products in the near term as
Re:Ignorant Agricultural Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, gonna try and be nice, but I love how naiive people are about farming and ranching in the US (which for the rest of this post I will simply call farming, because I don't care if some rancher gets offended).
First lesson of farming:
Farmer's are the cheapest mother fuckers on the planet. Seriously, I am not kidding, if they can make a sixties tractor work by using bailing wire to "fix it" (no matter how fucking dangerous or inefficient the fix) they will. I'd bet you'll never find a group of Americans more consistantly willing to cheat on their taxes as well. As a sub lesson, they fucking hate the government, which can do no right, except when giving them free money, which they will bitch and moan about any whisper that something might change in the future.
Second lesson of farming:
A lot of farmers are terrible businessmen. They often don't take long term views, many are really bad at math and don't even know how to calculate costs. There's actually bankers that loan to farms (or there used to be), they used to send in consultants to save farms from defaulting on their loans. Seriously, this isn't all farmers, but the idea of calculating costs, risks, and returns is completely foreign to many of them. This is why they use inefficient machinery, because it never occurs to them that the total cost of operation exceeds the cost of replacement.
Third lesson of farming:
Farming has a vast infrastructure that requires massive amounts of energy input (10% or so of our energy in the US, daily, goes to agriculture). Part of that infrastructure, as stated, is old. Another part, for some insane reason lumped in with "capital" in modern economics, is land, and you cannot trade suddenly infertile land for "new land", complete with the infrastructure you need, just because we've fucked up our farm belt. A lot of infrastructure isn't even directly owned by the farmer (e.g. some farmers don't own any harvesters, they pay someone per acre to come do it for them). You'd have to move entire communities in order to move the location of production. As for irrigation, it couldn't have solved this (though the water supply is not nearly adequate), since it got too hot for the corn and it simply died. But we've depleted aquifers at alarming rates in the last couple of decades always gambling on that one "really good, wet year" to fill them back up. This gamble cannot always pay off. Supposing you could find a supply of water, how would you get it where it needs to go, suddenly? You have a few weeks at most, to solve most issues like this, you can't suddenly make new irrigation appear. Btw, the same thing goes for all the solar tractors or non-oil based fertilizer (laughable on its face, anyway) that people imagine will happen as oil prices drive up, that shit won't magically appear, people will go hungry first, for years in fact, and in some nations will actually starve to death.
Final lesson of farming:
Most farmers know how to produce limited crops. I.E. they know hogs, or they know dairy, or they know corn, or soybeans. Not only will their set up be geared towards that one crop, you can't always convince them to switch products for a variety of reasons. If they have decided they want to grow corn, good luck getting a pig headed (har har) farmer to grow soybeans instead. You could show him a fucking spreadsheet that indicates double his profits and he's more likely to keep growing corn than switch. Now, if all his neighbors switch (especially if they think they're putting one over on the big, bad government), that might convince him, but you, based on public policy and/or good sense, will not. Even if you could convince one to switch, he might be little better at producing his new crop than you would be, knowing fuck all about any of it.
If I've sounded harsh to farmers, well seriously, there are a few decent ones, but fuck em, as a group. They are entitled, ignorant brats, by and large. Big ag is not much better, if more efficient. I do know some farmers I like, but I like them as they stand out as quiet a bit different from most farmers.
- A guy who grew up around farmers
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Don't worry long pig bacon will still be available for those who need it...
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I'm pretty sure there's a bacon cult gaining power in the US. Now that they've sucked the brains out of enough people, they can control the country by controlling the bacon supply.
Maybe it's larger than that. Has irrational preoccupation with bacon spread to other parts of the world too?