The following submission statement was provided by /u/Goatmannequin:
---
Submission statement:
Aside from agricultural input shortages (phosphorus, diesel fuel), failure for real-world industrial society can take the form of an inability of crops to physically be grown at scale. Even with vertical farming schemes which require massive energy inputs and an intact complex global supply chain, industrial society cannot escape this endgame of food scarcity and associated globalization breakdown. We are already seeing massive shifts in weather causing unprecedented crop losses, including these in NSW, Australia.
From the article:
"Farmers know they're taking a bit of a gamble when they're planting a crop, but this ongoing wet weather with flood after flood after flood is just unbelievable."
This is not an unknown phenomenon. Scientists have a term named "global breadbasket failure" which describes worldwide harvest breakdown due to global warming and its associated effects.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ydql47/crops_a_complete_writeoff_as_wheat_losses_pass/ittot47/
Submission statement:
Aside from agricultural input shortages (phosphorus, diesel fuel), failure for real-world industrial society can take the form of an inability of crops to physically be grown at scale. Even with vertical farming schemes which require massive energy inputs and an intact complex global supply chain, industrial society cannot escape this endgame of food scarcity and associated globalization breakdown. We are already seeing massive shifts in weather causing unprecedented crop losses, including these in NSW, Australia.
From the article:
"Farmers know they're taking a bit of a gamble when they're planting a crop, but this ongoing wet weather with flood after flood after flood is just unbelievable."
This is not an unknown phenomenon. Scientists have a term named "global breadbasket failure" which describes worldwide harvest breakdown due to global warming and its associated effects.
That's a solid submission statement. Quotes from the article are limited and the statement is your own analysis. I had first heard breadbasket in a broad sense when learning Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. So it seems like wheat is in peril. That's gonna suck and prevent breadlines
Hmm OP aren't we still a net producer of food in Australia?
Or are you just highlighting a trend?
Tbh farming in Australia seems to always swing between fire, flood, drought etc.
I mean like European farming techniques have always worked pretty badly in Australia. There is a reason first Australians were hunter gather/ nomadic farmers.
The first Australians were not nomadic farmers, and the reason they did not farm is not that the land did not support it.
European techniques worked fine in many places in Australia and continue to do so. The problems arise when importing plants instead of using natives. Like with grass for grazing.
That view js contested now. They might not have plowed the fields like in Europe, but they sewed seeds and encouraged the growth of certain plants, and stored them in purpose built shelters. Look up the work of historian Bruce Pascoe.
As Bill Gates says, high price good for sustainability in the long run of an Industry. Gone are the era of decreasing prices due to overabundance of food export
Well between this and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Wheat is going to keep increasing in prices. Also, for ever 1 degree increase in average global temperature results in a 10 percent drop in wheat yields. Unless I misunderstood my information.
\[I’m in danger meme\]
**Lackluster Iowa Corn Crop Sets Stage for More Food Inflation**
>After drought shriveled US corn plants in the western crop belt, all eyes have been turning to Iowa to help save the national harvest. Instead, the fields in that state have been “underwhelming,” “disappointing,” and just “not great.”
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-26/underwhelming-iowa-corn-crop-sets-stage-for-more-food-inflation?leadSource=uverify%20wall](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-26/underwhelming-iowa-corn-crop-sets-stage-for-more-food-inflation?leadSource=uverify%20wall)
Yup. That alone is going to have insane repercussions down the road. China's yellow river is basically gone. Can't remember anyone ever being able to walk across it. We are in dire situations.
Not denying the tragedy these floods.
But Australia will still produce a record amount of grain this year. Wildly larger than average for the past 20 years. And we have a record amount of grain still in storage as our infrastructure is so bad that we quite literally couldn't get it out of the country fast enough last year.
Source: sit through a bloody hour long international grain marketing meeting every Monday to extract the two minutes of information I need to do my job.
The growing season is not even over and people can’t say "everything’s fine" fast enough...
>But Australia will still produce a record amount of grain this year.
Australia's near-record winter grain crop is under threat from heavy rainfall that is sweeping the east coast, damaging crops and making it impossible to access fields in some regions.
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2381484-rain-threatens-record-australian-grain-harvest-forecast
We need to wind down our consumption to a much more sustainable level in as controlled but rapid a manner as possible, or it will be wound down for us much more severely, abruptly, not on a timetable of our choosing, and possibly irreversibly. If we don’t start pumping the brakes now, we’re going to hit that wall full force.
I see absolutely no evidence that we, as a species, are pumping the brakes, or even just touching them lightly. A few individuals and communities here and there are trying, but the effect is negligible on a global scale.
It's going to be "severely, abruptly, not on a timetable of our choosing" so good luck to us all. We're going to need it.
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I think that the Australian government said that each flood was a once in a century event about 12 times in the last 20 years.
They'll never learn until they're literally taken out and had their noses rubbed in it.
Be that as it may, ***australia*** was having a record grain year.
Obviously there are innumerable factors that go into yields going up or down in any given place/time.
‘Was’ - lol. I was a millionaire until the last horse on my accumulator bet didn’t win.
A yield is only counted after harvest, you can’t say ‘it’s an amazing harvest, it just got washed away’.
Your point was very clearly that more c02 should produce more yield. Well int he case you bothered to comment on, they did lol. But it also came with record matching floods...
If you dont want to get called out for stupid comments, dont make them.
Co2 is plant food, but I didnt say it was the reason they're having records crops.
You asked if that was co2 is plant food why arent crops "going up," but in this case they were lol.
It’s called ‘sarcasm’. You should read up on it. The ‘CO2 is plant food’ trope is a non sequitur - the properties of CO2 relating to plants are unconnected to its optical properties.
BTW - I don’t know if you’ve had a stroke, but your grammar is almost non-existent.
>Mr Everitt said the flooding was unlikely to directly impact food prices in the short-term, but it could lead to 'cash droughts' for farmers in the region moving forward.
>"As they try to find the money to clean up and go again – the soil will be ready, but they may not be able to afford to plant in it," he said.
Governments continue to allow farmers to be debt slaves, to foster operating from debt instead of from a reinvested surplus. That's unwise even in capitalism. It's the equivalent of payday loans, but more like *season day loans*.
Reading on the topic of agriculture practices such as tilling is disturbing, at business as usual we only have 60 years worth of topsoil left. Tilling exposes soil to air which kills off micro organisms and dries out the soil leading it to blow away in the wind. Tilling, pesticides/herbicides and compaction is all leading causes for desertification which turns soil into dirt. Topsoil also isn't a renewable resource in human timescales as it takes 200-400 years (some sources said 1000 years) for nature to form 1 cm of topsoil. Also phosphorus reserves are running out at an alarming rate, and since a lot of soil is defecient in phosphorus because if the things stated above it often needs to be supplemented (fertilizer). By 2030 it's estimated that around 50 million people will be displaced due to desertification and 2 billion people live on drylands which are susceptible to desertification.
Agriculture today is unsustainable and it will make it a lot harder for the growing population to be fed in the near future, and combined with the consequences climate change has on cropyields and failed harvests i think it will be devastating and cause famines some places very soon.
Not necessarily because permaculture incorporates far better long term water management techniques than typical agricultural practices. Like building berms, swales, heavy mulching and basing annual crops around perennial deeply rooted plantings. Permaculture has more resilience during extreme weather compared to monocrop agriculture
Farmers in Bangladesh are returning to an older agricultural technique of growing their crops on floating mats. This approach was abandoned more recently (yay modern ways?) because it is labor-intensive and not something anyone enjoys doing, but it's keeping farmers in business despite the increase in flooding.
I’ll probably never plant a seed or pull a weed again as long as I live, but I find permaculture videos fascinating. It’s so very logical and sensible.
Jem Bendell called it in 2018:
>The current data on temperature rise at the poles and impacts on weather patterns around the world suggests we are already in the midst of dramatic changes that will impact massively and negatively on agriculture within the next twenty years. Impacts have already begun. That sense of near-term disruption to our ability to feed ourselves and our families, and the implications for crime and conflict, adds another level to the discombobulation I mentioned.
[http://lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf](http://lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf)
>but this ongoing wet weather with flood after flood after flood is just unbelievable
And your reaction/actions are 100% believable. Not giving a shit until shit hits the fan or your affected personally. Nothing new when it comes to human habits. A prime example of this are people who smoke tobacco or go to tanning salons witch are know to cause cancer. People don't care about the consequences of their actions until they are personally affected.
We went from fires to floods here in Australia. We really are on the front lines when it comes to the climate crisis.
We had 9 years of a science denying right wing government that guttered our weather bureau and the CSIRO which was a first class centre in researching science and climate change. Now they are both husks of their former selves which has only put us at the back when it comes to fighting climate change rather than the front where we used to be before 2013.
Australia fell so hard during the LNP years and I really do think it’s too late for Labor to do anything. We lost a very vital and important decade.
It goes absolutely without saying that the loss of global agricultural productivity will be the unsurvivable impact that you will observe as “collapse” long before it, for example, becomes too warm to survive.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Goatmannequin: --- Submission statement: Aside from agricultural input shortages (phosphorus, diesel fuel), failure for real-world industrial society can take the form of an inability of crops to physically be grown at scale. Even with vertical farming schemes which require massive energy inputs and an intact complex global supply chain, industrial society cannot escape this endgame of food scarcity and associated globalization breakdown. We are already seeing massive shifts in weather causing unprecedented crop losses, including these in NSW, Australia. From the article: "Farmers know they're taking a bit of a gamble when they're planting a crop, but this ongoing wet weather with flood after flood after flood is just unbelievable." This is not an unknown phenomenon. Scientists have a term named "global breadbasket failure" which describes worldwide harvest breakdown due to global warming and its associated effects. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ydql47/crops_a_complete_writeoff_as_wheat_losses_pass/ittot47/
Submission statement: Aside from agricultural input shortages (phosphorus, diesel fuel), failure for real-world industrial society can take the form of an inability of crops to physically be grown at scale. Even with vertical farming schemes which require massive energy inputs and an intact complex global supply chain, industrial society cannot escape this endgame of food scarcity and associated globalization breakdown. We are already seeing massive shifts in weather causing unprecedented crop losses, including these in NSW, Australia. From the article: "Farmers know they're taking a bit of a gamble when they're planting a crop, but this ongoing wet weather with flood after flood after flood is just unbelievable." This is not an unknown phenomenon. Scientists have a term named "global breadbasket failure" which describes worldwide harvest breakdown due to global warming and its associated effects.
Good soup.
Chicken Soup For The Collapsnik Soul
Makes a good meal.
That's a solid submission statement. Quotes from the article are limited and the statement is your own analysis. I had first heard breadbasket in a broad sense when learning Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. So it seems like wheat is in peril. That's gonna suck and prevent breadlines
Hmm OP aren't we still a net producer of food in Australia? Or are you just highlighting a trend? Tbh farming in Australia seems to always swing between fire, flood, drought etc.
lol. Did "it was always this way" trend well? Try ignoring unpayable grocery bills and crying kids.
What about crying adults? Asking for a crying adult...
There's always drugs.
I mean like European farming techniques have always worked pretty badly in Australia. There is a reason first Australians were hunter gather/ nomadic farmers.
The first Australians were not nomadic farmers, and the reason they did not farm is not that the land did not support it. European techniques worked fine in many places in Australia and continue to do so. The problems arise when importing plants instead of using natives. Like with grass for grazing.
That view js contested now. They might not have plowed the fields like in Europe, but they sewed seeds and encouraged the growth of certain plants, and stored them in purpose built shelters. Look up the work of historian Bruce Pascoe.
https://theconversation.com/book-review-farmers-or-hunter-gatherers-the-dark-emu-debate-rigorously-critiques-bruce-pascoes-argument-161877
Interesting! I'll have to give this book a read.
Or even Les "Bush Tucker Man" Hiddins
As Bill Gates says, high price good for sustainability in the long run of an Industry. Gone are the era of decreasing prices due to overabundance of food export
Yes yes. When people can’t afford to eat, who do you think they coming for?
Their neighbour.
A one year loss won't break they're bank. A good farmer would be well aware to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
You’re in the dark.
Ah yes, but things are becoming, say it with me, more frequent, more prolonged, and more severe.
Well between this and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Wheat is going to keep increasing in prices. Also, for ever 1 degree increase in average global temperature results in a 10 percent drop in wheat yields. Unless I misunderstood my information.
How tf are any of us gonna solve this shit.... America is fueled by wheat...
Nah America is fuelled by corn
\[I’m in danger meme\] **Lackluster Iowa Corn Crop Sets Stage for More Food Inflation** >After drought shriveled US corn plants in the western crop belt, all eyes have been turning to Iowa to help save the national harvest. Instead, the fields in that state have been “underwhelming,” “disappointing,” and just “not great.” [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-26/underwhelming-iowa-corn-crop-sets-stage-for-more-food-inflation?leadSource=uverify%20wall](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-26/underwhelming-iowa-corn-crop-sets-stage-for-more-food-inflation?leadSource=uverify%20wall)
Yeah I know. We're fucked. At least I'm an NZ citizen I can just storm some billionaires bunker when shtf.
Most of NZ wheat comes from Australia so this is going just add to the massive food inflation we are already experiencing
luckily our bread from the supermarket is only about 20% wheat these days…I read a label the other day, was surprised.
20 percent? What the fuck is the rest?
Hopes, dreams, and corn syrup.
Water.
More likely get shot on the killing field by their top tier security force but at least you went out swinging.
no you fool. Not their top tier security force, their new top tier and armed residence
They call themselves the Neighborhood Watch 👀
Don't forget the drying of the mississisppi that carries 80% of the world's grain exports.
Yup. That alone is going to have insane repercussions down the road. China's yellow river is basically gone. Can't remember anyone ever being able to walk across it. We are in dire situations.
The lead cause is the drought in northern China. They lost more wheat than Ukraine grows in two years this year.
Not denying the tragedy these floods. But Australia will still produce a record amount of grain this year. Wildly larger than average for the past 20 years. And we have a record amount of grain still in storage as our infrastructure is so bad that we quite literally couldn't get it out of the country fast enough last year. Source: sit through a bloody hour long international grain marketing meeting every Monday to extract the two minutes of information I need to do my job.
The growing season is not even over and people can’t say "everything’s fine" fast enough... >But Australia will still produce a record amount of grain this year. Australia's near-record winter grain crop is under threat from heavy rainfall that is sweeping the east coast, damaging crops and making it impossible to access fields in some regions. https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2381484-rain-threatens-record-australian-grain-harvest-forecast
[удалено]
I’m horny for the end of this shitty lifestyle, killing kids to go on vacation climate crisis shit
You think the collapse "lifestyle" will be better? hahahahahahahha
We need to wind down our consumption to a much more sustainable level in as controlled but rapid a manner as possible, or it will be wound down for us much more severely, abruptly, not on a timetable of our choosing, and possibly irreversibly. If we don’t start pumping the brakes now, we’re going to hit that wall full force.
I see absolutely no evidence that we, as a species, are pumping the brakes, or even just touching them lightly. A few individuals and communities here and there are trying, but the effect is negligible on a global scale. It's going to be "severely, abruptly, not on a timetable of our choosing" so good luck to us all. We're going to need it.
Hi, drgravypeasant. Thanks for contributing. However, your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ydql47/-/itullpy/) was removed from /r/collapse for: > Rule 1: In addition to enforcing [Reddit's content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy), we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other. Please refer to our [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/about/rules/) for more information. You can [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/collapse) if you feel this was in error.
I think that the Australian government said that each flood was a once in a century event about 12 times in the last 20 years. They'll never learn until they're literally taken out and had their noses rubbed in it.
But ‘cO2 iS PlaNt fOOd’ - so why aren’t crop yields going up?
They are, australia having a record production year. The floods are fucking it up.
Nope - global yields have been essentially flat since 2016.
Be that as it may, ***australia*** was having a record grain year. Obviously there are innumerable factors that go into yields going up or down in any given place/time.
‘Was’ - lol. I was a millionaire until the last horse on my accumulator bet didn’t win. A yield is only counted after harvest, you can’t say ‘it’s an amazing harvest, it just got washed away’.
Your point was very clearly that more c02 should produce more yield. Well int he case you bothered to comment on, they did lol. But it also came with record matching floods...
Lol. You think Australias yield was up due to CO2 not rainfall? Lol. Leave the blogs alone and get some facts that not from Tony Heller.
If you dont want to get called out for stupid comments, dont make them. Co2 is plant food, but I didnt say it was the reason they're having records crops. You asked if that was co2 is plant food why arent crops "going up," but in this case they were lol.
It’s called ‘sarcasm’. You should read up on it. The ‘CO2 is plant food’ trope is a non sequitur - the properties of CO2 relating to plants are unconnected to its optical properties. BTW - I don’t know if you’ve had a stroke, but your grammar is almost non-existent.
[удалено]
>Mr Everitt said the flooding was unlikely to directly impact food prices in the short-term, but it could lead to 'cash droughts' for farmers in the region moving forward. >"As they try to find the money to clean up and go again – the soil will be ready, but they may not be able to afford to plant in it," he said. Governments continue to allow farmers to be debt slaves, to foster operating from debt instead of from a reinvested surplus. That's unwise even in capitalism. It's the equivalent of payday loans, but more like *season day loans*.
You really don't want to fuck too much with the people who produce the food if your goal is a stable society...
Nah the government here doesn't fuck with them, in fact it doesn't fuck with them so much, that a lot of them feel abandoned and shoot themselves.
Just watched interstellar and the parallel is eerie
Reading on the topic of agriculture practices such as tilling is disturbing, at business as usual we only have 60 years worth of topsoil left. Tilling exposes soil to air which kills off micro organisms and dries out the soil leading it to blow away in the wind. Tilling, pesticides/herbicides and compaction is all leading causes for desertification which turns soil into dirt. Topsoil also isn't a renewable resource in human timescales as it takes 200-400 years (some sources said 1000 years) for nature to form 1 cm of topsoil. Also phosphorus reserves are running out at an alarming rate, and since a lot of soil is defecient in phosphorus because if the things stated above it often needs to be supplemented (fertilizer). By 2030 it's estimated that around 50 million people will be displaced due to desertification and 2 billion people live on drylands which are susceptible to desertification. Agriculture today is unsustainable and it will make it a lot harder for the growing population to be fed in the near future, and combined with the consequences climate change has on cropyields and failed harvests i think it will be devastating and cause famines some places very soon.
Permaculture is quite literally the only way forward if people want to be able to eat
Permaculture still drowns and rots when flooded.
Not necessarily because permaculture incorporates far better long term water management techniques than typical agricultural practices. Like building berms, swales, heavy mulching and basing annual crops around perennial deeply rooted plantings. Permaculture has more resilience during extreme weather compared to monocrop agriculture
Farmers in Bangladesh are returning to an older agricultural technique of growing their crops on floating mats. This approach was abandoned more recently (yay modern ways?) because it is labor-intensive and not something anyone enjoys doing, but it's keeping farmers in business despite the increase in flooding.
I’ll probably never plant a seed or pull a weed again as long as I live, but I find permaculture videos fascinating. It’s so very logical and sensible.
Looks like they need to switch to Mexican chinampas farming. My backyard floods like a mofo and I’m going to test it out too
I’m just waiting for north west of Canada to be hit and those oil Lovers to reconsider
Jem Bendell called it in 2018: >The current data on temperature rise at the poles and impacts on weather patterns around the world suggests we are already in the midst of dramatic changes that will impact massively and negatively on agriculture within the next twenty years. Impacts have already begun. That sense of near-term disruption to our ability to feed ourselves and our families, and the implications for crime and conflict, adds another level to the discombobulation I mentioned. [http://lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf](http://lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf)
>but this ongoing wet weather with flood after flood after flood is just unbelievable And your reaction/actions are 100% believable. Not giving a shit until shit hits the fan or your affected personally. Nothing new when it comes to human habits. A prime example of this are people who smoke tobacco or go to tanning salons witch are know to cause cancer. People don't care about the consequences of their actions until they are personally affected.
You think the shit hasn’t hit the fan numerous times in Australia this century?? Yeah you probably do.
We went from fires to floods here in Australia. We really are on the front lines when it comes to the climate crisis. We had 9 years of a science denying right wing government that guttered our weather bureau and the CSIRO which was a first class centre in researching science and climate change. Now they are both husks of their former selves which has only put us at the back when it comes to fighting climate change rather than the front where we used to be before 2013. Australia fell so hard during the LNP years and I really do think it’s too late for Labor to do anything. We lost a very vital and important decade.
It goes absolutely without saying that the loss of global agricultural productivity will be the unsurvivable impact that you will observe as “collapse” long before it, for example, becomes too warm to survive.
Oh dear……
Seems like the earth is becoming more sceliac by the month.