Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. suggests that with over 1,400 insect species being eaten by humans worldwide anyway, the wild world of insects offers “promising possibilities both commercially and nutritionally.”
The prospect of tossing up a net and harvesting swarms of grasshoppers is a tantalizing idea. Rumor has it there are some areas of the Western States where grasshoppers could be harvested at the rate of 100 pounds per hour.
Harvesting grasshoppers sounds even more difficult than herding cats and a lot less fun. As there is no profit in herding cats at the moment save for the entertainment value, grasshoppers may be the better way to go for feeding the world, and making a profit.
To put this into proper perspective, in 1938 just one county in the U.S., woke up with 2-3 grasshopper egg pods per square foot, in their fields. That doesn’t sound like much until we realize each pod holds 60-80 eggs, or 200 grasshoppers per square foot. That’s an infestation biblical in proportions. An average grasshopper can eat more than half its body weight in vegetation every day. A swarm can eat an entire field in no time.
Some scientists are claiming adding insects to our diet would be good for us and the environment.
When I see the words commercial and devastation used in regard to the same insects…chills run up my spine.
What could go wrong? Oh where to begin. I don’t care if insects were the ‘original white meat’.
Photo Thanks: P. Durst FAO
Labels: Food Shortage, Grasshoppers, Insects, U.N. FAO
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
What Could Go Wrong? The Plague of Locust; Coming to A Dinner Table Near You.
Friday, April 18, 2008
On April 9, we published a little entry about bigger families becoming the new status symbol. We mentioned that Ted Turner thinks global warming could lead to cannibalism. Could it be the famous ‘mouth of the south’ got it right?
Market analysts started to verbalize that the cost of food would be taking a sharp
rise as the price per barrel of oil kept hitting record highs. Stories about an eminent lack of food looming on the horizon weren’t being dealt with, not with any sense of urgency at least. No, there was no time for that, not with the U.S. election coverage, designed to send the nation into a collective coma playing non-stop.
Then Ted Turner came out with his comments on too many people too little food and how someday we would all be dead from starvation and those left would be eating each other.
A day or two later the news did mention the Haitians were actually rioting over the price of food. Those riots did result in lowering the price of rice. Then, like a pot that finally boiled over, the stories began to spill out over the Internet. The crisis is still only trickling out over cable news. But, the news about LiLo, the Britster, Obama and Clinton is still abundant. Abundant Hollywood and Washington D.C. news, unlike the world wide lack of food.
Port-Au-Prince, Cairo, the sub-Saharan, and Malaysia. Governments in some Asian countries have too limits on how much rice can be purchased in an effort to limit the hoarding of food by panicked shoppers. Even Thailand which exports millions
of tons more rice than it consumes has taken steps to limit the amount of rice shoppers can buy.
El Salvador’s President Saca calls the impending crisis a scandalous storm that might become a hurricane. “How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and commodities are becoming scarce.” Saca also said, “This is a perfect storm,” while attending the World Economic Forum on Latin America earlier this week.
On April 11, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)warned that food riots in developing countries will spread unless something was done about the price of food for the poor. FAO director General Jacques Diouf said at a news conference “The reality is that people are dying already in the riots.”
There are reportedly food riots taking place in 22 nations already. Food riots had already broken out in Indonesia, the Philippines and Haiti plus several African countries. North Korea may be on the brink. Will global warming clean out a cupboard near you?
Labels: Food Crisis, Food Riots, Food Shortage, Global Warming, Ted Turner, U.N. FAO
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Where Has All The Food Gone? Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard; maybe it’s there.
