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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

There are also lifestyle shifts that can be made that are far less severe than starvation, like the Woodrow Wilson's WW1 proclamation for meatless Tuesdays and one meatless meal every day [1]. That would reduce pressure on supplies of basic cereal grains.

It will also be interesting (if it happens) to see how substitutable other cereal grains are for wheat. One impact of globalization is that people are far less provincial in what they will eat than they used to be, so they could substitute more rice for wheat, for example.

The thing there is no substitute for today is fertilizer, which is used at similar rates by all 3 main stable cereal crops, but rice and corn produce several times more calories per hectare than wheat [2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday#History

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-...

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With some variance across cultivars, wheat has 50% more protein than maize and nearly double the protein of rice.

Further, "feed corn" (maize) isn't really suitable for humans. Best way to turn it into calories for human consumption is to feed it to egglayers, after that it's broilers, then dairy cattle, then swine and beef cattle.

Finally, changing a crop mixture is something that has a long lead time. Got to sow the fields a season in advance, at least. Rising price of wheat means that some of the land used for maize for this season will be wheat for next harvest. Market will take care of that. Won't have any food shortages in the USA, but could be rough in less agriculturally-capable parts of the world.

Why it isn't suitable for humans? To me it seems perfectly fine.

It is certainly not the best food source, but it a subsistence.

During famines in Finland people used to eat even bark, especially inner bark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_bread

Can't just mill it and eat it as you can with wheat. Needs to be post-processed extensively with alkaline water, plus what the threshers and mills turn out for ethanol and feed ain't what you'd want to make tacos in the first place.

Plus, maize is only okay in the diet, low in proteins and nutrients compared to wheat, it really needs some pulses alongside if you want good nutrition, so pulses would need to be planted a bit more or soy processing would have to shift over from feed to tofu alongside. Historical records show pre-Columbian folks in the maize empires (Aztec, Incas) were a bit malnourished compared to their wheat-eating European and meat-hunting North American counterparts. In the modern day, animals (eggs, poultry, dairy, swine, beef) basically post-process a less-than-ideal crop into something real good for the human.

A few egg layers in the back yard, though, works wonders to turn feed corn into something nutritious for a human being.

Field/dent corn is perfectly suitable for humans. You make corn meal and corn bread from it.

Nixtamalization is important, if it’s a major component of the diet. It makes great tacos, tamales, and enchiladas.

> Further, "feed corn" (maize) isn't really suitable for humans. Best way to turn it into calories for human consumption is to feed it to egglayers, after that it's broilers, then dairy cattle, then swine and beef cattle.

So a less red-meat-intensive diet. I don't think Woodrow Wilson meant vegetarian when he proclaimed Meatless Tuesdays, although that is a much more viable option these days. It's probably going to be more expensive to be paleo, though.

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