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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

The difference is that unlike microchips, wheat can't be stored indefinitely. Eventually it rots. And reserve storage capacity is very limited; they have to make room for the next crop. The worldwide wheat market is huge and fragmented so no one can really corner the market through hoarding. An electronics manufacturer might not be able to easily substitute a '328 for another microcontroller, but an Egyptian baker can easily substitute French or Indian wheat for Ukrainian wheat as long as the transport can be worked out at a reasonable cost.

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Wheat properly stored keeps for at least thirty years without noticeable degradation[0]. I'm not sure how easy that is at scale, but on first glance it seems not impractical.

[0] https://extension.usu.edu/preserve-the-harvest/research/stor...

It's easy to store small quantities of wheat for years at home, but that's irrelevant to this situation. We're talking about grain elevators and warehouses.

I'm not convinced that an airtight grain storage facility filled with carbon dioxide is impractical. A quick search turns up several manufacturers of airtight grain silos.

In fact, you don't even need the silo to be air-tight: moisture is the enemy. If you can keep you silo dry (including when air temperature change, which is really the only challenge you would face, for example in the ancient world), you're good[1], it won't rot.

Humans have known how to keep wheat for several millennia !

[1]: at least if the goal is to eat the wheat. Replanting the seeds will become much harder after time passes.

These places have regulated hygrometry for exactly this reason.

The type of places at risk of food shortages don't necessarily have wheat storage facilities with regulated hygrometry. Developed countries will be fine, and have facilities for long term grain storage. It's the poorest countries that will be hit by rising wheat prices and intermittent shortages.

> The type of places at risk of food shortages don't necessarily have wheat storage facilities with regulated hygrometry.

First of all you're moving goalpost here, the thread started with a discussion about how some people can hoard a huge amount a microchips or wheat to make big profit, there's no reason for this hoarding to occur in developing countries (and in fact it's more likely to happen in countries where capital is flowing, for such a speculator to invest).

Then when we're talking about countries that import wheat, that means taking wheat from tankers in big ports, not some remote rural places with no electricity or running water. In countries that import wheat, Middle East and North Africa that is, theses facilities are critical to the mere survival of the population, so of course they have access to at least the early/mid 20th century tech which is all you need…

> unlike microchips, wheat can't be stored indefinitely

I'm actually unsure which depreciates quicker: wheat or silicon? On one hand, wheat is perishable. On the other hand, silicon becomes obsolete.

What we know says that obsolete silicon trickles down to poorer countries, e.g. the early 8-bit microcomputers saw continued use in the former Soviet states into the mid-1990's, a full decade after obsolescence had started to hit in North America with the introduction of 16-bit machines.

Of course, there's some leapfrogging that also takes place. Most of Africa jumped straight into adoption of mobile phones without really going through an era of cheap consumer micros.

Well the PS4 was released in 2013 and still plays modern games, sure they could look better and run faster but it gets the job done.

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