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Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the economics will sort this out automatically, at least for the average first-world citizen.

Most consume way more than they actually utilize for nutritional value. In America, food is entertainment more than anything else. Once the price of this "entertainment" becomes prohibitive, people will start looking at it with the proper perspective.

Simply switching from daily takeout to weekly meal prep can shave $500-1000 off someone's monthly food budget. The time/discipline tradeoff is complex, but ultimately a hungry person will figure something out.

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Meat normally fixes the fluctuations on agriculture output.

When it's very plentiful, meat producers switch into more grains and grow more cattle. When it's scarce, meat producers slaughter their cattle earlier, and do as much as possible to substitute grains for grass.

AFAIK, the second largest stabilizer is on stockpiles. But some countries do almost none of it.

  >  The time/discipline tradeoff is complex

It's really not.

Here's how I do : once a week buy lots vegetables at the market. Once every two days, put a good deal of veggies + rice/lentils (+ rarely chicken) in a casserole. Add little water, cover, let cook very gently.

Now you have good food for two days. And cheap. And dead easy to make.

Not sure why are you getting the downvotes. Food prep is not rocket science. My wife is a proper foodie, and cooks gourmet food every day - and she is not spending more than 45 mins each day doing this. Thats what she does to unwind after work. When I lived alone I used your strategy and with a slow cooker it would not take more than 20 mins per day to make quality, tasty food.

Aren't calorie dense (nutrient poor) foods already the cheapest because they are the easiest to produce?

How about the majority of the world's people who are not first world citizens?

A shifted American perspective on what food is actually for might help the rest of the world as well.

Ironically it would be easier, food costs in "first world" are the most expensive, while emerging economies have much more potential to stablize and finally use their local resources to grow "cheap" food.

At the same time it also depends on what that local population really is used too - different to compare Asia, South East Asia to Africa.

Prices going up doesn’t mean everyone can continue to consume as much as before if they are willing to pay for it. Nor is food perfectly fungible across continents. Your American family may just be able to outspend someone in Senegal, even if they waste half of the food while the other guy is starving. And even if they somehow buy less, they may just buy less beef, which is still to expensive for the world’s poor to buy, may not even be raised, and a;l that’s saved is some animal feed unfit for human consumption, rotting in Iowa.

Sure, it’ll all adjust, just not at the timescale necessary.

While people try to figure out how to feed themselves, it'd be a good opportunity to blame you for their problems and get some political capital :)

The cynic is me thinks this might help explain the ethanol mandate insanity.

Ethanol Mandates == Higher Food Prices == Arab Spring Scenarios.

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