this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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[–] [email protected] 85 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

If you live in the US and are not wealthy, stock up on rice, beans, lentils, and spices now. As much as you can reasonably afford. You will be glad you did.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Don't forget mouse traps and other ways of keeping them safe from vermin.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

And then later, catching and eating the vermin.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Urban pigeons and rats are definitely NOT a safe food. They're full of chemical pollution that you can't cook out, and probably more than a few diseases which you might also catch. It beats starving to death, but you should consider basically anything else, including boiling your (vegetable tanned) leather belts and shoes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Pigeons are actually a domesticated animal that used to be bred for (among other things) food. So you re-domesticate a few of them, and then eat their offspring which you feed household scraps.

You might also save on heating in the winter by having larger cattle in your house and sleeping on a loft above them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, you can totally eat pigeons, and people do. You can totally eat rats (and I assume some people do). But those aren't the ones you randomly spot eating garbage in the cities.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I remember a tour guide in Paris showing me a poster from the Siege of Paris by the Prussians.

Dog meat, pigeons, rats, etc.

Honestly I'd just do what Napoleon III did and just sit in the field and wait to get hit at that point.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I imagine a late 19th century rat or pigeon had a much healthier diet than a modern one. Just be sure not to touch the lungs too much...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah fuck, I just threw a dead mouse away a couple weeks ago. I'm gonna be kicked out of the community for wasting food soon. 3 people could've ate with that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Look at this fat cat.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago

Build a garden box or two if you can afford it. Stupid easy to build and they can be fun.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

Domestically produced food shouldn't go up that much.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

When all of the regulations go out the window, affordable or not, food quality is going to slide into the dumpster.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

Quality maybe but there's no reason domestically produced food should go up a lot. The fact that China refused tons of pork and soy beans imports from America means there will be a glut and that means terrible finances for farmers but hardly expensive food.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago

I’ve already seen prices go up considerably at basically any grocery store I’ve been at. Capitalists will continue to increase the prices regardless.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago

You think grocers will pass the savings on?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

The fact that China refused tons of pork and soy beans imports from America means there will be...

huge, unexpected profits for groceries?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

In the short term, maybe but next season they simply wont produce either.

There is not infinite processing capacity so much of that will likely go to waste.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Some naive shit right here.

terrible finances for farmers but hardly expensive food.

So close to figuring it out...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

For this current season specifically there will be a glut of food and not enough buyers. In the future if these farmers go out of business then prices could increase.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If your competition cost more then you can raise your prices too!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Most food in the US is domestically produced, so no. The US is a huge exporter of food outside of specialty goods and tropical things.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

You're not giving capitalism enough credit. Corporations and businesses are not altruistic. If they can get away with slowly raising prices to increase profit margins, they will.

That's a hell of a lot easier to actually achieve when you don't have foreign produce acting as competition and consequently sanity-checking domestic prices. Foreign suppliers implicitly set a ceiling for how much a product can cost since the market would shift to using them if they became the cheaper option.

To make matters worse, tariffs are a very nice excuse for retailers to raise prices across the board using the excuse that "it costs us more to get it, so it has to cost you more to buy it." If we're lucky, they'll raise foreign goods by the exact amount they're paying more for them and only choose to raise domestic good prices (for profit) by only some fraction of that amount.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

For basic stuff like rice the US produces way more than it needs, the only real imports I see are for specialty stuff like jasmine rice or bhasmati rice from Thailand or India. Basic long grain rice or calrose is domestic and very cheap.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's literally how capitalism works, so yes. They don't care if it's "mean." They will ALWAYS price things as high as they can, and they will push it as far as they possibly can before sales start to dip.

If it's a publicly traded company, they will literally oust you as CEO if you aren't doing this because you'd be leaving money on the table.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If the value of money goes down, prices go up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The dollar is internal and farmers make annual purchases so they will have already bought their stuff they need for this season so they shouldn't be too affected by exchange rates. The US makes its own oil and derivatives like fertilizer and farm equipment so they shouldn't be too affected for now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

The dollar is internal

What does this even mean? You think the US has complete control over what the dollar is worth? Because that's utter nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

It will anyway, prices never really went back down after covid for a reason

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Either a bot or: Tell me you played sportsball in a small town highschool without telling me you played sportsball in a small town in highschool!

Whoever let gave you a passing grade in economics only did it so you could ahoot the game winning 3 point score.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

There is more supply than needed, we normally make so much we export huge quantities. How does restricted food exports increase prices domestically?

The comments about capitalism and price gouging and stuff are all fine and correct. But that would logically apply whether the exports were restricted or not. But they have to do something with all the food they were going to export or not. Sometimes they'll just burn it or dump milk but they can probably sell, just at a lower price or pay more to ship it farther away. Now long term yes if these farmers go out of business then prices could increase if the supply shrinks but that doesn't really apply to this year.

The problem with the reasoning I see here is that you lot are taking things you heard and applying them to this situation, but you just say capitalism and that's the end of your argument. Supply and demand still affect prices, especially on a large scale and with commodity goods.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Our domestic food supply is critically dependent on a number of tools and spare parts that will no longer be easily obtainable. A lead time of 6-7 weeks is the difference between a good harvest and no harvest at all.