World Food Supply If There Were A Nuclear Fallout #cats

2 years ago
91

World food reserves, as measured by total cereal stores at any given time, are frighteningly small should production fail. They have amounted in recent years to about 2 months' supply of cereals at present consumption rates.1 In the United States food stores would feed the population for about a year.2 Portions of the stores, however, would be destroyed by blast or fire or would be contaminated by radioactivity.3, 4 Crops in the field would be damaged to an unpredictable extent.4,5
2.
More important, the means to transport the food from sites of harvest or storage to the consumers would no longer exist. Transportation centers would be prime targets of an aggressor intent on destroying the industrial competence of an opponent to sustain a war. Roads, bridges, and rail and port facilities would be likely targets. Foods that appear in our markets are not grown locally. In Massachusetts, for example, more than three-quarters of the food arrives from out of state by truck or rail, and supplies on hand would last for only a few days. In a nuclear attack most of these supplies in urban areas would be destroyed. In the United States and other developed countries, food no longer is carried by farmers to nearby markets. The northeastern United States is particularly vulnerable to a breakdown in transportation of foods since some 80 percent of its food is imported, but other sections of the country would fare only little better. Eighty-five percent of U.S. corn is grown in 11 Midwestern states. One-sixth of the wheat is grown in Kansas alone, and most of the rest is grown from Texas north to Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana, with some being grown in Michigan, the Pacific Northwest, and New York State, but only a negligible amount is grown in the Northeast. Two-thirds of the soybeans are grown in the Great Lakes States and the Corn Belt. Rice is grown mainly in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and California. Fruit and vegetable production is nearly as regionally concentrated.2 With key railway links and highways destroyed and gasoline and diesel fuels unavailable, whatever crops survived could not be moved to places where they would be needed.
3.
Food is supplied today in the United States and developed countries by a complex network of enterprises that involves not only farming, animal husbandry, and fishing but also farm machinery, pesticides, fertilizers, petroleum products, and commercial seeds. This network utilizes sophisticated techniques and technology to handle the food that is produced. These include grain elevators, slaughterhouses, cold-storage plants, flour mills, canning factories, and other packaging plants. It also includes the transportation, the storage, and the marketing and distribution of foods through both wholesale and retail outlets. A breakdown in this vast agribusiness would be an inevitable consequence of a nuclear war. Without the means to harvest, process, and distribute those crops that survived, there would be much spoilage.
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