Yes and mostly no. Its definitely a costlier rice but not unaffordable. My dad grow rice and he doesnt prefer the taste of basmati. Basmati is softer and longer but not as sweet as his favorite "sharbati" or IR24. It tastes bland with vegetables and curries. It has aroma but no flavor. Most farmers dont prefer basmati for daily usage even when they grow it. Also,per acre, basmati has not significant advantage over other varieties which can grow upto 2x basmati.
I live in city and now I prefer basmati because its less sweeter and softer. Weight gain has been a concern for me (not to my dad, he likes doing labor). Basmati also doesnt fit well with many traditional dishes, except for biryani I guess.
Cashew has become unaffordable locally because of high export demand. I find is mildly irritating. On the other hand, I earn quite well because of service export.
There's an insane amount of everything varieties, you just don't often get much (or at least not explicit) choice at the point of purchase.
Potatoes are the biggest exception I can think of in the UK. Largely grown here! Could believe it's similar for retail rice in India for similar reasons. (That doesn't work for say wheat flour though. A lot grown here, but best you can do is pick your protein %. I'm also not sure if you should care about more than that though - milling aside.)
At which point of sale? If you mean in some chain grocery store then I would agree with you, but if you go to any local rice merchant they have tons of varieties.
Well what I mean is that a lot of people don't have a 'local rice merchant' or aren't going there - so it's not 'often' much of a choice, i.e. across all points of sale.
I'm not talking about just India (nor just rice) if that's the confusion - I don't know where I'd personally go for a choice of basmati cultivars, but there's probably things (potatoes?) I have more choice of in the UK than there generally is in India.
The special thing about this is that creating new rice cultivars are difficult. Indian farmers specifically discovered and developed techniques to prevent self-pollination and encourage cross-pollination. This allowed for an explosion of rice varietals.
In other words the special part here, along with the quantity, is that the process was deliberate and encouraged. There are like 110,000 identified cultivars of rice in India. There are special harvest festivals that specifically encourage the discovery of new rice varietals which are then shared in these festivals.
I like making Kichdi once in a while and Basmati is awful for this dish. I have discovered the japanese Sushi rice takes my khichdi so much more wonderful. It is not good for the waistline but it is an indulgence for whenever I get sick.
Ha, it's so funny to me khichdi is a sick dish - I thought that was just my fiancée's family at first. She made some for me which I kept eating in good health, but she couldn't/wouldn't eat it herself, put off by that association.
The British kedgeree (which has its origin in khichdi but frankly is quite different - like a breakfast biryani of smoked haddock & boiled egg; generally no daal) doesn't at all share that.
That is unfortunate about cashews, but I'm jealous to read of the choice of rice varieties - it's a funny world!
In the UK I think I'd have a hard time getting anything other than generic 'basmati' (which afaict just means Oryza sativa indica - it could be IR24, what you're calling basmati, anything else in the subspecies, or some blend with the yield & shelf-life & availability properties they wanted) that would be at all suitable for (my attempt at/interpretation of) 'Indian' food.
Whatever it is I suppose I subconsciously agree it's bland - I tend to cook it with some rai/jeera/ilaayachi/laung depending.
(Edit -) It just occurred to me that the cashew issue is probably not helped that they're hardly cheap here, largely eaten as a snack (roasted & salted) on their own - which supports a higher price, I suppose, than more common use as more of an ingredient (e.g. kaju katri, ground up in creamy dishes) in India.
> In the UK I think I'd have a hard time getting anything other than generic 'basmati'
It’s relatively easy to find any kind of rice in countries with significant East Asian diaspora like England provided you are ready to buy largish quantity (10kg). It’s highly likely there is an Asian market near you with a surprisingly large selection of rices (not necessarily on display) and which can get you other kinds if you order. It definitely is more involved than going to Tesco but far from impossible.
I do buy in 5-10kg bags (but admittedly takes me much longer to work through than it would an East Asian family) I've just never seen it specify a variety. Just different brands of 'basmati' (which as I said I think is used more generically here than it is up thread).
There are even different ways to cook the same rice for use with different dishes. Sometimes you want sticky, sometimes you want mushy, sometimes you want the grains to stay individual, sometimes you want them to have a little bite…
Lol. Yesterday, I was making fun of my friend. He likes drinking and like to talk about various kind of drinks. I don't drink and wanted to change the topic:
"alcohol is just alcohol!". He rolled his eyes.
Basmati rice has generally lower arsenic content than the other rice types, at least those they sell here. That's the main reason I buy it, not really for the taste.
The article says basmati accounts for 1/4th of the exports, yes it’s a higher yield crop, but basmati is consumed at a much much lower rate than let’s say sona masoori (at least in the south)
There are many varieties of Rice and Basmati is just one of them. In India it is used only for special dishes like Biryani/Pulao/etc. and not as a all purpose everyday use Rice. And it is also a higher margin crop well-suited for exports.
Ocean shipping is really efficient. Local farmers market food can easily result in more CO2 emissions than shipping from another country. 20 miles in a pickup truck is worse than 2,000 miles by massive cargo ship.
This is why carbon taxes are so efficient, they optimize for actual emissions vs what people think are the problems.
This one. For example, imported New Zealand lamb is significantly less carbon intensive than Welsh lamb (when consumed in the UK), because of country size and climate.
That is one cherry picked example... And it is an odd situation to have picked. The colony that has yet to have its nutrients extracted and exported requires less fertilizers. Who knew /s.
Hardly, it’s cherry picked in the other direction to favor local production due to the extreme distances involved. Compare veggies grown in Spain and shipped to London and the advantage is even later, but the distances are less impressive.
The study was comparing food consumed in the UK not India. It wasn’t suggesting producing apples/milk/lamb in New Zealand was the best option, just that it was more environmentally friendly for people in the UK to eat an Apple from New Zealand than that which was produced locally. Clearly there’s other options for imports that aren’t literally from the opposite side of the planet. (https://www.geodatos.net/en/antipodes/united-kingdom/london)
> concluded that lamb imported from New Zealand is four times as energy efficient as lamb reared in the UK, even when carbon emissions from the transport process are taken into account.”
> The report shows apples and dairy products also have a smaller carbon footprint – half the size, in the case of dairy – when they are imported from New Zealand rather than UK-sourced.
> Professor Caroline Saunders, who led the research, said, “Food that has travelled long distances is perceived as being harmful to the environment and has some media attention in our key markets, especially Europe.
It's the example I know off the top of my head, because I'm from a Welsh farming town. Is that really so surprising? Transport is _incredibly_ efficient nowadays, it's completely expected that a better climate trumps transportation costs.
In a world where economies to scale in large production reasons = less GHG/per cultivated and the typical person involved in the production of the food has a much lower carbon footprint necessary to sustain their life.
If we are comparing farmers markets to grocery stores, last mile delivery to grocery stores is in semi trucks filled with a range of products not half full pickup trucks. The difference in CO2/mile is again huge. As to picking up from each, people driving out of their way to farmers markets are generally worse for the environment than any potential savings from “local” production.
PS: Home delivery often beats driving to stores because of more efficient routing, but that’s very dependent on the specifics.
This is where electric everything makes sense. Yes a lot of resources are used to transport food, but today we're not at all dependent on a good harvest season for not starving.
The last 100 years have been pretty much the only time in history where food in many parts of the world was guaranteed. Regardless of growing seasons.
I think long term vertical farming is going to revolutionize food, but until then efficient global shipment will be the way to go.
Technically, preventing famines harms the environment in the “best way to not produce carbon is to die” sense, although I don’t think this was what the poster meant originally!
Food transportation is NOT a big contributor to global warming. Bulk transportation, especially with ships is one of the most efficient ways of moving things around the globe.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
A quote from that article "Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%."
Yes, so the transportation of food is a small portion of the greenhouse emissions involved with producing that food.
Trying to grow food locally with lower economies of scale may in turn result in higher emissions. In any case, it's not going to massively lower emissions.
This - as most of this thread - reads like some well-crafted well put-together propaganda coming straight from some Paul R. Ehrlich type talking head of a person. Even if I would trust the data you provided, there is still the monoculture vs polycultlure in relation to fertilizer usage, job market, food security, microclimate aspects - each of which would require a separate thread. There is a whole socioeconomic ecosystem build around local farming, most post-communist countries had world-class agri systems in place before it was taken apart after 1989 (with local fertilizer production due to local beef production).
I'm not sure the Sam Kinison approach scales. We need cheaper cleaner energy. Growing food locally just shuffles the variables around for marginal emissions benefit with massive hits to scalability.
You don't even get a marginal emissions benefit. When you grow crops outside of their ideal climates, you end up emitting a lot more for things like fertilizer than whatever you emit for longer distance transportation.
You either transport the food or you transport the fertilizer, heavy equipment, water, and other inputs necessary to grow the food. And often to places that aren't well suited to it.
Something's gonna have to be transported one way or another. Or we can just decide everyone will need to have blander and less varied diets. That will bring the amount of stuff to transport down, but you're still probably going to be more efficient having the inputs in a few places that can grow food really well and exporting it to the places that can't.
Putin can stop whenever he wants by not annexing Ukraine.
Its surprising that people spin that west is responsible for a war started by Russia. The article says "We can stop the war by the west stopping supply to Ukraine". This is literally the way Russia wins the war and annexes Ukraine.
Insistence that Ukraine recapture Crimea and we should keep supplying weapons until they do is ridiculous imo and will lead to a lot more loss of life and likely little success. Nevermind that the ethnically Russian population of Crimea likely does not want to be part of the post-Euromaidan government of Ukraine (which, let’s keep in mind, did technically involve the illegal ouster of the president Crimeans helped elect and the subsequent banning of the Russian language in schools).
> Insistence that Ukraine recapture Crimea and we should keep supplying weapons until they do
There are no major western leaders saying this. Ukraine is saying that they intend to recapture Crimea.
The russian play book of conquering lands and then stuffing them with ethnic russians is not a good strategy to reward. Ethnic russians can go live in Russia if they don't want to live in Ukraine.
What? Crimean Russians have been there for like at least 50 years.
Ukraine is making claims about recapturing this and that because they feel they can count on Western support to do so and because it lets them negotiate from a high starting point. I think that is largely fine if we are pushing for settlements behind the scenes
Your post suggests ethnic russians are the only ones that matter. There are no trustworthy numbers since Russia annexed Crimea but before that - meaning less than 10 years ago - ethnic russians were just a minority. There are also Ukrainians, Crim tartars and a wealth of smaller groups.
Options:
1. Russia might have managed to drive off other ethnicities and add more russians,but all of which would have been in the past 10 years, knowing full well it's stolen land.do these people get a say on who owns Crimea? I don't think that's something to reward.
2. Russians are still a minority(and not necessarily all of them might want to be part of Russia...). Then clearly your logic would suggest that Ukraine should retake it or Russia voluntarily should hand it back.
Sure. And yet still, Russia's been trying to make it more Russian. And they've been doing the same in recently occupied areas.
Ukraine is indeed making those claims because they think they can do it. But you were implying this was a Western move, which it is not.
But frankly fuck them. If Ukraine can gain fire control over the bridge to Crimea then it's just Kherson City all over again. Crimea would be immensely expensive to hold. No practical logistical support for what is, by far, the most valuable part of Ukraine. No safe harbor for ships in Sevastapol. Maybe Russia tries to play it out. Maybe they just acknowledge it and give up. But it'd be relatively easy to lay siege to it if the land bridge is captured and the bridge bridge is in fire control (or destroyed). They don't need to march into Crimea itself. Just hold that siege and Russia will eventually need to yield.
Crimea isn't a side objective. It's the checkmate move. It has the potential to be a lot less bloody than fighting for every meter of land in the east.
Sieges are pretty bloody, but its better than a grind through trenches and minefields at the rate of dozens of meters per day. My point was more so that Russia "probably" won't keep fighting if they don't control Crimea.
It's not just Putin saying this, but also Western leaders (quietly) confirming it.
Merkel, Macron, Bennett, et al. have asserted that Washington+London are more or less sabotaging any diplomatic solution that doesn't involve the inevitable collapse of Russia.
Russia has put their diplomatic cards on the table multiple times, including in late 2021 where they literally drafted a "security guarantee" treaty that, modulo further negotiations, Washington would simply have to sign to get Russian troops away from Ukraine. And Washington didn't even try to call a bluff, they just ignored the opportunity. Yet they constantly miscall bluffs of military escalation. Truly baffling.
It cannot be overstated how utterly nonexistent the diplomacy has been between Washington and Moscow particularly since 2014. Because one side sees the other as a fundamentally inferior state.
This is blatantly not true when the modus operandi behind the restrictions on arms sales is to prevent the collapse of Russia - not of Putin, but of Russia. It isn't mutually exclusive with worries about nuclear escalation, but I've often seen generals and colonels scoff at that in comparison despite the lengthier public discussion. The idea that any strategic planner wants Russia to collapse is the idea that John Bolton is the only type of person to be employed in the state department. You are disparaging thousands of people who dedicated their lives to do the opposite of the cynism you state.
Annexing all of Ukraine's natural gas fields under the guise of saving ethnic Russians wasn't acceptable to Ukraine was it? The agreement you discuss is a defacto conquering of Ukraine.
Notice that it is purely focused on security guarantees. It does not say, as you incorrectly asserted, that Russia gets sole rights to Ukraine's natural resources. Both Russian AND Western billionaires would continue to be able to exploit them. Sure, Russian ones might have an advantage because it's on their doorstep and they speak the same language. But that's geography for you.
Ironically, since Washington refused this treaty, Russia will likely gain exclusive economic access to eastern (done) and southern (WIP) Ukraine, and former Ukraine will become landlocked if not dissolve entirely to Poland et al.
This is prior to March 2023, and ignores the annexation of the gas fields, as well as the additions Russia has added to it's constitution since the war began. Being from 2021, what relevance does that document have? Ukraine was not party to that, and had within its constitution a mandate to join NATO. Hundreds of thousands of casualties for what?
Here is a map of the gas fields -
FWIW, disagreement does not equate to "bad faith".
The "Russia invaded Ukraine mainly for its natural resources narrative" requires extraordinary cherry-picking of historical fact to support.
- Russia already has oodles of natural resources. They export them to the West for a bargain. This is not Japan in WW2.
- Do a modicum of research on post-Soviet IR in Europe. What were Gorbachev's and Putin's agendas vis-a-vis Europe, based not on Applebaumian psychoanalysis but public statements and action? Study the Budapest Memo, Putin's 2007 MSC speech, Minsk agreements, etc.
- Also do a modicum of research on the agendas from the other side. What was Brzezinski saying about post-Soviet geopolitics? What is Victoria Nuland working on in the Bush, Obama, and Biden State Departments? What was Yalta European Strategy about? How did Zelensky rapidly rise from clown to president? What does the leaked Nuland-Pyatt call reveal?
There is an enormous amount of historical fact that we can build our understanding on, rather than resorting to simplistic Zeihan-tier pseudo-intellectualism.
I mentioned bad faith not out of disagreement but because it seemed like you were dodging the points brought up. This thread began by stating the war was begun by malicious American entities, in its entirety.
They aren't mutually exclusive, but again, the occupation of gas fields, and now the embargo of grain, is about depriving the Ukrainian government. not domestic shortages. That is the thing that makes me mention bad faith. I have researched these agendas, and I recheck the records and rumors frequently. The zeihen doomerism is disenguine hawking of his trade and book, but what makes you think that this war is all an American diplomatic failure brought at the behest of western billionaires? A war is complicated, and simplifying it isn't helpful.
> It cannot be overstated how utterly nonexistent the diplomacy has been between Washington and Moscow particularly since 2014. Because one side sees the other as a fundamentally inferior state.
Perhaps it is because in 2014, Russia broke its promises and stole Crimea with a military invasion and the west figured they could not be trusted and would almost certainly do the same thing again; which they did.
Before that, NATO broke its promise to "not expand one-inch eastward" and to not interfere with Ukrainian sovereignty. There are no good guys here.
By the way, how many people died in the Russian invasion of Crimea and resulting occupation? Surely it was very bloody (like the current war) because Crimeans didn't want it, right?
>Beset by chaos at home, an increasingly beleaguered Yeltsin turned to historical revisionism. He began to interpret the Two Plus Four Treaty as a ban on NATO expansion east of Germany, on the basis that it only permitted alliance activities on East German territory. He (and later Putin) claimed that the failure to mention Eastern Europe, together with the stipulated restrictions in relation to former GDR terrain, meant an implicit Western rejection of eastward enlargement.
Also later
> At preliminary bilateral talks in Helsinki in March 1997, Clinton refused to respond to Yeltsin’s call for binding restrictions on the establishment of NATO security infrastructure in new member states.
If you want to talk about promises of not expanding, maybe we should talk about that time Ukraine gave Russia a bunch of Soviet nukes for the assurance they would be left alone to govern themselves.
Here's a hint: Only one of these two promises would even be relevant.
The promise of not expanding NATO never existed, BUT EVEN IF IT DID then Russia should be invading the US, not Ukraine. There is no justification to invade Ukraine as a defense against NATO, as even if you believe NATO controls Ukraine (it doesn't), taking that land merely increases the size of Russia's border with NATO.
It is supremely disingenuous to imply that Washington's Ukraine policy circa 2014 (before Russia stole Crimea) is in any way compatible with the terms and spirit of the Budapest Agreements, and that Russia was therefore the first mover in violating it.
You know I don't really care. I think your historical analysis is flawed. But I don't care. Fuck the US gov. Sure.
But Russia is the one launching a genocidal campaign, leveling cities, and posturing to intentionally cause a nuclear disaster at the largest nuclear plant in Europe. I don't think anyone should engage with them diplomatically until their government is completely reformed. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and wounded. Civilian targets are hit on a daily basis. They have lost the right to diplomacy. Any further tolerance of this country will lead to more instances of what we're experiencing now. Run the war to its conclusion when the government inevitably collapses.
The guys preparing to intentionally cause a nuclear disaster at the largest nuclear plant in Europe, committing genocide on an immense scale, and perpetuating an offensive invasion into Ukraine are indeed the big bads, yes.
You can't break HN's rules like this, and you've unfortunately been posting lots of flamewar comments lately. That's not cool, and we've had to warn you more than once in the past:
Continuing like this will get your account banned here, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the intended use of the site, we'd appreciate it.
Your account has been using HN primarily or even exclusively for political/nationalist battle. This isn't allowed on HN, regardless of which politics or nations you're battling for or against—it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. I've therefore banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
India had a scorching summer and now heavy rains in many parts of the country. The government is just being prudent and ensuring sufficient local stock.
It's not a summary of the article, it is repetition of a lead-in.
In anticipation of getting downvoted to invisible and flagged like the original remark, I am sharing this to clarify and having been here 16 years, it is helpful to gently point out when the conversation becomes the object of engagement rather than the article.
Right. It is generally expected that comments are substantive and add value, which the original post doesn't. But pointing that out is what got flagged, which I guess does have some entertainment value by way of irony!
With the amount of rice and wheat stockpile India has on books it should not be affected. But elections are so close ruling government can't afford to take the risk of a shortage revealing half empty silo's.
This is not good reasoning nothing good has ever come from making other peoples life miserable. I know lots of people wanted to do the same during the energy crisis in Europe. It is short sighted.
If so then it's just sad to see people go this route. I don't even know what the incentive of doing this would be. Engage people? Farm points? I was vaguely aware that in reddit you can sell your profile. But does that even exist in HN?
Absolutely HN has astroturfing going on. This community is chock full of people who are gullible but think they are the smartest in the room, and most of the people here have more money than average. It's a marketer's wet dream.
There's also the characteristic feel of "Lot's of words, little substance", which seems to apply for every single ML generated body of text I have seen, and a bonus is it also catches non-ML based charlatans!
Welcome to the group, we meet alternate Thursdays and worry the rest of the time. For most of us that's as far as at goes. Some of us get all hyperfixated and might save the world, though.
India ban of rice export is partly because Thailand and nearby countries are also expected to have a bad crop this year which will put pressure on Indian rice prices. The first year probably should not be a problem but if it carries on to the next year then it could be bad in term of prices.
Just last harvest states like Telangana had a glut of rice with no buyers. And now we have this. The whole procurement and storage chain is hopelessly mismanaged in India.
The more markets worldwide connect to balance out local weather issues the more predictable the outcome. The problem however is international cooperation when there's global shortages.
The problem is as old as agriculture itself and we've known the solution too for millinea: Store surpluses that can be used in lean years.
But in India procurement, storage and sale of agricultural produce are all wrapped up in a maze of Byzantine laws. As a result, availability of financing and infrastructure is abysmal. The first modern rice silos in the country are only expected to start operations in the next month or so.
Question: Would it be possible to store foodstuffs at close to 0 Kelvin at scale, indefinitely? Cryopreservation for food instead of people? Which foodstuffs "survive" long-term freezing? How large and economical could large-scale food cryopreservation be?
Depends entirely on the foodstuffs in question. Rice can be kept for around 10 years at 70f if you control moisture. If you can control for oxygen, it can last even longer at temps well above freezing. Corn and soybeans are more sensitive to temperature than rice, but the major factor is still moisture and oxygen exposure.
It reminds me a bit of the game Oxygen Not Included where early food storage techniques involve keeping it stored in an area saturated with CO2 to reduce the rate at which it rots before you have access to refrigeration.
Well, yes, it obviously is and there is no need to go that low. Don’t you have a freezer at your place?
Technically food in a cold enough freezer will never get uneatable. It is indeed flash frozen to preserve its texture. The issue is that quality tends to get down with time due to water sublimation.
Water sublimation stops at -80c, 193 kelvin. Flash freezing followed by long term storage in liquid nitrogen should be sufficient for preserving quality indefinitely.
More practically, while sublimation hurts "quality", it does not harm the nutritional value of the food, so does not seem like that big of a deal in the context of famine policy.
For rice it is even less of an issue, because rice is routinly stored dry and rehydrated when cooked.
Yet only around 4.6-6% of total post harvest grain was lost due to storage reasons (according to NAAS). And 0.12% of post harvest wheat and rice (central and state stock) was lost due to storage reasons [0].
Maybe your conclusion applies to fruits or vegetables, of which there indeed considerable storage loss (promarily due to the cold temperatures needed iirc). But I don't think it applies to rice.
> Yet only around 4.6-6% of total post harvest grain was lost due to storage reasons
This only accounts for the loss after the grain is procured and not the loss between harvest and procurement. Given the practical challenges of measuring this, I doubt there's any quality data. I can only speak anecdotally but news reports about losses from poor makeshift storage arrangements while waiting for procurement are frustratingly common.
In a country as large as India, the frequency of such losses is bound to be greater than other countries. And a lot of channels exaggerate most news since it is hard to find actual news-worthy incidents that also happen to fit their agenda (which may be pro/anti BJP/congress, etc).
Having no Buyers is politics. Reforms in farm law which would have opened up markets for farmers were repealed because of politics and protest by vested interests.
Having no buyers is economics. The supply vastly exceeded demand. There were no buyers, private or otherwise because there was glut. Telangana is an arid region. The recent jump in rice production is thanks to the new irrigation projects in the state.
The scrapped farm laws were ill-considered and I'll framed. Fun fact: Both, the Produce Trade and Commerce Act and the Agreement on Price Assurance Act expressly barred the jurisdiction of courts in entertaining disputes relating to farming disputes and instead gave authority to the local Collector to arbitrate. That's blatant and shameless executive overreach. And that's not even going into the fact that these Union laws intrude on what is explicitly a State subject.
It seems like a no brainer that western powers should defend the transport of Ukrainian grain. The shortage of food is going to cause such an immense problem in states like in Africa. Europe is going to have a terrible time with this.
What do you propose, NATO escorting ships bound for Odessa and getting in an open armed conflict with Russia so that South Africa and other friends of Russia, avoid food shortages? Sorry, that ain't happening.
Best outcome would be if our man Erdogan can convince Putin to sign another grain deal in any other form, but I doubt it, because the latter made some outrageous requests to do so. Or if the West arms Ukraine with ground launched Harpoon missiles, so that the Kremlin chicken out and avoid exposing their Black Sea fleet to the same fate as Moskva's. There is also the solution of sending the ships through Romania and Bulgaria's territorial waters. Then the Russians can bitch about hidden weapons as much as they like.
> What do you propose, NATO escorting ships bound for Odessa and getting in an open armed conflict with Russia so that South Africa and other friends of Russia, avoid food shortages?
Yes. Fuck around and find out. Russia does not have the military capability to fight another war. They'd be complete idiots to attack a western warship. They would simply lose. You don't need to declare war to destroy a ship attacking yours.
Russia's threats are as idle as their constant nuclear threats.
Not happening. Warships are currently barred by Türkye from entering the Black Sea through the Bosphorus, unless returning to base. The only NATO warships that could escort civillian ships bound for Odessa are Turkish, Bulgarian or Romanian.
The Biden administration, along with the rest of NATO does not want to escalate and engage in a war with Russia. Not over Ukraine, not over the food security of Putin or Xi's partners. Egypt, Nigeria or South Africa not getting their grain only puts further pressure on the Kremlin to end this war.
Declarations of war have been exceedingly uncommon since the end of World War II.
> Not happening. Warships are currently barred by Türkye from entering the Black Sea through the Bosphorus, unless returning to base. The only NATO warships that could escort civillian ships bound for Odessa are Turkish, Bulgarian or Romanian.
Not true. Your own link states as much "the Turkish government appears to have exercised its rights under Article 21, which states that passage of warships should be wholly at the discretion of the Turkish Government when it feels itself to be threatened with imminent danger of war." At least in the sense that the US could publicly request to do this and Turkey would need to respond.
> The Biden administration, along with the rest of NATO does not want to escalate and engage in a war with Russia. Not over Ukraine, not over the food security of Putin or Xi's partners. Egypt, Nigeria or South Africa not getting their grain only puts further pressure on the Kremlin to end this war.
Agreed. Escorting grain ships is not a declaration of war. Nor is returning fire.
Note, these countries not getting grain raises food prices for everyone. This is problematic for most countries. Not Russia as Russia is food secure.
"but I doubt it, because the latter made some outrageous requests to do so."
Weren't these "outrageous requests" signed on in the parallel memorandum of understanding (MoU) ? They included removal of sanctions on the main Russian agricultural bank and Russian fertilizers. Russia has stated said as soon as those terms in the memorandum are implemented, they will resume the grain deal.
Good luck with that. It's essentially blackmail, just like with the "roll NATO back to 1991, remove anti ICBM systems from Eastern Europe" outrageous requests. It's easier and more effective to weaponize Ukraine and harden NATO's Eastern flank. The US in contrast with Russia respects the memorandums it signed, like the Budapest memorandum.
Russian forces have been attacking civilian targets since the start of the war. We don't need newly-created sock puppet accounts on HN trying to justify their war crimes.
Not vilifying India, just the policy that weakens sanctions by giving them an outlet for oil and inferior weapons sales. Taking a stand to protect other democracies would have been ideal.
Germany and other Europeans countries did when they failed to take a stand in 2014, and this is where it has led.
India's interests are that of its citizens. And that means buying oil at a cheaper rate, even if it is from a country that a certain moral policing nation doesn't like.
> perhaps you would benefit from actually conducting research
> perhaps you would learn
> But of course that would require you to actually inform yourself
> you so carelessly commented
A comment that stacks all of these pejoratives is unquestionably crossing into personal attack. This is not a borderline call.
I know how difficult it can be to respond neutrally when someone else is super wrong or you feel that they are. But commenters here need to pause when that happens, and then wait until they can respond neutrally, It's not easy, but we all need to work on it (including me). Otherwise we all go down in flames.
I expect the trend to continue and get worse. India is on the verge of having serious issue with its food supply. To keep its share of importation stable, given the current population growth, the country needs its production to grow by 20% (by weight) in the next 25 years. That’s basically a bit more than 1% a year. The potential is definitely there but as far as I know the growth has been slightly under target for the past few years. I fully expect imports to rise and exports to be banned more and more often for the foreseeable future. Famine is unlikely but definitely a risk.
A lot of farming indians are extremely untrustworthy of "modernization" of farming because it means near total reliance on American megacorps that already abuse american farmers, let alone people in an entirely separate country with even lower means.
One, that’s totally untrue. Tractors, for instance, have nothing to do with American mega corps.
Two, whatever, the reasons manufactured to keep productivity low are irrelevant. The sector is being run inefficiently to keep a surplus of farmers employed. High food costs are a political choice.
It fortunately doesn't have a monopoly because Indias farmers are smarter then US farmers. That is independent of the fact that John Deere equipment is basically the highest tech you can get.
> doesn't have a monopoly because Indias farmers are smarter then US farmers
Still totally wrong. John Deere is a top-selling tractor, but it’s far from a monopoly. It’s optimised for large farms; with its technological supremacy it lets high labour cost American farms beat emerging-market farms on cost per calorie. Deere & Company has a power imbalance with small farmers, but nobody is forced to buy their tractors.
Sounds like you are saying that after a liberalization in attitudes toward modern farming, most Indian farmers wouldn't have to choose John Deere, only the Indian mega farms that would under cut them on price per calorie would have to?
There definitely is. I don’t think it’s impossible at all. That’s what I meant by: “The potential is definitely there”. But mismanagement until it is too late is definitely a risk. The country should be able to solve that with some imports provided it wants to.
For all those saying that this due to the climatic conditions, you’ll are only semi-wrong (/jk), as it has to do with political climate instead with the upcoming elections next year (those in power want to appease their electorate base with lower rice prices). This is also the second time this has occurred, the previous time it was from the other ruling party, and them by enacting the rice export ban then, put a lot of rice factories out of business due to the ensuing demand shock (I know someone whose entire family business of multiple factories had to shut down for good due to this).
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadI live in city and now I prefer basmati because its less sweeter and softer. Weight gain has been a concern for me (not to my dad, he likes doing labor). Basmati also doesnt fit well with many traditional dishes, except for biryani I guess.
Cashew has become unaffordable locally because of high export demand. I find is mildly irritating. On the other hand, I earn quite well because of service export.
There's many different varieties of rice. The various regions of India use different varieites based on the type of food they cook.
I found this site that describes it if anyone's interested: https://sproutmonk.com/types-of-rice-in-india/
Potatoes are the biggest exception I can think of in the UK. Largely grown here! Could believe it's similar for retail rice in India for similar reasons. (That doesn't work for say wheat flour though. A lot grown here, but best you can do is pick your protein %. I'm also not sure if you should care about more than that though - milling aside.)
I'm not talking about just India (nor just rice) if that's the confusion - I don't know where I'd personally go for a choice of basmati cultivars, but there's probably things (potatoes?) I have more choice of in the UK than there generally is in India.
In other words the special part here, along with the quantity, is that the process was deliberate and encouraged. There are like 110,000 identified cultivars of rice in India. There are special harvest festivals that specifically encourage the discovery of new rice varietals which are then shared in these festivals.
The British kedgeree (which has its origin in khichdi but frankly is quite different - like a breakfast biryani of smoked haddock & boiled egg; generally no daal) doesn't at all share that.
Also we used to cook Tehri/Tahari vegetables/ rice(non-basmati), heavy spices in pressure cooker. Though nowadays Biryani/Pulao has taken prominence.
In the UK I think I'd have a hard time getting anything other than generic 'basmati' (which afaict just means Oryza sativa indica - it could be IR24, what you're calling basmati, anything else in the subspecies, or some blend with the yield & shelf-life & availability properties they wanted) that would be at all suitable for (my attempt at/interpretation of) 'Indian' food.
Whatever it is I suppose I subconsciously agree it's bland - I tend to cook it with some rai/jeera/ilaayachi/laung depending.
(Edit -) It just occurred to me that the cashew issue is probably not helped that they're hardly cheap here, largely eaten as a snack (roasted & salted) on their own - which supports a higher price, I suppose, than more common use as more of an ingredient (e.g. kaju katri, ground up in creamy dishes) in India.
It’s relatively easy to find any kind of rice in countries with significant East Asian diaspora like England provided you are ready to buy largish quantity (10kg). It’s highly likely there is an Asian market near you with a surprisingly large selection of rices (not necessarily on display) and which can get you other kinds if you order. It definitely is more involved than going to Tesco but far from impossible.
There are many varieties of Rice and Basmati is just one of them. In India it is used only for special dishes like Biryani/Pulao/etc. and not as a all purpose everyday use Rice. And it is also a higher margin crop well-suited for exports.
This is why carbon taxes are so efficient, they optimize for actual emissions vs what people think are the problems.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/nz-lambs-bette...
The context is India, remember. One of England's former colonies.
> concluded that lamb imported from New Zealand is four times as energy efficient as lamb reared in the UK, even when carbon emissions from the transport process are taken into account.”
> The report shows apples and dairy products also have a smaller carbon footprint – half the size, in the case of dairy – when they are imported from New Zealand rather than UK-sourced.
> Professor Caroline Saunders, who led the research, said, “Food that has travelled long distances is perceived as being harmful to the environment and has some media attention in our key markets, especially Europe.
PS: Home delivery often beats driving to stores because of more efficient routing, but that’s very dependent on the specifics.
The last 100 years have been pretty much the only time in history where food in many parts of the world was guaranteed. Regardless of growing seasons.
I think long term vertical farming is going to revolutionize food, but until then efficient global shipment will be the way to go.
Trying to grow food locally with lower economies of scale may in turn result in higher emissions. In any case, it's not going to massively lower emissions.
citation needed
Not advocating for some 7year-planning nightmare, this is solely related to the local vs globalized production aspect of this chaotic discussion
Something's gonna have to be transported one way or another. Or we can just decide everyone will need to have blander and less varied diets. That will bring the amount of stuff to transport down, but you're still probably going to be more efficient having the inputs in a few places that can grow food really well and exporting it to the places that can't.
Stop being an apologist for the aggressor
Providing token aid to a sovereign country being invaded by an objective enemy aggressor is not that.
Insistence that Ukraine recapture Crimea and we should keep supplying weapons until they do is ridiculous imo and will lead to a lot more loss of life and likely little success. Nevermind that the ethnically Russian population of Crimea likely does not want to be part of the post-Euromaidan government of Ukraine (which, let’s keep in mind, did technically involve the illegal ouster of the president Crimeans helped elect and the subsequent banning of the Russian language in schools).
There are no major western leaders saying this. Ukraine is saying that they intend to recapture Crimea.
The russian play book of conquering lands and then stuffing them with ethnic russians is not a good strategy to reward. Ethnic russians can go live in Russia if they don't want to live in Ukraine.
Ukraine is making claims about recapturing this and that because they feel they can count on Western support to do so and because it lets them negotiate from a high starting point. I think that is largely fine if we are pushing for settlements behind the scenes
Options:
1. Russia might have managed to drive off other ethnicities and add more russians,but all of which would have been in the past 10 years, knowing full well it's stolen land.do these people get a say on who owns Crimea? I don't think that's something to reward.
2. Russians are still a minority(and not necessarily all of them might want to be part of Russia...). Then clearly your logic would suggest that Ukraine should retake it or Russia voluntarily should hand it back.
ha-ha
got "trustworthy numbers" for that?
Ukraine is indeed making those claims because they think they can do it. But you were implying this was a Western move, which it is not.
But frankly fuck them. If Ukraine can gain fire control over the bridge to Crimea then it's just Kherson City all over again. Crimea would be immensely expensive to hold. No practical logistical support for what is, by far, the most valuable part of Ukraine. No safe harbor for ships in Sevastapol. Maybe Russia tries to play it out. Maybe they just acknowledge it and give up. But it'd be relatively easy to lay siege to it if the land bridge is captured and the bridge bridge is in fire control (or destroyed). They don't need to march into Crimea itself. Just hold that siege and Russia will eventually need to yield.
Crimea isn't a side objective. It's the checkmate move. It has the potential to be a lot less bloody than fighting for every meter of land in the east.
Merkel, Macron, Bennett, et al. have asserted that Washington+London are more or less sabotaging any diplomatic solution that doesn't involve the inevitable collapse of Russia.
Russia has put their diplomatic cards on the table multiple times, including in late 2021 where they literally drafted a "security guarantee" treaty that, modulo further negotiations, Washington would simply have to sign to get Russian troops away from Ukraine. And Washington didn't even try to call a bluff, they just ignored the opportunity. Yet they constantly miscall bluffs of military escalation. Truly baffling.
It cannot be overstated how utterly nonexistent the diplomacy has been between Washington and Moscow particularly since 2014. Because one side sees the other as a fundamentally inferior state.
Annexing all of Ukraine's natural gas fields under the guise of saving ethnic Russians wasn't acceptable to Ukraine was it? The agreement you discuss is a defacto conquering of Ukraine.
Notice that it is purely focused on security guarantees. It does not say, as you incorrectly asserted, that Russia gets sole rights to Ukraine's natural resources. Both Russian AND Western billionaires would continue to be able to exploit them. Sure, Russian ones might have an advantage because it's on their doorstep and they speak the same language. But that's geography for you.
Ironically, since Washington refused this treaty, Russia will likely gain exclusive economic access to eastern (done) and southern (WIP) Ukraine, and former Ukraine will become landlocked if not dissolve entirely to Poland et al.
https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/euobs-media/30196762d9...
Please act in good faith.
FWIW, disagreement does not equate to "bad faith".
The "Russia invaded Ukraine mainly for its natural resources narrative" requires extraordinary cherry-picking of historical fact to support.
- Russia already has oodles of natural resources. They export them to the West for a bargain. This is not Japan in WW2.
- Do a modicum of research on post-Soviet IR in Europe. What were Gorbachev's and Putin's agendas vis-a-vis Europe, based not on Applebaumian psychoanalysis but public statements and action? Study the Budapest Memo, Putin's 2007 MSC speech, Minsk agreements, etc.
- Also do a modicum of research on the agendas from the other side. What was Brzezinski saying about post-Soviet geopolitics? What is Victoria Nuland working on in the Bush, Obama, and Biden State Departments? What was Yalta European Strategy about? How did Zelensky rapidly rise from clown to president? What does the leaked Nuland-Pyatt call reveal?
There is an enormous amount of historical fact that we can build our understanding on, rather than resorting to simplistic Zeihan-tier pseudo-intellectualism.
They aren't mutually exclusive, but again, the occupation of gas fields, and now the embargo of grain, is about depriving the Ukrainian government. not domestic shortages. That is the thing that makes me mention bad faith. I have researched these agendas, and I recheck the records and rumors frequently. The zeihen doomerism is disenguine hawking of his trade and book, but what makes you think that this war is all an American diplomatic failure brought at the behest of western billionaires? A war is complicated, and simplifying it isn't helpful.
Perhaps it is because in 2014, Russia broke its promises and stole Crimea with a military invasion and the west figured they could not be trusted and would almost certainly do the same thing again; which they did.
By the way, how many people died in the Russian invasion of Crimea and resulting occupation? Surely it was very bloody (like the current war) because Crimeans didn't want it, right?
There was never a promise.
>Beset by chaos at home, an increasingly beleaguered Yeltsin turned to historical revisionism. He began to interpret the Two Plus Four Treaty as a ban on NATO expansion east of Germany, on the basis that it only permitted alliance activities on East German territory. He (and later Putin) claimed that the failure to mention Eastern Europe, together with the stipulated restrictions in relation to former GDR terrain, meant an implicit Western rejection of eastward enlargement.
Also later
> At preliminary bilateral talks in Helsinki in March 1997, Clinton refused to respond to Yeltsin’s call for binding restrictions on the establishment of NATO security infrastructure in new member states.
ha ha
"Kissinger confirms US verbal promise to Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward"
"ha ha" indeed.
"There was never a promise"
Here's a hint: Only one of these two promises would even be relevant.
The promise of not expanding NATO never existed, BUT EVEN IF IT DID then Russia should be invading the US, not Ukraine. There is no justification to invade Ukraine as a defense against NATO, as even if you believe NATO controls Ukraine (it doesn't), taking that land merely increases the size of Russia's border with NATO.
But you know all this.
But Russia is the one launching a genocidal campaign, leveling cities, and posturing to intentionally cause a nuclear disaster at the largest nuclear plant in Europe. I don't think anyone should engage with them diplomatically until their government is completely reformed. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and wounded. Civilian targets are hit on a daily basis. They have lost the right to diplomacy. Any further tolerance of this country will lead to more instances of what we're experiencing now. Run the war to its conclusion when the government inevitably collapses.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35843312 (May 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30593145 (March 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128649 (Jan 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29629671 (Dec 2021)
Continuing like this will get your account banned here, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the intended use of the site, we'd appreciate it.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Putin started war because he was pressured by the west ? Is that what you are saying ?
You would be surprised by the number of people believing that.
In anticipation of getting downvoted to invisible and flagged like the original remark, I am sharing this to clarify and having been here 16 years, it is helpful to gently point out when the conversation becomes the object of engagement rather than the article.
But in India procurement, storage and sale of agricultural produce are all wrapped up in a maze of Byzantine laws. As a result, availability of financing and infrastructure is abysmal. The first modern rice silos in the country are only expected to start operations in the next month or so.
It reminds me a bit of the game Oxygen Not Included where early food storage techniques involve keeping it stored in an area saturated with CO2 to reduce the rate at which it rots before you have access to refrigeration.
Technically food in a cold enough freezer will never get uneatable. It is indeed flash frozen to preserve its texture. The issue is that quality tends to get down with time due to water sublimation.
More practically, while sublimation hurts "quality", it does not harm the nutritional value of the food, so does not seem like that big of a deal in the context of famine policy.
For rice it is even less of an issue, because rice is routinly stored dry and rehydrated when cooked.
Maybe your conclusion applies to fruits or vegetables, of which there indeed considerable storage loss (promarily due to the cold temperatures needed iirc). But I don't think it applies to rice.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1147671/india-post-harve...
This only accounts for the loss after the grain is procured and not the loss between harvest and procurement. Given the practical challenges of measuring this, I doubt there's any quality data. I can only speak anecdotally but news reports about losses from poor makeshift storage arrangements while waiting for procurement are frustratingly common.
The scrapped farm laws were ill-considered and I'll framed. Fun fact: Both, the Produce Trade and Commerce Act and the Agreement on Price Assurance Act expressly barred the jurisdiction of courts in entertaining disputes relating to farming disputes and instead gave authority to the local Collector to arbitrate. That's blatant and shameless executive overreach. And that's not even going into the fact that these Union laws intrude on what is explicitly a State subject.
Best outcome would be if our man Erdogan can convince Putin to sign another grain deal in any other form, but I doubt it, because the latter made some outrageous requests to do so. Or if the West arms Ukraine with ground launched Harpoon missiles, so that the Kremlin chicken out and avoid exposing their Black Sea fleet to the same fate as Moskva's. There is also the solution of sending the ships through Romania and Bulgaria's territorial waters. Then the Russians can bitch about hidden weapons as much as they like.
Yes. Fuck around and find out. Russia does not have the military capability to fight another war. They'd be complete idiots to attack a western warship. They would simply lose. You don't need to declare war to destroy a ship attacking yours.
Russia's threats are as idle as their constant nuclear threats.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/02/turkey-closes-t...
What might be happening is arming Ukraine with ground launched anti ship missile systems:
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/06/polish-coastal-...
The Biden administration, along with the rest of NATO does not want to escalate and engage in a war with Russia. Not over Ukraine, not over the food security of Putin or Xi's partners. Egypt, Nigeria or South Africa not getting their grain only puts further pressure on the Kremlin to end this war.
Declarations of war have been exceedingly uncommon since the end of World War II.
Not true. Your own link states as much "the Turkish government appears to have exercised its rights under Article 21, which states that passage of warships should be wholly at the discretion of the Turkish Government when it feels itself to be threatened with imminent danger of war." At least in the sense that the US could publicly request to do this and Turkey would need to respond.
> The Biden administration, along with the rest of NATO does not want to escalate and engage in a war with Russia. Not over Ukraine, not over the food security of Putin or Xi's partners. Egypt, Nigeria or South Africa not getting their grain only puts further pressure on the Kremlin to end this war.
Agreed. Escorting grain ships is not a declaration of war. Nor is returning fire.
Note, these countries not getting grain raises food prices for everyone. This is problematic for most countries. Not Russia as Russia is food secure.
Weren't these "outrageous requests" signed on in the parallel memorandum of understanding (MoU) ? They included removal of sanctions on the main Russian agricultural bank and Russian fertilizers. Russia has stated said as soon as those terms in the memorandum are implemented, they will resume the grain deal.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't think they said anything remotely like this.
Germany and other Europeans countries did when they failed to take a stand in 2014, and this is where it has led.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> perhaps you would benefit from actually conducting research
> perhaps you would learn
> But of course that would require you to actually inform yourself
> you so carelessly commented
A comment that stacks all of these pejoratives is unquestionably crossing into personal attack. This is not a borderline call.
I know how difficult it can be to respond neutrally when someone else is super wrong or you feel that they are. But commenters here need to pause when that happens, and then wait until they can respond neutrally, It's not easy, but we all need to work on it (including me). Otherwise we all go down in flames.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Incidentally, things seemed to have improved recently here in the past month or so.
I think there was a period in the prior 4-5 months where the conversation was a bit of a mess.
This is true given the US’s case where we still export animal feed that was grown in the desert.
Two, whatever, the reasons manufactured to keep productivity low are irrelevant. The sector is being run inefficiently to keep a surplus of farmers employed. High food costs are a political choice.
Does John Deere have a global monopoly? Resisting modernisation because John Deere are dicks is textbook misdirection.
(Out of the top-ten selling tractors in India, John Deere has one—the 5510–on the list.)
Still totally wrong. John Deere is a top-selling tractor, but it’s far from a monopoly. It’s optimised for large farms; with its technological supremacy it lets high labour cost American farms beat emerging-market farms on cost per calorie. Deere & Company has a power imbalance with small farmers, but nobody is forced to buy their tractors.