Newly planted rice saplings have been underwater since July after torrential rain battered northern India, with landslides and flash floods sweeping through the region.
Last month, India, which is the world’s largest exporter of rice, announced a ban on exporting non-basmati white rice in a bid to calm rising prices at home and ensure food security. India then followed with more restrictions on its rice exports, including a 20% duty on exports of parboiled rice.
The move has triggered fears of global food inflation, hurt the livelihoods of some farmers and prompted several rice-dependent countries to seek urgent exemptions from the ban.
I can completely understand why India has made the choice to ban rice exports, because they’ve got to put their first priority on keeping their own people fed. But it’s making the whole global food situation worse.
I keep having this sinking feeling we’re going to experience something like the Bronze Age Collapse - part of the reason all the Bronze Age societies collapsed so suddenly wasn’t just the Sea People, it was that they were all so interconnected trade-wise that when one society collapsed, all of them did because supply chain links snapped. I feel like climate change is our current-day “Sea People,” only so much worse.
We really ought to be strengthening our supply networks. And it’s really frustrating that we’re not.
We already saw a glimpse of what can happen under covid lockdown. And that was a controlled shutdown. What happens if the supply chain breaks unexpectedly?
Not even that, producers and consumers need to stop being dependent on one crop.
Could probably just translate that to
The comparison is more apt than appears at first glance. The debates continue, but attacks by the Sea Peoples, or war, is only one of the hypothesized contributers to the collapse. Others include: a pandemic, environmental shifts caused by a volcanic eruption, and drought.
Were you watching The Fall of Civilizations recently?
I don’t even know what that is - is a documentary or something?
Yeah, a series of high quality documentaries on YouTube. The first episode IIRC was about the bronze age collapse.
India and US elections are right around the corner, both governments wants to appease the crowd. Hope people will vote responsiblely.