#760 Ironic Food Pressure

We take food for granted. But as China’s emerging middle class puts pressure on the world’s food resources, that may change.
As people get more money they’re less content with a plate of rice and more inclined to want a slab of pork or beef. A pound of pork—and what’s more enjoyable than a pound of pork?—takes ten pounds of grain to produce. A pound of beef takes twenty. So every time you munch on a Quarter Pounder at Mickey D’s it’s like a cow buddy is sitting next to you eating five pounds of corn.
Now ask yourself if the same stomach space you’re devoting to the burger would hold five pounds of rice?
Here’s another thing, now that I got you depressed. Food-animal raising produces 22% of global greenhouse gases. Probably almost entirely do to cow flatulence. I’m thinking perhaps our bovine friends have found a way to exact a rather ironic revenge for the slaughter and carnage we’ve wreaked on them.
Death to our way of life by cow gas emissions. An alternative anti-energy source. A breaking wind farm.
They make 85% of our Artificial Christmas trees in mostly non-Christian China. 80% of our toys. 100% of the unsafe toys recalled, including Thomas the Tank Engine. And the most scary statistic of all, a Chinese factory worker would have to work 6 months to earn the cost of a Thomas the Tank Engine train set. That’s right, 6 months of long days to earn enough to buy one Thomas the Tank Engine set. Lead and all.
These sets can go up to 500 bucks but still, I’m guessing these poor folks are still pretty much in the plate of rice category. The price of which is about to triple thanks to worldwide hoarding and demand.
I remember one Christmas. All the rage in the home crafting set was making pillows stuffed with dry rice that you then heated in the microwave and laid on to ease neck and back pain.
You think those pillows would help with cramps from an empty stomach?
America, ya gotta love it.