Only one country produces the food it needs to be self-sufficient

[thewayne]

You'll love this: GUYANA.

A small South American country just above Brazil.

"The study, published in Nature Food, investigated how well each country could feed their populations in seven food groups: fruits, vegetables, dairy, fish, meat, plant-based protein and starchy staples." China and Vietnam produce enough in six of the seven categories. Out of 186 countries, 65% overproduce meat and dairy.

Concerningly, "...six countries – Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Macao, Qatar and Yemen – did not produce enough of any food group to be considered self-sufficient in that category." Dr. Jonas Stehl, first author of the paper, said that a lack of self-sufficiency is not inherently bad and can be due to any number of reasons: lack of water, bad soil, etc. But at the same time, "... low levels of self-sufficiency can reduce a country’s capability to respond to sudden global food supply shocks such as droughts, wars or export bans..."

The study was based on the World Wildlife Fund’s Livewell diet, which "... describes itself as “a flexible diet that involves rebalancing our protein consumption toward plants, eating more vegetables, pulses and wholegrains, and fewer foods high in fat, salt and sugar.”"

BBC article:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/only-one-country-produces-food-it-needs-self-sufficient

What appears to be the actual full study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-025-01173-4

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/05/23/1912252/only-one-country-in-the-world-produces-all-the-food-it-needs-study-finds

Comments

[garote]

So, this is their guide?

https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/food-and-nutrition/eating-well/eatwell-guide-how-to-eat-a-healthy-balanced-diet/

This is a reiteration of the "Mediterranean diet," proposed in the the 70's and prominent in the 90's, and its true title should be "if you're middle-class and not concerned about money, but concerned about your waistline, try this." I do consider it very good nutritional advice, but I don't consider it the standard by which every human on earth should be measured.

[ranunculus]

Self sufficiency is closely related to "carrying capacity". We are getting close to, or possibly have reached, that time when the resources on earth cannot provide food for all the humans that are over running it. In so many places in the world we have actively decreased, or even completely removed the very things that have in the past provided abundance. Damming rivers and destroying salmon runs, removing wetlands that support the young of so many creatures, paving over the most productive soils, dumping toxic materials in fields that once provided food....

[armiphlage]

Qatar and the UAE are gas stations with their own flags, so that makes sense. Iraq is a surprise, given its history of agriculture. The US invasion may have wrecked it more than I thought.

[disneydream06]

The UAE and Qatar don't care, they will just buy another country's supplies. :o :o :o

What is a pulses?
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

This is that sign of the global economy that most of the nativists don't particularly like to wrestle with. If they really were about isolationism and trying to decouple the country from the "globalists," they would need to completely retool agriculture so that the country could produce sufficient foodstuff to feed itself. (If they did, they'd admit to having learned something from the Civil War, since the blockade of cash crops made it very difficult for the Confederacy to get resources of just about any amount. If they had been able to feed themselves, they still would have likely lost, but it could have been a longer and more protracted war.)