Exotics Maggots and Chickens. The need for protein for sustainability.

[China Connection]

Maggots and Chickens and Whatever. The need for protein for sustainability.


Life is somewhat funny! I think life, as we know it in the West, is coming to an end. I have watched the life that is on hand for today's young people and unless one is very clever there is not much opportunity. Most end up being on standby for part-time work on minimum pay. Not very inspiring. Most these days live from payday to payday.

At one stage while I was working in China, factory workers were refusing to continue to work and returning to their farms. The reason was their wages were only coving food cost and left nothing to save. With most now working from one payday to the next in the West we are like Chinese factory workers but with no farm to run to.

Anyway, we need to try our best to produce all our own food. It is possible to live on just potatoes and quality butter. However one needs about 10 medium potatoes a day all year round. Then how does one magically come up with the butter? Not hard if one has the money to buy everything but if the economy collapses along with the currency, one is, up the creek, so to speak.

I have a number of Chickens which I have to feed every day. I feed a grain mix formulated for chickens. I sprout the grain. I then feed greens, dogfood or maggots. Sometimes mincemeat. Greens are usually duckweed. I also crush eggshell and give back to them for calcium. My Chickens go crazy for the protein and greens. The grain does not overexcite them and it is always on hand for them to eat.

Now take Prison of War Camps. An egg or two a day can be the difference between life and death. Carbs do not provide the Amino Acids we need. A bit of rice soup doesn't make the grade.

The food chain in the oceans starts with Algae. Care to guess the protein content of Algae? It is high! Care to guess how much protein is in the vegetable etc in our greengrocer stores? The answer is hardly any. Potatoes are not to bad. However, you need to eat about 10 medium sized potatoes a day to get enough protein as I said above. One or two eggs, however, will do the job.

So gardening needs to be looked at differently for hard times.

Floating plants like Duckweed and Azolla are high protein. Comfrey and fodder trees are high protein. Moringa a tree is tops also for protein. All these can be fed to livestock and reduce the amount of feed normally needed to feed to them.




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Grows Tropics and Sub-Tropics. Moringa Tree miracle tree?
https://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/sho...cs-and-Sub-Tropics.-Moringa-Tree-miracle-tree

 

[China Connection]

The Burma-Thailand Railway and Hellfire Pass

Food

Hunger became an accepted part of our life … food was just like sex, we tried not to think about it.

[Rowley Richards, A Doctor's War, Sydney, Harper Collins, 2005, 127.]

Four emaciated and solemn prisoners address the camera

The effects of malnutrition are plain in this photograph of four prisoners of war at Tha Sao, the major hospital camp and staging camp near Nam Tok. [AWM P00761.011]

Drawing: two seated men sift trays of rice above larger container on ground

As it was a ubiquitous part of the diet, rice was used in many different ways. Here, prisoners sift rice, taking out impurities. Rice was often ground to make flour, from which cakes and pastry could be made. (Handwriting on the drawing says: 'Sifting rice gristings P.O.W-Changi A.I.F Feb. 10th 1943' and 'Murray Griffin official war artist A.I.F - Malaya'.) [Drawing by Murray Griffin, AWM ART25072]

The lack of food caused much illness and death among prisoners of the Japanese. Food shortages stemmed from the unwillingness or inability of the Japanese to feed their workforce adequately and the logistical difficulties of supplying remote camps and work sites.

Conditions varied from camp to camp. Prisoners in permanent base camps like Changi ate relatively good food, with Japanese supplies being supplemented by vegetable gardens and food stolen by work groups unloading ships on the wharves of Singapore. In Japan, in contrast, the entire population was suffering food shortages towards the end of the war.

On the Thai–Burma railway the supply of food was usually inadequate. The more remote the camp site the worse the food supply.

The main food supplied by the Japanese was white rice. Sometimes this was supplemented with small quantities of 'vegetables' (often more like grass) and even smaller amounts of fish and meat. A typical meal was a thin broth of rice and vegetables.

The prisoners were paid a small wage with which they supplemented this diet. Camps near villages could trade with the local Thai population for items such as duck eggs and fruit. Camps on the Kwae Noi also had access to supplies brought up by boat. But on the journey perishable food such as vegetables and meat would rot. Even rice was subject to spoilage from damp and insects.

Meat was rarely available in sufficient quantities. Cattle were brought up to some worksites to act as 'meat on the hoof' but they died quickly for lack of food and the harsh conditions. In any case, the Japanese usually took the best parts of the cattle for themselves. At Konyu River, Ray Parkin records, 45 kilograms of meat and bone were shared between 875 men (about 50 grams each)1

Drawing of men and calf, bamboo and atap buildings

'Meat on the hoof'. Three men lead a water buffalo calf into Konyu camp, October 1942. [Drawing by Jack Chalker, AWM ART91813]

Food preparation was problematic in many camps. Food had to be cooked in cwalis (enormous metal bowls) over fires which the wet weather made difficult to keep alight. All water had to be boiled before consumption to prevent the spread of diseases like cholera.

Storage of food too was a problem, given the heat, flies and, depending on the season, dust or damp. As Denys Peek said:

the flies are so thick … Eating is an unpleasant business, the first spoonful is blotted from view before it reaches your mouth and has to be thrown away.

[Ian Denys Peek, One Fourteenth of an Elephant, Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 197.]

The nutritional value of the diet for men forced to do long hours of manual labour was completely inadequate. Prisoners soon fell ill with diseases of malnutrition or became wracked with dysentery.

Working all day, and sometimes through the night, prisoners had to take their food with them. Tins or bamboo containers were used to carry their cold and unappetising ration of rice.

The plight of the sick was particularly desperate as the Japanese cut their rations. Depending on a camp's organisation, some of the wages the prisoners received would be pooled to feed them.

Large metal wok (cwali), about a metre wide, two paddles and nearby pot

The white rice that was the staple of prisoners of war working on the Thai–Burma railway was cooked in large bowls called cwalis. This particular cwali is on display at the Weary Dunlop Park at Home Phu Toey, Thailand. The large paddles were used by the cooks to stir the cooking rice. [Photo: Kim McKenzie]

Starving prisoners turned to scrounging and theft. Snakes, fish, clams, and rodents were caught and usually shared with an inner group of friends. Medical personnel would experiment with vegetation such as weeds as a potential source of vitamins.

Stealing from the Japanese was another source of food, though culprits, if detected, were punished severely. There was also the temptation for starving men to steal from each other—something that caused intense ill-will between prisoners.

In these circumstances every prisoner faced moral and personal dilemmas. The Australian surgeon, Lieutenant-Colonel E.E. 'Weary' Dunlop was once torn between his longing for his ration of two duck eggs and the sight two emaciated British prisoners. His mess man Happy insisted he eat his eggs. As the doctor he needed to be well and he had attended the sick all day. Dunlop scraped together a few spare biscuits for the British and:

'Then' he said, 'I ate those awful eggs … that's the difference between an ordinary fellow … and a saint … I suppose'.

[Ray Parkin, Into the Smother, London, Hogarth, 1963, 148.]

1.
Ray Parkin, Into the Smother, London, Hogarth, 1963, 42


https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/hist...ilway-and-hellfire-pass/events/surviving/food

 

[Michiana MaJo]

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-n...ve-humans-eating-maggots-for-protein_05062019

Scientist: The Food Crisis Will Have Humans Eating Maggots For Protein

Mac Slavo
May 6th, 2019


As an alternative to meat, one scientist has suggested that humans will acquire the habit of eating maggots in order to reach their protein intake requirements. “Maggot sausages” will be the “meat” of the future according to an Australian scientist, Dr. Louwrens Hoffman.

Food scientists at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia are incorporating insects such as maggots and locusts into a range of specialty foods, including sausage, as well as formulating sustainable insect-based feeds for the livestock themselves. “Would you eat a commercial sausage made from maggots? What about other insect larvae and even whole insects like locusts? The biggest potential for sustainable protein production lies with insects and new plant sources,” said Dr. Hoffman.

Hoffman says that the meat industry is not sustainable, but people can start eating insects instead. “An overpopulated world is going to struggle to find enough protein unless people are willing to open their minds, and stomachs, to a much broader notion of food,” said Hoffman. The scientist says that conventional livestock production will soon be unable to meet global demand for meat. That means that other “fillers” and alternatives will be needed to supplement the food supply with sufficient protein sources, according to The New York Post.

“In other words, insect protein needs to be incorporated into existing food products as an ingredient,” he says. “One of my students has created a very tasty insect ice cream.” The Queehttps://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/newreply.php?p=7260759&noquote=1nsland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) team is focusing on disguising insects in pre-prepared foods, says Hoffman, as studies have shown Westerners shy away from eating whole insects.

A Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations report, which came out in 2013, urged global citizens to eat more insects. Apparently, compared to conventional meats, bugs are nutritious, cheaper to produce, and more sustainable. Inspired by the report and other studies, several snack makers have marketed insect-based products in the US, including Chirps chips and Chapul protein bars.

Hoffman admitted that eating bugs might seem unpalatable to Westerners, “for many millions of people around the world they are a familiar part of the diet.” He also calls for a “global reappraisal of what can constitute healthy, nutritional and safe food for all.”

 

[summerthyme]

I dunno about the "meat industry" not being sustainable, (I tend to agree) but we produce up to 10 tons of beef (on the hoof) yearly, along with replacement heifers... with the only purchased feed input being 600-800# of white salt blocks.

No grain necessary, the manure fertilizes the hay fields, the hay and pasture feeds the cattle, and while we'll hac0ve yo purchase some lime at some point to keep the pH of the soil up, it absolutely CAN be a sustainable food. And since the fields are kept in hay and pasture, there is no erosion, and it's a huge carbon sink... if that was important, which it's not!

I'll leave the maggots for the chickens.

Summerthyme

 

[China Connection]

I'll try and keep it simple so I will use housefly maggots as an example. So I start with 1 kg of maggots. In less than two weeks I can produce about 250 kg of maggots provided I have temperature control.

Let's get to cost. Say I used grain, one kg of maggots would cost me about $3 a kg that is using grain from a produce store. I could grow the food to on feed for a limited production of maggots for next to nothing.

So with meat costing what it is currently selling for I can save a heap on feeding myself.

When things collapse one can survive in a small space using maggots etc. Keeping beef takes a lot of space.

 

[packyderms_wife]

How are your maggots doing now post fire?