“We have stopped eating tomatoes in salad,” one shopper said, “and we are not making any tomato-based vegetable dishes.”

Last year it was wheat, then sugar. This year, it is tomatoes.

As weather patterns grow erratic — rainfalls too heavy and often out of sync with farming calendars, and heat cycles beginning earlier and breaking records — food shortages are one of the many ways India is reeling from climate change.

Supplies have been shrinking, and prices shooting up — in the case of tomatoes, at least a fivefold increase between May and mid-July according to official figures, and even a steeper spike based on consumer accounts. The government has been forced to take emergency measures, curbing exports and injecting subsidized supplies to the market to reduce the shock on the world’s most populous nation.

    • fearout@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      Sustained human pedal-powered energy output is about 500W for world-class cyclists and around 100–200W for average people. Your body also produces ~100W of heat energy by simply existing, and that can rise to about 500W when exercising.

      So the output range we’re looking at here is something like 300–1000Wh per hour depending on your fitness level and exercise intensity. 1 kWh costs ~10–30 cents around the world, I think.

      You’re gonna spend much more on extra food to fuel your pedalling than you’ll ever be able to save on heating bills :)

      • HubertManne@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah every so often I see someone suggest bicycling is not so good for the environment because it takes the total calories burned without subtracting the calories burned by someone just existing for the same time period. If we could produce a lot of power ourselves then losing weight would be super easy.

        • fearout@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          That’s a weird argument, since cycling is the most efficient mode of transport. Even ignoring all the health improvements/lower emissions/etc., it still easily outpaces everything else in terms of environmental benefits. It’s just not a good way to heat your home.

          • HubertManne@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            yeah no idea why but it pops up every so often for me in places like this. Again its due to someone using total energy consumed by the human during cycling without minusing energy consumed if not bicycling. Which is a pretty big difference because we burn like 2k calories just existing each day but if you ever got on one of those excersise cycles that track how many calories you have burned you will find out how taxing it is just for every 100 calories and I can bike places without it being taxing at all.