Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/13/asia-heatwave-south-korea-potatoes-boil-ground-record-heat-hong-kong-japan

37 points · 6 comments · view on lemmy.world

6 Comments

UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 11d (1 reply)

When a massive crop of cheap and efficient calories is destroyed during a growing season, what are the socio-economic consequences?

Asking for an Irish friend

The heat has since been blamed for at least 31 deaths nationwide, according to the country’s disease control agency, while more than 900,000 livestock and 1.4 million farmed fish have died.

Yeah, that seems really bad

eldavi@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 11d

and the inheritors to the hegemony that caused the irish famine are causing this one as well -- just the same as it is with the current crop of genocides and ethnic cleansings.

zigzag@lemmus.org · 2 pts · 9d (1 reply)

In a potato field in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, Lee Sang-hyuk dug into the soil and found nothing worth saving.

A week earlier the crop, located in Gangwon province, had looked fine. Now the potatoes came up soft and collapsing, "like boiled potatoes", spoiled by heat that had turned the ground into something closer to an oven.

(Emphasis added)

yogthos@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 9d

this is how we get famines

umbrella@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 11d (1 reply)

yeah

Phantom_Feline17@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 9d

Humanity is beyond fucked! 🥲