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Sri Lankan's can live off the land and the sea. I asked one of them about the upcoming crisis. He showed me his very modest house on a relatively small plot of land and said: "See: there are coconut trees on my land. We will not starve."

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This is a very naive view of how the food economy works. It's not some Edenic paradise where everyone maintains a homestead. It's an Asian country in 2022. There are plenty of people in the countryside; though it's questionable that they can automatically feed themselves off the land).

But 25% of the population lives in Colombo alone, in a population density double that of New York City's.

He'd better be close to the sea-- there's this infamous coconut-only dieter who basically starved to death:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Engelhardt

After 15 years...

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