Seems to be a lot of people in this thread who know nothing about agriculture and aren't answering OP's questions. Therefore it's safe to assume a lot of people on HN have no idea what they're talking about and comment anyway. Readers be aware.
Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
141–149 of 149 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#142Since you are interest in self sustainable communities in general, you might want to read about walden3 ( http://www.walden3.org:80/index.htm)
Lets just say, it is not easy - but there are more people working on that. In the case of walden3 also some with good financial background. But they still didnt get far.
I also did some research on my own and visited some communities who tried to live self sustaining ... The problem is, if you need technology you cant make yourself (allmost everything advanced) you are not really self sustainable. (neither computers nor simple tools last forever) And if you do all by hand ... well, it is possible in some areas even without working >12 h a day, if you happen to find he right land and are skilled and strong enough ... but still without much comfort. Some like that. I also from time to time. But not in general and not for life.
So in general, good luck, but better find a compromise to live with the rest of the world. You cant close yourself of completely (from all the crazy things) and just have the nice things the world has to offer. So you will need constantly money. And that has to come from somewhere .... so join the club, if you don't like that ;)
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#143One thing I've heard rumblings about here in California (especially around Sacramento, where I grew up) is running wells in reverse in order to pump floodwater back into the now-depleted aquifers and "recharge" them. This way, restoration of the water tables in the Central Valley can happen over a scale of years or decades rather than centuries or millennia.
That's really the big push around here, I reckon. California's in a relatively-unique position of having very fertile and nutrient-rich farmland (to the point where it's responsible for the vast majority of the world's supply of various fruits and vegetables), but current water use practices run the risk of turning the Central Valley into a barren desert. It's becoming clear that we can't rely on precipitation alone to sustain the current state of agricultural water usage; we need to get way more efficient when it comes to water usage and/or we need to start seriously investigating other water sources (in particular: California's long coastline could be hosting a long line of desalinization plants, bringing our water production v. consumption back into the positive and even paving the way for California to export to more arid states like Nevada and Arizona).
In other words: it's not that we need more farms, at least here. It's that we need to make those farms more water-efficient and/or produce more water for those farms to use.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#144Here is a low tech solution, a multivariate best practices guide for farmers free of cost.
What does the HN community think about this idea
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
You keep throwing the phrase "petro-chemical fertilizers" around but I can't see how it can make sense except for denigrating the concept and spreading FUD (which is counterproductive). Ammonia is just NH3 and there is nothing "petro" (i.e. hydrocarbons) in it, that hydrogen can be obtained anywhere and the nitrogen is literally around you. Can you please elaborate on how fixing nitrogen on industrial scale is "disas…
I just listened to a podcast (50 things that made the modern economy http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04f77rg ) about the Haber-Bosch process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process According to the podcast and the wiki page, the current source of hydrogen for ammonia is natural gas. Additionally the process is energy-intensive, using high temperature and pressure. These things don't necessarily make it mandatory…
And the current source of electricity that runs HN is most probably fossil fuels. Does it make HN "petro-website"? It's clearly a derogatory term that serves no constructive purpose. I believe we should strive for zero-emission hydrogen production (which is clearly possible given that hydrogen can be easily used to utilize excessive production from "green" sources) instead of pushing luddite worldview.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
You keep throwing the phrase "petro-chemical fertilizers" around but I can't see how it can make sense except for denigrating the concept and spreading FUD (which is counterproductive). Ammonia is just NH3 and there is nothing "petro" (i.e. hydrocarbons) in it, that hydrogen can be obtained anywhere and the nitrogen is literally around you. Can you please elaborate on how fixing nitrogen on industrial scale is "disas…
> You keep throwing the phrase "petro-chemical fertilizers"... Given that most fertilizers are composed of chemicals derived from petroleum, it's accurate. I don't use the term "conventional farming" because these techniques are extremely modern. > Can you please elaborate on how fixing nitrogen on industrial scale is "disastrous" To be clear, fixing nitrogen is fine, bacteria do this already naturally. The problem w…
> most fertilizers are composed of chemicals derived from petroleum
Can you please elaborate further? Yep, in a lot of cases hydrogen for ammonia comes from natural gas. Nope, it doesn't have to be, in fact you can easily get it from water. What other "chemicals" do you have in mind?
> because these techniques are extremely modern
They are, but the concept of "not dying of famine" is also pretty modern if you consider an overall population.
> The problem with fertilizers… killing local ecosystem of bacteria and insects
I believe you confuse fertilizers with pesticides.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
But an acre of land in the suburbs costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, whereas an acre of land in a normal agricultural area far from a city costs a few thousand dollars.
maybe there has to be a certain chunk of land set aside in urban areas for green and open spaces? concentrating massive food production centers is a terrible idea. not just because its an easy target for bio hacking but also because of the impact on environment and water especially. small distributed food production centers makes much more sense.
In the US, 40% of all its land is in active agriculture production. Most of the remaining 60% is not in production because it is not productive. I suggest production has already spread to everywhere that is viable to do so.
Even if you can find and allocate several thousand acres of productive farmland in every city for growing food, what are you really accomplishing? That's but a tiny little drop in the bucket of all the land needed to sustain the population. Not to mention that many cities rose out of agrarian pasts, so it is quite likely that active farmland is already found on the outskirts.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just listened to a podcast (50 things that made the modern economy http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04f77rg ) about the Haber-Bosch process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process According to the podcast and the wiki page, the current source of hydrogen for ammonia is natural gas. Additionally the process is energy-intensive, using high temperature and pressure. These things don't necessarily make it mandatory…
And the current source of electricity that runs HN is most probably fossil fuels. Does it make HN "petro-website"? It's clearly a derogatory term that serves no constructive purpose. I believe we should strive for zero-emission hydrogen production (which is clearly possible given that hydrogen can be easily used to utilize excessive production from "green" sources) instead of pushing luddite worldview.
The key point of my post was "the current source of hydrogen for ammonia is natural gas" It can be made from other sources, but it is not. Hence petro-chemical. Like plastic or nylon.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You keep throwing the phrase "petro-chemical fertilizers"... Given that most fertilizers are composed of chemicals derived from petroleum, it's accurate. I don't use the term "conventional farming" because these techniques are extremely modern. > Can you please elaborate on how fixing nitrogen on industrial scale is "disastrous" To be clear, fixing nitrogen is fine, bacteria do this already naturally. The problem w…
> most fertilizers are composed of chemicals derived from petroleum Can you please elaborate further? Yep, in a lot of cases hydrogen for ammonia comes from natural gas. Nope, it doesn't have to be, in fact you can easily get it from water. What other "chemicals" do you have in mind? > because these techniques are extremely modern They are, but the concept of "not dying of famine" is also pretty modern if you conside…
The nitrogen in the fertilizer is creating dead zones: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizer-runoff...
A quick googling will show many scholarly papers and articles describing this.