21–30 of 278 posts
My hope is that we can build robotic tools that work the land more like human hands do instead of the big tools and poisons we use today.
If you like that kind of thing please take a look:
https://community.twistedfields.com/t/introducing-acorn-a-pr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl#Long-term_economic_i...
https://www.softschools.com/facts/us_history/dust_bowl_facts...
I run r/UrbanForestry and have recently posted some soil-related pieces there and I'm trying to get a handle on a complex topic without having to get a PhD in it. If anyone can suggest some good sources for me, I would appreciate it.
We're ~60 years from running out of topsoil globally if we continue degrading it at the current rate: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...
We’ll probably be eating lab-grown meat and hydroponically-grown vegetables by then. If we’re not all uploaded to a server embedded in the planet’s core or orbiting the sun.
Hydroponically grown celery tastes like water. Fresh, dirt-grown celery is nearly inedible because of how sharp and metallic the flavor is.
Industrial and lab-grown meat will face the same problems.
Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
I'm not worried about the soil, I'm worried about the water. The Ogallala Aquifer is shrinking. The more it shrinks, the more there will be compaction preventing it from refilling to previous states. We can always grow food in water but getting clean water will be an increasingly difficult task. Look how bad it already is in CA.
Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
I'm not worried about the soil, I'm worried about the water. The Ogallala Aquifer is shrinking. The more it shrinks, the more there will be compaction preventing it from refilling to previous states. We can always grow food in water but getting clean water will be an increasingly difficult task. Look how bad it already is in CA.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not worried about the soil, I'm worried about the water. The Ogallala Aquifer is shrinking. The more it shrinks, the more there will be compaction preventing it from refilling to previous states. We can always grow food in water but getting clean water will be an increasingly difficult task. Look how bad it already is in CA.
We can grow crops with far less water. Look at farms in Israel. The problem is that water prices don't account for externalities or sustainability, so in the short term farmers have little incentive to conserve.
Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
Most important is nitrogen-based fertilizer, that can easily be produced from any kind of electricity. Most of the other stuff are minerals that are cheaply mined anywhere and won't run out for the next few thousand years. The most important oil consumption is for driving farm implements, but that can easily be changed to rapeseed oil in the short term and other green energy in the long term. So no cause for panic.
I think water loss (especially from aquifers but also just drought and river diversion in California), soil erosion, habitat loss, and homogenisation are big worries. We’ve seen big problems from soil loss before in America where the prairie grass with its deep root systems holding the soil together was replaced by cereal crops with short roots and plowing exposing the soil. The result was the dust bowl.
Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.
Maybe we shouldn't burn ethanol in cars. Maybe we shouldn't load up every food product with corn syrup.
In the US, Iowa is the largest producer of corn [1] (producing nearly 40% more than the next, Illinois,) and thus the greatest beneficiary of those corn subsidies. Could we reduce those corn subsidies? No, it's politically nonviable, in part because Iowa has enshrined in its laws that it must have the first primaries in the US [2][3]. No candidate that has ever said anything against corn subsidies has won a primary.
[1] https://www.cropprophet.com/what-state-produces-the-most-cor...
[2] https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/why-iowa-and-new-hampshi...
[3] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/01/why-the-iowa-cau...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe we shouldn't burn ethanol in cars. Maybe we shouldn't load up every food product with corn syrup.
Corn in the US is heavily subsidized. It's why corn syrup is so prevalent in US foods, because the subsidies mean it's cheaper than any other sources of sugar. In the US, Iowa is the largest producer of corn [1] (producing nearly 40% more than the next, Illinois,) and thus the greatest beneficiary of those corn subsidies. Could we reduce those corn subsidies? No, it's politically nonviable, in part because Iowa has e…