The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
smithsonianmag.com
The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
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Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#2Modern 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.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#3We'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-...
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#4Modern 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.
Exactly.
I worked on a farm in my teens in 90s upstate ny that was like the last dying breath of the traditional family farm. It was a property that was intact since a land grant from a Dutch patroon and continuously farmed until around 2000. Today the family still owns it, and boards a few horses to pay the taxes.
The farmer was an old-school conservative farmer. He was a local Republican Party leader for awhile, a conservationist and just overall hardworking guy. The modern farm is more like an oil company. I think that 75 years from now, when we lament the fate of the impoverished Midwest Desert and will see the 1970s/1980s as a watershed moment where we flipped our entire governance philosophy to short term P&L, despite then obvious and already learned lessons of the past.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#5We'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.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#6So we short or long soy/corn?
Insurance regarding farming crops and futures though is a very interesting topic, one that I wish to have learned more about. Tons of big things.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#7Modern 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.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#8I guess we'll have to replace it
"Artificial soil: quick and dirty"
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526161-700-artifici...
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#9These topsoil crisis stories have been running since the 1930s, and are still nonsense. Modern farming doesn't depend on soil nutrients. The soil is tested, then minerals and petrochemical fertilizers are added. The soil is basically a growing medium.
Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
#10Modern 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.
Sarah Taber covers this very well on her Twitter (even though she has a particular anti-dairy ax to grind)