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The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#231

Post by japanuspus »

titzer wrote: post #58
gumby wrote: post #2

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 come from a long line of farmers. My father was the last of our family to try to hold onto the farming tradition. He grew up on a farm, along with all my aunts and uncles. His generation was the first go to college. He chose business. He made a ton of money, and hated it. After leaving the business world in the mid 1980s to return to farming, it was not the same, and he soon returned to what was effectively day tra…

One argument in "Sapiens" [0], is that all of human history is a continuous repeat of this trove: We hunted the megafauna to extinction, converted the land to agriculture, and so on not because of evil, but because that for the individuals living at any given time this was the most beneficial course of action.

[0]: Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari (2011)

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#232

Post by markdown »

supernovae wrote: post #217
markdown wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they've done what's all too common these days... gone and changed what a word means. Dead topsoil is dead topsoil. It doesn't become rock or subsoil or something else. The title of this post is "corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil". It should be "a third of the top soil in the corn belt is badly degraded" or something like that.

Have they? It's common vernacular to say we lost something even if it isn't "i lost my keys" but "We lost the last dodo bird"... doesn't mean we can't find it, but, what we had will never be again.

Why would it never be again? The ingredients to making good topsoil aren't a mystery. The topsoil can be fixed.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#233

Post by FooHentai »

FredPret wrote: post #104
FooHentai wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that's accurate. The main issue or limitation of hydroponics/aquaponics is that many types of vegetables cannot be grown via the method. It's suited to leafy greens and not, for example, root vegetables.

I googled "hydroponic potatoes" and I kid you not, the first words in the results were "Potatoes are one of the easiest crops to grow with a hydroponics system". I've also had grown and eaten hydroponic potatoes myself and they were great.

Huh, my knowledge is outta date. Thanks for correcting!

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#236

Post by ecf »

99_00 wrote: post #68

Right now there is no financial incentive to preserve topsoil. In the future there will be. So why artificially create incentive to pay the higher cost now when we can punt to the future where technology will be so much better and the cost will probably be lower?

Why force future generations to solve a life-or-death problem and rob them of freedoms that people enjoy today?

I hope in 50 years the entire adult generation of today is mocked and ridiculed for how they destroyed the only known inhabitable planet for our specifies.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#237

Post by AngryData »

markdown wrote: post #65
makerofspoons wrote: post #3

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-...

Where does the topsoil go? Doesn't it, by definition, just become topsoil somewhere else?

No, topsoil is more than mere dirt, it is an entire ecosystem that lives in the soil. It takes 50-100 years of build up and fertilizer and very careful tending, with less than optimal yield, to turn lifeless dirt into healthy topsoil.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#238

Post by AngryData »

markdown wrote: post #206
supernovae wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to go anywhere, it can just "die" - lose its ability to hold water, nutrients, fungus, microbes - everything necessary for it to be beneficial to plants.

So they've done what's all too common these days... gone and changed what a word means. Dead topsoil is dead topsoil. It doesn't become rock or subsoil or something else. The title of this post is "corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil". It should be "a third of the top soil in the corn belt is badly degraded" or something like that.

If the soil is dead it isn't topsoil, it is just dirt.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#239

Post by AngryData »

julianlam wrote: post #121
nobrains wrote: post #115

I think everyone needs to learn from the ancient wisdom on the Punjab province in India and Pakistan. Open Google earth and zoom into Punjab. It is the greenest agriculture zone in the entire world. Just look at it yourself. Now I don't know the specifics, but it is a starting point. If we are able to get the knowledge from the locals there on their ancient farming techniques, that knowledge will be net positive for…

You seem to think that GMOs mean scientists are injecting mutant genes into corn and wheat in order to increase yield. This is wrong. GMO means the crop itself has been selectively bred over time to increase desirable qualities, yield being one of them. Taste, perhaps another. Are you afraid of GMO foods? Perhaps you should avoid orange carrots, and sweet corn, then.

You are right, however at the same time, the vast majority of GMO work is done with the entire purpose of increasing yield, even if top soil is already being over-utilized and dieing. We could use it to make food tastier and more nutritious, but is a20% tastier apple going to sell 20% for more? 20% higher yield will. And having usable top soil in 50 years doesn't get the same financial incentive as using up in 20, selling off used up land to developers, then buying out the properly tended soil from struggling farmers who didn't fuck their land.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#240

Post by Melting_Harps »

a9h74j wrote: post #140
dagss wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me think of easter island. When our civilization perishes, money will seem as useful as those statues.

Modified meme caption: Yea, we destroyed the environment, but for a brief moment, we sure mined a lot of Bitcoin.

> Modified meme caption: Yea, we destroyed the environment, but for a brief moment, we sure mined a lot of Bitcoin.

It's hysterical that Bitcoin is the punching bag, because when economies that are prone to hyper inflation give way, its BTC that is used in many of those same countries. Who also, resort back to subsistence or local Ag. And guess what, destroying your land is kind of antithetical to the whole farming thing...

Anyhow, regenerative Ag can now be a massive boon if the infrastructure bill gets properly allotted; I'm skeptical but this could really come to define late millennials and gen Z to ensure that the problems they inheritance from the most wasteful generation (boomers) has some chance of being remediated prior to it being depleted and ensuring famine.

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