Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 278 posts

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

#251

Post by markdown »

corty wrote: post #242
markdown wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rapeseed oil isn't green energy. It's just more big-Ag.

With that attitude we can just go back to the caves. Big-anything is what makes our society and level of population work, without Big-Ag we couldn't feed everyone. Without Big-Trans we couldn't distribute the food. Without Big-Trade, you would have to inefficiently buy from 20 small shops selling one item each. Without Big-Industry, your kitchen implements would be a pot and a kettle above the fireplace. Rapeseed oil…

What a strange stance to take in a thread about how big-Ag has destroyed a third of US topsoil.

You've been brainwashed.

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

#252

Post by mschuster91 »

whatever1 wrote: post #168
tamcap wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of contract clauses have been found void and unenforceable. Same could (and should) happen to many HOA covenants. The fact that you are unable to buy housing in many zip codes without HOA, and there are even some states (ie Texas) where you can be forced into an HOA (even if you own the house clear of one) is just insane.

The power we are giving to HOAs is insane. They can ruin your life. There is a case that I know where a person of color was accused by his white neighbors for WFH, thus using his house for business purposes, thus violating the HOA contract, thus they initiated an eviction. It is an ablolute mess.

It makes sense for HOAs to be able to prevent someone running stuff like a car repair shop or a mail order business from their garage.

However, what is desperately needed is some sort of appeals process in front of an actual court that could intervene in such obvious cases of abuse.

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

#253

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

ls612 wrote: post #182
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analysis above is remarkably detailed, but it misses the point. When I used the term "sustainable" I was speaking of resource usage and environmental impact, not whether the practice was affordable.

We aren’t going to run out of seawater anytime soon

The resource constraint that matters for desalination right now is not obviously seawater. It is the energy input for desalination, which in many areas still depends on hydrocarbons.

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

#254

Post by wepple »

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…

This is wonderfully written, and really hit me in a way this topic hasn’t before.

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

#255

Post by Borrible »

Ah, no problem.

Just exchange it with micro plastics

https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/6/649/2020/

In case that is not enough, there still is Soylent Green.

Did you know, before the introduction of artifial fertilizers, they used the human bones from Napoleonic battlefields?

https://medium.com/study-of-history/the-bones-of-waterloo-a3...

...

Dust in the Wind.

Dirt in the Ground.

The Earth dies screaming.

I will survive.

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

#256

Post by CuriouslyC »

corty wrote: post #245
CuriouslyC wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have topsoil you don't have water retention and you don't have organisms and structure that avoids the need to till for aeration and mineral movement. That means the garbage soil we're left with must be watered from aquifers when it's not constantly raining, and we must till the soil then work in fertilizers, which wastes gas and time. The path you say has "no cause for panic" is a path to cyclical famin…

The path to famine is exponential population growth. No need for agriculture to fail as well. We do have bigger fish to fry than worry about soil quality as long as it is still fixable with fertilizer.

Personally I think the way of life that is destroying the topsoil is at the heart of most of our problems, and if we reverted to a more pastoral life where people are more connected to nature and the food they eat in some way a lot of issues we're facing would magically disappear. Most depression, obesity (with related health issues) and a good part of climate change are all a result of our messed up lifestyles.

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

#257

Post by gjkhggjklg »

mschuster91 wrote: post #252
whatever1 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power we are giving to HOAs is insane. They can ruin your life. There is a case that I know where a person of color was accused by his white neighbors for WFH, thus using his house for business purposes, thus violating the HOA contract, thus they initiated an eviction. It is an ablolute mess.

It makes sense for HOAs to be able to prevent someone running stuff like a car repair shop or a mail order business from their garage. However, what is desperately needed is some sort of appeals process in front of an actual court that could intervene in such obvious cases of abuse.

No, it doesn't make sense.

Restrictions on land use at a local level are already handled via zoning.

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

#258

Post by analog31 »

corty wrote: post #243
analog31 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the process can hypothetically run from renewable energy in the future, but the primary energy source and primary source of hydrogen are probably both methane right now.

Methane can be and sometimes is produced from biomass. And there are a few plants in operation that produce without any fossil inputs, but most of them aren't switched over yet, mostly because green hydrogen production isn't at the necessary scale yet and will probably be used for steel making first.

Perhaps a simple explanation would be to quantify the inputs and outputs, maybe from year to year. For instance the carbon footprint of farming should be shrinking if all of these green measures are coming online.

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

#259

Post by stjohnswarts »

koolba wrote: post #161
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOAs are a scourge. I’d love to see more states scale back the power of HOAs.

I doubt there’s much State’s can do to stop HOAs from existing. It’s a contract between the homeowners. There’s a lot of economy of scale for group maintenance as well (e.g. landscaping costs are significantly less for adjacent properties). Like most things in the USA, you can vote with your wallet and live somewhere that doesn’t have an HOA.

No, they could make them illegal, it's not an issue other than lack of will.

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

#260

Post by stjohnswarts »

cdash wrote: post #230
javajosh wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mother earth is fine." I think this ignores the human status as a thinking animal, and the glaringly obvious responsibility we collectively share for keeping our biosphere in good condition. That is, that we keep the remarkable diversity of life intact, and do not pointlessly throw the most unique and precious part of our universe in a chipper to make more particle board furniture. It is interesting that by incremen…

We don't have any "responsbility" to anyone or anything but our own desires.

You may not have loyalty, but if you're enjoying the fruits of society there is also responsibility to that society, otherwise one should probably extricate himself from society and see how long he makes it in the woods without it.
Post reply on HN