Pastures are the future. There's a reason the US Midwest had such great soil — it's not simply a confluence of rivers & luck. The buffalo did their thing, and the grasses they fed on were fed in turn by them. Replacing corn and soy with ruminants will replenish the soil, provide excellent protein for people, and get rid of the cheap, food-like things made from corn, soy, and their chemically-coaxed out byproducts. It's not too late. (A nice effect of this would be the likely (it'll take a while) replenishment of the Ogallala Aquifer.)
‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
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Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#92There are options besides chemical fertilizers. The nodules on legume root are a symbiotic home for nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Farmers traditionally rotate corn and soybeans to reduce their nitrogen costs. Other plants have deeper roots, which pull up nutrients... My comment about biological nitrogen fixation (15 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29829580 Saw this recently: Black eyed peas could help eli…
That vastly underestimates the size of the modern problem. I posted previously of the adage "Modern agriculture is about turning energy in fossil fuels into food we can eat." While not entirely accurate (yes, most of the energy in plants comes from the sun, but it is fossil fuels that power most of the nitrogen fixation needed to unlock that photosynthesis), it does emphasize how so much of modern agriculture is depe…
They only use fossil fuels to make the hydrogen. Which can be made more efficiently with electricity. So it's not really a problem. We only do it now because the costs are hidden. The transition is almost entirely political in nature, since not using fossil fuels for this is the better option, and it's already started.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edit: "wheat" -> "corn" "Square foot gardening" with hand labor isn't going to replace the 772 million metric tons of wheat and 1 billion metric tons of corn produced annually. Sorry, it just isn't. Given that it's January, why not try the experiment of producing all the food you personally consume this year using the techniques in this book? Growing a few tomatoes and a bit of lettuce is pretty easy, and is a fun an…
Growing by hand for calories is a negative return activity. Industrial is just more energy efficient and who cares about artisanal sugar or cooking oil. Hand-Grow some herbs and tomatoes on the other hand and now you’re making dough.
> Growing by hand for calories is a negative return activity.
Industrial agriculture, with the help of chemical fertilizers, has only been a thing since the early 19th century.
I find it hard to believe that agriculture, in all the centuries before that, was negative in return. How did sedentary humans feed themselves for these thousands of years before that if not with manual agriculture?
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've read, the Haber process sustains well over half of the earth's animal population. Legumes can't provide enough nitrogen to maintain current levels of crop yields. Something has to give.
Too lazy to look up numbers, but in the US corn is a significant crop and much of it is more of an industrial feedstock rather than food for people. I'm guessing that "more natural" processes could still feed us all but the game is rigged so that it's not economical for to do that (directly, as it's effectively subsidized for the "economical" side).
My readings were more ominous, that without the Haber process, more natural processes cannot extract enough nitrogen to feed us. That situation is partially alleviated if we stop eating meat, but not completely.
This is just one example of a larger realization, which is that humanity can no longer sustain itself without a complex and sophisticated technological society.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
i always assumed ethanol production was encouraged by the govt precisely to spur excess production of corn so as to make our food production more robust. i.e. during a bad year of food production, halt ethanol production and redirect that excess of corn back into the food supply; crisis averted. is that not the case?
the corn used for ethenol is not the same corn used for consumption.
Is it? I get it's not sweet corn (ie. corn on the cob or canned/frozen corn), but it should still be starchy and edible (think tortilla corn).
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#96World hunger for the first world maybe. 80% of global food is still produced in very small, un-industrial family farms.
No post body was provided.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#97Maybe we should end the government mandate to burn corn in car engines. Biden seems more pro-ethanol than Trump, I have no idea why.
i always assumed ethanol production was encouraged by the govt precisely to spur excess production of corn so as to make our food production more robust. i.e. during a bad year of food production, halt ethanol production and redirect that excess of corn back into the food supply; crisis averted. is that not the case?
Subsides are never such simple handouts.
Corn and ag subsidies have as much or more to do with govt "buying" surplus and "selling" it to foreign countries as part of aid packages. And dominating the world grain market, which gives the US even more indirect control over foreign grain growing capabilities, making others reliant on the US. (Bc investing in local production is risky when the US can just flood the market.)
Separately, most corn grown for ethanol or animal feed isn't going to directly be rerouted to food supply, unless we approach a full collapse type situation (and even then, it would be more market and regulation collapse and black market emergence than due to policy changes).
But keeping those farmers in business and capable of growing table corn next season (with minimal capital investment or changes to practices required) accomplishes roughly the same thing.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#98This is a good thing, fertilizer is heavily overused, poisoning waterways. Yes the cost of food may go up as a result but the current farming practices are unsustainable.
> poisoning waterways This hasn't been true for years. Most algal blooms around the US at least are caused by lawn runoff.
This is still very much true according to NOAA [0]
A bit weird to make such a definitive statement about the, allegedly singular, culprit with "lawn runoff".
It's really difficult, to nearly impossible, to trace back where the nitrogen and phosphorus originated from that results in oceanic dead zones thousands of miles away [1].
A good start would simply be to look at the biggest consumers of these fertilizers, and those ain't homeowners fertilizing lawns, those are industrial scale agricultural operations [2] for whom fertilizer use directly correlates with their financial bottom line [3].
[0] https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/happenowdeadzone/
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4216153/
[2] https://www.epa.gov/agriculture/agriculture-nutrient-managem...
[3] https://investigatemidwest.org/2021/11/30/excess-fertilizer-...
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#99Maybe we should end the government mandate to burn corn in car engines. Biden seems more pro-ethanol than Trump, I have no idea why.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ethanol_fuel_mixtures#E...
In my worldview, a political issue that Biden and the EU agree on, and Trump is less enthusiastic about is probably a good thing.
I don't know all the ins and outs, and would generally prefer moving to EVs, but you didn't actually mention why you're not a fan of this policy?
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
If those existed and were cheaper, that would be done
If what existed? sustainable, nutritious and humane crops and farming practices? they do exist.
The person you're responding to said "existed and were cheaper," but you seem to have ignored the second conjunct of their claim in your response.