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‘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

#111

Post by Desertfoxatx »

flenserboy wrote: post #91

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…

The midwest has great soil because billions of organisms died millions of years ago in a shallow sea that covered most of the central united states today.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#112

Post by smallerfish »

flenserboy wrote: post #107
smallerfish wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories." https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets "So if this system is so ideal, why is it that my cow hasn’t tasted a blade of grass since October? Speed, in a word. Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and the modern me…

And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly. Do also keep in mind that there are wide swaths of land which can usefully be occupied by ruminants that cannot be farmed without piping in almost all the water and dumping fertilizer on it. Such marginal land is counted as arable so as to further attack animal husbandry.

> And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly.

I don't disagree with this part. My point is just that a) livestock are an enormously inefficient way of raising calories and b) that's taking into consideration the horrendous industrial meat system. The US raised 33 million cows to slaughter in 2019 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/194357/total-cattle-slau...). Converting those to be pasture raised would use a vast amount of land (1), a huge reduction of calories already being produced (unsustainably) from corn and soy, and require a lot of additional labor.

(1) https://www.omnicalculator.com/biology/cattle-per-acre -- I don't know if the defaults are generally applicable for the US, but let's say 0.33 cows per acre (which may be optimistic - see e.g. https://www.outdoorhappens.com/how-many-cows-per-acre-in-you...).

A cow raised fully on grass requires around 24 months. So, if the US wants to keep slaughtering 33 million cows per year, 66 million cows need to be alive at any one time. (https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is...)

So, minimum land use would be 3 x 66 million = 198,000,000. That's equivalent to the total land used right now for soy, corn AND cotton combined (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2021/06-30-2021.php).

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#113

Post by Forge36 »

Desertfoxatx wrote: post #111
flenserboy wrote: post #91

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…

The midwest has great soil because billions of organisms died millions of years ago in a shallow sea that covered most of the central united states today.

Similar to "The Black Belt"?

https://vigorousnorth.blogspot.com/2008/11/black-belt-how-so...

https://web.archive.org/web/20100526092708/http://www.southe...

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#114

Post by lancesells »

flenserboy wrote: post #107
smallerfish wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories." https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets "So if this system is so ideal, why is it that my cow hasn’t tasted a blade of grass since October? Speed, in a word. Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and the modern me…

And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly. Do also keep in mind that there are wide swaths of land which can usefully be occupied by ruminants that cannot be farmed without piping in almost all the water and dumping fertilizer on it. Such marginal land is counted as arable so as to further attack animal husbandry.

> And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly.

Substitute grass for vegetables and I think this applies to humans as well.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#115

Post by delecti »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #108
flenserboy wrote: post #91

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…

Only about ~10% of corn is used to make food consumed by people. Of the remainder, roughly ~30% is used for animal feed, ~30% for export, and ~30% for fuel ethanol. Replacing the cheap processed food production with grazing land will not do much to increase the amount of animal protein available to the population. If our goal is to have more pasture, it would make more sense to eliminate ethanol production, reduce th…

What is the export percent used for? I don't think it's true, but if that export 30% were all used for food for people then it'd be disingenuous to say only 10% is used for human food.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#116

Post by dilap »

smallerfish wrote: post #112
flenserboy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly. Do also keep in mind that there are wide swaths of land which can usefully be occupied by ruminants that cannot be farmed without piping in almost all the water and dumping fertilizer on it. Such marginal land is counted as arable so as to further attack animal husbandry.

> And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly. I don't disagree with this part. My point is just that a) livestock are an enormously inefficient way of raising calories and b) that's taking into consideration the horrendous industrial meat system. The US raised 33 million cows to slaughter in 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/…

Funnily enough, there used to be about 60 million wild buffalo roaming north america. We killed them off & have devoted vast tracts of land to monocrop agriculture fueled by petrochemical fertilizers.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#117

Post by maxerickson »

wallacoloo wrote: post #56
ploden wrote: post #30

Maybe 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?

Ethanol is used in gasoline because MTBE is environmentally persistent.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#118

Post by cjbgkagh »

Desertfoxatx wrote: post #111
flenserboy wrote: post #91

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…

The midwest has great soil because billions of organisms died millions of years ago in a shallow sea that covered most of the central united states today.

A theory I heard as a child was that glaciers pushed topsoil down from Canada during the ice ages? A superficial search did not turn up more info so maybe that has long been discredited and nobody told me.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#119

Post by omginternets »

smallerfish wrote: post #112
flenserboy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly. Do also keep in mind that there are wide swaths of land which can usefully be occupied by ruminants that cannot be farmed without piping in almost all the water and dumping fertilizer on it. Such marginal land is counted as arable so as to further attack animal husbandry.

> And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly. I don't disagree with this part. My point is just that a) livestock are an enormously inefficient way of raising calories and b) that's taking into consideration the horrendous industrial meat system. The US raised 33 million cows to slaughter in 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/…

It’s only inefficient if you continue to ignore the points being raised by the parent post.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#120

Post by gs17 »

maxerickson wrote: post #117
wallacoloo wrote: post #56

Earlier 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?

Ethanol is used in gasoline because MTBE is environmentally persistent.

For anyone else who was unaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBE_controversy
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