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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#11

Post by the8472 »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #5
ryanmercer wrote: post #2

Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. 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... . (don't…

Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture. If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land int…

1/3rd of the US farmland being used for pasture and 80% of global crops being fed to livestock are not mutually exclusive on their own.

Edit: Surprisingly our world in data has a breakdown of land uses (which includes grazing) but not of crop use. This study[0] says that about 40% of global crop use (by calories) is used to feed livestock and that it takes about 3.7 crop calories for 1 calorie of animal product. So yes, there's plenty of saving potential even if we kept all the grazing livestock untouched.

[0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/4/044...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#12

Post by citizenkeen »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #5
ryanmercer wrote: post #2

Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. 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... . (don't…

Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture. If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land int…

I don't believe the argument is that the acreage for animal pastures would be converted, but rather the acreage for the crops they eat would be converted. Or is that in error as well?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#13

Post by Tade0 »

ryanmercer wrote: post #2

Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. 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... . (don't…

Thank you for the link - I needed a good source for my internet arguments over sustainability.

Looking at the data it appears that we just need to drop beef and veal - totally doable I guess?

I didn't read the source in full, but I wonder how would such a shift affect fish populations?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#14

Post by dbatten »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #5
ryanmercer wrote: post #2

Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. 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... . (don't…

Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture. If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land int…

The objection I've usually heard is less about farm land being used for pasture instead of growing crops, and more about the amount of crops that have to be grown to feed the cattle... Growing corn to feed cows to feed humans is massively less efficient than growing corn to feed humans, or at least that's how the story goes.

Is there not an efficiency problem there that we could improve on?

(Not an expert in this area, genuinely curious.)

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#15

Post by thriftwy »

ryanmercer wrote: post #2

Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. 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... . (don't…

Animal based protein does not need fertilizer to be grown and it may not be carbon-intensive.

Plant based protein is basically putting oil in the ground and getting crops back.

It's intellectually disgusting how you try to put a round peg in a square hole.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#17

Post by deltille »

Asooka wrote: post #7
citizenkeen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) [Thing] is bad for the world (2) But I want it. This is the recipe for the road we are on.

If eating meat were bad for the environment, all predators who eat exclusively large prey would be extinct. We can have a discussion about how much meat per year production is sustainable, but I'm not going to start eating bugs.

Most predators that eat exclusively large prey don't number in the billions.

Any reason you are averse to eating bugs specifically?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#18

Post by [deleted] »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #5
ryanmercer wrote: post #2

Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. 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... . (don't…

Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture. If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land int…

[deleted]

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#19

Post by fsloth »

Asooka wrote: post #7
citizenkeen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) [Thing] is bad for the world (2) But I want it. This is the recipe for the road we are on.

If eating meat were bad for the environment, all predators who eat exclusively large prey would be extinct. We can have a discussion about how much meat per year production is sustainable, but I'm not going to start eating bugs.

Humans plus agricultural animals are 96% of all the mammalian biomass.

In light of these numbers I don't understand the environmental rationalization based on the diets of predators.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#20

Post by zqmall »

In 2012 you could feed 570 million people with the crops that go into the "green" ethanol scam:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/01/162127460/do...

I'm not opposed to farm subsidies as part of food independence for national security, but please do not call it "green".

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