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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#61

Post by PheonixPharts »

kickout wrote: post #50

Mostly good comments in here. My take is we have at least 1-2 years of global supply of most grains. This is a completely political problem; its not like we're getting 2012 US Midwest levels of drought in back-to-back years (now THAT would be a crunch). Food waste is a problem, yes. Animal protein is not a problem. There is plenty of land in the US only suitable for grazing. Much better than that synthetic soup of Im…

> its not like we're getting 2012 US Midwest levels of drought in back-to-back years (now THAT would be a crunch).

That's very likely in the current climate change scenario. Look at what's happening in the American South West right now. Lake Mead is currently at unprecedented low levels with no evidence that this will change course any time soon. It's possible within a decade there won't be enough water to run the Hoover dam. That's something no one would have taken as a serious risk 10 years ago.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#62

Post by thriftwy »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #37
zqmall wrote: post #20

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".

I was reading the journals of Gareth Jones about his time spent in Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and find remarkable similarities to this sort of thing. The government took over, for example, the manufacture and maintenance of tractors, and also selected people nearly at random to maintain them. The one guy he interviewed said something to the extent that the tractors barely last a year before breaking. The people who d…

Late Soviet regime produced so much farm hardware as if it wanted to outright lay siege to the field and storm it by having greater numbers.

Most of it went rotting. I remember a village school with a large yard full of half-disassembled tractors and combines. Apparently the students were supposed to learn to use all the stuff and then give the field no rest. In reality it would just rot.

I don't think you should label all that people incompetent. They were mostly very practical in solving their immediate problem while having no freedom to rethink it. The system sucked and people were just trapped in it.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#64

Post by [deleted] »

mathgladiator wrote: post #31
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.

(3) And im willing to pay for it. I only eat 100% grass-fed beef, and I believe the world would be better without corn fed abominations.

[deleted]

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#65

Post by ryanmercer »

the8472 wrote: post #11
DiabloD3 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Pasture, that is harvested for straw/hay to feed to cattle, still gets fertilized usually at a minimum with added nitrogen. That nitrogen could be better used in other fields growing crops specifically for humans, never mind the negative implications of the runoff that causes damage elsewhere.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#66

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

bitwize wrote: post #57
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanos’ ideas about everything were extremely silly. A halving of population would do nothing on any time scale. A small blip easily recovered by reproduction. People deserve better writing, even in comic book movies.

The original rationale for Thanos made a lot more sense: he simped for Death, like the concept of death was a woman in the Marvel universe. He thought half the universe's souls would make a perfect offering for her and would impress her enough to make her want to be with him. It's outrageously comic-book-y, but may as well lean into the illogic.

That makes much more sense, I wish they had stuck with that.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#67

Post by throwaway0a5e »

jlengrand wrote: post #38

Global food shortage always feels like "well, I'm not concerned many other countries will be hit first". Many countries will literally have issues, but the food will _also_ be a lot more expensive for all of us. The coming years will be "fun" (and I mean bad, to be clear).

>The coming years will be fun

I wouldn't call the impending cognitive dissonance "fun" unless one likes being a spectator of ideologically driven mental gymnastics.

We've done weird stuff to low levels of our economies. That's gonna have marginal consequences across the board. And a little bit across the board adds up to a lot of hardship.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#68

Post by api »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #44
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading the journals of Gareth Jones about his time spent in Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and find remarkable similarities to this sort of thing. The government took over, for example, the manufacture and maintenance of tractors, and also selected people nearly at random to maintain them. The one guy he interviewed said something to the extent that the tractors barely last a year before breaking. The people who d…

Thanos’ ideas about everything were extremely silly. A halving of population would do nothing on any time scale. A small blip easily recovered by reproduction. People deserve better writing, even in comic book movies.

Real life despots and fanatics are usually quite a bit crazier and less coherent than Thanos. As usual you have to tone it down to make it believable in fiction. A realistic depiction of a genocidal fanatic would be too stupid or insane to be believable.

See: Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, ISIS, Kim Jong Un, and numerous other examples.

If they were rational they would not be despots and fanatics. Unfortunately charismatic lunatics command followings. Charisma bypasses the rational mind and shoots straight into the limbic system (as do fear, outrage, etc).

Cult leaders are good cases too: L. Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Keith Raniere, etc. These people would be as bad as the worst despots if they actually had power over more than a few people.

Thanos' line is more rational than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#69

Post by lm28469 »

pasabagi wrote: post #60
kickout wrote: post #50

Mostly good comments in here. My take is we have at least 1-2 years of global supply of most grains. This is a completely political problem; its not like we're getting 2012 US Midwest levels of drought in back-to-back years (now THAT would be a crunch). Food waste is a problem, yes. Animal protein is not a problem. There is plenty of land in the US only suitable for grazing. Much better than that synthetic soup of Im…

> its not like we're getting 2012 US Midwest levels of drought in back-to-back years (now THAT would be a crunch). I got a shiver down my spine just reading that sentence. Please do not tempt fate. We just had the hottest year on record. I expect we'll break that record in the next few years again. Drought is depressingly likely.

Didn't China predict they'll have their lowest crops yields in modern history ?

I can't find the article I remember reading but here is one: https://www.reuters.com/business/china-ensure-agricultural-p... and another: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/climate-c...

Looks like everything is aligning for a pretty bad 2022 and 2023

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#70

Post by bkland »

It is fascinating that we have recessions, food crises etc. all because NATO wanted to expand and Donbass cannot be allowed to be independent.

While we are at it, should we liberate Northern Ireland? What exactly is the difference, except that in the case of Northern Ireland less than 50% wants to be British and in Donbass more than 50% wants to be Russian.

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