Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security • Hacker News Board

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#91

Post by gruez » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

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…

>- Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

Easier said than done. After all, if businesses are literally throwing their product out, it's probably for a good reason (ie. trying to recover it is more expensive than buying more)

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#92

Post by nemo44x » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

anthonypasq wrote: post #78

godmode2019 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you feed a cow you are essentially trading up. Animal meat is much more bioavailable and nutrient dense. Especially when they are eating grass on land unsuitable for crops.

I dont think so... It takes way more than 1 calorie of plant matter to generate 1 calorie of beef

Plant matter that we can’t eat and grows in areas we can’t farm.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#93

Post by throwaway4aday » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

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…

> Low values of embodied crop calories are related to production systems for ruminants based on fodder and forage, while large values are usually associated with production systems for non-ruminants fed on crop products.

Cows are ruminants.

> First, we estimated country-wise feed requirements. We calculated feed required per grid cell for each livestock types in ton per year multiplying regional and livestock-wise daily feed requirements (Haberl et al 2007) with the gridded livestock counts.

Honestly, I'm not very interested in their results after reading this. If they're just estimating based on number of livestock x calories required for livestock along with a bucket of crop yields for an area then this is just paper shuffling. You'll have my attention when you get real numbers directly from the farmers themselves rather than just aggregating 3rd hand information over a grid area.

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

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#94

Post by lm28469 » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:06 PM UTC

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.

> If eating meat were bad for the environment, all predators who eat exclusively large prey would be extinct.

It's not that eating meat is inherently bad, it's the abomination we created to make it a world wide cheap commodity.

Just like a single car isn't a problem, the problem is the scale and the fact that we built our societies around it as if it was just an inevitable fact of life

> all predators who eat exclusively large prey would be extinct.

Lions don't have literal meat factories, don't treat animals like merchandise and don't use low quality processed meat as a filler for everything. This is such a low quality analogy. Look at that video and tell me it's just what large predators do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWbgZQxd6J4&t=106s

> I'm not going to start eating bugs.

Nobody saying that, I'm 90% vegetarian and I never had a single bug in my life. I'm lifting weight three times a week and rock climbing twice a week with no issues too so here goes the "muh protein/energy" argument. The bug based food and ultra processed vegetarian/vegan options are just a marketing fad imho

Again, eating meat is fine, eating 500gr of low quality meat every single isn't, it's just about scale.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#95

Post by modo_mario » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:06 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #40

_8j50 wrote: post #26

If all the land and resource that goes into feeding cows is used for crops, a lot more people can be supported. It has never been a lack of global food shortage, it is always regional anyways.

There are an enormous number of products that cattle provide beyond beef, from cosmetics to medicine to important industrial and agricultural products, with manure, bonemeal, and bloodmeal among them.

I agree with this. Tbh there are things that can be done to reduce it's footprint and we should collectively eat less meat. But comparing 1 to 1 what ends up on the cows plat and what ends up in the store generally doesn't do it justice. Absolutely everything gets used and processed.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#96

Post by lm28469 » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:07 PM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #15

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.

Do you think animal based proteins are synthesised out of thin air ?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#97

Post by refurb » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

citizenkeen wrote: post #6

ianhawes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be hard to give up my fertilizer-fed beef.

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

That's a silly argument because you being alive is "bad for the world".

But hey, I'm guessing you "want to live"?

So selfish.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#98

Post by CraigJPerry » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #39

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".

Then factor in all the havoc caused by ethanol in gas ruining seals, not working well in small engines, etc. and it’s just totally non-sensical that this fraud has been allowed to happen.

In defence of ethanol, producing it from plants and then burning it as fuel reduces greenhouse gas emissions vs extracting, refining and burning dino juice.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#99

Post by jiveturkey42 » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

kickout wrote: post #86

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #63

Threads like these reminds me that HN is an overwhelmingly urban community with almost zero exposure to the agriculture sector

It's ok though. I like these threads on HN. Hopefully helps educate people. People on HN have a lot of skills to offer agriculture they likely aren't even aware of. Every article/discussion helps spread the message, hopefully. ETA: Most people don't understand agriculture or where their food comes from--HN no different. Only small % of people involved in agriculture _directly_

Alternatively, I would argue that much harm has been done to agriculture by the 'information' sector in general. Commoditizing and industrializing food production (a reduction to data and numbers) has caused most of the issues collectively known as the 'modern American diet'

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#100

Post by ch4s3 » Mon, May 02, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

PheonixPharts wrote: post #61

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 Ho…

Lake Mead is so low because the Colorado River Water Compact allocates more water than has historically been in the river, based on tree ring data. There have been a number of years of historically average flow in a row, and keeping the reservoirs full requires roughly a decade of above average flow.

* Edit * For clarity the compact divides up 17 million acre/ft per year and the real average historic flow is closer to 13 million acre/ft per year. The compact also double dips in it's accounting for some return flows.