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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#121

Post by pm90 »

cerol wrote: post #107

Food security always makes me think about food waste. When I was 17 years old I went to Sweden as part of a cultural exchange program (I'm from South America). One of the first things that shocked me was the sheer amount of food being wasted for no reason whatsoever. In my country, even though I come from a privileged family, you can't shield yourself away from poverty. Throughout my entire life living with my parent…

theres some really simple solutions to food waste https://youtu.be/6RlxySFrkIM

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#122

Post by pm90 »

nemo44x wrote: post #92
anthonypasq wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Amazon? Yeah sure but not sure thats a good trade: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/amazon...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#123

Post by kickout »

phil21 wrote: post #118
kickout wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_

So far at posting time I don't see a whole lot of signal to gain from the noise here if I were legitimately someone who had zero agriculture experience and was trying to gain understanding. This is the blind leading the blind, and if you gleaned much from the top comments you'd be worse informed than not reading this entire thread. Half of the posts are just political using couched language to pretend they aren't. Ag…

Usually I shill my blog (in bio) where I _hope_ i'm sharing signal.

In a weird type of way, there's little we can do immediately. Almost like a solar flare type of event. Ag and food production systems are so massively scaled, even if we WANTED to change everything for the better, it would likely take years, if not decades. Not like software where any bug can be fixed in a week or so. Human population numbers have exploded on the back of cheap, abundant food. If anything seriously disturbed that, yikes.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#125

Post by Aperocky »

sct202 wrote: post #113
orangepurple wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans. > The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol. https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

It is digestible post processing like after nixtamalization to turn it into masa. No 2 corn is used in tortillas, snack foods and other processed corn products. That sentence is misleading, because yes straight off the cob you can't eat it. https://agcrops.osu.edu/newsletter/corn-newsletter/2016-40/t...

To add to that I'm sure this country eat more tortillas than actual corn...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#126

Post by jiveturkey42 »

phil21 wrote: post #118
kickout wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_

So far at posting time I don't see a whole lot of signal to gain from the noise here if I were legitimately someone who had zero agriculture experience and was trying to gain understanding. This is the blind leading the blind, and if you gleaned much from the top comments you'd be worse informed than not reading this entire thread. Half of the posts are just political using couched language to pretend they aren't. Ag…

Perhaps these issues cannot be solved from a desk and computer.

HN might bristle at the idea the Farmer Joe has a more sophisticated mental model of an extremely complex and multivariate system (a field of corn or soy) which evades reduction to a dataset.

The solutions I've seen on this board is typically "well let's reduce the variables and grow lettuce in warehouses!" Or trying to build a robot that can pick strawberries. Neither of these solves food scarcity issues.

If people reading this wanted to pursue a meaningful solution via data, my advise is to look at the scaling of the farm-to-consumer market, and how to enable larger distributed networks of small independent farms to sell to customers. The food supply will be more resilient when farming gets smaller, simpler, and more distributed

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#127

Post by lumost »

sct202 wrote: post #113
orangepurple wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans. > The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol. https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

It is digestible post processing like after nixtamalization to turn it into masa. No 2 corn is used in tortillas, snack foods and other processed corn products. That sentence is misleading, because yes straight off the cob you can't eat it. https://agcrops.osu.edu/newsletter/corn-newsletter/2016-40/t...

This also hints that our food production is more complex than you would first expect, in a true food crunch there are likely many substitute diet options which can be made by processing inedible agriculture products or repurposing fields.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#128

Post by pm90 »

londons_explore wrote: post #88

Everyone saying 'we need to grow more crops!' needs to see that the futures markets deal with exactly this. As people see high futures prices for corn, they'll grow more corn because it's more profitable. Some farmers will switch from livestock to corn. Others who have storage facilities will make money by buying now to sell later and make use of the price difference. At a certain point, prices get too high for makin…

India, the 2/3 largest producer of wheat/rice has strict controls on exports. Other countries will impose restrictions when they realize their poor will rise up in riots. One theory for arab spring is that it started because of rising food prices.

Food is just not like other commodities. Shortages lead not just to recessions but revolutions. Any Government and society not paying close attention and investing in either ramping up domestic production or stockpiling is going to have a really bad time.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#129

Post by raverbashing »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #98
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but corn is one of the worse sources for alcohol production

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#130

Post by [deleted] »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #98
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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