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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#131

Post by scns »

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…

My brother worked for a help organization in africa for 1,5 years. When he came back, he told me that they throw food away too. I only cook as much as i can eat.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#132

Post by kickout »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #106
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…

> Animal protein is not a problem. There is plenty of land in the US only suitable for grazing. This statement is wrong. Livestock grazes early in its lifetime, but is moved to feed lots and feed corn and soy to prepare for slaughter. The US spends a quarter of its corn crop on feeding animals, whereas less than 10% is directly feed to people. Animal protein is a significant opportunity cost to US agriculture.

Nope. Go after ethanol if you want wasted corn. We like/need meat, and there is plenty of corn production or grazing land to accommodate that production.

Something like 30-50M buffalo lived and grazed in North America before they were all killed. The ecosystem can most certainly sustain 30-50M cattle grazing. They wouldn't be as _profitable_ as corn-finished cattle, but they produce meat.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#133

Post by ziml77 »

refurb wrote: post #90
jiveturkey42 wrote: post #63

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

As someone who works in healthcare, it must be like a healthcare/medicine/biology thread popping up for me. You'll never see so many people so certain they were right despite lacking the most basic knowledge on the topic.

I've found that you need come into HN comments with a baseline amount of skepticism and then increase skepticism the further the topic strays from being purely about software development.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#134

Post by pjc50 »

catchclose8919 wrote: post #109

Quoted post unavailable.

> Hope we at least go for number (1) and do the trimming at the top where it needs to happen.

Do not advocate for mass murder on HN.

> Why don't we have more, spread around the world, and capable of slight over-production just in case?

Because we don't have global centralized economic planning, and overcapacity costs money?

Besides, only one of the three NPK is really "produced" in a plant, the other two are mined. (You can in theory extract the elements from seawater, like gold and uranium, but it's very energy-expensive)

> local and locally controlled chemical plants

Doesn't actually help unless you can also get the feedstock - natural gas - locally. Otherwise you're still exposed to world prices and world availability issues.

Really this is all fallout from cutting Russia out of the market and the invasion of Ukraine itself.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#135

Post by gruez »

kickout wrote: post #119
gruez wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Animal protein is not a problem. There is plenty of land in the US only suitable for grazing Only in the sense that you can theoretically produce meat that way, but in reality most meat is produced on CAFOs that use grain.

they do this because its most efficient/profitable, not because of a technical limitation. Those economic incentivizes could be changed rapidly given the proper political capital.

I don't think we're disagreeing here. I already admitted in my previous comment that it was theoretically possible. My point was that even though it's possible for animal protein to be "not a problem", that's not the case today.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#136

Post by CraigJPerry »

raverbashing wrote: post #129
CraigJPerry wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don’t know the story, what’s bad about it?

My understanding so far is that the corn used for ethanol isn’t the kind you eat (sweetcorn) it’s a cheaper to produce and more hardy plant but consequently can only really be used for cattle feed and ethanol production.

Ages ago i read something that said in the US, corn was the optimal source but in other parts of the world, sugar cane could result in a more energy efficient process for ethanol.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#137

Post by pjc50 »

_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.

> It has never been a lack of global food shortage

Indeed. It's about availability and right to food, as articulated by Amartya Sen in his Nobel prize winning work on the Bengal (and other) famines.

https://www.prismaweb.org/nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Pove...

However, quite a lot of cattle grazing land isn't really suitable for arable farming. The American approach of raising cattle on soybeans grown on arable land may not be sustainable, but more traditional hillside grazing may be.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#138

Post by cerol »

scns wrote: post #131
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…

My brother worked for a help organization in africa for 1,5 years. When he came back, he told me that they throw food away too. I only cook as much as i can eat.

I don't think food waste can be eliminated. I would even argue that there is threshold after which a decrease in food waste comes at the expense of quality of nutrition.

Even in my university's restaurant, which feeds students on a massive industrial scale, I see food waste. But even in a much bigger scale, the amount was significantly less.

Elimination of food waste is not practical and should not be a goal, you'll just ultimately fail and give up on intermediary goals that might just suffice.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#139

Post by lm28469 »

thriftwy wrote: post #112
lm28469 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Normally it comes out of grass. But the public here seem to assume the only option is to put animals in a building and feed them corn. In this case, you might as well stop eating animal protein, if you can't make it work for you.

Hm sounds like a bold claim, unless you consider grains as grass. Fully grass fed beef account for 1% of the beef sold in the US for example, and god knows what percentage of this comes from 0 fertiliser crops

It's a bit disingenuous to say that animal proteins don't need fertiliser when in fact the extreme vast majority of the animals we eat are fed products or byproducts coming from intensive agriculture which uses fertilisers

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#140

Post by true_religion »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #99
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_

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'

Okay, but I don't think anyone of us are part of the information sector that's commoditizing food production. OP said we are unaware of agriculture, and I mostly agree unless you're in an agrarian area or country, you simply won't learn about these things.

Additionally what you're talking about sounds more like actions prompted by business 'leaders' and not IT staff making databases.

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