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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#141

Post by radford-neal »

kickout wrote: post #74
pasabagi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Will likely happen in our lifetime. I'm positive of it. not a damn thing we can do either. If it doesn't rain, no 'genome edited drought resistance' will matter. Crops need water period (be nice if they needed _less_ water though)

"be nice if they needed _less_ water though"

Fortunately, they do. Higher atmospheric CO2 levels mean that plants can obtain the CO2 they need more easily, with the stomata in their leaves not having to open as much. Consequently, they loose less water through the stomata, and are more drought resistant.

Of course, this only helps to a certain extent. A bad enough drought will still be very bad. And a very bad drought is bound to happen sooner or later, just from natural variability. So a robust food supply system, incorporating both a degree of local self-sufficiency in inputs, and global trade (for when crops fail in one location) is essential.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#142

Post by oceanplexian »

bkland wrote: post #70

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.

Ukraine is a contributing factor but so was COVID. Governments printed trillions of dollars and messed with the economy while millions of people stayed inside and didn’t work for weeks or months. What did everyone think was going to happen?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#143

Post by mrfusion »

orangepurple wrote: post #104
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".

> 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/

Could we use it as a diet food if it’s indigestible?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#144

Post by orwin »

px43 wrote: post #117
alecco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle East is starting to have issues. This will impact oil prices.

I don't think that the people experiencing poverty and hunger in the middle east have any relation to anyone in the oil industry there.

History doesn't agree with you. Last time the middle-east and Maghreb got hungry, it was 2011. The Arab spring wouldn't have come if it weren't for food riots.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#145

Post by thinkcontext »

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.

This is disputed. The GAO issued a report that cited research which claimed its worse when taking land use effects into account.

In regards to your other question about why its a bad way to produce alcohol, from an EROI perspective, a frequently cited figure is its around 1.5:1 (invest one unit of energy, get 1.5 back). Making it from Brazilian sugar cane on the other hand is 8:1.

Whatever the exact numbers are, the benefits are pretty modest if there are any. Its an agricultural subsidy program.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#146

Post by supertofu »

Ok, so we have all these enormous factory farms full of animals who produce fertilizer quite naturally. All we have to do is give them nutritious feed and better lives so they are spared disease. Why can't Big Agriculture pivot to actually using the poop that these animals produce?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#147

Post by thinkcontext »

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.

I've heard of the seal issue but never seen any numbers on how widespread the damage is. Got any numbers?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#148

Post by chasd00 »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #126
phil21 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 strawb…

>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.

are you implying a farmer's market? they exist.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#149

Post by thinkcontext »

orangepurple wrote: post #104
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".

> 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/

Sure but something else could be planted in its place or the acreage could go to conservation and absorb more carbon.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#150

Post by hef19898 »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #110
refurb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It conflating data with knowledge. "Because I deal with X industry data, I understand X industry"

That attitude is the main beef I have with highly qualified, up to PhD level, data scientists. they could bring so much to the table, in any domain, by working with the domain experts. Instead of doing that, and trying to learn, most (basically all I encountered so far) try to understand any domain they encounter based on their data sets and some first principle. Kind of re-discovering gravity, and then expecting praise for being geniuses for doing so.

A shame, really. Because my skill in big data analysis stops at what Excel can do without macros. I'd love to get more data insight, simply turned out that it is hard to get.

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