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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#171

Post by zmgsabst »

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…

> 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

Very astute comment.

If any farmers in WA (or elsewhere) want a free consult on how to connect with your customers via the internet, please reach out!

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#172

Post by jiveturkey42 »

true_religion wrote: post #140
jiveturkey42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't blame the individual IT staff or engineers for being foot soldiers of corporate mandate.

I do blame the mindset of 'every problem can be solved with enough data'

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#173

Post by usrn »

disambiguation wrote: post #162

This is a story about supply chains and inflation, but the real story is that we're in the century of "peak resources". Fertilizer depends on phosphorous which cannot be renewed or substituted once its gone. Without fertilizer we can't support the multi-billion person population we have today. We're not running out tomorrow, or even this decade, but we may experience peak phosphorous within our lifetimes.

Short of a nuclear reaction it isn't "gone" and some organisms are known to concentrate it when it's scattered.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#174

Post by throwaway894345 »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #63

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

My favorite are the threads about how we need to get rid of cars and switch everyone to public transit and cycling. :)

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#175

Post by ryanmercer »

macinjosh wrote: post #80
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…

Have you ever been to a farm and ranch? A grazing pasture is not the same as a crop field. Pastures are on land not suitable for crops due to size, shape, terrain, soil etc. Sometimes livestock is even put on crop fields to help enrich the soil and to let the animals eat remnants from a harvest. Land limitations are not a problem.

>Have you ever been to a farm and ranch?

Have you ever been to a feed lot? It is not a pretty little hilly patch of land with cows wandering aimlessly around nibbling on grass. The vast majority of cattle are, at a minimum, finished on a feedlot. A patch of dirt, packed in as much as movement allows, and fed grain via a trough for half (or more) of their weight gain.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#176

Post by Aperocky »

disambiguation wrote: post #162

This is a story about supply chains and inflation, but the real story is that we're in the century of "peak resources". Fertilizer depends on phosphorous which cannot be renewed or substituted once its gone. Without fertilizer we can't support the multi-billion person population we have today. We're not running out tomorrow, or even this decade, but we may experience peak phosphorous within our lifetimes.

> Fertilizer depends on phosphorous which cannot be renewed or substituted once its gone.

Can you elaborate? It's not like phosphorous in fertilizer are leaving Earth after being used as fertilizer.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#178

Post by qeternity »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #136
raverbashing wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effic…

> but consequently can only really be used for cattle feed

Spoiler: most agriculture goes to supporting industrial livestock farming.

It doesn’t change the economics. The ethanol mandate is horribly stupid.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#180

Post by SemanticStrengh »

As a reminder Skq1 solves world hunger however like most scientific revolutions, nobody will use it. It multiply by two plants growth rate.

https://www.dissercat.com/content/biotekhnologicheskie-osnov... https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2095713A1/en Ah yes downvote because key knowledge nobody knows should keep being ignored otherwise it could.. save life's? Imagine the horror!

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