Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security • Hacker News Board

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#191

Post by throwaway894345 » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

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…

I think the specific problems would-be technologists have in approaching farmers are:

(1) beliefs that farming is simple and farmers are inept

(2) beliefs that the technology they (our facile technologists) know (e.g., robotics, saas, ai, etc) can be shoe-horned into or sprinkled onto agriculture for revolutionary results (at best these things tend to be incremental improvements and at worse they are detrimental).

In general, technologists need to understand agriculture as a global dynamic system in order to understand the opportunities for innovation (there certainly are places where applying robotics or AI or etc can lead to revolutionary results, but it's probably not obvious to someone whose experience with agriculture was an elementary school field trip 30 years ago).

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#192

Post by idiotsecant » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:16 PM UTC

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…

> The food supply will be more resilient when farming gets smaller, simpler, and more distributed

Will it? In my area the main agricultural products are apples, dairy products, beef, wheat, and potatoes, because those are the things that my area's climate and geology support. I can already buy those things cheaply and readily and they are farmed efficiently and widely by very large operations. How does farming get more resilient when individual farms get smaller? Smaller farms, by definition, have higher overheads because they benefit less from economy of scale, right? Logistics get more expensive for a zillion small actors, equipment and maintenance is a larger slice of the overall operation, smaller operations have less efficient access to capital, etc...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#193

Post by trompetenaccoun » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

kickout wrote: post #164

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much arable land does livestock take up?

Not much, most of that land literally has no use besides animal grazing.

The majority of animals doesn't "graze", they're locked in factory farms. And you're ignoring the land needed to grow the feed, which makes a major difference.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#194

Post by cinntaile » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #172

true_religion wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'

If you have the right data, I don't see why not?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#195

Post by salmonfamine » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #111

yunohn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A halving of population would do nothing on any time scale. A small blip easily recovered by reproduction. The population was half of 2020 in 1973 (1). Emissions were also half of now back then (2). That’s nearly 30 years of runway that Thano’s solution would provide. With today’s technology and rapid iteration, we could definitely do something better for climate change. I’m not endorsing the method, but merely dis…

Halving the emissions today would buy us only a couple of years until 2° warming becomes completely unpreventable.

This is simply not true.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#196

Post by EricE » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

cerol wrote: post #138

scns wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Food waste may always be a thing, but it can be handled a lot smarter than we do. We need more of this: https://www.porkbusiness.com/news/hog-production/famed-dirty...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#197

Post by legulere » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

kickout wrote: post #164

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much arable land does livestock take up?

Not much, most of that land literally has no use besides animal grazing.

At least here in Europe most meat is produced with animal feed grown on arable land (mostly in South America).

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#198

Post by mistrial9 » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

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…

> Ag is definitely one of HNs blind spots

I met a young man from Missouri.. he had a large frame but was just 20 years old or so.. He was harried and furtive and was getting into some trouble here and there. Upon knowing him a little bit, he was traumatized by large, loud, dominant men giving him orders, while as an intelligent young man he had questions. Of course many of the men I refer to here are from the Ag community.

North American Ag is not solved, and with the Oklahoma Dustbowl and current crop patterns in California, it must be obvious to science that sometimes, Ag has evolved for CONTROL not INTELLIGENCE. American factory animal farming is a living nightmare in places. American treatment of topsoil, and of fresh water, and industrial placement at the Great Lakes for that matter, are a DISASTER. You defend the Ag "community" like they need defending, from urban smart-people? They are beetle-like survivors of decades of market distortion, ego and alcohol.

Disrupt the Ag sector, yes please.

ps- your elected representative William Gates already started the ball rolling with farm ownership. see any news story after his "revelation" .. first result in GS

" Today, Bill Gates owns 242,000 acres of farmland in 19 states. In addition, he owns 25,750 acres of transitional land and 1,234 acres of recreational land for total land holdings of 268,984 acres. His largest holding is in Louisiana (69,071 acres), followed by Arkansas (47,927 acres) and Arizona (25,750 acres). Aug 27, 2021"

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#199

Post by thebooktocome » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

kickout wrote: post #132

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The ecosystem that supported buffalo herds three centuries ago no longer exists.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#200

Post by slfnflctd » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

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.

In theory, I agree. However, this is only currently true for small parts of the beef supply chain in the US. The vast majority of meat tissue growth people eat here comes from factory farms.

I don't have a major problem with meat eating when it's done sustainably and humanely. The real issue is that this is not the case for way too much of it now, and current meat production practices are yet another example of unsustainable overconsumption in general. Yet more than half the population regularly celebrates and enshrines that overconsumption, reinforcing it. This is not a good look to anyone who's really thinking long term & globally about these things.