Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security • Hacker News Board

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#231

Post by hunterb123 » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #225

hunterb123 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (insanely oversized “trucks”) are hardly ever necessary. As someone with a truck constantly having to lend it for friends to use, I disagree. Not sure exactly what you meant by insanely oversized, but a lift kit and tires aren't abnormal, they have use for off-roading / mudding which is fairly popular. It's both a style preference and lifestyle preference. Good luck using a car if you have a lot of outdoor hobbies…

Isn't the fact that your friends don't need a truck because they can borrow one occasionally evidence against your point? I mean, yes, it's true that it would be nicer if they'd rent one instead of impose on you. But clearly they don't "need" trucks of their own, because they have access to shared resources. This is the kind of absolutist argument that these threads always fall into. You hear someone say "not everyon…

> I mean, yes, it's true that it would be nicer if they'd rent one instead of impose on you.

Whether they rent or borrow one, they still needed a truck.

I need mine all the time, as do most others I know. I also listed activities that people like to use them for.

> But we also build and deploy way too many of them. Those facts can be true at the same time.

How many should we allow then? Who should qualify for them? Do recreational activities not qualify? Who gets to decide this? Do we do this for other things?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#232

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #198

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…

> 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 comm…

[deleted]

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#233

Post by rootusrootus » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #209

throwaway894345 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Similarly, a sure-fire way to tell someone hasn't lived in a place where you haven't needed a car for every aspect of life is when they criticize anti-car policy without engaging with the deeper reasons behind it :) I think a lot of the pushback against cars have to do with the popularization of human-centric design movements that question the assumption that cars are the pinnacle of transportation that American citi…

> Does it make sense to give every family 0.75 acres of grass, 400 sqft of driveway and a 2 car garage

A standard suburban house doesn't sit on 0.75 acres. 0.2 is typical. Though you're probably low on the driveway and garage :).

I'd like to see a better argument for why we shouldn't live this way. There are relatively large metros (e.g. Portland) that are predominantly suburban single family homes, and so far it seems to work fine. Sure, we could compress Portland into a 10 mile by 10 mile square, but why? Would it actually make our lives better? By what metric?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#234

Post by goatlover » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #193

kickout wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Speaking of beef, there's a lot of cows that graze in the US West on a lot of pasture.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#235

Post by thriftwy » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:50 PM UTC

brimble wrote: post #210

thriftwy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Late Soviet regime produced so much farm hardware as if it wanted to outright lay siege to the field and storm it by having greater numbers. Most of it went rotting. I remember a village school with a large yard full of half-disassembled tractors and combines. Apparently the students were supposed to learn to use all the stuff and then give the field no rest. In reality it would just rot. I don't think you should lab…

I didn't take incompetent as an insult, but in its straightforward, descriptive sense: the people were not competent at the jobs they were assigned to (and, presumably, weren't given sufficient help in becoming competent)

I have to disagree. The tractor-builders were very competent in building 100,000 new tractors each year when operating on vastly insufficient resources with apathetic workforce; and making sure these tractors could leave the factory gates on their own. In short, they did fulfill their plan.

Would they be happier producing 10,000 tractors that would actually last, instead? Maybe. Would they be able to do that right away? No, but with some practice it could be done. Could they produce better tractors with the constraints that they had? I don't think so.

You will undoubtedly see the same pattern all over the corporate world.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#236

Post by PTOB » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:50 PM UTC

api wrote: post #68

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanos’ ideas about everything were extremely silly. A halving of population would do nothing on any time scale. A small blip easily recovered by reproduction. People deserve better writing, even in comic book movies.

Real life despots and fanatics are usually quite a bit crazier and less coherent than Thanos. As usual you have to tone it down to make it believable in fiction. A realistic depiction of a genocidal fanatic would be too stupid or insane to be believable. See: Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, ISIS, Kim Jong Un, and numerous other examples. If they were rational they would not be despots and fanatics. Unfortunately charismatic l…

Reading _Wizard's First Rule_ right now. "Charisma bypasses the rational mind and shoots straight into the limbic system (as do fear, outrage, etc)." That's pretty much the premise of the book.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#237

Post by Alex3917 » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:50 PM UTC

I don't get this whole fertilizer crunch thing. If you look at the price of Osmocote on Amazon, it's basically not much different than it's always been:

https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B00GTDGMHC

So basically the cost of enough fertilizer to feed an entire family for a year has gone up by, what, $20? $100?

And that's at retail prices; the cost (and cost increase) would obviously be much smaller when purchased in bulk. And that's also for the name brand product, obviously generics are much cheaper.

I'm not a farmer but I did fertilize ~20 fruit trees with weekend with Plant-tone, Peters 20-20-20, Garden Lime, and Fish & Kelp. My cost of doing that for the entire year will be maybe $60, and that's only because I'm trying to maximize fruit quality and tree health rather than minimize costs.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#238

Post by hosh » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

I mean, we have been depleting soil fertility through the use of synthetic fertilizers for decades. It’s been a self-destructive cycle.

Perhaps some farmers might switch to practices that are not so dependent upon as much to external inputs … but even switching to things like no-till or using local inputs like manure, or using soil-regenerating practices like polycropping or integrated pest-control is going to take time.

It’s doable though. The Cubans have been operating their agriculture without imported oil and fertilizers since the US shut down imports. That also meant that use of tractors became limited, as are long-distance transport for food.

Better than food security is food sovereignty, and people within a locality being able to feed themselves.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#239

Post by ajross » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

hunterb123 wrote: post #231

ajross wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the fact that your friends don't need a truck because they can borrow one occasionally evidence against your point? I mean, yes, it's true that it would be nicer if they'd rent one instead of impose on you. But clearly they don't "need" trucks of their own, because they have access to shared resources. This is the kind of absolutist argument that these threads always fall into. You hear someone say "not everyon…

> I mean, yes, it's true that it would be nicer if they'd rent one instead of impose on you. Whether they rent or borrow one, they still needed a truck. I need mine all the time, as do most others I know. I also listed activities that people like to use them for. > But we also build and deploy way too many of them. Those facts can be true at the same time. How many should we allow then? Who should qualify for them? D…

> Whether they rent or borrow one, they still needed a truck.

Yes, but only occasionally! Again, you're thinking we're trying to "take away your truck", when we're just saying (correctly) that most people (like your friends!) don't need them except rarely and are better served by other kind of resource allocation than personal vehicles.

> How many should we allow [...] who should qualify [...] banned [...] who gets to decide

This isn't a good faith argument. No one is advocating for any of that. Please don't.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#240

Post by ajsnigrutin » Mon, May 02, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #209

throwaway894345 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Similarly, a sure-fire way to tell someone hasn't lived in a place where you haven't needed a car for every aspect of life is when they criticize anti-car policy without engaging with the deeper reasons behind it :) I think a lot of the pushback against cars have to do with the popularization of human-centric design movements that question the assumption that cars are the pinnacle of transportation that American citi…

Cars give you freedom... yes, they're a cost, they take up space, you have to build around them, but you can move wherever you want, whenever you want.

I live in a country with relatively good public transport, relatively great one in the capital and few other large cities, with public bikes and biking lanes.

Then 2020 came, and due to covid, no more public transport (for some time). Want to go to work? Too bad. Want to go to the larger (and cheaper) store... nope. Order food delivery from a large supermarket chain? Good luck, people don't want to go to crowded stores, and delivery slots are full 2 minutes after midnight.

I know it's an extreme situation, but it made people rethink what they need for their independece, and cars came high on the list.