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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#401

Post by llanowarelves »

mike_hearn wrote: post #159

I'm always bothered by stories like these that seem to do a reasonable job of listing causes of self-inflicted problems, and then try to act like it was some sort of inevitable act of God, or natural law of the universe or something. According to TFA the causes are: 1. Back-to-back storms in the USA causing production shutdowns. OK, that one is genuinely just random natural variance. 2. Natural gas price explosion. T…

It's not an own-goal for the elites and politicians, who now have an excuse for their bad monetary policy causing inflation, and who have got and will continue to get many more dependents as things worsen.

Never let a good crisis go to waste!

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#402

Post by m_coder »

rmah wrote: post #389
hinkley wrote: post #326

The fungi guys will tell you that running out of mineral fertilizer is bullshit on roughly 95% of the arable land because all of the minerals your food needs are right there in the sand and clay. I once heard it described that conventional agriculture is essentially a hydroponics system using partially sterilized soil as the substrate. Nearly every symbiotic relationship fungi make is based on buying sugars from plan…

They could prove their case by actually doing it at commercial farm scale. But as far as I know, no one has. Which, to me anyway, shows they're probably (but not certainly) wrong.

The comment farther up the thread (at this point anyhow)[1] references Gabe Brown. He is using very little to no commercial fertilizer on his farm and has been for years. I am guessing his audience among cash strapped young desperate farmers has increased a lot in the last 3 months.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31237965

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#403

Post by mcguire »

tagami wrote: post #366
giantg2 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or from crop rotations of legumes with nitrogen fixing microbes. But that too would require a move away from intensive industrialized agricultural practices.

Yes. Nitrogen fixing bacteria (i.e. R. leguminasarum, s. meliloti) love the sugar exchange legumes offer. Cover cropping and inter cropping have potential to rethink the 113-year old haber-bosch solution.

"Cover crops were in use on less than 2 percent of total cropland (for all crops) during 2010-11 (6.8 million acres), with adoption rates higher in some regions (e.g., the Southern Seaboard and the Mississippi Portal). Although the benefits of cover crops and no-till/strip-till are enhanced when these practices are used on the same fields, the low cover crop adoption rate suggests that these benefits are realized on few acres." (From the report summary.)

https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=440...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#404

Post by llanowarelves »

smcl wrote: post #22
Asooka wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If eating meat were bad for the environment, all predators who eat exclusively large prey would be extinct. We can have a discussion about how much meat per year production is sustainable, but I'm not going to start eating bugs.

And where in the comment thread was anyone saying a) all instances of meat-eating is bad for the environment b) you will need to start eating insects

Why does anyone in the thread need to have said it?

That's been in the news cycle for the last half-decade and major NGOs as well as governments now (EU approved bugs as food) are on board, saying it'll be necessary to feed everybody their protein in the future.

Why do you think that's not relevant?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#405

Post by throwaway894345 »

titzer wrote: post #311
rootusrootus wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 see…

It's not the first-order (i.e. direct) effects of suburban life. In fact, TBH, suburban life can be downright cozy--you got your own decent-sized home, a little patch of grass, maybe a patio, barbecue, deck, maybe even a garden. That's not the issue. It's the externalities , the downstream effects, of trying to scale up suburban living to huge numbers of people. At a small scale, a little town of a few hundred or cou…

I don't like American suburbs for me personally, but the US has tons of space and I don't understand how traffic would be better if we pushed more people into less space (with fewer streets and so on). Indeed, most big cities are famous for their congestion.

With respect to prices, these are self-regulating. If prices go up, things either get denser and/or people move elsewhere.

> Culture takes a dive.

Again, suburbs aren't my thing, but it seems really offensive/chauvinistic to imply that suburban culture is lesser than urban culture. I'm sure I'm misunderstanding, and in the spirit of charity I want to give you the opportunity to set the record straight.

> No more walking or biking when those freeways go up.

Is this intrinsic to suburbs, or is it an artifact of how suburbs were planned at the time that suburbs exploded in popularity? Can suburbs be designed to be more walkable/bikeable (I would actually be surprised if they aren't already)?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#406

Post by blockwriter »

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…

I agree with eating what you acquire and prepare, but food waste is also a byproduct of adequate food supply, or of supersaturated food systems. It is not only an individual attitude toward food. It would be great if I could give my leftovers that are likely to go to waste to someone down the hall in my building, but they are not in a food scarce situation. In their calculus, it would be easier, and safer, to make their own dinner. There is perhaps only one person within five miles of me that is food scarce to the point that my leftovers would be useful or desirable to them. Within ten miles, there is perhaps an order of magnitude more; within twenty, two or three orders more. All the same, it would not make sense to rectify accidental waste by donating it in almost every instance when I produce accidental food waste. The transport required would make it unfeasible.

An abundance of food does self-perpetuate to the point that it becomes expendable. Well run family kitchens would likely have a positive effect on people's disposition towards food. I mill grains and bake bread, sourcing the grain supply from a well-run farm in my state, and this never fails to give me a moment to reflect on my relationship to food. It is, unfortunately, not commonplace for American households to engage with their consumption further up the supply chain than the supermarket shelf, where access is the most convenient.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#407

Post by mordechai9000 »

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…

I'm from the U.S., and I was actually raised with a somewhat similar view of food waste. But my parents were born in the 30s. Many of my contemporaries had parents born in the 40s or 50s, and their attitudes were very different.

I was over at a friend's house a few years ago, and she had prepared lunch for her daughter. When her daughter complained she didn't like it, my friend threw the whole plate food in the trash without blinking, and made something else. I asked my friend, and she said the food is so cheap it doesn't matter. And you can't just let your child not eat.

My parents certainly didn't grow up poor. Both of my grandfathers made a good living. I don't know what conclusion to draw, but there seems to have been a huge cultural shift towards food in the post war years.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#408

Post by smcl »

llanowarelves wrote: post #404
smcl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where in the comment thread was anyone saying a) all instances of meat-eating is bad for the environment b) you will need to start eating insects

Why does anyone in the thread need to have said it? That's been in the news cycle for the last half-decade and major NGOs as well as governments now (EU approved bugs as food) are on board, saying it'll be necessary to feed everybody their protein in the future. Why do you think that's not relevant?

Because they were responding to a person as if they had said it. You can't have a discussion where you just make up what the other person said and respond to that. And in fact you've done exactly the same. You've assigned a position to me that I haven't stated at all. It'd be like me ending this comment with: Why would you make such a inflammatory anti-muslim joke on Eid Al Fitr of all days?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#409

Post by hinkley »

rmah wrote: post #389
hinkley wrote: post #326

The fungi guys will tell you that running out of mineral fertilizer is bullshit on roughly 95% of the arable land because all of the minerals your food needs are right there in the sand and clay. I once heard it described that conventional agriculture is essentially a hydroponics system using partially sterilized soil as the substrate. Nearly every symbiotic relationship fungi make is based on buying sugars from plan…

They could prove their case by actually doing it at commercial farm scale. But as far as I know, no one has. Which, to me anyway, shows they're probably (but not certainly) wrong.

Gabe Brown manages about 5000 acres, with a skeleton crew.

On paper Mark Shepard seems to have about 106 acres around his house, which I think is a gross branding mistake, because he farms a lot more land than just his homestead. I have to find this interview again because it was kind of shocking and I'm afraid I may be misquoting it. One interviewer got him talking about all of the land he owns elsewhere, leases, or consults on and he makes some comment about he may actually be managing more farmland than anyone east of the Mississippi.

Most of us are on the internet all day regardless. We downplay the incremental cost of both doing things, bragging about it online, and getting it on people's radars, like it's simple but we mostly think about the people who are good at it and not all of the ones who quietly disappeared without most of us ever learning about it.

Farming is exhausting. Farming is remote. Farming is slow, and experiments take years to prove to be more than dumb luck. The gap between killing it and selling your audience on the notion that you are killing it is much, much wider. Talk enough, and you have to stop doing, which means you're now selling ideas that you can't back up.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#410

Post by llanowarelves »

typest wrote: post #207
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. :)

As someone who is strongly wants to "get rid of cars and switch everyone to public transit and cycling" -- no one is talking about doing this in rural areas. Should we decrease reliance on cars in cities and focus more on alternative forms of transport? Yes. Will this work in rural areas? No, of course not.

People who live in cities tend to look down on people who don't and wouldn't really care about what happens there, despite the fact that they rely on them for food.

For example, think about how many times you've seen people say they don't care about gas prices because they don't have a car: they take public transportation (which uses gas..) or walk.

The supply chain consists of things magically appearing in bodegas for their consumption, and that's why their pejoratively-named "flyover country" is and does nothing, they think.

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