Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Your friend's kid sounds spoiled tbh.
Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
441–450 of 575 posts
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#442I feel like the economics will sort this out automatically, at least for the average first-world citizen. Most consume way more than they actually utilize for nutritional value. In America, food is entertainment more than anything else. Once the price of this "entertainment" becomes prohibitive, people will start looking at it with the proper perspective. Simply switching from daily takeout to weekly meal prep can sh…
> The time/discipline tradeoff is complex It's really not. Here's how I do : once a week buy lots vegetables at the market. Once every two days, put a good deal of veggies + rice/lentils (+ rarely chicken) in a casserole. Add little water, cover, let cook very gently. Now you have good food for two days. And cheap. And dead easy to make.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Thank you for the helpful sarcasm. Yes, I am implying farmers markets. There is not currently an effective way for these small farms to network their production in aggregate to sell at a level commensurate to an industrial farm. This is the reason big ag can sell for cheaper. If farmers markets could achieve cost-parity with big grocery (by competing at-scale) then distributed small-scale farming could contribute to…
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea the way we do mass farming now is MASSively flawed. It produces huge yields but has tons of fragility - monoculture crops being a huge flaw as well. The one that fascinates me the most is the way the Mayans did it - Chinampas. That and aquaculture growing lots of smaller fish seems like a create combo if we could get small backyard pond/farms going
I dream of having land with a pond. Properly managed, it could produce about 50 pounds of bluegills, etc from a 1/2 pond every year, with little input and infrequent work.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#445I'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…
Yes, sanctions are wasteful of resources, which could lead to food shortages and people dying, but that's kind of the problem with war: It kills people and wastes resources. Even without sanctions, there would be many Ukrainians (and Russians) killed, and Ukraine would not be keeping up its wheat exports. Ideally, we'd like to prevent this kind of thing from happening very often, which in practice means there needs to be some kind of deterrence against strong countries invading their weaker neighbours. Since western powers can't fight directly against Russia, as it would risk nuclear war, sanctions are one of the few tools available for deterrence. Sanctions aren't about waving a blue and yellow flag or about showing how much you care. They're about preventing similar future conflicts and hopefully giving Ukraine a better negotiating position so the war can end sooner.
Also, it seems like European and North American sanctions shouldn't be a problem for most poor countries unless they're also participating in those sanctions themselves? While sanctions make sense for rich countries, the first priority should definitely be to feed your own people. So if the government of India decides that in order to feed its people, it needs to import potash from Belarus, more power to it.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#446I 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 t…
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
>3 acre hobby farm I've been thinking about getting a hobby farm as well. Do you have any recommendations on where to start or tips? I can't even tell if I can just buy a plot of land in some unincorporated area and use it for whatever I see fit (CA).
Check these three things, at a minimum: - Zoning - Soil type - Water availability. Your local UC agricultural extension office can help.
They can't always help, but they'll have good suggestions to think about.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was a good link, it seems like replacing corn with an alternative crop really is the sensible direction. There is something of note in the methodology behind the figures though: “We apply our models only domestically” Throughout the years of this study, the US imported most of its gasoline. The production emissions are excluded. It’s not comparing like with like.
> Throughout the years of this study, the US imported most of its gasoline. Uhh what? We export more gasoline than we import. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_snd_a_epm0f_mbblpd_a_cu... Even if you meant crude oil and not gasoline you are still wrong, we recently became a net oil exporter.
The study data is from 2008 to 2016 right? The US was (massively) an importer of gasoline in that time period, right?
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is possibly, but yields go way down, in some cases by 50% or more. the amount of land that will need to be utilized for food growth will have to drastically increased. not saying this is a bad thing. soil regeneration and more sustainable farming practices are a good thing Imo. it's just that we can't switch to that instantly. yield goes down, takes time to switch, cost likely will increase to make the same $/ac…
The problem is government which has an incentive to "feed everyone" which means cheap food by any means necessary. Food prices must go up, let them naturally go up. That means less food for poorer people, which in turn slowly means less people (lower birth rates, poor and bigger families struggling, etc), until we reach equilibrium with our environment under the terms we accept. It's the only fair way to do it, IMO.
Oh, and to paraphrase Hitchhiker's Guide, programmers will probably the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't know if this is my theory or just heavily implied but rarely stated in the literature: chemical fertilizers are giving plants something for 'free' that they used to pay for, and the reason the crops get bigger is not strictly because of the fertilizers, but because they get to spend those calories on more fruit. There have even been a few studies that warn that some strains of conventional crops are losing th…
A lot of US agriculture is done on by contract operators. Bill Gates seems to work mostly in that model.
I mention Gates because what he says suggests that he'd love to see that claim pan out on a large scale. Also, he's known for insisting on high dollar yields.
And yet, we're talking about demonstrations and not actual significant experience.
Maybe Gates is lying about his social goals AND also isn't profit-maximizing.
But, if he isn't, why aren't the demonstrators doing good and doing well (2X production is a big bucks) by doing this stuff at scale somewhere in Gates-land?