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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#501

Post by pphysch »

Melatonic wrote: post #380
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…

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

Aquaculture is a huge industry in East/SE Asia.

There's lots of FUD about China maliciously overconsuming fish, but they actually (sustainably) farm >50% of their seafood IIRC.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#502

Post by SantalBlush »

giantg2 wrote: post #493
benji-york wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are better-tasting fish, but yes.

That's probably a personal preference or maybe due to water quality. They're one of my favorite. There's a great TED talk our there about water quality and fish flavor, but I don't remember the person.

Seconded. Pan-fried bluegill can be pretty darn good.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#503

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

hinkley wrote: post #383
tagami wrote: post #366

Earlier 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…

The claim that people and companies are leaving a 2x yield on the floor (well, field) just because they're stupid does not seem plausible to me, so I suspect you missed some aspect of it.

(The most obvious could be that nobody want to buy some of the other crops, so while you could get the calories out, you can't get the dollars out, and the calories would go to waste if everyone did that.)

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#504

Post by Trisell »

arthurcolle wrote: post #467
psychlops wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, good question. Blackened bluegill if not. You could always do tilapia or catfish.

Tilapia has always been pretty tasteless in various dishes I've tried so not really a big fan. Catfish can be ok sometimes

Tilapia is the tofu of fish. It tastes like nothing on its own but is a massive sponge to flavors you throw at it.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#505

Post by R0b0t1 »

pphysch wrote: post #501
Melatonic wrote: post #380

Earlier 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

Aquaculture is a huge industry in East/SE Asia. There's lots of FUD about China maliciously overconsuming fish, but they actually (sustainably) farm >50% of their seafood IIRC.

There's no FUD, Chinese fishermen move into other country's territorial waters and poach fish.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#506

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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…

Every time I hear about food waste, I'm glad about what it means for food security. Don't get me wrong, I'm not glad about the fact that food is being wasted, just the implication: If some horrible thing happens and we suddenly lose 30% of food production, nobody will have to starve. We'll have to eat older leftovers and be more careful, but we won't be fighting over food.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#507

Post by christophilus »

hedora wrote: post #372
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…

Most of the nitrogen in currently living humans was captured from the atmosphere via the Haber Bosch process. That is the primary contribution of synthetic fertilizer, and there aren't scalable natural processes to match it. Countries used to go to war over nitrogen stores (such as islands covered in bat guano).

I know farmers who grow velvet beans and other nitrogen fixers and have huge yields. They’re somewhere between permaculture and organic farmers, though, so not industrial scale. It’d be nice if we could come up with a good way to scale permaculture.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#508

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

yabones wrote: post #362
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…

Despite growing up in a prosperous nation, as part of a middle-class family, this is always something I've been acutely aware of. Most likely because both of my parents came from backgrounds with their own struggles. Every time I see a garbage can, I see money that was spent on waste. And when I see money, I see time that was spent. And time is something you can't get back, it's gone for good once you spend it. Every…

> And when I see money, I see time that was spent. And time is something you can't get back, it's gone for good once you spend it. Every garbage can is a waste of life. Minutes and hours thrown away.

Quite the opposite. Often food waste is the result of convenience. That garbage can full of food in the cafeteria is a prime example: People could get smaller portions, but then they'd have to queue again to get seconds if they got too little, so they get a little more to be on the safe side.

Sometimes, something in my fridge spoils because I didn't eat it fast enough. I could always shop only for the next day when I'm sure I'll eat it, but then I'd spend at least an hour extra each week on trips to the store.

Sure, some time was spent to produce it, but the low price is a good signal that that is negligible.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#509

Post by SlicerDicer »

rmah wrote: post #470
hinkley wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to sound contrary... but if their techniques are better, why haven't they been replicated widely? If they can output just 20% better financial return, they will double the profits for most farmers. Understand that it is my wish and hope that these sort of low/no fertilizer organic techniques can work better than "traditional" heavy-fertilizer/irrigation farming the west now mainly employs. It's just that vaguely…

What is harder? Go ahead and try to convince people.

I have created fully automated systems for indoor that control everything except harvest. It is impossible to convince people due to the cost I am pretty sure.

Thusly? Money printer really does not go brr for this.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#510

Post by kickout »

CydeWeys wrote: post #473
kickout wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need programming, iphones, cars, computers, boats, houses, clothes, etc. But we like them.

The point is that, if the alternative is massive global starvation, we can give up on eating most meat so that that food can be more efficiently be eaten directly by humans instead. And you don't have to give up any of programming, iphones, cars, computers, boats, houses, clothes, etc., to do so.

We've been eating meat _far_ longer than houses, phones, tech, etc. Will be _much_ harder to give that up. Been eating meat for hundreds of millennia
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