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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#511

Post by honkdaddy »

triceratops wrote: post #294
honkdaddy wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'insanely oversized "trucks"' are necessary for reasons probably not evident if you grew up in a country like NT. I'm from a small town in rural Ontario, Canada where most people drive a 4WD vehicle largely because they'd never get out of their snow-filled driveway in a tiny European style car. Lots of country roads are literally impassable without a large machine; having a truck of some kind is more or less a ne…

What explains the abundance of trucks that I see here in suburbia? Or in places like the Bay Area, where there's never, ever any snow.

I'm not sure, I've never lived in the Bay Area.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#512

Post by Trisell »

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…

There is a tremendous market of corporate interests that have a very vested interest in farming staying the way it is. From custom GMO seeds to input(fertilizer, fungicides, pesticides) producers to implement manufacturers they all want farming to stay the same. A regenerative approach removes a massive amount of those needs and profits.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#513

Post by solarkraft »

kickout wrote: post #510
CydeWeys wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I for one have been eating meat for less than 20 years. Lots of people (not only individually, but culturally) live mostly vegetarian. There is no problem with it.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#514

Post by User23 »

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 "problem", in scare quotes, is that these solutions take more thinking and knowing than scourging your fields every year. But since running a farm practically takes a bachelor's degree these days, that's not really a problem of lack of resource in that area. It's more a problem of perspective and focus.

I agree on this point. Every successful farmer I've met has been of notably above average intelligence. However at the family farm scale it's a very fragile business. A small increase in input costs can greatly reduce or eliminate profitability. While I think permaculture, no-till, and other such techniques are great, we have to acknowledge that they require considerably more labor than running a combine harvester over corn or soy fields. The labor shortage is bad enough that even generally immigration skeptical rural areas welcome H-2A migrant workers. And while the best American farm workers are every bit as hard-working as the best Mexican seasonal workers, the average Mexican that comes to the USA in the program is considerably more reliable than the average American these days.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#515

Post by disambiguation »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #451
disambiguation wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry i didnt mean to misrepresent your point. i wanted to emphasize (and i think we agree here) that the land is single use. allowing biology to "do its thing" usually means we can't also use it to grow crops. maybe some sustainable hybrid strategies exist, but i doubt the yields are anywhere near the mass food production we have today.

The land use isn't singular on a regeneratively managed farm. Agroforestry and intense rotational grazing are two examples of ecosystems planned for maximum profitable output from land. An agroforestry farm may provide mushrooms, berries, nuts, wood, meat, dairy, eggs, grains, and fruit from the same plot of land that may provide 201,000 bushels of wheat (~5000 acres). The difference is management. Regenerative pract…

TIL this seems very promising, thanks for sharing!

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#517

Post by johnny22 »

unmole wrote: post #428
hinkley wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should look at what's going on with agriculture in India right now. There was a lot of bankrupt farmers in the US in the 80's, and that's happening in India over the last decade. Graphically, some farmers are taking their lives by drinking leftover pesticides when they realize they can't afford their crops this year. India is, by many accounts, likely to switch to a new-new form of agriculture sooner than…

Farming in India has been perilous for centuries because it depends on the Monsoon. Improved irrigation, better seeds and yes artificial fertilizers have all significantly improved farm incomes. Nevertheless, structural issues remain. Farmer suicides are not even remotely new and it's disingenous to suggest otherwise. And it has to be pointed out that the suicide rate amongst Indian farmers is lower than the national…

> You'll have to pry Western farming methods from the cold dead hands of Indian farmers. Even the urban intelligencia has shut up about organic/traditional farming after seeing what's happening across the Palk Strait.

The indian itelligencia? I'd like to hear more about the commonalities here between equivalent folks in the uhmmm "west"

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#518

Post by mauflows »

usrn wrote: post #483
mauflows wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We do if we want everyone to eat This is not true. There is plenty of food, especially if we put all resources we currently feed livestock into feeding humans.

God dammit humans can't eat grass. How hard is that for you people to get?

I never said humans can eat grass.

The vast majority of ruminants are fed corn and soy. If they were all to eat grass we'd be able to produce much less meat than we currently do, and also use much more land

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#519

Post by ellopoppit »

mauflows wrote: post #518
usrn wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God dammit humans can't eat grass. How hard is that for you people to get?

I never said humans can eat grass. The vast majority of ruminants are fed corn and soy. If they were all to eat grass we'd be able to produce much less meat than we currently do, and also use much more land

Pigs can eat garbage, feces even

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#520

Post by hinkley »

Trisell wrote: post #512
rmah wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a tremendous market of corporate interests that have a very vested interest in farming staying the way it is. From custom GMO seeds to input(fertilizer, fungicides, pesticides) producers to implement manufacturers they all want farming to stay the same. A regenerative approach removes a massive amount of those needs and profits.

The farm industrial complex is built around creating problems and selling you solutions.
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