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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#541

Post by mauflows »

Diederich wrote: post #476
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is meat necessary for, other than proteins and iron? Taste? Tradition? Also, what decisions are you talking about? OP said one does not need meat. Isn't that a provable fact?

My wife needs to eat red meat, otherwise she has very low iron levels. Note: she does not like red meat, and we spent years and years trying to get her iron levels up without it. She started to have to get iron infusions, which are no fun at all. All that stopped when she started eating red meat twice a week. Yes, this is a very rare case, and I can imagine a future where red meat is provided as something like medici…

Fair point! Thanks for the perspective

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#542

Post by Beached »

simmanian wrote: post #352
Beached wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from what I understand / have read. yields go down per acre when moving from synthetic fertilizer to organic / natural fertilization. not just in the immediate, but forever. soil health, nutrition, crop resilience all go up, input and input cost go down, but so does overall yield per acre. from all the reading I have done, and in my own experience with a shitty 3acre hobby farm, overall yield per acre never reaches a…

>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).

My land used to be a traditionally farmed plot.

It is expensive, time consuming and very laborous. Only do it if you like the out doors, you are home 90% of the time in planting and harvest season, and half the time during the growing season.

I bought degraded land. I threw clover and mulch over everything the moment i bought it. (Bought the clover, called the local arborist to dump 30+ truckloads of mulch over the season for free) I let 90% of it sit there and do nothign the first two years, and that seemed to help rebuild the soil well.

I live in Michigan, so I cant tell you how CA works. But in michigan, you can do crops and animals pretty much anywhere you can score 3 acres.

I have a real issue with moisture, its a VERY wet lot. makes planting hard because of the mud and stuff. Whatever zone you are in, figure out what your bottle neck would be (For me its waiting for the water levels to go down enoguh to plant) and come up with a reasonable plan to solve that bottle neck before you buy the land.

Dont plan to make money. This hobby farm is definately a net loss. It would be WAY cheaper to just buy my food from the grocery store. I do this because I like gardening, I call my self a large scale gardener most of the time, because i feel like a poser calling 3 acres a Farm (1 acre of that is house, barn, garrage, a small yard, etc.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#543

Post by rootusrootus »

leokennis wrote: post #534
rootusrootus wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a needlessly divisive conversation, every time it comes up. My guess is that 99% of all the people who complain that they see people driving pickups not hauling anything are themselves usually driving a 5 passenger car as the sole occupant.

What do you think burns more fuel per passenger? A family driving the US's most popular truck vs. me alone driving in my Honda Jazz/Fitt? https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/honda-jazz-fit-2007...

That's a pretty straightforward calculation that leads to unsurprising results. An F150 with just two passengers burns less fuel per person than a Honda Fit carrying one passenger.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#544

Post by leokennis »

rootusrootus wrote: post #543
leokennis wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think burns more fuel per passenger? A family driving the US's most popular truck vs. me alone driving in my Honda Jazz/Fitt? https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/honda-jazz-fit-2007...

That's a pretty straightforward calculation that leads to unsurprising results. An F150 with just two passengers burns less fuel per person than a Honda Fit carrying one passenger.

I see 13-23 mpg for the F150:

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2021_Ford_F150.shtml

And 31-36 for the Fit:

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform...

Taking the medians (F150: 18, Fit: 33.5) your statement is true, but barely. Which is not something to rejoice in.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#545

Post by cryptonector »

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…

OK, that may be, however, that doesn't change that our method of agriculture is about to come up short, and that to switch to other approaches will take time.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#546

Post by mythrwy »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #278
Gordonjcp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

No, the most commonly consumed meats do not come from ruminants. Pigs and chickens are the most commonly eaten animals in the world by a substantial margin and they aren’t feeding on grass.

It's possible to graze chickens. They will eat grass (along with insects and anything else they find).

Search Joel Salatin for more info. He has a number of sustainable local systems for chickens, pigs etc.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#547

Post by hunterb123 »

leokennis wrote: post #533
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…

What I mean is this: https://i.imgur.com/7huPvde.jpg What does the insanely large truck have that enables you to off road and explore your hobbies, that the smaller one does not?

Lol I assume you don't pull anything or do any sort of off roading, do you?

The smaller truck will get stuck. I guess you could try to winch yourself out every time it does.

But at that point use the bigger truck to pull a side by side and off road with that.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#548

Post by merry_flame »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #485
riversflow wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that we share the earth with every other species right? How about we let that stuff we cant eat be food for wild animals?

What do we eat? Food grown at tremendous ecological expense and shipped halfway round the world? Vegans are boiling the oceans. Eat what's on your doorstep.

Are you trolling or is this mood affiliation? Have you even really looked into the impact of the food miles of the ingredients you're using relatively to the rest of their carbon footprint? Spoiler: your food miles aren't going to make much of a difference relatively to the rest. Obviously, you can imagine a strawman vegan eating only your proverbial plane-flown avocado and compare that to a perfect locavore eating only grass-fed meat, and sparsely so. But how about compare the real average "locavore" and "vegan" and seeing how that goes. The BBC published a nice piece [1] (n=3) that gives a few pointers to help audit the impact of your food miles. Mileage will vary but even in the UK, with its heavy reliance on imported food, food miles weren't that big a deal compared with opting to eat less meat.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-bene...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#549

Post by merry_flame »

throw-nocoiner wrote: post #343
Beached wrote: post #263

Earlier 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…

An interesting trivia: Dividing the available arable land by global population leaves only a 100x100m plot per person - and that's before barns, silos, houses or warehouses. That's not a whole lot - as a city dweller, I'm confident I'd starve the first winter if not earlier Modern agriculture is really impressive - farmers manage to feed around 10-20 people from such a plot

I was hoping your figure would be wrong and it is, but the situation is actually worse than than. 1.4 billion hectares of arable land divided by 7.9 billion people yields 0.18 hectares per individual, which is actually a 18×100m plot per person, 5 times less than your figure. And that's before conservation areas, wasting arable land to build suburbs, etc. Looking into national figures is interesting, showing that China has less than half than amount, but also shows that something is off with the figures themselves. Extremely arid and sandy Niger has more than 5 times the global average, which doesn't pass the smell test. I was personally shocked by the sheer unsuitability of the land for growing crops in the most fertile regions of that country, much unlike the lush southern areas of Mali for instance. Forested areas don't count as is clearly seen from low-ranking Brunei, which is 98% primary forest with extremely luxurious landscapes. Papua New Guinea is mostly self-sufficient and yet also extremely low, clearly demonstrating that agroforestry systems aren't accounted for at all. I'm sure other absurdities are to be found. Lies, damned lies, and statistics…

[1] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Agriculture/...

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#550

Post by mythrwy »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #293
titzer wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have to convert cattle farms into cropland, just eat the grain we feed the cows, and if we get sick of that grain, then grow something else where we are growing that grain.

But we don't feed grain to cows, unless it's stuff like brewery mash where it's already been used to make human food. You cannot necessarily grow different stuff in the same field. Not all crops do well in the same kind of soil. For example, you need totally different soil for potatoes than you do for cereal crops if you want them to actually grow.

That's not correct.

We (in the US anyway) feed a massive quantity of unspent (not brewery mash for example) grains when finishing cattle in feedlots. Corn, barley, milo, soybeans etc along with harvested forages like alfalfa and sorghum (which is often fed as silage).

People do feed brewery mash and other byproducts but that isn't most of what goes into feedlot rations nationwide.

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