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Soil: The world beneath our feet

theguardian.com

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Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#11

Post by bwestergard »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #9
bmitc wrote: post #4

This is a great article. I forgot where I read it, but someone basically said that we need to stop treating soil as just dirt. I have found out through my research that replacing invasive species and lawns with native plants and also composting organic waste, leaves, and twigs and returning that to your lawn are two of the best things a single person or group of persons can do to thwart climate change. Organic materi…

What’s the difference between composting in the yard and composting in a landfill?

Composting in the yard, if done correctly, is aerobic. In a landfill it will be anaerobic, generating more methane.

Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#12

Post by soheil »

> Without a radical change in the way we eat, by 2050 the world will need to grow around 50% more grain.

Is that the only way? What if we grow grains that need 50% less water? This article is mind numbingly preachy and ignores that technology can and always has been at the forefront of human progress. Yes, if we wake up one day in 30 years and find that we have made 0 technological progress then we will need 50% more grain.

Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#13

Post by floren »

photochemsyn wrote: post #6

Closed-system farming, where basically everything is recycled - nutrients, water, biomass (except what goes onto people's tables) - is theoretically possible and this article describes what looks like a successful system. This is also the kind of thing you'd need on a large spaceship or Martian colony (where human feces/urine would also need to be recycled). However, the increase in labor needed shouldn't be underest…

I think about farming a lot these days, especially when I'm reading about startups on HN.

Our culture has spent decades putting down agriculture as the lowest work, worse than waiting tables or running a cash register. Hell, I grew up on a farm and I still looked down on it.

When I compare it to building CRUD apps because a VC wants another unicorn, though, it seems pretty attractive. The work is hard, but the results are tangible, and you're fulfilling the most basic human need. Which is more worthwhile: actually growing potatoes, or programming Farmville?

I would love a future in which a much bigger percentage of the American population lived in clusters of small farms, growing food to feed themselves and to send to market. A community of 10-acre plots (why 10 acres? see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48753), with a co-op organization that gathers up people's produce and hauls it to the nearest city for sale.

> where basically everything is recycled - nutrients, water, biomass (except what goes onto people's tables)

The parenthetical is an interesting problem... the current agricultural system seems to be a machine for pulling nutrients out of the soil, shipping them to cities, and then flushing them out to sea. Then we attack farmers for putting fertilizer into the soil.

Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#14

Post by rhn_mk1 »

bmitc wrote: post #4

This is a great article. I forgot where I read it, but someone basically said that we need to stop treating soil as just dirt. I have found out through my research that replacing invasive species and lawns with native plants and also composting organic waste, leaves, and twigs and returning that to your lawn are two of the best things a single person or group of persons can do to thwart climate change. Organic materi…

How to find out which plants are native to which region?

Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#16

Post by algoatecorn »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #14
bmitc wrote: post #4

This is a great article. I forgot where I read it, but someone basically said that we need to stop treating soil as just dirt. I have found out through my research that replacing invasive species and lawns with native plants and also composting organic waste, leaves, and twigs and returning that to your lawn are two of the best things a single person or group of persons can do to thwart climate change. Organic materi…

How to find out which plants are native to which region?

If you are in the US, most state universities will have an extension program that guides native plant selection. There are also quite a few regional native plant societies, many of which will even send free seeds.

Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#17

Post by carapace »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #9
bmitc wrote: post #4

This is a great article. I forgot where I read it, but someone basically said that we need to stop treating soil as just dirt. I have found out through my research that replacing invasive species and lawns with native plants and also composting organic waste, leaves, and twigs and returning that to your lawn are two of the best things a single person or group of persons can do to thwart climate change. Organic materi…

What’s the difference between composting in the yard and composting in a landfill?

In a word, oxygen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_organism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_organism

- - - -

"Compost" and "composting" is a fairly specific kind of process, it's just not correct to call what happens in a landfill "composting" (or contrast with a midden which is just a pile of kitchen refuse, and also not "composting".)

The key difference in composting (as contrasted with just piling up waste material) is the specific formation of a kind of ecosystem within the pile. A healthy compost pile produces it's own heat. It's a concentrated and accelerated form of the natural processes that happen in healthy soil, and in many ways it really is a kind of organism.

(The dividing line between organism and ecosystem is not sharp. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_mat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoplax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war#Coloni... and so on... )

Anyway, in a landfill you get your pockets of mostly organic biomass, and decomposition happens, but it tends to be anaerobic (which generally is less healthy from the POV of human metabolism) and the results don't get integrated back into ecosystems rapidly (isolation is not complete, so they ooze back into the water table but they are almost always accompanied by toxic chemical wastes, so it doesn't really help.)

Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#18

Post by algoatecorn »

floren wrote: post #13
photochemsyn wrote: post #6

Closed-system farming, where basically everything is recycled - nutrients, water, biomass (except what goes onto people's tables) - is theoretically possible and this article describes what looks like a successful system. This is also the kind of thing you'd need on a large spaceship or Martian colony (where human feces/urine would also need to be recycled). However, the increase in labor needed shouldn't be underest…

I think about farming a lot these days, especially when I'm reading about startups on HN. Our culture has spent decades putting down agriculture as the lowest work, worse than waiting tables or running a cash register. Hell, I grew up on a farm and I still looked down on it. When I compare it to building CRUD apps because a VC wants another unicorn, though, it seems pretty attractive. The work is hard, but the result…

On the upside, new farming techniques may provide higher-skill and comfortable jobs in the field. Vertical farming will offer a ton of comfortable jobs (in the AC as opposed to outside in the sun). There will also be more expertise required in the ag industry moving forward, meaning higher-paying jobs.

The downside is that food will, and probably should cost more. Our percentage of income spent on food is incredibly low and many don't realize how lucky that is. But a more sustainable system will likely mean more expensive food. That will be a tough pill to swallow.

Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#19

Post by mcbishop »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #14
bmitc wrote: post #4

This is a great article. I forgot where I read it, but someone basically said that we need to stop treating soil as just dirt. I have found out through my research that replacing invasive species and lawns with native plants and also composting organic waste, leaves, and twigs and returning that to your lawn are two of the best things a single person or group of persons can do to thwart climate change. Organic materi…

How to find out which plants are native to which region?

There are native plant nurseries.

Re: Soil: The world beneath our feet

#20

Post by rhn_mk1 »

soheil wrote: post #12

> Without a radical change in the way we eat, by 2050 the world will need to grow around 50% more grain. Is that the only way? What if we grow grains that need 50% less water? This article is mind numbingly preachy and ignores that technology can and always has been at the forefront of human progress. Yes, if we wake up one day in 30 years and find that we have made 0 technological progress then we will need 50% more…

It's not the only way. We could keep eating grain but stop the multiplication of humans on the planet.

But technology won't solve the problem that if human eating habits stay on the current trajectory, they will eat 50% more grain.

I get it that this is not what you meant. But the progress of technology, while you can rely on it getting somewhere, is unpredictable. It'd be foolish to count on it without considering contingencies in case it doesn't deliver.

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