The real problem is majority of crops being grown for animal agriculture, which is an extremely wasteful way of producing food. We'd only need a fraction of the farmlands if we were actually eating the crops we grow. Sadly, we can't count on consumers making rational choices and politicians are not going to tank their popularity by pushing for these changes. It's the same as climate change.
The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
31–40 of 271 posts
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it. In as much as they are allowed to function, markets will reward people addressing the shortages with outsized profit. Same as getting through the energy crisis, we can overcome the food crisis, one obstacle at a time. The connectedness of economies is also an advantage. Shipping rates are almost at a 3-year low: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic The greatest risk are policies forbidding "price…
I'm not sure i follow. How exactly will the people "awarded with outsized profit for addressing the shortages" help those starving due to lack of affordable food? "The market" doesn't work for goods whose demand is inelastic, such as food and medicine. Letting people starve "to allow the market to function" is cold blooded greed.
> Letting people starve "to allow the market to function" is cold blooded greed.
It's no better than human sacrafice practiced thousands of years ago - entirely self destructive. This con just has more layers of indirection.
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it. In as much as they are allowed to function, markets will reward people addressing the shortages with outsized profit. Same as getting through the energy crisis, we can overcome the food crisis, one obstacle at a time. The connectedness of economies is also an advantage. Shipping rates are almost at a 3-year low: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic The greatest risk are policies forbidding "price…
How can you price gouge something like Sri-Lakha, that has no currency to trade with? This whole mental model just has no grasp for the moment when the rear of the car falls off..
Hire its citizens. No money means you'd benefit by sending them money.
But inequality is a different problem than getting through crises. It should be addressed while leaving the production incentives intact. For example, progressive and/or negative income taxes.
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#34Few things have a single cause, but I think it's not outlandish to hypothesize that potential pending famines could be driven by a fertilizer shortage, driven by Russia's invasion and global economic issues, driven by the pandemic. Maybe this is obvious to those smarter than I, but I'm beginning to have a sinking sense that direct deaths by SARS-COV2 will be a shockingly small minority of total deaths caused by the p…
What does COVID have to do with this? The fertilizer shortage is caused by the war in Ukraine. This war will cause more deaths indirectly than it does directly, just like almost all large wars.
Arguably the war in Ukraine was influenced by the unrest against Lukanhesko after his poor handling of covid-19...and by Russians thinking that was yet another example of NATO attacks against their security.
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#35A remarkable amount of the fertilizer applied via modern industrial farming practices is just wasted: > "According to an average of 13 global databases from 10 data sources, in 2010, 161 teragrams of nitrogen were applied to agricultural crops, but only 73 teragrams of nitrogen made it to the harvested crop. A total of 86 teragrams of nitrogen was wasted, perhaps ending up in the water, air, or soil. The new research…
While it's cool and all to want to work on AI+Robots, because obviously that's where this thought is coming from because who wants to actually work in the fields am I right?\s
I think it's more important to think about market fit and margins of farming, in what world is introducing a complex, expensive machine to an already thin margin industry a practical solution?
The reason it's inefficient and wasteful isn't because "they're some hicks who need the righteous engineer to come and save them with their brilliance" its because its fast and cheap
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#36The real problem is majority of crops being grown for animal agriculture, which is an extremely wasteful way of producing food. We'd only need a fraction of the farmlands if we were actually eating the crops we grow. Sadly, we can't count on consumers making rational choices and politicians are not going to tank their popularity by pushing for these changes. It's the same as climate change.
It is climate change.
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#37Recently, I have seen a short-sighted push to allow human waste to fertilize crops. That is absolutely 100% not the solution to anything for probably a dozen very good reasons. The impact of this kind of "recycling" is well studied and the negatives outweigh the positives.
North Korea uses human waste as a fertilizer. Which causes this: North Korean defector found to have 'enormous parasites' https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-420... > "I've never seen anything like this in my 20 years as a physician," South Korean doctor Lee Cook-jong told journalists, explaining that the longest worm removed from the patient's intestines was 27cm (11in) long. > In 2015 South Kor…
Do human parasites in human poop spread to more humans animals fed on plants fed on human poop, or only of humans eat the plants fed on human poop?
Can the parasites be filtered away?
Also, couldn't NK parasites be explained by a general lack of health and hygiene technology in NK? Parasites are a major problem in large parts of Africa too, but are controlled when medications are deployed.
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then, the ignition is lost in the flame. Goosebumps from this line. It's apt and thoughtful. I'm thinking about how these events can be fractal-like. The past few years of active pandemic have felt like the "flame" but could be seen as the "ignition" for countless other, possibly even worse global events. It's like a Great Tree Shaking: all non-resilient systems began showing cracks of one size or another, cascadin…
We spent the first 50 years of the information age building systems to be as hyper-efficient as possible, with ruthless competition eliminating resiliency first in existing commercial, social, and political structures, and then in the education and life experience of the people that built those structures later. Like a Californian wilderness, we've been accumulating surface fuel load for decades.
At least in the us the first thing ruthless competition does is eliminate all competition and establish a monopoly like position. Every industry wants to consolidate to 2-4 players that split the market and don’t compete
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does COVID have to do with this? The fertilizer shortage is caused by the war in Ukraine. This war will cause more deaths indirectly than it does directly, just like almost all large wars.
Arguably the war in Ukraine was influenced by the unrest against Lukanhesko after his poor handling of covid-19...and by Russians thinking that was yet another example of NATO attacks against their security.
This war has one primary cause: Putin. Anything else is a very distant secondary.
COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault, not COVID's.
Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023
#40Recently, I have seen a short-sighted push to allow human waste to fertilize crops. That is absolutely 100% not the solution to anything for probably a dozen very good reasons. The impact of this kind of "recycling" is well studied and the negatives outweigh the positives.
Well, if you have a modern sewage treatment plant it is possible to recover phosphate and ammonium (NH4+) as relatively pure chemicals at the end of the process prior to releasing the treated water back into the environment. It's a bit cost-intensive to do this however, but it might make economic sense as fertilizer scarcity grows, especially for the phosphorous fraction.
But yes, applying untreated human feces to agricultural fields is a very bad idea from the infectious disease and parasite transfer perspective. Also, many sewage streams have additional contaminants (heavy metals etc.) from industrial sources, and varying levels of pharmaceuticals of all kinds.