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The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

modernfarmer.com

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Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#121

Post by ceejayoz »

debacle wrote: post #104
bryanlarsen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault I don't see anyone still claiming this besides neocon warhawks, and they don't really have a source besides other neocon warhawks.

There are three claims in that, which are you contesting?

Isolation has clear evidence; https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-....

Paranoia is hard to suss out between public statements that sound paranoid - "NATO is coming to get us!" style stuff - and genuine private paranoia. This one might be the hardest to prove.

"Putin's fault" is fairly hard to argue against without quite a bit of logical contortion.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#122

Post by algoatecorn »

tengbretson wrote: post #94
ilostmyshoes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they don't seem to be talking about is learning from indigenous farming communities who use things like diversity in crops and rotation to keep soil quality high. These problems were solved decades ago, just not by the industrial farming community

It's like everyone who's ever watched a YouTube video about planting a 3 sisters garden has an opinion for the people actually staking their livelihood on this now.

No kidding, and furthermore it's as if they don't take a second to consider scalability, yield, commodity-market efficiency, and labor-force.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#123

Post by Scoundreller »

debacle wrote: post #7

Recently, 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.

I wish we normalized taking a piss on the footprint of my backyard Apple tree or where my tomato garden will be.

Supposedly one person is capable of providing enough fertilizer through urine for a few hundred square meters of crop per year.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#124

Post by hedora »

Waterluvian wrote: post #2

Few 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…

The big lesson from the 1918 flu pandemic was that lockdowns didn’t really work.

The scientific consensus after that was to isolate the highest risk populations, and let it run through the rest of the population. That way, it hits herd immunity / becomes endemic without infecting people that are likely to die from it. For COVID, the conventional approach would be to lock down nursing homes and provide shelter in place orders / resources for the top 1-5% risk groups for 3 months while otherwise ignoring the pandemic.

If it were not for RNA vaccines, that approach certainly would have been better than what we did with COVID. Economic disruption would be minimal, per case fatality would be cut significantly, and the tripledemic / avian flu / 2021 famine / rebound of malaria, etc. probably would not have happened.

With the vaccines, it is unclear if the lockdowns helped or hurt average life expectancies. We will know in a few more years.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#125

Post by undersuit »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #65
photochemsyn wrote: post #19

A 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…

Is this a problem exclusive to outdoor farms, or would vertical/indoor farming help this?

Hydroponics usually measure the nutrients in the water and only add when needed. Indoor farming with soil beds can adopt water recycling too but there's no requirement to.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#126

Post by eru »

Spooky23 wrote: post #87
mattpallissard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why the general tone of HN seems to be that modern farming isn't changing at all. Erosion has been on everyone's radar for decades. We went from plow -> till -> low till -> no till. Believe me, the folks who do this talk about plowing practices and cover crops. They also discuss GMO crops and the crazy legal restrictions around seed that come with it. > Brown earth has a deep top layer where most of the…

I think people see a sea of corn and don’t appreciate nuance. The bigger issue that farmers are ignoring is water.

> The bigger issue that farmers are ignoring is water.

Of course, whether that's an issue depends on where you are in the world.

It's gonna be different in California vs Germany.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#127

Post by eru »

randomdata wrote: post #119
mattpallissard wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crop diversity is great. Crop rotation has been standard practice my entire life. One of the many kickers though is soybeans are the fallback crop for really wet springs. Many crops need to be planted by a certain date or the growing season will be too short. Soybeans can "make up for lost time", so to speak. If your first planting gets flooded, or if it's too wet to get any crop in, you can wait until it's dry and…

Many years ago one of my neighbours tried not rotating is crops. It worked out okay the first couple of years, but it wasn't long before his yields nosedived and within the five years he was bankrupt.

Why did your neighbour try?

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#128

Post by eru »

horsawlarway wrote: post #45
Avicebron wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beca…

Yes, but fast and cheap is temporary (and the end result is a lot of pain). This is a problem that requires structural investment from government (the populace) but once done, the return on investment seems very high. How do you think the Netherlands are the second leading agricultural exporter in the world right now? Short answer - very efficient greenhouses. To get an idea of just how efficient - they use ~4 to 9 l…

In places where you have enough water, that doesn't sound like a problem.

It's not like the water is lost forever. (In those places where you have enough water, and don't take it out of an ancient non-replenishing aquifer or so.)

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#129

Post by eru »

hammock wrote: post #48
marginalia_nu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there is more farm land away from the sea than adjacent to it. How does for example fertilizer from here[1] or here[2] end up at sea? [1] https://goo.gl/maps/Pm4JGesJZ9xELrBB8 [2] https://goo.gl/maps/rzGttw1gMchSWXREA

The Mississippi and Rhine Rivers

Might be the Danube and not the Rhine in the second example. (Not that it matters.)

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#130

Post by eru »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #65
photochemsyn wrote: post #19

A 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…

Is this a problem exclusive to outdoor farms, or would vertical/indoor farming help this?

If you do greenhouse farming, the problem is more explicit.

(Though in theory you could still just let your wastewater drain into the ground, and have the same problem.)

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