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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

#141

Post by kortilla »

ilostmyshoes wrote: post #73
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…

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

Pretending indigenous communities “solved” this is a farce. If we switched to their methods 90% of the population would need to die because they don’t scale.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#142

Post by soperj »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #92
seiferteric wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's water soluble.

Sure, but why is it pulled sideways and not down, and why does it move toward the river of all directions it could move?

Some water is pulled down (along with the half of the fertilizer that's actually used), the rest is literally washed away because the soil can't absorb the amount of water being dropped on it. All the water that's flowing over the ground ends up in rivers (it's the reason they exist in the first place).

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#143

Post by eru »

WillAdams wrote: post #72

We are currently burning (or applying as fertilizer) 10 calories of petrochemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy --- we need to rebalance this equation somehow.

Even if this was true, why do you think we need to rebalance?

We could also just find another source of cheap energy.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#144

Post by eru »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #117

Russia was a net exporter of fertilizer, and China is a net importer. if Peter Zeihan is right, this will cause food shortages in China.

Why? China can buy fertilizer on the world market. Prices might rise a bit, but China is a solidly middle income country.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#145

Post by marginalia_nu »

Tyrannosaur wrote: post #110
marginalia_nu wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but why is it pulled sideways and not down, and why does it move toward the river of all directions it could move?

For exactly the same reason the river exists in the first place. Why does the water flow to the ocean and not just sink into the ground?

A lot of it does sink into the ground though. Thats how aquifiers replenish.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#146

Post by horsawlarway »

eru wrote: post #128
horsawlarway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Sure, but water is hardly the only input they're optimizing for.

They're reducing the need for pesticides and fungicides by controlling the ambient environment around the plants.

Reducing the need for fertilizers by optimizing growing conditions and limiting runoff and waste.

Basically - the attitude there has been: "Build the right environment for the plant" followed by a focus on efficient (and therefor cost effective) inputs.

We aren't building the right environment, we're just dumping inputs (pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, water, etc) on the growing area and calling it a day.

Which is cheap on the up front capital costs, but much more expensive over the long term, as you end up needing consistently more inputs over a long period of time.

---

Basically - I'm arguing that the up front capital costs likely are worth the returns to you get in efficiency, but farmers in the US are not incentivized to make those investments. Or perhaps more realistically - can't afford those investments on their current operating margins. Which is why we likely will want government programs focused on this.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#147

Post by ajross »

eru wrote: post #136
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a famine in Madagascar now, although not related to fertiliser. The system is fragile

That's entirely the fault of their inept and corrupt administration there.

Well, and also a big drought. Economies (and weather) are indeed unstable in general. But per the upthread hypothesis there's no particular instability in the food supply caused by fertilizer/energy/covid disruption that seems notable. We've been here before and we'll be here again.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#149

Post by gruez »

kragen wrote: post #76
sofixa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the market does work for goods whose demand is inelastic at the cme wheat costs 8.38 dollars per bushel, 31¢ per kg, and 1 kg of wheat is roughly two person-days' worth of food, 57 dollars per person-year (of course an actual diet needs to be more varied and therefore slightly more expensive, but even just cooked wheat will extend your survival time under famine conditions by quite a lot) let's start by dividing the…

Just a heads up, your usages of unicode circled characters (eg. ①) makes the comment hard to read. At least on my computer, the circled characters are the same approximate size as regular characters, but due to the circle the actual number/letter ends up being so small that they're unreadable without additional zoom.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#150

Post by ClumsyPilot »

eru wrote: post #136
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a famine in Madagascar now, although not related to fertiliser. The system is fragile

That's entirely the fault of their inept and corrupt administration there.

United Nations says it's "first climate change famine".

Why are you blaming administration? I am not sure how corrupt they are, but how do you deal with drought in a country that has GDP per capital of $520? Like you can't afford to do much with that.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/10/1103712

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