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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

#171

Post by londons_explore »

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…

> 161 teragrams of nitrogen were applied to agricultural crops, but only 73 teragrams of nitrogen made it to the harvested crop

Getting ~half of the nitrogen from the fertilizer into the harvest seems awfully impressive to me. There are so many ways for nitrogen to escape - into runoff, broken down back into the atmosphere, used to grow weeds and non-productive parts of the plant, etc.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#172

Post by [deleted] »

kragen wrote: post #96
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.

i have heard this before, so i looked at the underlying research it is not true and has never been true for the food supply in general it is true in a few expensive crops of low calorie content; i think lettuce and almonds were the ones i saw

[deleted]

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#173

Post by fredgrott »

The context is China imports 90% from Russia and India is at 40% imports from Russia and the deep sea ports Russia uses shippers will not ship from as they are north of Black Sea for obvious reasons.

To complicate matters Russia currently is using all available train cars and thus has no compacity to increase rail traffic to ship fertilizer.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#174

Post by bigbillheck »

GalenErso wrote: post #14
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.

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…

I've stopped believing sensational stories about North Korea after one too many stories about someone official getting executed only for them to show up alive and well a few weeks later.

Hepatitis B is a STD; presumably they meant Hepatitis A? There was an outbreak of that just last year in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/outbreaks/2022/hav-contaminate... that appear to have come from Mexican strawberries; 'the Mexicans must be using night soil' is not the first conclusion I would have jumped to. Same for Hepatitis C, in 2020 there were 107k newly identified chronic infections in the US.

Regarding the worm, a quick google suggests that the largest roundworm parasite of humans is Ascaris lumbercoides, about which wiki tells me that males are up to 12 inches long and females up to 19 inches long; an 11 incher doesn't seem that remarkable in comparison.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#175

Post by HDThoreaun »

Scoundreller wrote: post #118
ajmurmann wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 20.8% of goal potash production comes from Russia and another 18% from Belarus. It's a key ingredients in making fertilizer. There is your single cause. Source: https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-minin...

Have they stopped producing? Don’t think any of the big buyers are resisting purchase from those two countries.

They've stopped exporting to western countries.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#176

Post by banDeveloper »

eru wrote: post #140
banDeveloper wrote: post #31

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.

I'm not sure what you mean by not making rational choices? People have a preference for meat. Rationality doesn't say what your preferences should be, it just helps you satisfy them.

I mean thinking about long term consequences of their actions and making a choice that leads to the best outcome for the society at large. You're right in saying people have a preference, but the way you say it makes it seem like that's all their is to it, as if people's dietary choices have no broader impact.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#177

Post by lukas099 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #145
Tyrannosaur wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the percentage of fertilizer in the groundwater would reach an equilibrium where just as much is going out as is coming in.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#178

Post by HDThoreaun »

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.

China has the money to pay the increased costs. Brazil is likely the most fucked by the fertilizer shortage since their massive soy farms are all on desert soil which requires loads of fertilizer which they can no longer afford.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#179

Post by wahern »

csdvrx wrote: post #153
Alex3917 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A remarkable amount of the fertilizer applied via modern industrial farming practices is just wasted You can also cut out most of the nitrogen just by using Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria (e.g. azospirillum), but most US farmers don't do that. Without PGPBs, most of the plant's energy is wasted just trying to uptake the nitrogen from the soil. Whereas the with the bacteria, not only do the bacteria produce the nit…

> but most US farmers don't do that Why? Is it not cost-effective?

> Is it not cost-effective?

A quick Googling of the literature (more general terms seems to be bioinoculant and biofertilizer) suggests exactly that. There are industrial products out there for large-scale inoculation, but manufacture, packaging, shipping, and application of bioinoculants can require rather sophisticated carriers, whether in solid, liquid, or polymer form; or engineering more easily accommodated bacteria or fungus. It seems it's still very early days for industrial-scale products, notwithstanding that the research and perhaps even some products go back decades.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#180

Post by amts »

"Each hour 430 quintillion Joules of energy from the sun hits the Earth. That's 430 with 18 zeroes after it. In comparison, the total amount of energy that all humans use in a year is 410 quintillion Joules." [1]

"The 70 percent of solar energy the Earth absorbs per year equals roughly 3.85 million exajoules. In other words, the amount of solar energy hitting the earth in one hour is more than enough to power the world for one year." [2]

"The total solar power hitting Earth is about 173,000 terawatts, or 1.73×10^17 joules per second. That’s roughly equivalent to the energy of 41 Megatons of TNT exploding… every second. It’s hard for us to comprehend how much energy a joule is (or even what energy is in the first place). But energy can be converted into mass, and we do understand what mass is." [3]

Thus, equatorial and semi-equatorial regions should be energy magnats of the world and be able to get nitrogen, phosphorus, water, etc for their food from thin air and sand. Yet, the relevant world has still to feed the majority of these regions, including the solar tech etc.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-sol...

[2] https://www.ucdavis.edu/climate/definitions/how-is-solar-pow...

[3] https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-from-the-Sun-hits-the-...

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