Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

modernfarmer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 271 posts

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#181

Post by Baeocystin »

zdragnar wrote: post #160
tmountain wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, most gardening books start off talking about humus, “dark, organic material that forms in soil when plant and animal matter decays.” Industrial farms are very far away from the foundations of healthy soil, and they need copious amounts of fertilizer and water to compensate. The food produced is less nutritious and less sustainable as a result. Consider investing in a local CSA if you have the opportunity. It’s a…

CSAs where I live are a luxury good for a few people to feel better about themselves. You pay in much more than you get back (compared to a grocery store), and what you get is geared towards variety to make it more appealing. As such, you get enough of any particular veg for one or two meals, at a cost that is wildly expensive for most people. I tried one summer, and it was cute but replaced approximately 0% of our g…

Just to throw out some numbers, I pay $27/box for my fruit n' veg mix, which I could mostly replicate for maybe $15-20 at the grocery store. But the freshness can't be beat, and I think it's fun to see what I can do with whatever shows up. It's definitely not replacing my entire grocery bill, of course, but I do think it is worth it.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#182

Post by LarryMullins »

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.

Water from shallow aquifers also flows into nearby rivers.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#183

Post by LarryMullins »

willcipriano wrote: post #165
throwaway4aday wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your solution is to give up your job and return to subsistence farming? Let us know how that works out.

No, my point is everyone would to do it that way.

Without experience, land, and modern industrial farming techniques? No, "everybody" would not start subsistence farming. There would be massive famines, billions would starve and die.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#184

Post by lukas099 »

hedora wrote: post #124
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 plac…

> If it were not for RNA vaccines, that approach certainly would have been better than what we did with COVID.

I know that 'flatten the curve' largely left the public consciousness, but wouldn't letting the virus run largely unrestricted have overwhelmed the health care system?

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#185

Post by [deleted] »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #28
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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#186

Post by lukas099 »

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.

Is this even physically possible to significantly improve? How many calories of sunlight energy do plants use to create 1 calorie of chemical bonds?

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#187

Post by kragen »

gruez wrote: post #149
kragen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i appreciate the heads up

what platform are you using

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#188

Post by jacooper »

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.

They should actually focus on things that have the biggest impact on climate change, and that's certainly not Meat production, but Oil and gas.

Stop chasing that most visible way to fight climate change rather than the most effective one.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#189

Post by seiferteric »

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 of it does I am sure, where some will be consumed by soil bacteria. Lots of fertilizers are salts as well and even if it goes into the soil, rain will redissolve it where it will eventually make its way to rivers.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#190

Post by Scoundreller »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #175
Scoundreller wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After the US (which I’m assuming imports from Canada, the largest exporter), the next 6 largest importers aren’t western countries (if you exclude Brazil in that):

https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/potash-fertilizer-i...

https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-minin...

The biggest issue is that Belarus has restricted access to euro seaports, but Belarus and Russia have extensive rail networks.

Post reply on HN