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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

#231

Post by arghnoname »

ceejayoz wrote: post #121
debacle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 logica…

Why do you think NATO was ceaselessly expanding eastward, in violation of guarantees they had made that they would not do so? Why do you think they were putting missiles, etc, in the former Warsaw pact countries?

Is it so unreasonable for a country that lost over 20 million from western aggression in WWII to be a little worried about this military buildup? I seem to remember a pretty strident response to soviet missiles in Cuba. Why so paranoid?

I don't imagine the US would respond well (and shouldn't!) to a Russian led military alliance with Mexico and other periphery countries that led to a growing mass of military arms in a military alliance that was essentially founded to combat the United States.

The psychodrama stuff is just not a very sophisticated argument here. Countries don't go to war like this because a leader like Putin is scared of COVID. This is something that was and is popular within Russia, Putin is seemingly a more moderate voice on all of this. There has been pressure for a more muscular response to the situation in Ukraine for quite a while internally to Russia.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#232

Post by midasuni »

photochemsyn wrote: post #54
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…

Modern industrial-scale farming equipment is already highly engineered. Adding features that allowed for more precise care of individual plants would be an extension of existing technology, not something radically new. Take a look at modern combine harvesters, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2LnkKgwpOE This is also a sector that would benefit from electrification, incidentally. Of course, the fossil fue…

What type of energy density is needed to run a combine at harvest time 24/7 from battery or (green) hydrogen?

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#233

Post by banDeveloper »

jacooper wrote: post #188
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.

We can do multiple things to address climate change at the same time. My proposition is to slowly redirect all the animal agriculture subsidies elsewhere. Animal products going up in price by 3 - 10 fold would surely decrease consumption.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#234

Post by arghnoname »

lukas099 wrote: post #184
hedora wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The curve flattening was initially proposed for a short period of time. Maybe weeks or a few months, I forget.

I think some initial panic is forgivable, even if it led to actions that were counter to previous guidance. We were ventilating patients early on, for instance, and we later learned that this causes more harm than good for many patients and should be deferred if at all possible. I think it's arguable that a short term lockdown was the right call. It's arguable it wasn't, but in my opinion it wasn't crazy.

During that initial period we were supposed to be increasing capacity and learning treatment. Encouraging people to lose weight and improve their health during this time would probably help with outcomes as well.

Capacity was increased to some extent. Remember the tents and the medical ship in NYC? I think neither were used at all. We don't seem to be having conversations now about more long-term increases in health care capacity. It's just like nothing was learned. It all just became political and like all things political in the US, incredibly stupid and tribal.

For what it's worth, when DeSantis started relaxing Florida lockdowns I thought the death toll in Florida was going to be sobering and it was reckless. I now think it was the right thing to do. DeSantis seemed to be following the pre-COVID playbook. I was scared and clung on too much to the status quo procedure on COVID.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#235

Post by arghnoname »

occz wrote: post #195
eru wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People have a preference for meat post huge subsidies, which essentially makes the preference mean nothing whatsoever. If people prefer meat when it's not subsidised, then sure, what the hell, let them have it.

Farming and subsidies go hand in hand. I'm from the midwest. Whether it's growing food in the first place or leaving a field fallow in another, a subsidy is probably involved.

This is a good thing. Farming is very tough business and I would rather keep these guys in business because I like eating quite a bit.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#236

Post by arghnoname »

randomdata wrote: post #217
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.

> which is an extremely wasteful way of producing food. Depends on what you are optimizing for. As a farmer, I can make more money growing crops for human consumption. It is the most logical business model. But the real world is a harsh mistress and the nature of... nature means that is isn't realistic to grow the same crops over and over and over again. Disease, soil health, etc. requires crop rotation to sustain a…

Thanks for making food. I'm a fan. Like Bloomberg's statement about how easy it is to grow crops, you spend enough time in a city and you're prone to start thinking food grows on trees, pun intended.

One of the things I've realized as I've gotten older is that parts of the economy I don't understand are rarely as wasteful as they might appear. Waste is super expensive and no one likes wasting money. The people growing alfalfa know exactly why they're doing it. It's pretty great we can regenerate the soil and feed some cattle at the same time, isn't that kind of sustainable thing the goal?

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#237

Post by arghnoname »

undersuit wrote: post #131
Scoundreller wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I watched a video on YT about a man in Arizona or New Mexico who put in a piping system to his backyard fruit trees that is fed by his outdoor urinal. He lives in the middle of a standard urban neighborhood.

Is the salt a problem?

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#239

Post by sudosysgen »

Scoundreller wrote: post #190
HDThoreaun wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reduced supply to Western countries would still push prices way up.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#240

Post by sudosysgen »

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…

In retrospect, herd immunity for COVID doesn't seem like it ever was possible. It's a ridiculously infectious disease, basically everyone has to get infected and even then herd immunity is not guaranteed.

The most likely outcome without lockdowns, even if you isolate the 1-5% most vulnerable, would be catastrophic failure of the healthcare system. Plenty of countries really did try not to use lockdowns, but invariably all countries that didn't have extremely young demographics and tried not using lockdowns were at the brink at least once.

The approach you suggest would have been disastrous without RNA vaccines and from what happened in most countries which lifted restrictions too early, would also have been disastrous with them. The government where I live is one of them and they had to flip-flop on the issue about 7 times as the system got close to the breaking point. Increasing capacity wasn't feasible either because trained personnel was the bottleneck, and even if you could train three times faster, no one would want to do the job anyways.

The problem with health system breakdown is that at some point it's not even COVID that kills people. If that happens, even just a broken bone can be genuinely life threatening. People will start dying of a plethora of things they'd normally be able to easily deal with.

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