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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

#261

Post by sudosysgen »

hedora wrote: post #256
sudosysgen wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invariabl…

I think you missed the part of the guidance where you lock down the 1-5% of the population that is most vulnerable, but only for 1-3 months. For Covid, that would have greatly reduced peak health care loads, and had a much more modest economic impact, and fewer secondary effects (RSV wouldn’t have been a issue, for example.)

Locking down 1-5% is not nearly enough, though. Hospitalisation rate just for nauve people above 60, which are a quarter of the population, was above 5%. No healthcare system can handle the hospitalization of over 1% of the population in a few weeks.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#262

Post by anticodon »

ceejayoz wrote: post #254
anticodon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin's (I'd say Russian) motivations were stated open and clear in 2021: we want NATO to stop expanding to the East. We asked West to discuss this thing and put an end to NATO expansion. All of our demands were declined in the most obnoxious manner possible: "You mean nothing, we don't want to listen to your concerns, go away and die silently in your Siberia"

Just like I don’t get veto power over your friendships, Russia does not get to decide who other sovereign nations get to be friends with. The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either. Only one country is expanding in Europe by force.

> Just like I don’t get veto power over your friendships, Russia does not get to decide who other sovereign nations get to be friends with.

NATO is an aggressive military alliance. Ukraine could be friends with EU and US and not be a part of NATO.

> The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either.

Do you really know anything about what happened in 2008? Honestly, not from the media and not from Wikipedia. Because regurgitating the easy-peasy propaganda from media is not interesting in any way.

How can you be so sure that it was Russia that "invaded" Georgia in 2008? How comes that although Russia beat the Georgian military force so easily that we could capture the whole Georgia, we didn't do it? There was nothing to stop us in 2008. How comes that "greedy Putin" didn't take Tbilisi and everything with it?

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#263

Post by anticodon »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #253
anticodon wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always perplexed when reading such opinions: do people writing this ever tried to consider anything, just to sit and think for 1 minute instead of retranslating propaganda by media. If you think that Putin is sick, do you think it is possible to rule the huge country with quite big population, huge territory, and a bunch of problems exacerbated by Western sanctions, quite successfully? E.g. the effect of sanction…

Nice rant. Did you reply to the wrong comment? I didn't say Putin was sick or any of the other things you implied I said.

> COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#264

Post by kortilla »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #208
kortilla wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a strawman and there isn’t much nuance to what you yourself said. It’s not even close to being adequate. Claiming that people are arguing for “synthesis” is just a weasel word escape route. Indigenous farming is completely inadequate and the parts that are useful have already been incorporated into modern farming. What is it you think is still on the table for this “synthesis”?

Are you familiar with how traditional agricultural systems tend to work? They're vastly different than modern industrial agriculture in my personal experience. You won't find average farms in Central Valley or the midwest doing intercropping (especially anything besides strip intercropping), hyperlocal heirloom varieties, terracing, and complex crop rotations. Tractors don't like intercropping or terraces, complex ro…

> Are you familiar with how traditional agricultural systems tend to work?

Yes, they produced terrible yields that would starve the current population.

There is a reason farmers’ markets are for the upper middle class. Anything that isn’t done at scale can’t feed 8 billion people. If it can’t be done with combines/tractors/etc, it’s fucking useless.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#265

Post by eru »

arghnoname wrote: post #258
eru wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People would still farm without subsidies. First: they are growing some crops now already that are not subsidised. Second: a general drop in subsidies will mostly just result in lower land rents. The reward for farm labour will stay roughly the same, because it's mostly set by the general equilibrium in the wider labour market.

Beyond patronage, one of the primary goals of ag subsidies is to prevent farm land from being converted to non-farmland. This effectively increases the ability to comparatively quickly put more crop acres there if for some reason (e.g., weather, war, etc) we need to increase supply. Without subsidies it's likely that the lower land rent would cause more fields to be converted to other purposes and we'd run this a bit…

Yes, that argument is common, but it doesn't mean that it holds water.

If you actually wanted to ensure a steady food supply, you'd use subsidies that directly target that.

Eg instead of subsidising actual production of a few specific crops, you'd have subsidies that reward being able to produce eg lots of calories in a field on short notice. (And every year, you'd challenge a random selection of recipients to produce the promised calories on short notice. Of course, if you use that land for already for actual production, that's fine.)

You'd also reward people to stockpile lots of canned food, I guess?

> A good deal of early EU politics were measures to make sure that liberalized trade didn't just result in the French agricultural industry vanishing.

Yes, but that's more of a function of the power of the agricultural lobby, than any rational policy.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#268

Post by dehrmann »

officialjunk wrote: post #5
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…

probably. heart attacks on the rise for covid survivors aged 25-44 https://www.khon2.com/local-news/heart-attacks-on-dramatic-r...

That's not what the study's abstract said. It said heart attack deaths increased during the pandemic. It could be due to covid itself, fear of covid while seeking treatment, worse quality treatment, lifestyle chances, social isolation, others, or some combination.

One of the study's authors did say there's a link, but I have to wonder why it wasn't in the abstract.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#269

Post by knewter »

mikeyouse wrote: post #112
knewter wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it interesting when people being up the 2014 Ukraine situation without referencing the call from Victoria Nuland discussing who the US was going to put in charge ("surprisingly", those ended up being the government the people elected) https://odysee.com/@AdamFitzgerald:2/Victoria-Nuland-Phone-C...

Likely because people who know anything about the region know that that supposedly damning call happened after three months of violent protests against the most corrupt government in recent European history.. the reference to Klitchko being made deputy PM means it was recorded after Jan 26th which was when Yanukovych was trying everything to stay in power, including bringing opposition leaders into his government (an…

Hurr Durr the CIA did it

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#270

Post by eru »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #150
eru wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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?

That's partially a function of the corruption and silly practices. Eg they are spending tax dollars (that they don't really have) to subsidies fuel.

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