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‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
141–150 of 235 posts
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories." https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets "So if this system is so ideal, why is it that my cow hasn’t tasted a blade of grass since October? Speed, in a word. Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and the modern me…
> So if this system is so ideal, why is it that my cow hasn’t tasted a blade of grass since October? Keep in mind this is absolutely not true in even the rest of the Western world. American-style cattle factory farms are almost unheard of in the UK, and practically all beef here would count as grass-fed, because that's just how we raise cattle. There is some supplementation over winter when grass doesn't grow (and ev…
I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a great steak in the UK. The beef is just very low quality compared to what is sourced in the USA. Far too lean in the UK. I and I generally find them a bit tougher too possibly due to more roaming by the cattle.
Now, UK pork on the other hand is tremendous.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly. I don't disagree with this part. My point is just that a) livestock are an enormously inefficient way of raising calories and b) that's taking into consideration the horrendous industrial meat system. The US raised 33 million cows to slaughter in 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/…
Funnily enough, there used to be about 60 million wild buffalo roaming north america. We killed them off & have devoted vast tracts of land to monocrop agriculture fueled by petrochemical fertilizers.
Those 60 million Bison lived ~15 years on average. Cattle on the other hand rarely make it past adulthood, so those 33 million cattle slaughtered every year requires significantly more food.
That’s the core reason we are feeding cattle with farmed corn, you simply get more beef from the same land.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And this speed is making both them and the land sick — cows are meant to eat grass, not the grains used to fatten them quickly. I don't disagree with this part. My point is just that a) livestock are an enormously inefficient way of raising calories and b) that's taking into consideration the horrendous industrial meat system. The US raised 33 million cows to slaughter in 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/…
Funnily enough, there used to be about 60 million wild buffalo roaming north america. We killed them off & have devoted vast tracts of land to monocrop agriculture fueled by petrochemical fertilizers.
You (the U.S. government back then) killed them off just to stick it to the indigenous people, since buffalos played a central role in their lives. That is so messed up. From over 60 million to 541 in less than a century according to Wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s only inefficient if you continue to ignore the points being raised by the parent post.
The only point I see that wasn't addressed was that we can use land unsuitable for agriculture for grazing, but in that case all the supposed top-soil benefits are going to the wrong place anyway.
"The wrong place" can become "the right place" in a relatively short period of time if we change the way we think about agriculture, is the point. For what it's worth, I think the main problem here is agricultural subsidies - they completely distort the market. Calories are cheap due to this, true, but the result is completely unsustainable agricultural practices, poorer health, a more fragile economy, and less variety and higher prices for unsubsidized goods.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Umm... hours worked isn't the only metric for quality of life. I'm pretty sure that 40 hours spent in agricultural stoop labor is not the same thing as 40 hours sitting in a comfy chair in front of a computer. Also, you're just shining off the fact that they were serfs . I wouldn't want to be a serf even if I had to work only 10 hours per week. Would you? Not free to leave the land on which you were born, living in a…
I am not arguing about quality of life. The point is that less than 40 hours per week (it can be in fact close to 30 as less than 40 is a conservative estimate) was enough for a single person to feed a family and have some extra using manual labor.
> was enough for a single person to feed a family and have some extra using manual labor.
No, that was ten serfs each working 30 hours a week to in aggregate grow enough food to subsist on and generate the master's demanded surplus. That was also only true in good years. In bad years a portion of serfs just died.
A serf's life sucked in every dimension. Even if they only "worked" 30 hours they spent the rest of their time in squalor. If you think working in a field is so attractive there's lots of farms looking for day labor. Try it out.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#147Something that bugs me: How much human poop is generated worldwide every day and where does it go?? Why isn’t some of it used as fertilizer, or is it?
It is used as fertilizer, often not for food consumption. You would be depressed to know how many horrible things are to be found in human excrement, including pharmaceuticals, plastics, fire retardants, etc. To me the greatest use of human waste would be carbon sequestration. Think about it: we have an existing network of pipelines directly from every house to a centralized facility that can collect, dry, and [optionally] store that output in the soil or elsewhere for many years.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> poisoning waterways This hasn't been true for years. Most algal blooms around the US at least are caused by lawn runoff.
This is still very much true according to NOAA [0] A bit weird to make such a definitive statement about the, allegedly singular, culprit with "lawn runoff". It's really difficult, to nearly impossible, to trace back where the nitrogen and phosphorus originated from that results in oceanic dead zones thousands of miles away [1]. A good start would simply be to look at the biggest consumers of these fertilizers, and t…
I went back and revisited what I read and realized I was overstating the case on gains in fertilization efficiency. It's unfortunately too late to edit my original comment.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've read, the Haber process sustains well over half of the earth's animal population. Legumes can't provide enough nitrogen to maintain current levels of crop yields. Something has to give.
Too lazy to look up numbers, but in the US corn is a significant crop and much of it is more of an industrial feedstock rather than food for people. I'm guessing that "more natural" processes could still feed us all but the game is rigged so that it's not economical for to do that (directly, as it's effectively subsidized for the "economical" side).
Corn is a very good carbon sink.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016719871...
https://denvergazette.com/news/environment/one-global-warmin...
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories." https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets "So if this system is so ideal, why is it that my cow hasn’t tasted a blade of grass since October? Speed, in a word. Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and the modern me…
Humans cannot survive on calories alone, though, and certainly aren't going to be healthy living on them. Protein has always been one of the most expensive parts of a healthy diet.
That's a great point. I can get a can of black beans for $0.50 (and dried black beans for even cheaper). I can get a chicken breast for ~$2. The black beans still net 98g of protein. But I also get an additional 500 calories more than the chicken beast. And that's with the subsidies for poultry. I'm also going to pre-empt the "not a complete protein source" argument with the fact that we're talking about a healthy diet and no one is eating only beans or only chicken in their diet.
Plant proteins are always going to win in terms of cost efficiency over meat. There is always going to be a cost for the increased protein density of meat.