Eliminate subsidies and mandates for ethanol in gasoline. 14-16 million acres of land devoted to a mono crop of corn requiring copious fertilizer and pesticide. Basically this converts oil into a slightly larger quantity of ethanol with some of the most productive farmland in the world.
‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
161–170 of 235 posts
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Potato and sweet potato can be produced in a local garden and provide enough calories and nutrients. For example, if one eats enough potatoes to get 2500 kilocalories (about 6 pounds), one get more than enough protein.
6 pounds ? I'm skeptical that anyone can sit down and eat 6 pounds of potatoes. You should probably check your arithmetic here. And no, you're not going to produce enough potatoes in a "local garden" to feed our cities, much less all of the people in the rest of the world who are fed by our croplands.
I'm picturing a 5 pound bag of potatoes one might find at a grocery store. I think it might be larger than my torso.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
The midwest has great soil because billions of organisms died millions of years ago in a shallow sea that covered most of the central united states today.
I’m not sure that’s correct, or at least is not complete. There were many cycles of grasses and wildlife involved in building up the soil.
No, it's correct. The plains states are so fertile because of hundreds of millions of years of shallow ocean water led to huge amounts of plankton to die and settle. That's also why there's oil in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
>pushing everyone into eating cheap to grow grains There is more to plant-based food than grains. Seeds and legumes are full of nutrients. People can and do survive on way less meat.
Like there is more to food than calories, there is more to life than survival.
I can only guess what you mean by this. If it's that people can't get enjoyment out of eating plant-based food, you're wrong. And if it's that people will have less enjoyable lives because they can't eat meat every day, you're also wrong.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#165Food prices rising means hunger means social unrest. The developed world is not entirely out of the woods. With low natural gas prices and heavily subsidised food, the poor of the US should hopefully come out relatively unharmed. It's going to be worse in the EU and its periphery: - High dependence on Russian natural gas. - Lots of fertiliser depends on Belarussian potash here. - The natural gas crisis is halting lot…
We over-produce a lot of food in the west. I think there's very little risk of hunger.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only about ~10% of corn is used to make food consumed by people. Of the remainder, roughly ~30% is used for animal feed, ~30% for export, and ~30% for fuel ethanol. Replacing the cheap processed food production with grazing land will not do much to increase the amount of animal protein available to the population. If our goal is to have more pasture, it would make more sense to eliminate ethanol production, reduce th…
I’d add “fuel ethanol” to the list of things worse than Bitcoin.
A little bit of it is good for various reasons. Trying to solve a substantive part of our liquid fuel problem with it is madness.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like there is more to food than calories, there is more to life than survival.
I can only guess what you mean by this. If it's that people can't get enjoyment out of eating plant-based food, you're wrong. And if it's that people will have less enjoyable lives because they can't eat meat every day, you're also wrong.
No, and clearly that doesn’t mesh with bioreactor food which typically isn’t enjoyable to eat. I’m saying the science on the health relationship with food isn’t great and I don’t trust it. Especially in the ‘healthy at any size’ era we now live in. I eat meat to help cover gaps in understanding, and by careful measurement I can tell that I’m healthier when I eat it, or specifically less healthy when I don’t. If the science can be improved then maybe we could then shift away from meat.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#168Pastures are the future. There's a reason the US Midwest had such great soil — it's not simply a confluence of rivers & luck. The buffalo did their thing, and the grasses they fed on were fed in turn by them. Replacing corn and soy with ruminants will replenish the soil, provide excellent protein for people, and get rid of the cheap, food-like things made from corn, soy, and their chemically-coaxed out byproducts. It…
The midwest has great soil because billions of organisms died millions of years ago in a shallow sea that covered most of the central united states today.
I thought the soil was great because of the Yellowstone Caldera Supervolcano dropping huge amounts of volcanic ash every 650,000 years.
How long has it been? Oh, right around 650,000 years..........
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#169Earlier 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. Substitute grass for vegetables and I think this applies to humans as well.
No, we evolved to consume prepared food, including meat. Our mouths, jaws, and digestive system have been coevolving for past few tens-to-hundreds of thousands of years with our diets and food preparation methods. Certainly, vegetables have not been a major source of calories for humans in many tens of thousands of years now (because they don’t have a lot of calories in them in the first place, but also because they…
Grains, legumes and root vegetables would disagree.
Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Yes, extremely tragic.