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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#181

Post by jerf »

cerol wrote: post #138
scns wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother worked for a help organization in africa for 1,5 years. When he came back, he told me that they throw food away too. I only cook as much as i can eat.

I don't think food waste can be eliminated. I would even argue that there is threshold after which a decrease in food waste comes at the expense of quality of nutrition. Even in my university's restaurant, which feeds students on a massive industrial scale, I see food waste. But even in a much bigger scale, the amount was significantly less. Elimination of food waste is not practical and should not be a goal, you'll…

As with any engineering problem, the harder you push some constraints the more you'll have to pay with others. A university-scale cafeteria could greatly reduce food waste by fetching the food off of the plates the customers are done with and putting that food back into the cafeteria for the next customers. But there's reasons that's several violations of the health code. Something has to give at some point.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#182

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #90
jiveturkey42 wrote: post #63

Threads like these reminds me that HN is an overwhelmingly urban community with almost zero exposure to the agriculture sector

As someone who works in healthcare, it must be like a healthcare/medicine/biology thread popping up for me. You'll never see so many people so certain they were right despite lacking the most basic knowledge on the topic.

[deleted]

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#183

Post by disambiguation »

usrn wrote: post #173
disambiguation wrote: post #162

This is a story about supply chains and inflation, but the real story is that we're in the century of "peak resources". Fertilizer depends on phosphorous which cannot be renewed or substituted once its gone. Without fertilizer we can't support the multi-billion person population we have today. We're not running out tomorrow, or even this decade, but we may experience peak phosphorous within our lifetimes.

Short of a nuclear reaction it isn't "gone" and some organisms are known to concentrate it when it's scattered.

Sure there is some level of recovery, likewise we can pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and stick it back in the ground.

A lot of problems go away if we "solve" energy, but that's also challenged by the same "peak" resource scenarios.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#184

Post by EricE »

We've been doing stupid crap - like subsidizing corn production for ethanol - that seriously needs to end. The amount of government/market mismanagement and interference driven by special interests is beyond ridiculous. The rubber band is beginning to snap!

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#185

Post by jiveturkey42 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #174
jiveturkey42 wrote: post #63

Threads like these reminds me that HN is an overwhelmingly urban community with almost zero exposure to the agriculture sector

My favorite are the threads about how we need to get rid of cars and switch everyone to public transit and cycling. :)

A sure-fire indicator that someone exists in a purely urban mental-model of reality

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#186

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

wrycoder wrote: post #161
mrfusion wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could we use it as a diet food if it’s indigestible?

You aren't going to get thin eating corn chips. That combination of fat and high glycemic carbohydrate is one of the worst.

The corn in corn chips has undergone nixtamalization, which makes more of the nutrients available to humans.

As others have commented, no. 2 yellow field corn can be ground into cornmeal, and even without nixtamalization, it is certainly digestible by humans, it's just that nixtamalization makes important nutrients like niacin available.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#187

Post by incomingpain »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #168
incomingpain wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

What in tarnation are you rambling about?

>What in tarnation are you rambling about?

I apologize for my poor reply, I am being downvoted even got flagged, which I don't feel is fair. https://imgur.com/Fsz6rdb

I was trying to explain that it's not about expertise on the subject. It's about finding a mind to change. What if perhaps there's some HN user who reads this and is like screw it I'm going into industrial scale fully automated aquaponics. They become huge and we feed the world.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#188

Post by EricE »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #61
kickout wrote: post #50

Mostly good comments in here. My take is we have at least 1-2 years of global supply of most grains. This is a completely political problem; its not like we're getting 2012 US Midwest levels of drought in back-to-back years (now THAT would be a crunch). Food waste is a problem, yes. Animal protein is not a problem. There is plenty of land in the US only suitable for grazing. Much better than that synthetic soup of Im…

> its not like we're getting 2012 US Midwest levels of drought in back-to-back years (now THAT would be a crunch). That's very likely in the current climate change scenario. Look at what's happening in the American South West right now. Lake Mead is currently at unprecedented low levels with no evidence that this will change course any time soon. It's possible within a decade there won't be enough water to run the Ho…

It' going to be within the next year or two, not a decade.... As I currently sit less than 5 miles from Hoover Dam.

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#189

Post by kristjansson »

orangepurple wrote: post #104
zqmall wrote: post #20

In 2012 you could feed 570 million people with the crops that go into the "green" ethanol scam: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/01/162127460/do... I'm not opposed to farm subsidies as part of food independence for national security, but please do not call it "green".

> Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans. > The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol. https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

Digestibility of corn post-processing aside, who eats the animals?

Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security

#190

Post by phpnode »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #152
chasd00 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If people reading this wanted to pursue a meaningful solution via data, my advise is to look at the scaling of the farm-to-consumer market, and how to enable larger distributed networks of small independent farms to sell to customers. are you implying a farmer's market? they exist.

Thank you for the helpful sarcasm. Yes, I am implying farmers markets. There is not currently an effective way for these small farms to network their production in aggregate to sell at a level commensurate to an industrial farm. This is the reason big ag can sell for cheaper. If farmers markets could achieve cost-parity with big grocery (by competing at-scale) then distributed small-scale farming could contribute to…

To make this work there would need to be a big social push towards eating in line with the seasons again (which was obviously the norm for 99.99% of the history of humanity). I think this might be a hard sell, people are now very used to being able to buy whatever they want whenever they want, e.g. strawberries in january
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