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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

#251

Post by mecsred »

AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote: post #199
LarryMullins wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why the general tone of HN seems to be that modern farming isn't changing at all. Indeed. Perhaps somewhere out there is a parallel forum filled with farmers opining about computer programming, with equally inane remarks like "Have those programmers ever thought about making languages that translate into machine code instead of writing everything out as ones and zeros?"

> Sutor, ne ultra crepidam If you are a shoemaker, be careful not to pass judgement beyond the making of shoes.

You can pass all the judgement you want. You should just be more ready for it to be inaccurate the further you get from things you practice.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#252

Post by hedgehog »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #248
hedgehog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the rest of industrial age development, farm automation has historically been built around treating everything uniformly (even distribution of seeds bred for easy harvest in evenly spaced rows evenly fertilizied with no rocks etc etc). Moving away from that introduces all kinds of complexity, mechanical problems, data problems, etc, which are not easy to solve even when you have historical existence proofs of po…

It introduces trying to sell your crops for 5x what your competitor is and no buyer is going to pay 5x for “sustainable” produce.

What I'm getting at is things like applying fertilizer based on estimated need from imaging data, using robots with lasers to kill weeds, mechanized intercropping, etc. Not something consumers will necessarily see any direct impact from but that improve the quality and economics of production.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#253

Post by bryanlarsen »

anticodon wrote: post #223
bryanlarsen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This war has one primary cause: Putin. Anything else is a very distant secondary. COVID caused Putin to isolate and become paranoid, but it's still Putin's fault, not COVID's.

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.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#254

Post by ceejayoz »

anticodon wrote: post #224
ceejayoz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin's motivations predate the war, too; the invasion of Crimea was in 2014, and before that was Georgia in 2008.

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.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#255

Post by lotsofpulp »

hedgehog wrote: post #252
lotsofpulp wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It introduces trying to sell your crops for 5x what your competitor is and no buyer is going to pay 5x for “sustainable” produce.

What I'm getting at is things like applying fertilizer based on estimated need from imaging data, using robots with lasers to kill weeds, mechanized intercropping, etc. Not something consumers will necessarily see any direct impact from but that improve the quality and economics of production.

> which are not easy to solve even when you have historical existence proofs of potentially better ways to do things. It's happening though.

What I am getting at is if these “proofs” existed, they would already be proven by lower priced goods at the market.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#256

Post by hedora »

sudosysgen wrote: post #240
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…

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.)

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#258

Post by arghnoname »

eru wrote: post #250
arghnoname wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 leaner (i.e., more in accordance to the market on some shorter time horizon). There's also always an element of keeping more expensive ag in country than relying solely on imports.

I don't know how strong this effect would be, but I've heard these arguments a lot. 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.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#259

Post by arghnoname »

ceejayoz wrote: post #245
arghnoname wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 missi…

> Why do you think NATO was ceaselessly expanding eastward… Because countries asked to join, as is their right as sovereign nations. > in violation of guarantees they had made that they would not do so? No such guarantee has ever existed. The only such agreement violated in all this is the Budapest Memorandum, by the Russians. > Is it so unreasonable for a country that lost over 20 million from western aggression in…

Okay thanks. I think we just live in different realities.

Re: The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023

#260

Post by hedgehog »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #255
hedgehog wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm getting at is things like applying fertilizer based on estimated need from imaging data, using robots with lasers to kill weeds, mechanized intercropping, etc. Not something consumers will necessarily see any direct impact from but that improve the quality and economics of production.

> which are not easy to solve even when you have historical existence proofs of potentially better ways to do things. It's happening though. What I am getting at is if these “proofs” existed, they would already be proven by lower priced goods at the market.

A historical existence proof of a system or technology working has essentially nothing to do with whether it's being practiced in industry today, and whether it's being practiced today has very little to do with the product or pricing you see when you for example stop by KFC to eat a piece of chicken that's largely created out of corn, soy, and methane. That's the beauty of capitalism and commodity markets, John Deere can roll out technology for say computer-controlled planting that improves efficiency and the dividends get spread across the value chain without everyone having to know about it or change what they're doing.
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