<story><title>The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023</title><url>https://modernfarmer.com/2022/12/the-fertilizer-shortage-will-persist-in-2023/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tengbretson</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s like everyone who&amp;#x27;s ever watched a YouTube video about planting a 3 sisters garden has an opinion for the people actually staking their livelihood on this now.</text></item><item><author>ilostmyshoes</author><text>What they don&amp;#x27;t seem to be talking about is learning from indigenous farming communities who use things like diversity in crops and rotation to keep soil quality high. These problems were solved decades ago, just not by the industrial farming community</text></item><item><author>mattpallissard</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure why the general tone of HN seems to be that modern farming isn&amp;#x27;t changing at all.&lt;p&gt;Erosion has been on everyone&amp;#x27;s radar for decades. We went from plow -&amp;gt; till -&amp;gt; low till -&amp;gt; no till.  Believe me, the folks who do this talk about plowing practices and cover crops.  They also discuss GMO crops and the crazy legal restrictions around seed that come with it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Brown earth has a deep top layer where most of the nutrients are and biological activities take place. At around 20 centimetres deep&lt;p&gt;Fun fact, where I grew up there is over 10 feet of black dirt before you hit bedrock.  A lot of the Midwestern US is like that.  Even with all that runway those guys _still_ discuss erosion.</text></item><item><author>hammock</author><text>There is so little organic matter in the topsoil due to modern farming practices and it gets worse every year. The result is soil that doesn&amp;#x27;t retain water, it just runs off. This means that irrigation has to be more and more frequent, and it means that fertilizer runs off (causing algal blooms etc) more than it percolates into the soil&lt;p&gt;Lots of places to read more about this issue and here&amp;#x27;s a start: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nhm.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;discover&amp;#x2F;soil-degradation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nhm.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;discover&amp;#x2F;soil-degradation.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>photochemsyn</author><text>A remarkable amount of the fertilizer applied via modern industrial farming practices is just wasted:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;According to an average of 13 global databases from 10 data sources, in 2010, 161 teragrams of nitrogen were applied to agricultural crops, but only 73 teragrams of nitrogen made it to the harvested crop. A total of 86 teragrams of nitrogen was wasted, perhaps ending up in the water, air, or soil. The new research was published in the journal Nature Food in July.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eos.org&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;index-suggests-that-half-of-nitrogen-applied-to-crops-is-lost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eos.org&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;index-suggests-that-half-of-nitroge...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Large-area applications by mechanized systems seem to be part of the problem, but that&amp;#x27;s also necessary to escape the subsitence agriculture trap, i.e. with such systems, it&amp;#x27;s not necessary for half or more of the human population to be working in the fields to grow food, it&amp;#x27;s more like 1 in 50 or 1 in 100.&lt;p&gt;The most promising solution might be AI + robots.  If a robot could crawl up and down fields inspecting individual plants for nutrient status and applying small amounts of fertilizer as needed (also weeding and checking for pest infestations), it could cut fertilizer use in half while maintaining the same level of production - and perhaps eliminate the need for most herbicides and pesticides.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>codingdave</author><text>It is more about that fact that people talking about sustainable food production do not share many goals with commodity farmers exchanging corn and soybeans for as much cash as possible.</text></comment>
<story><title>The fertilizer shortage will persist in 2023</title><url>https://modernfarmer.com/2022/12/the-fertilizer-shortage-will-persist-in-2023/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tengbretson</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s like everyone who&amp;#x27;s ever watched a YouTube video about planting a 3 sisters garden has an opinion for the people actually staking their livelihood on this now.</text></item><item><author>ilostmyshoes</author><text>What they don&amp;#x27;t seem to be talking about is learning from indigenous farming communities who use things like diversity in crops and rotation to keep soil quality high. These problems were solved decades ago, just not by the industrial farming community</text></item><item><author>mattpallissard</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure why the general tone of HN seems to be that modern farming isn&amp;#x27;t changing at all.&lt;p&gt;Erosion has been on everyone&amp;#x27;s radar for decades. We went from plow -&amp;gt; till -&amp;gt; low till -&amp;gt; no till.  Believe me, the folks who do this talk about plowing practices and cover crops.  They also discuss GMO crops and the crazy legal restrictions around seed that come with it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Brown earth has a deep top layer where most of the nutrients are and biological activities take place. At around 20 centimetres deep&lt;p&gt;Fun fact, where I grew up there is over 10 feet of black dirt before you hit bedrock.  A lot of the Midwestern US is like that.  Even with all that runway those guys _still_ discuss erosion.</text></item><item><author>hammock</author><text>There is so little organic matter in the topsoil due to modern farming practices and it gets worse every year. The result is soil that doesn&amp;#x27;t retain water, it just runs off. This means that irrigation has to be more and more frequent, and it means that fertilizer runs off (causing algal blooms etc) more than it percolates into the soil&lt;p&gt;Lots of places to read more about this issue and here&amp;#x27;s a start: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nhm.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;discover&amp;#x2F;soil-degradation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nhm.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;discover&amp;#x2F;soil-degradation.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>photochemsyn</author><text>A remarkable amount of the fertilizer applied via modern industrial farming practices is just wasted:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;According to an average of 13 global databases from 10 data sources, in 2010, 161 teragrams of nitrogen were applied to agricultural crops, but only 73 teragrams of nitrogen made it to the harvested crop. A total of 86 teragrams of nitrogen was wasted, perhaps ending up in the water, air, or soil. The new research was published in the journal Nature Food in July.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eos.org&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;index-suggests-that-half-of-nitrogen-applied-to-crops-is-lost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eos.org&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;index-suggests-that-half-of-nitroge...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Large-area applications by mechanized systems seem to be part of the problem, but that&amp;#x27;s also necessary to escape the subsitence agriculture trap, i.e. with such systems, it&amp;#x27;s not necessary for half or more of the human population to be working in the fields to grow food, it&amp;#x27;s more like 1 in 50 or 1 in 100.&lt;p&gt;The most promising solution might be AI + robots.  If a robot could crawl up and down fields inspecting individual plants for nutrient status and applying small amounts of fertilizer as needed (also weeding and checking for pest infestations), it could cut fertilizer use in half while maintaining the same level of production - and perhaps eliminate the need for most herbicides and pesticides.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mattwest</author><text>No kidding, and furthermore it&amp;#x27;s as if they don&amp;#x27;t take a second to consider scalability, yield, commodity-market efficiency, and labor-force.</text></comment>