[HN Gopher] Farmers facing fertiliser sticker shock may cut use,...
___________________________________________________________________
Farmers facing fertiliser sticker shock may cut use,raising food
security risks
Author : jelliclesfarm
Score : 80 points
Date : 2022-01-06 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| 99_00 wrote:
| More "surprises" like this is coming in the future.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_divestment
| _rpd wrote:
| A more in depth look at the factors causing high fertilizer
| prices:
|
| https://www.fb.org/market-intel/too-many-to-count-factors-dr...
|
| tl;dr: high natural gas prices, weather caused production delays,
| COVID caused production/shipping delays, power shortages in China
| (a major exporter) resulting in lower production
| akeck wrote:
| "Dirt to Soil" by Gabe Brown might start getting more popular. He
| started investigating no-till, etc. after several successive
| years of crop failures and thus not being able to afford the
| normal inputs for industrial farming.
| rmason wrote:
| Adopting no-till techniques will save soil but won't
| appreciably reduce your fertilizer use. I'd even go so far as
| to say if you do it right the soil will be healthier.
|
| But if you use cover crops and especially rotate out of alfalfa
| you can safely reduce nitrogen use because of the carryover of
| nitrogen in the soil.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| All the no till people I follow don't use chemical
| fertilizer(eg JM Fortier). They do add compost to their soil
| but that's not fertilizer.
| [deleted]
| Panino wrote:
| And his farm has above-average yields compared to other area
| farms, but also _way higher_ profits. Brown Ranch practices
| Regenerative Agriculture.
|
| If I was president I'd ask Gabe Brown to run USDA.
| akeck wrote:
| Exactly. I watched one of his presentations. His burn rate is
| quite low since he needs many fewer inputs to farm.
| hosh wrote:
| There is a government agency that goes around trying to teach
| farmers how to farm in a way to bring fertility back to soil
| life, and have even parterned with people farming with notill
| to talk to conventional farmers.
|
| Despite going around making presentations for years, it is
| still a hard sell to farmers.
|
| Examples (and I am paraphrasing not quoting):
|
| "What if my crop goes bad? Or hail? How do I deal with
| pests?" "Polycropping means that you'll have some kind of
| crop even if some of them don't do well, or the market
| crashes on one of them"
|
| "I can't run my farm and make a profit without the subsidies"
| "I was able to get off of subsidies and my farm is more
| profitable and resilient than it had been before."
|
| "I'd still have to get manure from somewhere and prices will
| go up" "I run a livestock operation on the fallow fields.
| They help fertilize the fields until I put crops back on
| them. I sell both crops and livestock."
|
| And so on.
| bluGill wrote:
| Much like science advances with the death of the older
| generation, farming advances as the old farmers die. The
| average farmer is something like 55 years old. Young
| farmers are far more willing in generation to try new
| things.
|
| No till is standard farming practice these days. You can't
| get government subsides in many cases if you do traditional
| tilling. (there are other types of tilling allowed - they
| are much better for the soil)
| hosh wrote:
| Well ... notill is something that some indigenous people
| had as a practice. I think we lost a lot more in our
| shift to modernity. We've been living on this narrative
| that what comes next is necessarily better than what came
| before, and while there are some progress, that narrative
| doesn't hold up to be universally true.
|
| https://www.atnesa.org/contil/contil-shetto-
| indigenous.pdf
|
| If folks thought notill is so revolutionary, wait 'til
| they see perennial food forests and agroforestry. Those
| also have indigenous roots.
| bsder wrote:
| Most of the issues we have in our system in the US is due to
| the fact that we really don't have _farms_ --we have gigantic
| _agribusinesses_.
|
| Most of the "family farms" have been driven out of business
| or have had to scale up to industrial levels (thus becoming
| part of the problem).
|
| How does "Regenerative Agriculture" address the scaling
| problem?
| thowaway97351 wrote:
| bee_rider wrote:
| This website was originally about startups. I bet if your farm
| can produce anything near as much as the competition without
| using modern fertilizers, you could pick up some investors here
| by detailing your process and results.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Playground Global was looking at fertilizer making by
| skipping Haber Bosch process entirely...I don't know how far
| along they are but there are a few companies/startups that
| are looking at this space.
|
| Perhaps quantum computing might catch on sooner than we hope
| and new breakthroughs in material science?
| mwattsun wrote:
| I remember this from awhile back about how food insecurity
| sparked instability in N. African and Middle Eastern countries
|
| _Lack of access to affordable food has proven to trigger
| revolutions and spark unrest across the world_
|
| https://www.csis.org/analysis/food-insecurity-conflict-and-s...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That seems like an obvious truth.
| mwattsun wrote:
| I thought the same thing, but I like to fact check
| switch007 wrote:
| It's a huge reason why food is relatively cheap in most of the
| EU, I believe.
| shrubble wrote:
| A related problem is that seeds for next year's crop has gone up
| a lot also.
|
| For example, last year peas for seed were about $8 per bushel.
| Now, $25 per bushel.
|
| So both fertilizer and seed costs have increased; which changes
| the calculus of how many acres the farmer can afford to plant.
| Reichhardt wrote:
| China already suspended Phosphate exports in July 2021:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-exports-fertilisers...
| downrightmike wrote:
| Considering how much is overused and washes into rivers and
| oceans and creates dead zones. This is a really good thing. We
| over produce as is.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Food prices going up hurts the poor the most, especially base
| commodities like corn and soy.
| picsao wrote:
| The last cut in american over production resulted in the Arab-
| spring revolution wave and the Syrian Civil War.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| What an odd rationalization. This is NOT a good thing. Aside
| from empty shelves, prices will rise from lower production if
| nothing else and that can lead to all kinds of bad consequences
| from malnutrition to social unrest.
| drbojingle wrote:
| He's not wrong though. What he's describing is a silver
| lining. Optimizing fertilizer application to reduce waste is
| going to be part of the response to addressing climate
| change.
| rmason wrote:
| Most of the nitrogen in our rivers and lakes causing problems
| isn't from farmers use of fertilizer. Farmers are in a low
| margin business and if they use too much nitrogen they make
| less money.
|
| A lot of it used to be caused by manure runoff from large
| animal operations. But twenty or more years ago laws were
| changed and regulators focused their attention on correcting
| this problem. There are always exceptions but mostly this
| problem is fixed. Farmers have to file plans on which lands
| gets manure, complete with soil tests showing they're not
| overdoing it.
|
| I helped farmers in the late nineties fill out these reports in
| my former career as an agronomist. Back then some larger
| farmers were either moving to composting or using the manure to
| power plants creating electricity.
|
| So where is it coming from now? Lawn fertilizer! People over
| fertilizing their lawns.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Lawn fertilizer! People over fertilizing their lawns.
|
| Lawn fertilizer!? I didn't even know that was a thing! Why
| would you fertilize a lawn. Won't that just make it grow
| faster and therefore require you to mow it more often?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The worst part is people clean off the lawn clippings,
| which would just decompose into nitrogen that the grass
| needs in the first place.
| jakear wrote:
| You seem to know what you're talking about so I have a
| question. Is it possible that leaving fallen leaves on a lawn
| for a period of time can help to fertilize that lawn? I
| experimented with that on my lawn this past fall and while
| it's too early to make any conclusions I wonder if there's
| any prior art here?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Composted leaves will fertilize it somewhat, but if you
| just let leaves fall on your lawn, it tends to kill the
| lawn. I recommend raking into pile, and letting it sit for
| a year or so (fallen brown leaves compost rather slowly),
| then you can spread resulting compost. But, unless you have
| lots of trees, the amount of nitrogen in fallen leaves will
| be minimal (trees don't like parting with valuable
| nutrients either).
| aesch wrote:
| Not an expert, just a gardener. Short answer: just letting
| leaves fall on your lawn for a period of time is unlikely
| to provide fertilization, in fact it may hurt your lawn,
| because the leaves will not break down fast enough and will
| instead cut off your lawn's access to air and sunlight.
|
| Long answer: You need to break down the organic matter in
| the leaves through composting. To speed up composting you
| want the right proportions of both brown (carbon - your
| leaves) and green (nitrogen) matter, the right moisture
| levels, and access to oxygen, usually in a large pile to
| create the perfect environment for the microorganisms that
| break down the matter. Your leaves are a great base for
| your compost, I always use mine, but you will probably need
| to put a little sweat equity into it, as well as kitchen
| scraps, lawn cuttings, etc. to get the right proportion of
| greens.
| frenchyatwork wrote:
| So humanity's stupidest form of cultivation strikes again.
| aussiegreenie wrote:
| Farmers are facing countless "sticker shocks" with the most
| important being water. Most farming is not either ecologically or
| financially sustainable.
|
| Major changes are need to farming.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| Most people don't understand that fertilizer is made from
| petrochemicals. It's not old-fashioned manure.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Most people don 't understand that fertilizer is made from
| petrochemicals. It's not old-fashioned manure._
|
| Not all fertilizer. But I wouldn't be surprised if the majority
| of it is made from chemicals.
|
| Chicago's poop gets processed and spread on farms downstate,
| for example.
|
| Just an hour ago I got a food delivery from a farmer who uses
| only her own livestock to fertilize her fields.
|
| (As a side note, it's wonderful to see -- since the pandemic --
| how many farmers where I live have set up web sites so they can
| deliver their goods from their farms straight to the doorsteps
| of people living the city, in addition to farmers' markets. So
| far, I get my beef, pork, eggs, some cheeses, and honey
| delivered right to my doorman. Still looking for a milk option
| that isn't raw, or $11.99/gallon.)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| This was one of the things I was taught as an environmental
| studies major: That Peak Oil does not just mean we need to
| develop alternative energy and alternative transportation. It
| means we need to also develop alternative means to keep
| producing enough food to feed our current population.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| And some of the toxic by-products of that production are then
| put into our drinking water instead of being properly disposed
| of
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/engineering/engineering-sho...
|
| >The three fluoride additives used for water fluoridation are
| derived principally from phosphate fertilizer production.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The source of something doesn't tell you much about its
| health effects. A lot of life saving drugs are created using
| industrial processes involving many nasty chemicals. This is
| not too far from the logic of signing a petition against
| dihydrogen monoxide because it sounds like a scary chemical.
| lovich wrote:
| Is fluoride in our drinking water a problem? I happen to like
| my teeth
| OJFord wrote:
| Some locales (all of the USA, I believe) add it for the
| _benefit_ of teeth.
|
| (Like anything there's presumably a poisonous dosage! But)
| no, not a problem.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| If you'll forgive my use of an anecdote...
|
| I stopped getting cavities when I started using a good
| electric toothbrush, not when I started drinking
| fluoridated water.
|
| So no idea if the statistics bear this out, but personally
| I don't care much about the fluoride.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I stopped getting tons of cavities when I started
| drinking fluoridated water as a kid. I didn't have an
| electric toothbrush until well into my 20s. So I guess
| that's 2 data points? What now?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wasn't trying to demonstrate that brushing trumps
| fluoride. I shared my experience in the hope it would
| spark interesting discussion.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I know a dentist in a suburb of a city that does not
| fluoridate. They said they can guess whether or not the
| patient grew up in the city or outside the city simply
| based on their dental history.
| machinerychorus wrote:
| While it is typically railed against by crackpots, it also
| shouldn't be assumed to be safe/correct. We've been adding
| flouride to water for a long time, without much
| understanding of the risks, benefits, or proper dosage.
| Here's an article from the atlantic (not a crackpot news
| source) which goes into detail:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/why-
| flu...
| worik wrote:
| https://www.cochrane.org/CD010856/ORAL_water-
| fluoridation-pr...
|
| Key results
|
| Our review found that water fluoridation is effective at
| reducing levels of tooth decay among children. The
| introduction of water fluoridation resulted in children
| having 35% fewer decayed, missing and filled baby teeth
| and 26% fewer decayed, missing and filled permanent
| teeth. We also found that fluoridation led to a 15%
| increase in children with no decay in their baby teeth
| and a 14% increase in children with no decay in their
| permanent teeth. These results are based predominantly on
| old studies and may not be applicable today.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| There is basically consensus that fluoride in the
| drinking water is good for teeth. The worry is that
| consuming it may have other negative effects unrelated to
| teeth. We know that fluoride in higher dosage isn't good
| to be consumed, but what about long term, small dosage
| exposure?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Fluoride in water doesn't do anything for teeth. The
| fluoridation treatments dentists use are effective but
| that's a concentrated paste applied for some minutes to the
| teeth in a dentist's chair. Diluted fluoride in the water
| supply has zero benefit for teeth.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Research seems to disagree with you[1]. Do you have a
| citation for your assertion?
|
| [1] https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/news/calgary-childrens-
| dental-he...
| [deleted]
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| NPK is the acronym for basic plant nutrients. Others might know
| better than me, but you have those three (nitrogen, phosphate,
| and potassium) for primary fertilizer nutrients. Of those P is
| mined (apatite) from rock ore and K is mined from rock ore or
| brine. Mining and ore process has energy inputs couple to oil
| price, granted. Nitrogen is ammonia via HB, predominately with
| nat gas feedstock.
|
| Sometimes we get down these tangents and it derails from the
| core topic. This is terrible and unwelcome news.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Phosphate fertilizer is mostly mined. Ammonia-based (NH3)
| fertilizers are made from atmospheric N2 via hydrogenation, and
| the source of the hydrogen can be water. The whole process
| (Haber-Bosch) can be renewably powered with no fossil fuels in
| other words.
| nostrademons wrote:
| "Can be" is pretty critical. Most hydrogen is currently
| produced from methane (natural gas) via steam reforming. The
| barriers toward renewable production are economic, not
| technological, but at current prices natural gas is a lot
| cheaper than electrolysis.
|
| On the plus side, it's good to know that fertilizer isn't a
| blocker from going fossil-fuel free.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Fertilizer can be carbon free (ammonia from hydrogen from
| water + sun), but about 0% of the world's supply is that.
| All the hydrogen comes from natural gas.
|
| Steel can be made carbon free, but so far it's all made in
| a blast furnace with a lot of coal.
|
| Aluminium can be carbon free (electricity), but so far we
| reduce carbon electrodes and release a lot of CO2 because
| carbon is cheaper than using extra electricity.
|
| All it would take is the right global tax or incentive
| structure and all these industries would quickly move over,
| saving us 20+% of CO2 emissions!
| sophacles wrote:
| Sorry for being pedantic, but isn't carbon-free steel
| just iron?
| bsder wrote:
| The carbon in the steel is a tiny fraction of the carbon
| used to make coke which fuels the process.
|
| This is similar to plastics. Sure, plastics use
| petroleum. However, if we quit burning petroleum for
| cars, suddenly we have 100+ years of petroleum reserves
| for plastics.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| While not the focus of this article, I'm curious how much of a
| reduction in fertilizer use we'll see in Iowa and the
| ramifications for water quality. Overapplication and lack of
| buffers has lead to incredibly high levels of nitrates making it
| into the rivers. Because of this, Des Moines is starting on a new
| $30M well because every year the algae and nitrate levels become
| too high for safe consumption. It's gone to the Iowa Supreme
| Court, but no remedy has been required of the communities
| upstream.
|
| The most of the last two summers the local lake has had an
| advisory to not swim or do water sports because of the algae.
| Another article interviewed a water quality professor who
| basically said "There's no other comparable city that has this
| issue. Not being able to use the river as the full water supply
| because of nitrate levels is unheard of."
|
| https://www.iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2021-04-22/des-moin...
| mattferderer wrote:
| This has become a huge issue all over the country where there
| is a lot of farm land next to lakes & rivers. Another big issue
| is salt from water softeners & products dumped on roads &
| driveways to remove ice in the winter.
|
| I'm curious if there exists any companies working on some type
| of large water supply cleaning method as I don't see people
| slowing down or reducing any of the above.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Making mostly-clean water into clean water with reverse
| osmosis is pretty viable.
|
| It's far cheaper than the reverse osmosis of seawater done in
| many parts of the world.
| bluGill wrote:
| Nitrate levels in Iowa were sometimes dangerously high when
| white settlers first arrived in the early 1800s. (I have no
| doubt before then too, but I don't have information on what the
| native tribes or fur trappers dealt with). Nitrates are a
| natural process in soil, that is what makes Iowa so great for
| corn farming. Yes farmers are adding more, but even without
| farmers there would be a problem.
|
| Farmers actually care about this - any nitrate that runs off is
| nitrate that they paid for and didn't use (or nitrate that they
| have to pay to replace). That doesn't mean they know how to
| solve the problem
| keithly wrote:
| The problem is agricultural practices that lead to increased
| runoff, not the amount of nitrogen naturally occurring in the
| soil or the amount applied.
|
| https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/20.
| ..
|
| "Nitrate levels in Iowa's major rivers have increased more
| than threefold since the 1950s, but have stabilized -- and
| even slightly declined -- in recent decades, according to an
| in-depth review of available research."
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I guess the Toledo (the Ohio one) Water Crisis was lost on
| them.
|
| Could happen to any city on the Great Lakes.
|
| > Lake Erie, which is a source of drinking water for the Toledo
| water system may have been impacted by a harmful algal bloom
| (HAB). These organisms are capable of producing a number of
| toxins that may pose a risk to human and animal health. HABs
| occur when excess nitrogen and phosphorus are present in lakes
| and streams. Such nutrients can come from runoff of over-
| fertilized fields and lawns, from malfunctioning septic systems
| and from livestock pens.
|
| https://neiwpcc.org/information-center/neiwpcc-reprint-serie...
|
| > It took a serendipitous slug of toxins and the loss of
| drinking water for a half-million residents to bring home what
| scientists and government officials in this part of the country
| have been saying for years: Lake Erie is in trouble, and
| getting worse by the year.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/us/lifting-ban-toledo-say...
| sremani wrote:
| This is a serious problem. Developing world and food insecure
| nations will see heads roll and experience famine. Worried about
| global inflation on food.
| doitLP wrote:
| This was my first thought after I understood what locking down
| the world meant. I wonder if the death toll with be worth it in
| the final analysis.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| By the way, ammonia is basically the easiest market for clean
| hydrogen (makes WAY more sense than hydrogen for transportation).
| Ammonia actually doesn't use hydrocarbons for feedstock at all;
| it uses nitrogen from the air and hydrogen (usually produced via
| steam reforming of natural gas, but can be made easily with
| electricity, as was common before the 1950s when steam reforming
| took off). It takes about 1kg of hydrogen per 5.7kg of anhydrous
| ammonia. So if you can make clean hydrogen for $2.5-3/kg, you can
| make clean ammonia for under $500/tonne in feedstock costs. The
| current price of anhydrous ammonia has reached above $1300/tonne
| in some areas of the US in the last few months.
|
| Companies looking into making synthetic natural gas or hydrogen
| for transport really ought to be focusing on this as near-term
| low-hanging fruit where you have the option of actually
| eliminating steam reforming needed for fossil fuels and use
| electrically synthesized hydrogen as a direct feedstock instead.
| nradov wrote:
| Ammonia may be a good option for fueling merchant ships.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54511743
| philipkglass wrote:
| Electrolytic hydrogen projects are ramping up quickly now. It
| will take a few years for those planned now to be completed.
| Here's a recently announced Egyptian project:
|
| _Scatec has entered into an agreement with Fertiglobe plc, a
| leading ammonia producer jointly owned by OCI N.V. and Abu
| Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and The Sovereign Fund of
| Egypt (TSFE), to jointly develop a 50-100MW green hydrogen
| facility as feedstock for green ammonia production._
|
| https://scatec.com/2021/10/14/scatec-partners-with-fertiglob...
|
| In the 1960s Egypt had the world's largest electrolytic
| hydrogen plant powered by hydroelectricity from the Aswan Dam,
| also for making fertilizer. Now renewable electricity from
| other sources is making electricity-to-ammonia practical again.
|
| _In energy terms, the [fertilizer] industry is dominated by
| the Kima plant at Aswan which at full production would use 7.6
| x 10^15 joules of energy per annum to produce 112,000 tonnes of
| nitrogen as prilled calcium ammonium nitrate. The plant was*
| built in 1960 to utilize the spare hydropower available from
| the Aswan Dam to produce hydrogen by electrolysis for ammonia
| manufacture. The plant has operated successfully since its
| inception and is currently one of the largest plants in the
| country._
|
| From U.S. Department of Energy report, "An Assessment of the
| Energy Requirements and Selected Options Facing Major Consumers
| Within the Eyptian Industrial and Agricultural Sectors", 1978
|
| https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5610349
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Most people are not aware that we have less than 60 years of
| phosphate reserves left. It's not a renewable resource.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Wikipedia says 260 years:
|
| > In 2021, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated
| that economically extractable phosphate rock reserves worldwide
| are 71 billion tons, while world mining production in 2020 was
| 223 million tons. Assuming zero growth, the reserves would thus
| last for 260 years.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Phosphorus is one of the more common elements on Earth. It's
| more common than carbon, sulfur, or nitrogen (to name 3 other
| elements essential to life):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth.
| ..
|
| Lower grade phosphorus-bearing minerals could also be refined
| to concentrate the phosphorus. But there's little current
| incentive to do so when the tried-and-true process starting
| with phosphate rock will be adequate for a couple more
| centuries.
| kashkhan wrote:
| have we ever "run out" of a non-renewable resource? Non-
| renewables just become more expensive when easily found
| reserves are exhausted.
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| That's a distinction without a difference. The end result is
| the same; we lose the ability to make use of the resource in
| question and have to design alternatives.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| By that measure we ran out of copper a long time ago, yet I
| can still buy it at Home Depot. It's just crazy expensive.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| Silphuim, passenger pigeons, and dodos. Previously, wolly
| mammoths (and undoubtedly others that we don't know about).
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Those are all renewable.
| evan_ wrote:
| so is petroleum, if you can wait a few hundred million
| years
| sokoloff wrote:
| Fossil fuels probably are as well if you're willing to
| wait long enough. No amount of waiting will renew one of
| the extinct species listed.
| celticninja wrote:
| I dont think this would apply to coal. There are
| organisms that can use the wood that would otherwise need
| to fossilize to create coal. These organisms did not
| exist the first time round.
| bigthymer wrote:
| They could also switch to less fertilizer intensive crops. I
| think soybeans require less than corn. Farmers commonly switch
| between the two depending on market prices. Not a farmer but I
| think I read it somewhere...maybe 80% sure of this...
| opinion-is-bad wrote:
| Soybeans and corn can often be grown in the same areas, and
| corn uses more fertilizer than soybeans so your logic checks
| out. The problem is that corn produces more calories per acre
| than soybeans (or any other crop), so changing over large
| amounts of production could still result in a food shortage
| even if the total acres remains the same.
| zdragnar wrote:
| We could also cut the mandates for ethanol produced from
| corn- roughly 40% of corn grown goes into making it.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| A lot of corn also goes to animal feed.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| When I worked out the numbers, it was about 75% of US
| corn production going to ethanol and animal feed.
|
| A lot of the other 25% is probably corn syrup.
|
| Burning natural gas to make fertilizer to grow corn (a 2%
| efficient solar panel) to eventually blend with gasoline
| is uhhhhh, dumb.
| djrogers wrote:
| The article, and the problems it references, aren't really
| expected to be a US thing - it's developing nations, and
| places where food is already harder to come by...
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I'd imagine that the protein in soy is more important to the
| food supply than a simple measure of calories.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| We could also stop feeding so much of these plants to animals
| and start feeding them to ourselves and cut our growing
| immensely. We're feeding about 3/4 of our soybeans to
| animals, but they're packed with protein that we can digest.
| teslabox wrote:
| > Farmers commonly switch between the two depending on market
| prices.
|
| Legume roots have nodules that cultivate bacteria that fix
| nitrogen. Farmers rotate their fields between corn and
| soybeans/legumes because the bacteria on legume roots restores
| the nitrogen in the soil, thereby lessening their fertilizer
| costs.
|
| _Biological Nitrogen Fixation:_
| https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/biological...
|
| This is an inoculant with bacteria for soybeans:
| https://www.groworganic.com/products/soybean-inoculant?_pos=...
|
| Plants with deep roots pull up nutrients from deep soil. I
| think corn and soybeans generally don't help with restoring the
| soil like native plants.
|
| _A chart comparing root systems of North American prairie
| plants and bluegrass:_
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ecology/comments/bxoh43/a_chart_com...
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