3 ms·

I spent most of my early childhood (0-7) on an "allotment" it measured 90 rods by 10 feet, or some other useless unit of measurement. Next to the allotment is

I spent most of my early childhood (0-7) on an "allotment" it measured 90 rods by 10 feet, or some other useless unit of measurement. Next to the allotment is a standard farmers field. It was earmarked for housing about 10 years ago, and it was abandoned as an crop growing device there and then. There are two obvious features of this field: 1) its much lower than the allotment 2) it only grows algae. The soil in the field is now basically sand. Most of the organic matter having dried out and blow away. There are no worms, because there is nothing for them to eat. Even if there were, they would have been killed by the pesticides long ago. Basically modern farming techniques sacrifice soil quality for current yield. Decent soil is needed to retain moisture. Decent soil requires much less in organic fertilisers, which greatly reduces phosphate run-offs. Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial: modern farming requires empty soils. Empty, poor quality soil does not retain water. This leads to run off, flooding and droughts. I would also suggest that it contributes directly to global warming, as bare soil retains its heat much better than dense vegetation. For the water retention, thats easy to prove, for temperatures, much harder

roel_v 10y ago
"Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:" This is not controversial. It's widely recognized (even by conventional farming bodies) that soil degradation is a major environmental threat. At the EU level, while the Soil Directive proposal was withdrawn a few years ago, much other environmental work and legislation is about mitigation and monitoring of soil degradation / threats. There are different schools of thought on how to deal with it though; the 'let's go back to subsistence farming' idea isn't the only way.
- KaiserPro 10y ago
  oh, I'm not suggesting subsitance farming, that just sucks balls. Have you ever tried to plough furrows with horses? that shits hard. we need to be dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields again. we also need to stop killing the soil ecosystem, so that fungus, worms and all manner of other things can grown and break the soil up
  - roel_v 10y ago
    Actually the reason we're in the soil predicament we're in (in Europe, at least) is that we've been dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields for years, leading to massive nitrate pollution. To the point that one of the limiting factors for keeping cows is the amount of land you have (or can rent) to spread the manure they produce over. But that's just nitpicking of me - I take it that what you meant is that we need less annual crops, more polyculture food growing, less tilling, and other such methods that increase soil organic matter and soil life. The problem is though that all alternatives, right now, are only a little bit less labor intensive than subsistence farming; especially if we add in the extra constraint of 'minimizing food kilometers'. Whereas the high-tech route (vertical hydroponics-style) doesn't need soil at all... I'm not sure where I'm going with this; all my replies in this thread have been pretty negative I'm afraid. The thing is that we don't have a good way forward; right now there is no 'sustainable agriculture' that is also scalable and cheap enough to feed everybody. If everybody who claimed 'their method' as the answer would start by admitting that, we could at least start from a position of mutual vulnerability, instead of the ideological entrenchment we see now.
    - KaiserPro 10y ago
      Ahh, slurry. yes, that lovely problem. I should have been more specific, instead of litrally spraying raw shit everywhere, we need to create proper compost/soil products. The aztecs managed it, I'm sure we can re-do Terra preta at scale I agree, what we really need is the application of science, and some imagination to try many different things. There is no one size fits all here.
PeterisP 10y ago
Do you literally mean "modern farming requires empty soils" or are you just saying that empty soils are a common result of modern farming, which is a bit different statement.

roel_v 10y ago

"Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:" This is not controversial. It's widely recognized (even by conventional farming bodies) that soil degradation is a major environmental threat. At the EU level, while the Soil Directive proposal was withdrawn a few years ago, much other environmental work and legislation is about mitigation and monitoring of soil degradation / threats. There are different schools of thought on how to deal with it though; the 'let's go back to subsistence farming' idea isn't the only way.

KaiserPro 10y ago
oh, I'm not suggesting subsitance farming, that just sucks balls. Have you ever tried to plough furrows with horses? that shits hard. we need to be dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields again. we also need to stop killing the soil ecosystem, so that fungus, worms and all manner of other things can grown and break the soil up
- roel_v 10y ago
  Actually the reason we're in the soil predicament we're in (in Europe, at least) is that we've been dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields for years, leading to massive nitrate pollution. To the point that one of the limiting factors for keeping cows is the amount of land you have (or can rent) to spread the manure they produce over. But that's just nitpicking of me - I take it that what you meant is that we need less annual crops, more polyculture food growing, less tilling, and other such methods that increase soil organic matter and soil life. The problem is though that all alternatives, right now, are only a little bit less labor intensive than subsistence farming; especially if we add in the extra constraint of 'minimizing food kilometers'. Whereas the high-tech route (vertical hydroponics-style) doesn't need soil at all... I'm not sure where I'm going with this; all my replies in this thread have been pretty negative I'm afraid. The thing is that we don't have a good way forward; right now there is no 'sustainable agriculture' that is also scalable and cheap enough to feed everybody. If everybody who claimed 'their method' as the answer would start by admitting that, we could at least start from a position of mutual vulnerability, instead of the ideological entrenchment we see now.
  - KaiserPro 10y ago
    Ahh, slurry. yes, that lovely problem. I should have been more specific, instead of litrally spraying raw shit everywhere, we need to create proper compost/soil products. The aztecs managed it, I'm sure we can re-do Terra preta at scale I agree, what we really need is the application of science, and some imagination to try many different things. There is no one size fits all here.

PeterisP 10y ago

Do you literally mean "modern farming requires empty soils" or are you just saying that empty soils are a common result of modern farming, which is a bit different statement.