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"Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:" This is not controversial. It's widely recognized (even by conventional farming bodies) that soil degradati

by 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 At the EU level, while the Soil Directive proposal was withdrawn a few years ago, much other environmental work and legislation is about mitigation and monitoring of soil degradation / threats.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.

by roel_v 10y ago

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.