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Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it seems like increasing yields and inadequate fertilization focusing on macronutrients would also explain the drop. If I

Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it seems like increasing yields and inadequate fertilization focusing on macronutrients would also explain the drop. If I grow crops that preferentially absorb certain minerals and then take away most of the vegetable matter from the plot, the soil content of the absorbed minerals is going to drop without something to replenish it. Now, I'm not saying soil bacteria and mychorrhizal networks can't pull minerals from the underlying bedrock and transport it to the top layer, but even assuming they did, I would think high-yield farming would tax their ability to keep up with mineral outflows.

Scoundreller 7y ago
Not even focusing on macronutrients. We’re just focussing in mass. I’m not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.
- philipov 7y ago
  The worst is strawberries. The huge strawberries you can buy in the store have the same flavor content as the tiny ones you can grow in your yard, but it's completely diluted with water. They're disgusting.
  - fiblye 7y ago
    Where I live, I can buy tiny fruits and vegetables from local farmers, or I can buy imported ones that are 3x as large and get twice as much for half the price. The difference in fruit flavor is unbelievable. Tiny strawberries grown on a couple acres of land versus mega farm strawberries aren’t even in the same flavor category. The tiny ones taste almost identical to strawberry candies, but large ones that draw people in with the wow factor are like firm lumps of sour water.
    - markdown 7y ago
      > but large ones that draw people in with the wow factor are like firm lumps of sour water. Sounds like they were grown hydroponically. I can't stand hydroponically grown tomatoes for the same reason. Just bags of water.
      - mito88 7y ago
        sreet protesters like them. :)
  - TillE 7y ago
    Same thing with carrots. Or tomatoes. It's amazing how vegetables can taste good when they haven't been bred into giant lumps of blandness.
  - powersnail 7y ago
    Is it just because they are giant? I’ve had relatively big strawberries that are sweet and flavorful in China. But in the US, they taste like cucumber plus citrus, no sweetness, no aroma, just incredibly sour and watery.
    - philipov 7y ago
      I don't know what Chinese strawberries are like, but I always figured that American strawberries are watery and sour because they're not only big, but they're also grown too quickly for flavor to develop. I think they're engineered to artificially mature early and are basically still unripe.
      - Trav5 7y ago
        I have had amazing and bland Strawberries from Safeway in the US. Not sure how to pick the good ones. Time of year?
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Yes, local in season fruit is always tastier. I suspect because out of season fruit has to come from further away, meaning it has to be picked before it normally would be if it didn’t have to travel so far.
        OkGoDoIt 7y ago
        I too have had this experience. Now I always sample one from a pack before I buy. I used to feel guilty doing that, but the quality varies so much and I got sick of wasting fruit purchases when they turn out to be sour or gross. Same with grapes and blueberries from Costco.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        It's really weird to me that people are generalizing this by nationality. Sure, a lot of supermarket strawberries are terrible. They also frequently (but not always) come from outside the US. Some are ok, and some people get flavorful ones somehow, because I've had excellent quality ones with dessert in a restaurant. Also, there are farmer's markets and stands, even though I'm not in the habit of going to them.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  There were people arguing how great increased crop yield was in the last few weeks. [0] Some comments were made about how the exponential factor of crop yields outweighed the loss of output nutrients. Glad to see the counterargument on the table. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20667031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20667031
- drewmol 7y ago
  Tomatoes can particuralry well so for the out of season times I've come to preffer using canned and avoiding the unripe tomatoes, which are often ripened (turned red) by truckloads using nitrogen. America's Test Kitchen has lot's of reviews on canned tomatoes[0]. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/taste_tests/231-canned-whole-tomatoes https://www.americastestkitchen.com/taste_tests/231-canned-w...
- JasonFruit 7y ago
  Store-bought tomatoes are just a pale reminder of what a real tomato tastes like. It's no wonder that people who never ate a ripe tomato fresh from the garden don't like tomatoes; there is nothing good about them but the memory of something incomparably better.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Maybe my gardens faulty, but within the same variety, superstore and my-personal-garden tomatoes are near indistinguishable. The only difference I see is my garden tomatoes seem to have a thin layer of city dirt on the skin that's hard to wipe off... (That black dusting of tyre rubber and brake dust that makes a tissue dirty if you wipe it over the surface)
cwkoss 7y ago
Glomalin was only discovered in 1996 and it contains up to 30% of soil carbon! Fungal cell walls degrade into a sticky product that makes the soil more loamy. Glomalin levels are strongly correlated with soil fertility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin I think artificial supplementation can be greatly improved, as you suggest. However, it increasingly looking like the soil biome is directly responsible for plant productivity, rather than only indirectly assisting in nutrient transport.
tmp190914pn2 7y ago
Both parent and grandparent are saying something important here. Mineral availability from the microbiome via root interactions is critical. But throw nitrogen at a plant and it will rapidly grow utilizing CO2, O2 and water, leaving a mineral deficient plant. And that is true in any soil. Also, modern plants have been selected to be large and tender, which tends to be inversely coorelated to mineral density. So it's been a perfect storm against.
- api 7y ago
  You get what you incentivize. Produce is typically sold by weight.
  - chii 7y ago
    produce rich in nutrients are typically also tastier. However, modern groceries (such as massive chain stores) require huge logistics and scale, and thus expect farmers to produce a steady, homogenous and sturdy crop that also happen to lack nutrients. It's unfortunate that for the produce to be cheap, it has to be done the way it is today. Not everybody can afford to have "organically grown" heirloom tomatoes, because it's too expensive, and labour intensive. May be genetically modifying foods to also take in minerals properly is the answer...
    - chimi 7y ago
      heirloom crops are not as productive. I grew many different varieties and some of the plants engineered for greenhouses would produce 5x as many tomatoes per plant than heirlooms in the same greenhouse, getting the same amount of water and fertilizer -- and they still tasted good. Much better than typical grocery store tomatoes. More modern varieties are also more resilient to disease and pests.
  - dmix 7y ago
    What's been incentivized in most countries farming-wise has had the scales significantly tipped in certain directions where it's not simply the most valuable plants/animals at the maximum weights.
geomark 7y ago
When you want to " pull minerals from the underlying bedrock and transport it to the top layer", trees do that. Composting with tree leaves would seem to be beneficial, although perhaps a rather slow process. And of course you need lots of trees around. Incompatible with large scale monoculture farming.

Scoundreller 7y ago

Not even focusing on macronutrients. We’re just focussing in mass. I’m not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.

philipov 7y ago
The worst is strawberries. The huge strawberries you can buy in the store have the same flavor content as the tiny ones you can grow in your yard, but it's completely diluted with water. They're disgusting.
- fiblye 7y ago
  Where I live, I can buy tiny fruits and vegetables from local farmers, or I can buy imported ones that are 3x as large and get twice as much for half the price. The difference in fruit flavor is unbelievable. Tiny strawberries grown on a couple acres of land versus mega farm strawberries aren’t even in the same flavor category. The tiny ones taste almost identical to strawberry candies, but large ones that draw people in with the wow factor are like firm lumps of sour water.
  - markdown 7y ago
    > but large ones that draw people in with the wow factor are like firm lumps of sour water. Sounds like they were grown hydroponically. I can't stand hydroponically grown tomatoes for the same reason. Just bags of water.
    - mito88 7y ago
      sreet protesters like them. :)
- TillE 7y ago
  Same thing with carrots. Or tomatoes. It's amazing how vegetables can taste good when they haven't been bred into giant lumps of blandness.
- powersnail 7y ago
  Is it just because they are giant? I’ve had relatively big strawberries that are sweet and flavorful in China. But in the US, they taste like cucumber plus citrus, no sweetness, no aroma, just incredibly sour and watery.
  - philipov 7y ago
    I don't know what Chinese strawberries are like, but I always figured that American strawberries are watery and sour because they're not only big, but they're also grown too quickly for flavor to develop. I think they're engineered to artificially mature early and are basically still unripe.
    - Trav5 7y ago
      I have had amazing and bland Strawberries from Safeway in the US. Not sure how to pick the good ones. Time of year?
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Yes, local in season fruit is always tastier. I suspect because out of season fruit has to come from further away, meaning it has to be picked before it normally would be if it didn’t have to travel so far.
      - OkGoDoIt 7y ago
        I too have had this experience. Now I always sample one from a pack before I buy. I used to feel guilty doing that, but the quality varies so much and I got sick of wasting fruit purchases when they turn out to be sour or gross. Same with grapes and blueberries from Costco.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      It's really weird to me that people are generalizing this by nationality. Sure, a lot of supermarket strawberries are terrible. They also frequently (but not always) come from outside the US. Some are ok, and some people get flavorful ones somehow, because I've had excellent quality ones with dessert in a restaurant. Also, there are farmer's markets and stands, even though I'm not in the habit of going to them.
windexh8er 7y ago
There were people arguing how great increased crop yield was in the last few weeks. [0] Some comments were made about how the exponential factor of crop yields outweighed the loss of output nutrients. Glad to see the counterargument on the table. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20667031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20667031
drewmol 7y ago
Tomatoes can particuralry well so for the out of season times I've come to preffer using canned and avoiding the unripe tomatoes, which are often ripened (turned red) by truckloads using nitrogen. America's Test Kitchen has lot's of reviews on canned tomatoes[0]. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/taste_tests/231-canned-whole-tomatoes https://www.americastestkitchen.com/taste_tests/231-canned-w...
JasonFruit 7y ago
Store-bought tomatoes are just a pale reminder of what a real tomato tastes like. It's no wonder that people who never ate a ripe tomato fresh from the garden don't like tomatoes; there is nothing good about them but the memory of something incomparably better.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Maybe my gardens faulty, but within the same variety, superstore and my-personal-garden tomatoes are near indistinguishable. The only difference I see is my garden tomatoes seem to have a thin layer of city dirt on the skin that's hard to wipe off... (That black dusting of tyre rubber and brake dust that makes a tissue dirty if you wipe it over the surface)

cwkoss 7y ago

Glomalin was only discovered in 1996 and it contains up to 30% of soil carbon! Fungal cell walls degrade into a sticky product that makes the soil more loamy. Glomalin levels are strongly correlated with soil fertility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin I think artificial supplementation can be greatly improved, as you suggest. However, it increasingly looking like the soil biome is directly responsible for plant productivity, rather than only indirectly assisting in nutrient transport.

tmp190914pn2 7y ago

Both parent and grandparent are saying something important here. Mineral availability from the microbiome via root interactions is critical. But throw nitrogen at a plant and it will rapidly grow utilizing CO2, O2 and water, leaving a mineral deficient plant. And that is true in any soil. Also, modern plants have been selected to be large and tender, which tends to be inversely coorelated to mineral density. So it's been a perfect storm against.

api 7y ago
You get what you incentivize. Produce is typically sold by weight.
- chii 7y ago
  produce rich in nutrients are typically also tastier. However, modern groceries (such as massive chain stores) require huge logistics and scale, and thus expect farmers to produce a steady, homogenous and sturdy crop that also happen to lack nutrients. It's unfortunate that for the produce to be cheap, it has to be done the way it is today. Not everybody can afford to have "organically grown" heirloom tomatoes, because it's too expensive, and labour intensive. May be genetically modifying foods to also take in minerals properly is the answer...
  - chimi 7y ago
    heirloom crops are not as productive. I grew many different varieties and some of the plants engineered for greenhouses would produce 5x as many tomatoes per plant than heirlooms in the same greenhouse, getting the same amount of water and fertilizer -- and they still tasted good. Much better than typical grocery store tomatoes. More modern varieties are also more resilient to disease and pests.
- dmix 7y ago
  What's been incentivized in most countries farming-wise has had the scales significantly tipped in certain directions where it's not simply the most valuable plants/animals at the maximum weights.

geomark 7y ago

When you want to " pull minerals from the underlying bedrock and transport it to the top layer", trees do that. Composting with tree leaves would seem to be beneficial, although perhaps a rather slow process. And of course you need lots of trees around. Incompatible with large scale monoculture farming.