8 ms·

That is neat, but we should also look at the amount of fertilizer this change will cause. We are already running soil at the redline and we have more trouble ge

That is neat, but we should also look at the amount of fertilizer this change will cause. We are already running soil at the redline and we have more trouble getting the fertilizer into the soil in a healthy way. If this ends up killing the soil 5 years faster through overutilization, it really isn't an improvement as it takes a ton of effort and time to revitalize soil.

bpodgursky 5y ago
> We are already running soil at the redline This is not a scientific statement at all; it's an attempt at an analogy that doesn't work. Farming w/ intensive fertilization doesn't "kill soil"; the soil is basically just a substrate to hold water and fertilizer, and a ton of farmland in the US is basically this. It's not natural, but it's a steady-state. And if the change here just makes the potato and rice more efficient, you could get similar yield improvements from organic farming. Just rotate a legume in every few years, you're not going to break the ecosystem by growing potatoes faster.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  > The soil is basically just a substrate to hold water and fertilizer, This view is incredibly harmful. What lives in the soil is important too, small animals, insects, mushrooms... And the soil supports this. The density, temperature, texture are all factors to it. Every time I get to the US, I'm aghast at the pitiful taste of the fruits and veggies. The way you are growing things produces volumes yes, but of tasteless empty shells of a plant. Of course then you put sugar on everything because the raw thing is aweful to eat. So you get obese people with nutrient deficiency, on top of a dead soil that is an ecological disaster. Seing only one dimension of something or maximizing productivity always leads to some kind of unbalance, and the effects are far reaching.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    I sorta suspect that soil conservation is just a vehicle for your complaining, not an end in itself.
    - leereeves 5y ago
      No, GP is saying that soil depletion is causing tasteless, nutrient-poor crops, which in turn cause health problems. Not an uncommon view, actually: "fruits and vegetables grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today. The main culprit in this disturbing nutritional trend is soil depletion" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-aND-NUTRITION-LOSS/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-aN...
      - baybal2 5y ago
        > Not an uncommon view, actually: And completely unfounded in reality. You can get chewing gum vegetables just anywhere.
      - parineum 5y ago
        That article body doesn't support soil depletion as the cause. It asserts it and then cites a study that doesn't support it. Pretty similar to what you just did actually. >Davis and his colleagues chalk up this declining nutritional content to the preponderance of agricultural practices designed to improve traits (size, growth rate, pest resistance) other than nutrition.
        leereeves 5y ago
        The article only cites a few studies that show the nutrient content of crops is decreasing. For example, the study you mentioned [1] was "Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999" and showed "apparent, statistically reliable declines" in 6 nutrients. The part of the article that you've quoted is simply Davis' opinion, not the subject of that study. The author has a different opinion. I don't know who is right, which is why I said it's "not an uncommon view". I don't know if that debate has been settled. The article doesn't cite any studies examining the cause of this nutrient depletion, and I didn't find any studies of the cause with a few Google Scholar searches for soil depletion and related terms. If you know of any research that answers the question I'd love to read it. 1: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2004.10719409 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2004.10...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    I have experimented with Hydroponics for vegetables and herbs and it all boils down to a science. We know exactly what nutrient ratios a plant needs, at what stages, and so on, and when done in a controlled environment plants are much healthier and have more consistent yields. There is no “magic” to soil, it’s a chemistry problem. After my experiences people who talk about the soils being “depleted” or whatever sound anti-science to me. We are good at growing a lot of food because big ag has figured out the science and is really damn good at it. In fact it is a miracle; only a few short generations ago famines were a common occurrence. Consistency of flavor and yield reigns supreme, because when someone orders a Big Mac or a Bud Light they want it to taste the same every time. Now of course, there is a whole organic and craft market segment for people who disagree with that premise and it’s served quite well in the US for those who want to pay for it.
    - user3939382 5y ago
      There is also a role for microbes in soil, which is an active area of research. Here’s some science on it, as an example: https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/SAG-16 https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/SAG-16 I would say that’s more than just chemistry, unless you mean chemistry in a sense that’s so general the statement becomes a tautology.
    - smolder 5y ago
      If the chemistry is perfect, why are store bought and fast food tomatoes so bland, for instance? I haven't been scientific about comparing them but the difference in flavor in garden grown tomatoes seems pretty pronounced.
      - yetihehe 5y ago
        Because they are different tomatoes, selected for long storage on shelves in shop, not for taste. Your garden tomato will be much tastier, but will start to spoil sooner.
        scarby2 5y ago
        Interestingly enough consumers drove the market for tasteless tomatoes. customers bought more tomatoes that were more brightly colored and more round, which drove selection for these characteristics
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    > This view is incredibly harmful. What lives in the soil is important too, small animals, insects, mushrooms... I want to highlight that it's a relatively recent discovery that almost all plants live in a symbiotic relationship with fungi (Mycorrhiza) in the soil, which I wasn't taught in school. Plants can also live without, but the existence of Mycorrhiza fungi impacts plant productivity and robustness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      https://phys.org/news/2021-07-cyborg-soil-reveals-secret-microbial.html https://phys.org/news/2021-07-cyborg-soil-reveals-secret-mic...
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "people with nutrient deficiency" Nutrients in plants decreased by small amount, but fresh plants in our diet decreased by 90%. Never in history have humans consumed exclusively fried chicken and deef fried potato. The diets are the real culprit. There are complex factors, for example our supply chain takes tomatoes before they are ripe - a ripe tomato is so soft, it's impossible to get to the consumer in one piece
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      People eat fried chickens because their greens taste like crap while the fried chicken taste good even with a crap chicken. Give a person delicious plants, and they will eat them.
- AngryData 5y ago
  The soil is not a mere substrate, it is an entire ecosystem into itself. Topsoil depth is directly correlated with crop yield, and top soil depth has been shrinking. It takes atleast 50 years, often longer, to turn shit soil into good top soil worth anything and it requires sacrificing a lot of the yield to do so. Growing alfalfa would help, but that is often not that profitable compared to reaping the soil and throwing on more artificial fertilizer until the soil is garbage.
  - soperj 5y ago
    People have done it alot faster than 50 years. Method boils down to, no till, plant a mix of cover crops, and don't plant mono culture. Ended up getting a inch of top soil a year.
    - tremon 5y ago
      plant a mix of cover crops You're starting halfway on the track. Most things you plant in arid soil won't grow, which is the situation where the GP started from. Sure, once you have a soil quality where your crop mix grows, it will take less than 50 years. "How to get an inch of topsoil?" - "first, have an inch of topsoil" isn't really the scenario the GP was thinking of.
      - soperj 5y ago
        The prairies in Canada/US are very arid, and they have no problem growing things.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    > It takes atleast 50 years, often longer Or, crazy idea, just do exactly what we do with fertilizer. Identify what's missing, prepare it en masse, and add it back in. This could include microbes, minerals, certain types of organic material, you name it. As our understanding of a system improves so too does our ability to efficiently manipulate it to achieve the end result that we want.
    - 5y ago
- infogulch 5y ago
  Soil depletion / degradation is definitely something we should be paying more attention to. A couple recent HN threads on the topic: "Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27809279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27809279 "Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25032337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25032337
- _Algernon_ 5y ago
  What do you think happens when soil is loosened to mix in fertilizer, and a large amount of rain / wind happens?
bullfightonmars 5y ago
A plant that creats more biomass is not going to deplete soils. In fact it might restore soils by fixing more carbon from the atmosphere and adding more organic material in the form of roots and shoots. The biggest problem with fertilization and why it is applied annually is that it is very mobile and washes away in the rain or breaks down or evaporates.
- f6v 5y ago
  Doesn’t the biomass get dumped into the soil in a different place? You grow something, pick it, ship to a different country.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    At a minimum, the roots are left in the soil. Normally other parts of the crop are left in the field too, like leaves and stems and whatever else doesn't sell.
    - f6v 5y ago
      Not to forget that nowadays plants are optimized for high yield. I’d imagine the fruit/stem biomass ratio is becoming higher.
- snemvalts 5y ago
  It needs to create biomass from something.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    The main content of plant-created biomass comes from atmospheric CO2 and water, not from soil (well, roots extract water from the soil, but that's not what we mean by soil depletion). A significant minority is nitrogen, which either needs nitrogen-fixing plants (which extract it from atmosphere) or fertilization.
    - 5y ago
4h53n 5y ago
Increasing the efficiency on existing farmlands should be the goal. Best way to reduce harm to the soil, ecosystem, nature is if we didn't require that much land. Maybe we can't decrease our usage just yet, but we can increase the efficiencies and decrease the demand for more farmland. Even an organic farmland is desert compared a forest.
- el_oni 5y ago
  I understand your point, but at the same time i don't know of an industry where increasing efficiency has lead them to think "now we can use less".
- neltnerb 5y ago
  I don't follow, forests are great but if the farmland you are using gets ruined you need to do something... right now something is usually more petro-fertilizer and pesticides, and occasionally more traditional methods at smaller scales. It's great if you can use less land for farming, but if concentration leads to the land being damaged beyond repair then what's the point? You'd just have to turn unused land into farmland, and if you're doing that you may as well use crop rotation intentionally. If you need to deposit massive amounts of natural gas (used to make hydrogen used to make ammonia) on a small amount of land instead of using a larger amount of land and using slower methods to get nitrogen in the soil... there is surely a stable point where the soil is continually usable without needing a lot of fertilizer.
  - _0ffh 5y ago
    Yes, it seems to me increased efficiency would best be spent on fallowing the fields to allow the soil to regenerate.

bpodgursky 5y ago

> We are already running soil at the redline This is not a scientific statement at all; it's an attempt at an analogy that doesn't work. Farming w/ intensive fertilization doesn't "kill soil"; the soil is basically just a substrate to hold water and fertilizer, and a ton of farmland in the US is basically this. It's not natural, but it's a steady-state. And if the change here just makes the potato and rice more efficient, you could get similar yield improvements from organic farming. Just rotate a legume in every few years, you're not going to break the ecosystem by growing potatoes faster.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
> The soil is basically just a substrate to hold water and fertilizer, This view is incredibly harmful. What lives in the soil is important too, small animals, insects, mushrooms... And the soil supports this. The density, temperature, texture are all factors to it. Every time I get to the US, I'm aghast at the pitiful taste of the fruits and veggies. The way you are growing things produces volumes yes, but of tasteless empty shells of a plant. Of course then you put sugar on everything because the raw thing is aweful to eat. So you get obese people with nutrient deficiency, on top of a dead soil that is an ecological disaster. Seing only one dimension of something or maximizing productivity always leads to some kind of unbalance, and the effects are far reaching.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  I sorta suspect that soil conservation is just a vehicle for your complaining, not an end in itself.
  - leereeves 5y ago
    No, GP is saying that soil depletion is causing tasteless, nutrient-poor crops, which in turn cause health problems. Not an uncommon view, actually: "fruits and vegetables grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today. The main culprit in this disturbing nutritional trend is soil depletion" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-aND-NUTRITION-LOSS/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-aN...
    - baybal2 5y ago
      > Not an uncommon view, actually: And completely unfounded in reality. You can get chewing gum vegetables just anywhere.
    - parineum 5y ago
      That article body doesn't support soil depletion as the cause. It asserts it and then cites a study that doesn't support it. Pretty similar to what you just did actually. >Davis and his colleagues chalk up this declining nutritional content to the preponderance of agricultural practices designed to improve traits (size, growth rate, pest resistance) other than nutrition.
      - leereeves 5y ago
        The article only cites a few studies that show the nutrient content of crops is decreasing. For example, the study you mentioned [1] was "Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999" and showed "apparent, statistically reliable declines" in 6 nutrients. The part of the article that you've quoted is simply Davis' opinion, not the subject of that study. The author has a different opinion. I don't know who is right, which is why I said it's "not an uncommon view". I don't know if that debate has been settled. The article doesn't cite any studies examining the cause of this nutrient depletion, and I didn't find any studies of the cause with a few Google Scholar searches for soil depletion and related terms. If you know of any research that answers the question I'd love to read it. 1: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2004.10719409 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2004.10...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  I have experimented with Hydroponics for vegetables and herbs and it all boils down to a science. We know exactly what nutrient ratios a plant needs, at what stages, and so on, and when done in a controlled environment plants are much healthier and have more consistent yields. There is no “magic” to soil, it’s a chemistry problem. After my experiences people who talk about the soils being “depleted” or whatever sound anti-science to me. We are good at growing a lot of food because big ag has figured out the science and is really damn good at it. In fact it is a miracle; only a few short generations ago famines were a common occurrence. Consistency of flavor and yield reigns supreme, because when someone orders a Big Mac or a Bud Light they want it to taste the same every time. Now of course, there is a whole organic and craft market segment for people who disagree with that premise and it’s served quite well in the US for those who want to pay for it.
  - user3939382 5y ago
    There is also a role for microbes in soil, which is an active area of research. Here’s some science on it, as an example: https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/SAG-16 https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/SAG-16 I would say that’s more than just chemistry, unless you mean chemistry in a sense that’s so general the statement becomes a tautology.
  - smolder 5y ago
    If the chemistry is perfect, why are store bought and fast food tomatoes so bland, for instance? I haven't been scientific about comparing them but the difference in flavor in garden grown tomatoes seems pretty pronounced.
    - yetihehe 5y ago
      Because they are different tomatoes, selected for long storage on shelves in shop, not for taste. Your garden tomato will be much tastier, but will start to spoil sooner.
      - scarby2 5y ago
        Interestingly enough consumers drove the market for tasteless tomatoes. customers bought more tomatoes that were more brightly colored and more round, which drove selection for these characteristics
- Pyramus 5y ago
  > This view is incredibly harmful. What lives in the soil is important too, small animals, insects, mushrooms... I want to highlight that it's a relatively recent discovery that almost all plants live in a symbiotic relationship with fungi (Mycorrhiza) in the soil, which I wasn't taught in school. Plants can also live without, but the existence of Mycorrhiza fungi impacts plant productivity and robustness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    https://phys.org/news/2021-07-cyborg-soil-reveals-secret-microbial.html https://phys.org/news/2021-07-cyborg-soil-reveals-secret-mic...
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "people with nutrient deficiency" Nutrients in plants decreased by small amount, but fresh plants in our diet decreased by 90%. Never in history have humans consumed exclusively fried chicken and deef fried potato. The diets are the real culprit. There are complex factors, for example our supply chain takes tomatoes before they are ripe - a ripe tomato is so soft, it's impossible to get to the consumer in one piece
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    People eat fried chickens because their greens taste like crap while the fried chicken taste good even with a crap chicken. Give a person delicious plants, and they will eat them.
AngryData 5y ago
The soil is not a mere substrate, it is an entire ecosystem into itself. Topsoil depth is directly correlated with crop yield, and top soil depth has been shrinking. It takes atleast 50 years, often longer, to turn shit soil into good top soil worth anything and it requires sacrificing a lot of the yield to do so. Growing alfalfa would help, but that is often not that profitable compared to reaping the soil and throwing on more artificial fertilizer until the soil is garbage.
- soperj 5y ago
  People have done it alot faster than 50 years. Method boils down to, no till, plant a mix of cover crops, and don't plant mono culture. Ended up getting a inch of top soil a year.
  - tremon 5y ago
    plant a mix of cover crops You're starting halfway on the track. Most things you plant in arid soil won't grow, which is the situation where the GP started from. Sure, once you have a soil quality where your crop mix grows, it will take less than 50 years. "How to get an inch of topsoil?" - "first, have an inch of topsoil" isn't really the scenario the GP was thinking of.
    - soperj 5y ago
      The prairies in Canada/US are very arid, and they have no problem growing things.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  > It takes atleast 50 years, often longer Or, crazy idea, just do exactly what we do with fertilizer. Identify what's missing, prepare it en masse, and add it back in. This could include microbes, minerals, certain types of organic material, you name it. As our understanding of a system improves so too does our ability to efficiently manipulate it to achieve the end result that we want.
  - 5y ago
infogulch 5y ago
Soil depletion / degradation is definitely something we should be paying more attention to. A couple recent HN threads on the topic: "Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27809279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27809279 "Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25032337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25032337
_Algernon_ 5y ago
What do you think happens when soil is loosened to mix in fertilizer, and a large amount of rain / wind happens?

bullfightonmars 5y ago

A plant that creats more biomass is not going to deplete soils. In fact it might restore soils by fixing more carbon from the atmosphere and adding more organic material in the form of roots and shoots. The biggest problem with fertilization and why it is applied annually is that it is very mobile and washes away in the rain or breaks down or evaporates.

f6v 5y ago
Doesn’t the biomass get dumped into the soil in a different place? You grow something, pick it, ship to a different country.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  At a minimum, the roots are left in the soil. Normally other parts of the crop are left in the field too, like leaves and stems and whatever else doesn't sell.
  - f6v 5y ago
    Not to forget that nowadays plants are optimized for high yield. I’d imagine the fruit/stem biomass ratio is becoming higher.
snemvalts 5y ago
It needs to create biomass from something.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  The main content of plant-created biomass comes from atmospheric CO2 and water, not from soil (well, roots extract water from the soil, but that's not what we mean by soil depletion). A significant minority is nitrogen, which either needs nitrogen-fixing plants (which extract it from atmosphere) or fertilization.
  - 5y ago

4h53n 5y ago

Increasing the efficiency on existing farmlands should be the goal. Best way to reduce harm to the soil, ecosystem, nature is if we didn't require that much land. Maybe we can't decrease our usage just yet, but we can increase the efficiencies and decrease the demand for more farmland. Even an organic farmland is desert compared a forest.

el_oni 5y ago
I understand your point, but at the same time i don't know of an industry where increasing efficiency has lead them to think "now we can use less".
neltnerb 5y ago
I don't follow, forests are great but if the farmland you are using gets ruined you need to do something... right now something is usually more petro-fertilizer and pesticides, and occasionally more traditional methods at smaller scales. It's great if you can use less land for farming, but if concentration leads to the land being damaged beyond repair then what's the point? You'd just have to turn unused land into farmland, and if you're doing that you may as well use crop rotation intentionally. If you need to deposit massive amounts of natural gas (used to make hydrogen used to make ammonia) on a small amount of land instead of using a larger amount of land and using slower methods to get nitrogen in the soil... there is surely a stable point where the soil is continually usable without needing a lot of fertilizer.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  Yes, it seems to me increased efficiency would best be spent on fallowing the fields to allow the soil to regenerate.