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This article mentions that regenerative agriculture as the solution. There is a lot of concern now about the potential for a global food shortage at the end of

This article mentions that regenerative agriculture as the solution. There is a lot of concern now about the potential for a global food shortage at the end of this year because of rising fertilizer prices (leading to less planting). Regenerative agriculture can help solve this as well by focusing on restoring the biome of the soil, thereby harnessing nitrogen from the air and minerals from the soil.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I agree and if anyone is curious I am part of a project to bring open source farming robots for regenerative agriculture to everyone. We’re working on building a monthly crowd funding following to sustainably fund the project while staying completely open source. We have a good prototype vehicle now and are working on a good solid kit design we can ship in the next year or two, and will work with our user community to design tools for soil prep, planting seeds and transplants, weeding, and harvesting all in a regenerative organic process. And anyone can start a business selling their own variant of the design. We believe this will drive down costs in the same way that 3D printers dropped in price by 100x when patents expired and an open community formed around the many new designs. More details in our latest update here: https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simulation-brakes-funding-and-navigation-improvements/202 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simu...
lil_dispaches 4y ago
Why are fertilizer prices rising? Could it be that fertilizer is the same stuff as gunpowder?
- nyokodo 4y ago
  > Why are fertilizer prices rising? Supply chain issues, logistics problems, and high demand lead to rising prices which lead the largest exporter of phosphate fertilizer, China, to halt exports to protect domestic supply. Russia is the biggest exporter of potassium fertilizer.
- butlerm 4y ago
  Fertilizer prices are rising in part because ammonia production is a rather energy intensive process and the price of natural gas used to produce ammonia is way up due to war time shortages. Ammonia, of course, is the primary source material for nitrogen based fertilizers.
- wcoenen 4y ago
  Because of high natural gas prices. The production of fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate and urea require ammonia. Ammonia is synthesized on large scales with the Haber-Bosch process. This process requires hydrogen, which is obtained by steam reforming of methane in natural gas. When natural gas prices exploded in Europe, many fertilizer factories had to stop production: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-15/soaring-european-gas-prices-force-fertilizer-plants-to-shutter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-15/soaring-e...
- blingscramble 4y ago
  I would suggest that fertilizer prices are higher due to cost increases to manufacture them but also because grain prices are higher. There seems to be a relationship between the 2 which is independent of actual costs to manufacture the inputs. As grain prices increase input costs increase, likewise with the inverse, grain prices decrease input prices decrease. Supply and demand for sure but there seems to be market forces outside of simply supply vs demand.
alecco 4y ago
What would you think about a farmer who doesn't know tech giving opinions on what the Tech sector should do? Farming is extremely hard and competitive, for mostly razor-thin margins and very high risks. One of the biggest problems is weeds. If you use these naive methods you'll end up with weed infections and then you have to either dump a lot of herbicides to recover the land or blunt tumble, basically entombing all the topsoil. Somehow journalists and people from the city know better than people risking their family's worth every year and working 12 hours a day on this. Every day. And even on weekends and holidays. You have no idea how hard it is.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure farming is as efficient as it is now because farmers listened to technicians who weren't working in the fields all day, and were helped to break out of local maxima. Also - you don't think farmers' kids go to college and end up studying and writing about regenerative agriculture? Are you yourself a farmer's kid who went to college and became a techie?
  - alecco 4y ago
    This is a simplistic analysis. Farmers have to time things around season, weather events, water availability (e.g. almost dry wells), floods, and many other variables changing all the time. For example, after heavy rains machines can't get into the field because they get stuck. And if you plant right before rains then when the mud dries it becomes too hard for seedlings to break it. Making all this work is very hard. Of course, many places are out of control blindly dumping fertilizer and herbicides. But that's mostly China and Third World countries. It would be smart to focus first on fixing things there. It's the same as with CO2 emissions. Don't put unrealistic demands in developed countries while leaving the rest to do whatever.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Are you replying the the right comment? I offered no analysis. I'm just not into Lysenkoism or generalized anti-intellectualism on principle. I don't think it is productive to attack the people making an argument instead of the argument itself, especially when you make the most negative assumptions about who they are. I'm sure that there is merit in what you say and that you probably have experience. My only experience in farming was directly in the fields, none in any sort of decision-making.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

I agree and if anyone is curious I am part of a project to bring open source farming robots for regenerative agriculture to everyone. We’re working on building a monthly crowd funding following to sustainably fund the project while staying completely open source. We have a good prototype vehicle now and are working on a good solid kit design we can ship in the next year or two, and will work with our user community to design tools for soil prep, planting seeds and transplants, weeding, and harvesting all in a regenerative organic process. And anyone can start a business selling their own variant of the design. We believe this will drive down costs in the same way that 3D printers dropped in price by 100x when patents expired and an open community formed around the many new designs. More details in our latest update here: https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simulation-brakes-funding-and-navigation-improvements/202 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simu...

lil_dispaches 4y ago

Why are fertilizer prices rising? Could it be that fertilizer is the same stuff as gunpowder?

nyokodo 4y ago
> Why are fertilizer prices rising? Supply chain issues, logistics problems, and high demand lead to rising prices which lead the largest exporter of phosphate fertilizer, China, to halt exports to protect domestic supply. Russia is the biggest exporter of potassium fertilizer.
butlerm 4y ago
Fertilizer prices are rising in part because ammonia production is a rather energy intensive process and the price of natural gas used to produce ammonia is way up due to war time shortages. Ammonia, of course, is the primary source material for nitrogen based fertilizers.
wcoenen 4y ago
Because of high natural gas prices. The production of fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate and urea require ammonia. Ammonia is synthesized on large scales with the Haber-Bosch process. This process requires hydrogen, which is obtained by steam reforming of methane in natural gas. When natural gas prices exploded in Europe, many fertilizer factories had to stop production: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-15/soaring-european-gas-prices-force-fertilizer-plants-to-shutter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-15/soaring-e...
blingscramble 4y ago
I would suggest that fertilizer prices are higher due to cost increases to manufacture them but also because grain prices are higher. There seems to be a relationship between the 2 which is independent of actual costs to manufacture the inputs. As grain prices increase input costs increase, likewise with the inverse, grain prices decrease input prices decrease. Supply and demand for sure but there seems to be market forces outside of simply supply vs demand.

alecco 4y ago

What would you think about a farmer who doesn't know tech giving opinions on what the Tech sector should do? Farming is extremely hard and competitive, for mostly razor-thin margins and very high risks. One of the biggest problems is weeds. If you use these naive methods you'll end up with weed infections and then you have to either dump a lot of herbicides to recover the land or blunt tumble, basically entombing all the topsoil. Somehow journalists and people from the city know better than people risking their family's worth every year and working 12 hours a day on this. Every day. And even on weekends and holidays. You have no idea how hard it is.

pessimizer 4y ago
I'm pretty sure farming is as efficient as it is now because farmers listened to technicians who weren't working in the fields all day, and were helped to break out of local maxima. Also - you don't think farmers' kids go to college and end up studying and writing about regenerative agriculture? Are you yourself a farmer's kid who went to college and became a techie?
- alecco 4y ago
  This is a simplistic analysis. Farmers have to time things around season, weather events, water availability (e.g. almost dry wells), floods, and many other variables changing all the time. For example, after heavy rains machines can't get into the field because they get stuck. And if you plant right before rains then when the mud dries it becomes too hard for seedlings to break it. Making all this work is very hard. Of course, many places are out of control blindly dumping fertilizer and herbicides. But that's mostly China and Third World countries. It would be smart to focus first on fixing things there. It's the same as with CO2 emissions. Don't put unrealistic demands in developed countries while leaving the rest to do whatever.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Are you replying the the right comment? I offered no analysis. I'm just not into Lysenkoism or generalized anti-intellectualism on principle. I don't think it is productive to attack the people making an argument instead of the argument itself, especially when you make the most negative assumptions about who they are. I'm sure that there is merit in what you say and that you probably have experience. My only experience in farming was directly in the fields, none in any sort of decision-making.