5 ms·

Intensive agriculture has been focusing too much on short-term yields, and too little on long-term soil performance. Plants need nutrients which they normally

Intensive agriculture has been focusing too much on short-term yields, and too little on long-term soil performance. Plants need nutrients which they normally retrieve from the soil. Natural soil is rich in organic matter and minerals, a product of microorganisms consuming biomass and excrement. Note that it forms a cycle! Nutritious soil -> Growth -> Death -> Decomposition -> Soil enhancement. Plants are just the visible part of the cycle. The other part consists of microorganisms. The use of pesticides, monocultures, and an absence of organic waste material and natural decomposition, effectively kills the microorganisms in the soil. This is what intensive agriculture does. Now, the soil is devoid of nutrients that plants need to grow. So farmers have to use fertilizer to substitute the required organic building blocks. The problem with this, is that fertilizer just provides the most common organic building blocks. This is enough to grow, but not in the most healthy and fruitful way possible. It's comparable to humans living on a diet of water and rice. They'll survive, but their health will suffer from a lack of nutrients. Now that intensive agriculture has literally killed the soil, there is no easy way back, and we are dependent on fertilizer to produce food of inferior quality. Luckily, alternative ways of agriculture are picking up popularity. See for example, biodynamic farming: https://www.biodynamics.com/ https://www.biodynamics.com/

giantg2 4y ago
"Intensive agriculture has been focusing too much on short-term yields, and too little on long-term soil performance." I think a lot of this pressure is from there being too many people. I have seen the estimates of how many people earth can support, yet I have never seen numbers for how many people the earth can sustainably support, especially in our modern lifestyle of excess.
- PretzelPirate 4y ago
  > I think a lot of this pressure is from there being too many people. Would this still be a problem if we didn’t use most of our agricultural land to grow crops to feed to the animals we eat? It’s very inefficient to feed plants to cows and then eat the cow.
  - shagie 4y ago
    In most cases, the pastureland for cattle for meat isn't suitable for growing anything more than grasses or may be inaccessible for growing other human consumable vegetables. https://www.google.com/maps/@44.715929,-106.2792854,3a,75y,121.82h,92.73t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snO55p85D8DZYvfnNXXgULw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@44.715929,-106.2792854,3a,75y,1... falls in the agricultural land category. In the "what should we be growing" it is important to separate Iowa from Wyoming. For much of Wyoming, the best land -> calorie conversion is through cattle. Trying to farm Wyoming for human consumable vegetables leads to other issues such as growing season, depleting aquifers, and salinization of the soil. This isn't to say that cattle don't have problems - but its not a simple "switch to farming plants to feed humans" in many areas.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    "Would this still be a problem if we didn’t use most of our agricultural land to grow crops to feed to the animals we eat?" It depends on the lifestyle. If everyone agreed to go vegan and eat unprocessed food, and we stopped using crops for many industrial uses (ethanol, plant based plastics, etc), then just maybe. However, people want their plastics and there is pressure to move away from petroleum in the long term. My guess would be that plant based industrial products will readily take the place of any reduction in agricultural feed over the next 30 years. And of course this doesn't address convincing the majority of the population to go vegan, which would be the bigger challenge.
  - CuriouslyC 4y ago
    Animals are part of ecosystems, and play a role in their health and sustainability. The great plains are fertile farmland in large part because of Bison. The problem we have is that animal products are more profitable in general than vegetables, so people overproduce them. It's the same thing behind the housing crises we see everywhere - luxury apartments are more profitable than low income housing, so that's the vast majority of what gets produced even though it's not what is needed, and it just fuels speculative buying.
- antris 4y ago
  This is an ecofascist adjacent argument, and is not based on reality. Not much land is needed to feed people, most of it is being used to produce meat and dairy, which is a waste. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Well, you'd have to resort to fascism to force all people to become vegan.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      This is one of the strangest thing I come across on HN. Often you see a poster in some other thread railing against all forms of ‘oppression’ but then casually suggests a future with an effective world dictatorship to regulate meat consumption…
    - specialist 4y ago
      Slippery slope: removing subsidies for factory farmed meat inevitably leads to vegan fascism. Nice.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        That's not at all what I'm saying. It's jumping to conclusions to think that we can just solve problems by using that 80% of production for people food crops vs animal feed. The paradigms are entirely different - from the types of crops the land can produce, to the labor involved in its production, etc. I also believe that the switch to plant based plastics over the coming decades will eat up whatever minor reduction in animal feed occurs. Even with higher prices for animal products you will still have a large market. Which is why you couldn't just remove subsidies and think that 80% number would shrink much.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- myshpa 4y ago
  The pressure is here from us doing bad things. We're killing the soil, bugs, forests, wildlife, sea, mainly by purchasing the wrong things in the supermarket. [1] We could use just 25% of our current agriculture land and still feed the population. There is nothing in the beef & dairy, which we could not get from other sources (preferably plant-based). The problem are agriculture subsidies. We're heavily subsidizing production of beef, mutton & dairy, which needs 75% of our agricultural lands, instead of focusing on less resource-intensive sources of protein & fats [2]. If enough people switched (and there are some positive indicators that it's already happening), maybe we could save the earth before it's too late [3]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding... The destruction of Earth & wildlife is horrendous. [4] [5] We [4] https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ (compulsory) [5] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra... "Humans and Big Ag Livestock Now Account for 96 Percent of Mammal Biomass ... a study ... found that, while humans account for 0.01 percent of the planet’s biomass, our activity has reduced the biomass of wild marine and terrestrial mammals by six times and the biomass of plant matter by half." [6] 100 years ago humans&cattle was just 2% of the biomass. Now it's 98%. If all people on earth eat as much meat as an average american, we would need 5+ earths. If as much as average european, then 4+ earths would be needed. There is not enough space to support this lifestyle any longer, people. [6] http://personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/siowfa12/2012/10/if-everyone-lived-liked-americans-how-many-earths-would-we-need.html http://personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/siowfa12/2012/10/if-every... --- By learning to switch to plant-based diet we would be healthier, leaner, and we would be guardians of our blue not, not its destroyers.
  - specialist 4y ago
    > ...mainly by purchasing the wrong things in the supermarket. I doubt that blaming the consumer is helpful. Stuff like fat shaming usually backfires. And leads to us-vs-them polarization. Plus, are consumers really to blame when choices are constrained by others? Plus, it absolves the actual villains. No different than the industry funded rhetoric around plastic recycling and carbon footprint. As though Big Ag is only responding to consumer demand, and is other wise powerless to effect change. We need to find more effective strategies for constructive policymaking. Blame and shame isn't working. Our current food pyramid is the result of industrial policy choices. Perhaps we can make other choices. Perhaps by demanding a seat at the table.

giantg2 4y ago

"Intensive agriculture has been focusing too much on short-term yields, and too little on long-term soil performance." I think a lot of this pressure is from there being too many people. I have seen the estimates of how many people earth can support, yet I have never seen numbers for how many people the earth can sustainably support, especially in our modern lifestyle of excess.

PretzelPirate 4y ago
> I think a lot of this pressure is from there being too many people. Would this still be a problem if we didn’t use most of our agricultural land to grow crops to feed to the animals we eat? It’s very inefficient to feed plants to cows and then eat the cow.
- shagie 4y ago
  In most cases, the pastureland for cattle for meat isn't suitable for growing anything more than grasses or may be inaccessible for growing other human consumable vegetables. https://www.google.com/maps/@44.715929,-106.2792854,3a,75y,121.82h,92.73t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snO55p85D8DZYvfnNXXgULw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@44.715929,-106.2792854,3a,75y,1... falls in the agricultural land category. In the "what should we be growing" it is important to separate Iowa from Wyoming. For much of Wyoming, the best land -> calorie conversion is through cattle. Trying to farm Wyoming for human consumable vegetables leads to other issues such as growing season, depleting aquifers, and salinization of the soil. This isn't to say that cattle don't have problems - but its not a simple "switch to farming plants to feed humans" in many areas.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "Would this still be a problem if we didn’t use most of our agricultural land to grow crops to feed to the animals we eat?" It depends on the lifestyle. If everyone agreed to go vegan and eat unprocessed food, and we stopped using crops for many industrial uses (ethanol, plant based plastics, etc), then just maybe. However, people want their plastics and there is pressure to move away from petroleum in the long term. My guess would be that plant based industrial products will readily take the place of any reduction in agricultural feed over the next 30 years. And of course this doesn't address convincing the majority of the population to go vegan, which would be the bigger challenge.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  Animals are part of ecosystems, and play a role in their health and sustainability. The great plains are fertile farmland in large part because of Bison. The problem we have is that animal products are more profitable in general than vegetables, so people overproduce them. It's the same thing behind the housing crises we see everywhere - luxury apartments are more profitable than low income housing, so that's the vast majority of what gets produced even though it's not what is needed, and it just fuels speculative buying.
antris 4y ago
This is an ecofascist adjacent argument, and is not based on reality. Not much land is needed to feed people, most of it is being used to produce meat and dairy, which is a waste. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets
- giantg2 4y ago
  Well, you'd have to resort to fascism to force all people to become vegan.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    This is one of the strangest thing I come across on HN. Often you see a poster in some other thread railing against all forms of ‘oppression’ but then casually suggests a future with an effective world dictatorship to regulate meat consumption…
  - specialist 4y ago
    Slippery slope: removing subsidies for factory farmed meat inevitably leads to vegan fascism. Nice.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      That's not at all what I'm saying. It's jumping to conclusions to think that we can just solve problems by using that 80% of production for people food crops vs animal feed. The paradigms are entirely different - from the types of crops the land can produce, to the labor involved in its production, etc. I also believe that the switch to plant based plastics over the coming decades will eat up whatever minor reduction in animal feed occurs. Even with higher prices for animal products you will still have a large market. Which is why you couldn't just remove subsidies and think that 80% number would shrink much.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
myshpa 4y ago
The pressure is here from us doing bad things. We're killing the soil, bugs, forests, wildlife, sea, mainly by purchasing the wrong things in the supermarket. [1] We could use just 25% of our current agriculture land and still feed the population. There is nothing in the beef & dairy, which we could not get from other sources (preferably plant-based). The problem are agriculture subsidies. We're heavily subsidizing production of beef, mutton & dairy, which needs 75% of our agricultural lands, instead of focusing on less resource-intensive sources of protein & fats [2]. If enough people switched (and there are some positive indicators that it's already happening), maybe we could save the earth before it's too late [3]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding... The destruction of Earth & wildlife is horrendous. [4] [5] We [4] https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ (compulsory) [5] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra... "Humans and Big Ag Livestock Now Account for 96 Percent of Mammal Biomass ... a study ... found that, while humans account for 0.01 percent of the planet’s biomass, our activity has reduced the biomass of wild marine and terrestrial mammals by six times and the biomass of plant matter by half." [6] 100 years ago humans&cattle was just 2% of the biomass. Now it's 98%. If all people on earth eat as much meat as an average american, we would need 5+ earths. If as much as average european, then 4+ earths would be needed. There is not enough space to support this lifestyle any longer, people. [6] http://personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/siowfa12/2012/10/if-everyone-lived-liked-americans-how-many-earths-would-we-need.html http://personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/siowfa12/2012/10/if-every... --- By learning to switch to plant-based diet we would be healthier, leaner, and we would be guardians of our blue not, not its destroyers.
- specialist 4y ago
  > ...mainly by purchasing the wrong things in the supermarket. I doubt that blaming the consumer is helpful. Stuff like fat shaming usually backfires. And leads to us-vs-them polarization. Plus, are consumers really to blame when choices are constrained by others? Plus, it absolves the actual villains. No different than the industry funded rhetoric around plastic recycling and carbon footprint. As though Big Ag is only responding to consumer demand, and is other wise powerless to effect change. We need to find more effective strategies for constructive policymaking. Blame and shame isn't working. Our current food pyramid is the result of industrial policy choices. Perhaps we can make other choices. Perhaps by demanding a seat at the table.