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An engineered barley plant that ‘orders’ soil bacteria to manufacture fertiliser
- credit_guy 4y agoIf you are against fertilisers, chances are you are against GMO as well.
- eloff 4y agoI think the biggest objections to fertilizers are environmental? It's not like pesticides where people worry about residue on their food? They may not be overlapping then.
- neltnerb 4y agoFertilizer overuse causing runoff is half the concern, that part causes algae blooms. On the other half is that fertilizers are either mined (unlikely) or manufactured from nitrogen in the air plus hydrogen. The downside is that the hydrogen is almost entirely made from natural gas. So, fertilizers start as mostly fossil fuel energetically, and end up feeding algae blooms if overused. This seems like a huge deal to me, I've been keeping an eye on this kind of project for a long time. Reducing use of fertilizer means less fossil fuel use, and if it's generated locally and in the right amounts it is bound to help on the waste side too.
- rmason 4y agoActually most cases of runoff these days are from lawn fertilizer and manure from very large livestock operations. The later is on its way to being controlled with farmers having to fill out and get approved plans for manure disposal. Nothing is being done that I am aware about lawn fertilizer overuse and I am not certain as to why?
- denimnerd42 4y agoit’s nearly impossible to find lawn fertilizer with phosphorus in it nowadays in many parts or all of the US so something is being done.
- bell-cot 4y agoIIR, there's quite a bit of opposition to large-scale, commercial agricultural fertilizers that is based on "the poor farmers often end up in debt bondage" arguments. (A line of reasoning which could also be applied to GMO's where the underlying IP is controlled by big, greedy corporations.)
- pkaye 4y agoFarmers can always use organic fertilizers if they want.
- christophilus 4y agoMy main problem with GMO is that it usually means: loads of pesticides and abuse of monopolistic powers, especially in poorer countries.
- credit_guy 4y agoIf that’s the problem, then ban or regulate pesticides. Instead, the EU bans GMOs themselves.
- ch4s3 4y agoIn practice it seems like capital intensive large scale mono-cropping does most of that without GMOs needing to make an appearance. Careful application of GMOs could probably cut the need for fertilizers and pesticides. Figuring out how to maintain some food production capacity without debt peonage in developing countries is a policy problem more than a technical problem.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoIn practice? A major reason for the explosion in use of the herbicide glyphosate (RoundUp) is the use of genetically modified crops that are glyphosate resistant. Because of this users of these crops can dump huge volumes of glyphosate on their farms. This is a well known example of GMO’s leading to an increase in use of biocides.
- drewmol 4y agoWorth noting, the increase in desiccation practices, to prepare crops for a more scheduled harvest is also leading to a huge increase in glyphosate usage. It’s used high concentrations on crops at the last stage of crop growth just prior to harvest, in expectation of dry conditions which are ideal for harvesting, among other benefits. https://ensia.com/features/glyphosate-drying/ https://ensia.com/features/glyphosate-drying/
- colechristensen 4y ago
- striking 4y agoThere's a synthetic fertilizer shortage right now. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-01/farmers-are-struggling-to-keep-up-food-supply-as-fertilizer-prices-surge https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-01/farmers-a...
- Melatonic 4y agoMost people are against the current *implementation* of GMO. Hopefully as the process gets easier and cheaper we will get more options
- delecti 4y agoI think we should use less fertilizer because most of it is made from petroleum we should be leaving in the ground. I think GMOs that let us use less fertilizer is awesome.
- ajmurmann 4y agoCould this even result in (temporary?) carbon capture?
- paulkrush 4y agoYou can write a 1000 year plan with GMO. Try that with mined fertilisers.
- aaron695 4y agoThe only people who think you can accurately plan more than 50 years ahead are environmentalists and economists in the heads of environmentalists. But if we got everyone to first world conditions we still could be using mined fertilisers in 1000 years, along with using fossil fuels to run the planet in a fine utopia. Of course I and a lot of others want to be visiting space in decades. Along with the population will start to explode again in decades. And lots of other things like traveling to the nearest star within 1000 years would take a lot of fossil fuel using current tech. 1000 years is a pointless thing to think about.
- vosper 4y agoI disagree that it's not worth thinking about the next 1,000 years, but I think you're right that right now we can't realistically plan more than 50 years ahead. (I vouched for your comment)
- xattt 4y ago1,000-year planning falls apart when future humans don’t want to follow what some old stogies wanted them to do.
- dv_dt 4y agoI think you could make a plan with renewable energy produced fertilizers.
- nielsbot 4y agoThere are more problems with fertilizer than CO2 emissions.
- 4y ago
- svieira 4y ago> Scientists have accomplished a key step in the long-term ambition to engineer nitrogen-fixation into non-legume cereal crops by demonstrating that barley can instruct soil bacteria to convert nitrogen from the air into ammonia fertiliser. E. g. make non-legumes act like legumes. The actual paper is https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2117465119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2117465119
- mrpopo 4y agoFarmers have practiced crop rotation for nitrogen fixing for millenia, among many other benefits : less favorable conditions for weeds and pests due to changing conditions, diversification of nutrients, improved soil structure which in turn improves carbon sequestration, ... Legumes also provide amino-acids that are lacking in cereals, which makes a legume-cereal combination a healthy well-balanced diet. Crop rotation doesn't prevent mechanization or reduce farm productivity in any way, rather the opposite because it improves soil health. So, my question: what is the benefit of this? Would that further improve yield in combination with crop rotation?
- ch4s3 4y agoThere are places where the weather permits 2 harvests per year, and if you could do that without rotation, and without added nitrogen then you could produce as much or more barley on less land. Or rotate between this GMO, barley, and soy while still building up nitrogen. While crop rotation has its place, it's hard to argue with how much more grain we can produce per acre now vs even 100 years ago.
- mrpopo 4y agoCrop rotation is not an old esoteric practice. It's widely used in European fields with 3 or 4 types of crops, including cover crops, and actually improves yield. The USA farming practices keep it to a strict minimum, I believe to reduce labor costs(?) but at the expense of soil health.
- 4y ago
- infogulch 4y agoThese just-in-time manufacturing techniques are getting ridiculous.
- epa 4y agoPeople easily forget that crypto is still in beta/early version, we are in javascript 1.0 mode.
- topher_t 4y agoI'm a little worried that having plants sending signals to soil bacteria to produce ammonia without releasing the associated sugars and nutrients that legumes do, might put evolutionary pressure on those soil bacteria to stop reacting to those signals, potentially harming legume crops if that non-reactive soil bacteria proliferates.
- melissalobos 4y agoThat actually sounds very frightening, can anyone comment on how possible that would be?
- matheusmoreira 4y agoIt makes sense. Same thing happens with antibiotic resistance, for example. It costs them energy and nutrients to develop and maintain resistance capabilities. Previously resistant bacteria may become sensitive again if exposure to the antibiotic ceases. The logic is they will be wasting energy duplicating and expressing useless DNA and proteins whose only purpose is dealing with antibiotics that are no longer present, so getting rid of them increases fitness because it frees up resources for other purposes. Bacteria evolve frighteningly quickly.
- ByersReason 4y agoTotally happens even with insects. The biotech industry started using BT genes (a fungus which takes care of corn ear worm) in GMO corn. Previously, BT was an organically approved pesticide, carefully applied by growers according to guidelines which made sure the target pest did not develop resistance. But with the genes making the nasties continually = BT all the time = excellent evolutionary driver = cases of resistant corn ear worm appearing. Biotech reaction: "we will just think of something new and keep doing it!" ref: https://entomologytoday.org/2018/10/23/problems-driving-resistance-bt-crops-proposed-solutions-bollworm-corn-earworm/ https://entomologytoday.org/2018/10/23/problems-driving-resi...
- 4y ago
- passivate 4y agoI do wonder at which point does modern agriculture stop being natural? We killed micro-ecologies from vast areas of land, removed wild plants/rodents and other so-called "pests" and forced large scale growing of plants in various ways - selective breeding and process optimization to boost yields, etc. Do we call all that natural and draw the line at GMO?
- kadoban 4y ago> I do wonder at which point does modern agriculture stop being natural? A point decades ago, at _least_. More likely centuries or millenia, depending on your definition.
- lootsauce 4y agoI have recently discovered Greg Judy on YT and have become fascinated with the possibilities of regenerative agriculture with grazing. He is producing organically with almost no inputs, no heavy equipment and it is growing better soil. Pretty impressive when you compare how many inputs are required with other methods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPmYlRMuXo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPmYlRMuXo8
- whalesalad 4y agoThis is the way. We need to go back to the way our ancestors did things. Factory farming will kill us eventually.
- ch4s3 4y agoOur agrarian ancestors were highly food insecure, and often died in droves if a few harvests failed in a row they also achieved this feat with more land per person under cultivation. Factory farming ins't ideal, but it feeds far more people on far less land. We should improve our methods, take soil health into account, and conserve water and other resources but there's a baby in that bath water. Land under cultivation in 1970 in the US was 464 million acres and is now about 384 million acres and production has nearly doubled. A lot of that 80 million acres has been re-wilded. We now have more tree cover than we have had for more than a century.
- rocqua 4y ago"there's a baby in that bath water" I love this turn of phrase. I might steal it.
- idiotsecant 4y agofactory farming will kill us eventually. Not factory farming will kill us in 90 days, on average, since that's how much food storage we have as a species.
- MisterMower 4y agoYeah, speak for yourself. Foraging for berries and trying not to get mauled by a moose or bear? In case you weren’t aware, that’s how our ancestors did things. Factory farming is the only reason your great grand parents survived childhood. It’s what allowed your parents to be born and live long enough to raise you. An argument can be made that the internet and this website only exist because some really smart people weren’t worried about their next next meal every day and devoted their talents to making innovative technologies instead of foraging for food. The most charitable word I can use to describe this comment is ignorant.