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Assuming the N comes from whatever they eat. This is so cool -- it's a pity that it's not economical to do this.
by pstuart 4y ago
Assuming the N comes from whatever they eat.
This is so cool -- it's a pity that it's not economical to do this.
- dv_dt 4y agoI would be interested in seeing if that stays true in an increased number of niches, especially with fertilizer shortages and prices likely to play into the near future.
- tharkun__ 4y agoAs for economical in the "traditional" sense, maybe not. I don't know how much success they're (still/actually) having but if you want a little glimpse into what should be possible in easily digestible docu-film format, look up "The Biggest Little Farm" (it's on Netflix for example). One thing I took away from that is that it's maybe not economical in a "have a one crop pigeon poop farm" (i.e. you sell pigeon poop from feeding pigeons), you can have a farm that sells a lot of things that uses a lot of different animals and crops in combination in order to not have to buy in things from the outside that "traditional" farms have to.
- pstuart 4y agoYes, I was thinking of the wholistic approach in your second paragraph -- where the fertilizer is used on site or traded with neighboring farms.
- pfdietz 4y agoAnd that source gets it from? As I said, the natural nitrogen fixing processes are insufficient to supply agriculture for nearly 8 billion people. And that N is more efficiently used by exploiting the nitrogen fixing sources directly rather than by filtering it through pigeons. In no way are pigeons a substitute for artificial nitrogen fixation.
- DoctorOetker 4y agoI largely agree with your sentiment: articles should educate, so it's important that the average reader ends up learning say in this case the dependency tree, i.e. knowledge that some species of organisms have the genetically coded skills to say fix nitrogen while others don't. The problem is that for those who don't already know this, these article are typically not that educational, and that for those who already do, any potential advantage of these pigeon tower is not explicitly elucidated either. For example I can come up with self-concocted explanations why this is senseless in the sense you describe: i.e. fundamentally the bird is not a nitrogen fixer, so it ate the fixed nitrogen compounds from which the compounds in its faeces derived. On the other hand I can come up with explanations despite its not being a nitrogen fixer why it still might be a net positive decision: perhaps the land has some insect pests anyway (pigeon towers or not), so that having the pigeons around results in them eating predators of your crop, while recycling those predators into useful nitrogen compounds... The problem is that I know its just a wild guess I make. Ideally we would read an article and understand under which conditions the pigeon towers make a net positive versus a net negative. I am not trying to take a dump on the article: I'd rather know such structures existed and know I don't fully understand when they make sense than to know nothing about it at all... understanding must start somewhere.