4 ms·

Without commenting on the merits of this technique, composting is as old as the hills and doesn't necessarily involve fossil fuels.

sparrowInHand 3y ago
Its also doesent scale. Medieval farming for industrial societies gave us the atrocities of WW2 including Lebensraum.
- hedora 3y ago
  What? The Germans pioneered modern fertilizer production in the 1890s-1910s.
- pjc50 3y ago
  WW2 could not have happened without Haber ammonia .. for explosives.
- laurencerowe 3y ago
  The Industrial Revolution couldn’t have happened without the Agricultural Revolution that preceded and accompanied it, freeing up workers for industry. In medieval times most of the population were farmers by necessity. In the UK, output per acre tripled and the proportion of the population in farming went from 60% to 20% in 1840. And the UK was still almost entirely self sufficient at this time, food imports only became substantial in the late 1800s. Similar changes happened across Europe, though timing varied by country with the spread of industrialisation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolut...
- maxbond 3y ago
  The biosphere seemed to scale quite a bit before we invented synthetic fertilizers. I don't think it's so much a problem of composting not scaling as much as our supply chains being wasteful and linear. Again, not commenting on the merits of this technology, I just think it's not correct to say that composting can't scale.
pstuart 3y ago
Composting has value too -- I'm a fan of permaculture. But as noted elsewhere, this scales well and becomes one tool of many.
hedora 3y ago
Composting is to atmospheric nitrogen fixing (this type of process) as recycling is to mining. Before people could pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere, wars were fought over guano deposits, etc. At this point, the majority of nitrogen in human biomass comes from the Haber-Bosch process. (I’m not arguing against composting, to be clear!)

sparrowInHand 3y ago

Its also doesent scale. Medieval farming for industrial societies gave us the atrocities of WW2 including Lebensraum.

hedora 3y ago
What? The Germans pioneered modern fertilizer production in the 1890s-1910s.
pjc50 3y ago
WW2 could not have happened without Haber ammonia .. for explosives.
laurencerowe 3y ago
The Industrial Revolution couldn’t have happened without the Agricultural Revolution that preceded and accompanied it, freeing up workers for industry. In medieval times most of the population were farmers by necessity. In the UK, output per acre tripled and the proportion of the population in farming went from 60% to 20% in 1840. And the UK was still almost entirely self sufficient at this time, food imports only became substantial in the late 1800s. Similar changes happened across Europe, though timing varied by country with the spread of industrialisation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolut...
maxbond 3y ago
The biosphere seemed to scale quite a bit before we invented synthetic fertilizers. I don't think it's so much a problem of composting not scaling as much as our supply chains being wasteful and linear. Again, not commenting on the merits of this technology, I just think it's not correct to say that composting can't scale.

pstuart 3y ago

Composting has value too -- I'm a fan of permaculture. But as noted elsewhere, this scales well and becomes one tool of many.

hedora 3y ago

Composting is to atmospheric nitrogen fixing (this type of process) as recycling is to mining. Before people could pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere, wars were fought over guano deposits, etc. At this point, the majority of nitrogen in human biomass comes from the Haber-Bosch process. (I’m not arguing against composting, to be clear!)