I heard from a reliable accountant that the cost of fertiliser has gone up this year due to the increasing oil prices.
What’s the relationship between the two?
I thought fertiliser was more of the ‘trace’ elements. Potassium, Phosphorus and lots of Nitrogen.
Some googling seem to indicate that oil is used in the production of ammonia, NH[sub]3[/sub]. Oil is used to provide the hydrogen.
Alas, a subject dear to my heart and I have no time.
The relationship of modern agriculture to petroleum is one that fascinates endlessly.
Once we ate solar-powered food, now we eat petroleum-powered food.
It was not a good change.
To be accurate, “solar-powered” food exhausted the soil of nutrients necessary for sustained production. We would all starve to death if all our food depended on native nutrients in the soil. And fertilizer does not replace the role of the sun; “petroleum-powered” food cannot grow in the dark.
Yep - we need to make nitrogen based fertilizers, because if we depended only on the land/natural supply, there would not be enough nutrition in it to grow the crops that feed the world. One of the most under appreciated achievements in the 20th century was creating a process to create nitrogen-based fertilizer.
Not so.
It is not necessary to use chemical fertilizers; even when used they do not replace the nutrients in the soil, they merely provide some nutrition to a given crop. The only way to rebuild depleted soil is through the addition of organic materials.
We have become accustomed to monocultural farming, with its lunatic dependence on fertilizers and the other chemicals in the arsenal of corporate farming. Sustainable farming is possible. I highly recommend Michael Pollan’s brilliant book: The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
The biggest single change in the human diet since agriculture began was after WW II, when most cattle destined for market were no longer fattened on grass but were jammed into feedlots and fed on corn. There was a glut of corn, encouraged by generous government support. The huge stockpiles of petroleum based chemicals once needed for the war machine were quickly turned into fertilizer.
Once the land was fertilized by organic materials, all grown by ‘solar power’ whether vegetable or manure from animals that had been fed vegetables. The switch to chemical fertilizer is what I meant by ‘petroleum power’.
It is “common knowledge” that modern conventional agriculture is necessary if we are all to eat. But that “common knowledge” is wrong and is little more than propaganda from the agricorps.
To have a real discussion over what is ‘necesary to feed the world’, you need to bring economics into it. That would send this over to GD for sure.
Also, the Haber Bosch process is an extremely high energy process. The cost of energy is almost always proportional to the cost of oil.
Keeping in mind Micheal Pollan is a professor of journalism, with no scientific credentials.
Pollan reported what he saw and experienced. Isn’t that what a journalist is supposed to do? At no point in that book did he claim to be a scientist, nor even an “expert” on agriculture. Unfortunately, agriculture is not very interesting to very many people. As a farmer, a farmer who actually makes her living at farming, it interests me a great deal.
As an eater, I am passionately interested in the food I eat.
The choices that led to the current conventional methods of farming were often poor choices made for reasons that had little or nothing to do with growing necessary food.
There are other choices possible. Unlikely, I admit, but possible.
That is fine, we all have to choose what information we are willing to accept. Given the notoriety of journalists for getting science wrong, and more specifically cherry picking the evidence they choose to report to make a good story, I wouldn’t accept any information from anything other than the direct source.
I do not have a degree in agricultural science so I use price and availability to examine the potential of organic farming techniques. Given that organic products are sold at a premium, any farmer would be a fool not to switch to organic techniques if these techniques were as good as the ones they are already using.
It indisputably is so.
Certainly, you have two oher choices: you can starve to death, or you can expend vast amounst of fuel to pillage the seas to obtain “natural” fertilizers.
Of course many frin it revolting to contemplate over 3 billion people starving to death or the use of even more fossil fuels to extract phopshorus from the oceans by removing vast amounts of seas life. For those peopel the use of chemicla fertiliser is indeed necessary.
That doesn’t even make any sense.
Ignoring the insignificant amount of foliar fertiliser used, can you possibly explain how fertiliser can provide nutirtion to crops without replacing nutrients in the soil?
What a load of rubbish. Most soils are depleted in the macro-nutrients; nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. Adding organic material is totally uneccesary to remedy this depletion.
Hippy permaculture BS to the contrary, monocultural farming has been the most widely practicee form of agriculture for the last 10, 000 years. I have to question what you mean by “we” and “accustomed” I guess after 10, 000 years the world probably does have a bit of a habit going.
Monoculture is only lunatic if you consider that not having over 1/5 of the world’s populayiopn strave to detah is lunatic. Me, I tend to think that anybody who woudl endorse such as scheme is the lunstic.
Yes, we are practicing it right now.
You seem to have become hoplelessly confused about the terms organic", “sustainable” and “permacultural” and are using them interchangably. They are not in any sense synonyms.
Much oganic farming is hopelessly usustianable (some reserachers suggets that almost all is).
Most organic farming is moncultural.
Most conventional, monocultural farming is perfectly sustainable.
I also highly recommend it.
It highly recommend it as a sterling example of psuedoscientific nonsense and a classic example of someone trying to use a gross distortion and simplification of a complex issue to push their own social agenda.
Utter bollocks on every every level.
The parctice of fattening cattle on other thna grass extends back for millenia. The standard pratcice in most places was to use any surplus to fatten stock and send them to market in prime condition. What do you think happended to excess grain and root vegetables once fresh crops were available?
This parctice has had no impact on human diet, much less been the most significant. Pig flesh is hevaily affected by diet. Because cattle are ruminants beef remains beef regardless of of diet.
In terms of large influences on agriculture an diet, this pratcice pails in comparison to the green revoluition. Priort to the green revolution something like 90% of the population would experience periods of starvation and malnutrition annually and millions starved to death annually. Now malnutrition is rare, death from starvtion is so rare that it makes international news and more humans are dying from obesity than from malnutrition.
Do you think perhaps those are somewhat more significant changes in human diet than what cattle are fed on?
Aboslute nonsense on every level. Simply no truth in any of this.
A classic misundertsanding and oversimplificataion.
Look, some plants can fix nitrogen from the air. Neither plants nor animals cna fix potassium of phosphorus form the air. When you “fertilise” land with organic materials all you are doing is using the material as a (very inefficient) way of moving those elements from one plot of land to another. In the process you expend vast amounts of energy and you deplete the land that the organic material was originally derived from.
IOW you are making one part of your field more fertile by deliberately depleting the fertility of the corner where you grow you manure. And you are doing that at considerbale energetic expense.
The beauty of synthetic fertiliisers is that they are very efficient to transport and they can be manufactured from deep rocks whose minerals are not available to the biosphere. IOW they are truly sustainable because they are rapidly cycling nutrients within the crust, rather than fertilsing one area of cropland by deleting another as manure fertilisers do.
Absolute tripe.
Before the green revolution famine was commonplace and the Earth’s population was less than 1/3 what it is now. 'nuff said.
Look things like permaculture and organic techniques are nice, but they have massive limitations. For example organic farming can only possibly get productivity equivalent to conventional if you have a massive rural menial labour class. If you wish to develop a society without such perpetual serfs then it is simply impossible to feed even 1/5 of the world’s popualtion without uisng conventional techniques if you want to avoid frequent famines.
I am a farmer, make my living farming, and have seen for myself much of what Pollan writes about.
If you are convinced that agriculture as done in the USA at this time is “sustainable”, then your view of “sustainability” is opposite to mine.
Your assertion that “monoculture” has been practiced for 10,000 years is an absurdity. Before the advent of cheap chemical fertilizers, farmers had learned and practiced methods of retaining soil fertility and crop rotation was a keystone of those practices.
Why would you have to ‘pillage the seas’ to obtain ‘natural fertilizers’? The seas are being pillaged right now, anyway. Our current fishing practices are less sustainable than our agricultural practices.
I grow cattle, I have done so for decades. I do not feedlot my cattle, I grass finish them. The feedlot system for cattle is an atrocity for many reasons. One small reason is that upwards of 35 to 40% of feedlot cattle carry E. coli 0157:H7, “hamburger disease”. The rumen in feedlot cattle is now often as acidic as the human gut, and this bacteria can thrive in acidic guts – and the rumens of cattle are acidified from eating corn. Because of poor hygienic practices in the industrial abbatoirs, this deadly contaminant is now common on the meat humans eat. Overuse of antibiotics, growth hormones, BSE: There are many other reasons I oppose feedlots, but this post can’t go on for pages and pages. Suffice it to say that the feedlot system is not necessary to feed the hungry peoples of the world.
This statement: " This parctice has had no impact on human diet, much less been the most significant. Pig flesh is hevaily affected by diet. Because cattle are ruminants beef remains beef regardless of of diet." is absolutely wrong. Beef cattle are ruminants, indeed, and cannot digest large amounts of grain. Feedlot cattle are routinely medicated and fed growth hormones to enable them to fatten on corn. Many of them would die of liver failure if they were not slaughtered at such a young age. I have seen the livers on these cattle. It is not a pretty sight. Beef might “remain beef” but the fat on corn fed cattle is very different from the fat on grass fed cattle. Grass fed cattle have fat much like game ruminants, with a different omega 3/omega 6 ratio. This is my business, you see. I know these things. I did not need Pollan to tell me.
Feed lot cattle do not ever graze on grass. They are confined in pens and fed corn, forcing them to slaughter weight at about 14 months. This is not how it was done before the corn revolution.
One of the worst effects of the corn revolution has been to make beef so cheap that it has become the daily meat of nearly everyone, and is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic in North America.
I am not advocating a return to some imaginary bucolic paradise, just pointing out that our present farming practices are not sustainable, that soil erosion and salination are enormous problems.
Because of the agricultural revolution, there are now 6 billion of us to feed. Yet, the very revolution that enabled this explosion in numbers will likely fail us in the end. Farmland is being destroyed on a grand scale by industrial agriculture, which mines the land. Water resources are overused and polluted. Genetic diversity in both plant and animal crops decreases every year. Every “advance” in herbicides and pesticides leads to the inevitable “advance” on the part of weeds and pests.
Modern “organic farming” is another issue altogether. But even industrial organic farming is better than the alternative. There has to be a way to return some sanity to agriculture, to begin to rebuild the depleted earth our lives depend on.
And what does any of that have to do with monoculture?
You claim to be a farmer, yet you also seem to be implying that soil consrvation and crop rotation are somehow mutually exclusive with monocultures.
Care to explain that for us? Why, for example, can’t I grow a field of nothing but cotton using zero tillage and the following season sow a crop of soybean?
This is one styraneg claim for a farmer to be making.
once again, a vey odd quetsion for a farmer to be asking.
What alternative source of phosphorus is there?
Look, there are only three possibel sources of phosphorus: the terrestrial biosphere, the oceanic biosphere and mineral reserves. the terrestrial biosphere just ain’t gonna cut it for the reasons I’ve already outlined, so whre else you gonna get your phosphorus from?
Simply not true.
That is the most wasteful and ecologhically dmaging method of finsihng possible. It does far more damage on every possible level than feedlotting ever could. grass is siimply not high enough inprotein to avoid major environmental dmage from what you are doing. A more practical and much less damaging alternative is to utilise forage crops for finishing, which is what those graziers with serious concerns about sustianability avtually do.
Absolute tripe. It is the non-ruminats such as horses that can’t process large amounst of grain, or at least unprocessed garin.
In contrast ruminats such as cattle can be, and are, fed on grain diets indefinitely with absolutely no ill effcts.
Oh what rubbish. In the US they are fed antibiotics and hromines to encourage growth. It has nothing whatsoever to do with thair diet. In other nations antibiotics or hormones or both are illegal for animal use and their feedlot cattle get alone just fine and dandy without them.
You may be a farmer but you cleraly know squat about cattle, or even cattle farming.
Nonsense.
This is one of the biggest cons ever pulled by the grass finsihing lobby.All you are saying is that you sell lean beaf. The fact composition is entirely dependant on that fact, not on the diet. This is like selling a truck with three cylinders and touting the fuel efficiecey of the underpowered wreck as some sort of bonus.
Of course it has a different bloody ratio, that’s because it has more bloody fat. A grain finished steer has 2-5 times more fat than a grass finished steer and unsurpsingly enough about 2-5 times less linoleic acids. If you were to grass finish a beast to the same fat composition as a grain finsihed beast the ratio would remain identical. Similarly diary culls which are grain finished but low fat have exactly the same at ratio as grass fed aninmals.
Look, there are heath benefits to lean beef, nobody ever denied that. I has nothing to wih the diet of the animal and is totally unaffected by feedlotting. Cttle are rumnats, the fat is digested in the rumen and doesn’t enter the body unaltered. teh final fat composition of the carcasse is a metabolic choice of the beast itself, quite unrelated to diet.
That is either an outright lie, or else you have absolutely no knowledge at all of cattle farming.
The simple fats is that Cattle are raised on range or pasture land for most of their lives (usually 12-18 months), then transported to a feedlot for finishing. These cattle usually spend about three to six months in a feedlot. Prior to entering a feedlot, cattle spend most of their life grazing on rangeland or on immature fields of grain such as wheat pasture. Once cattle obtain an entry-level weight, about 650 pounds (300 kg), they are transferred to a feedlot to be fed a specialized diet
Can you possibly provide any evidence at all for your outrageous claim that any cattle in the whole of north America are actually riased in feedlots,and never graze pasture?
More provably erroneous nonsense.
Corn fed beef is far more expensive to produce than pasture fed beef. Feedlotting is used because it produces a far higher quality of beef, for which consumers will pay higher prices.
This the truth is that the “corn revolution” has led to a rise in the price of beef for North Americans. Without feedlots North Americans would be forced to consume grass fed beef which is lower in quality but far less expensive.
The reason that pasture fed beef is expensive ATM is because it is a boutique product. Peopel producing grass fed beef at reasonable prices finish that beef on grain to maximise their profits. That leaves only the most expensive producers to supply pasture beef.
Your claim that corn feeding has led to a decrease in beef prices on North AMerica is absolutely ridiculous.
No, they aren’t.
No, it own;t.
No, it isn’t.
No, it doesn’t.
Once again another provably false claim.
People use less water per capita today, and the water quality available is far higher, than at any time in the last 200 years.
Once again another provably false claim.
Genetic diveristy in crops is higher today than it has ever been in human history. There are more species and more varieties of those species in clutivation ion 2008 than at any other time in the past 10, 000 years
Well of course it does. That’s called evolution. Unless you advocate abandoning all pest control, and hence abandoning agriculture, this problem is insoluble. It will exist no matter what farming methods we use.
What alternative might that be? Allowing 5 billion to starve to death?
It’s unneccesary, as you would know if you had even a basic understanding of the facts.
Blake:
I loved reading gems such as: “Genetic diveristy in crops is higher today than it has ever been in human history. There are more species and more varieties of those species in clutivation ion 2008 than at any other time in the past 10, 000 years” There are 3 major cereal crops grown on Earth: Rice, Wheat, and Corn. More corn is grown than any other grain. Do you know how many varieties of Zea Mais make up the majority of corn cropped in the USA? In the rest of the world? Do you know that nearly all of them are hybrids? Do you understand the threat to world food supplies presented by this lack of diversity? A geneticist I know spends her vacations in those parts of the world that still have their traditional crops. This is not sentimentality on her part, gathering seeds, but fear.
or, this is another treat:
“People use less water per capita today, and the water quality available is far higher, than at any time in the last 200 years.” That is truly interesting. I’d like to see that one explained. Where do people use less water than they did 200 years ago? As for water quality? Find me a major river system or aquifer that is not either polluted or depleting. Are you familiar with the Colorado river and its use as an irrigation source?
and, perhaps the best: your contradiction of my assertion that the seas are being pillaged by unsustainable fishing. Do the words “Northern Cod” mean anything to you? Was there a lesson in the collapse of the cod stocks? There was, but sadly I think that lesson was not learned. I live a mile from the greatest Salmon river on the Pacific - and in my lifetime I have seen what overfishing and habitat destruction has done to the salmon stocks. And since the world’s fishers found the salmon’s ocean feeding grounds, even fewer return to spawn here. And that’s only the salmon. Look at the tuna. Well, no. I guess you won’t, since you think the oceans are not being overfished.
“The simple fats is that Cattle are raised on range or pasture land for most of their lives (usually 12-18 months), then transported to a feedlot for finishing. These cattle usually spend about three to six months in a feedlot. Prior to entering a feedlot, cattle spend most of their life grazing on rangeland or on immature fields of grain such as wheat pasture. Once cattle obtain an entry-level weight, about 650 pounds (300 kg), they are transferred to a feedlot to be fed a specialized diet” When you posted that Wikipedia link, had you, in fact, read what it had to say? Just curious. Once a beef enters a feedlot, he never grazes again. His career as a grazer is brief, and coincides with his career as a milk drinker, pretty well.
"Corn fed beef is far more expensive to produce than pasture fed beef. Feedlotting is used because it produces a far higher quality of beef, for which consumers will pay higher prices.
This the truth is that the “corn revolution” has led to a rise in the price of beef for North Americans. Without feedlots North Americans would be forced to consume grass fed beef which is lower in quality but far less expensive. "
It takes much longer to raise a beef to slaughter weight on pasture, as I know. This means lower profit for the farmer who raises it and must wait longer to sell it. So many cattle farmers grow the calves only to the 300kg weight and sell them on to the feedlot operators, and few of those calves will be as old as 12 months, most are between 6 and 8 months: born in the early spring and feedlotted in the fall. The quick turnaround and cheap corn ensure that the price if beef to the consumer is at a historic low. Then, of course, you have the problem of the vast quantities of manure generated in the feedlots. It is, you know, so contaminated that it is basically unusable as fertilizer.
Grass fed beef is not lower in quality. Proper grazing practices do not destroy the land, it is a sustainable system. Note the word “proper”. Cattle or other ruminants can be grazed on land that will not produce grain crops.
"You claim to be a farmer, yet you also seem to be implying that soil consrvation and crop rotation are somehow mutually exclusive with monocultures.
Care to explain that for us? Why, for example, can’t I grow a field of nothing but cotton using zero tillage and the following season sow a crop of soybean? " Why not, indeed? Why don’t you tell me? I’m not saying it can’t be done, I’m saying it’s not done. Why is that?
Vision, I not you are new here so you probably dont; know all ther ules yet.
This forum is for factual answers. If you want to post your baseless opinions about how the world is going to hell in a handcart then then the correct place in IMHO.
Everything I have posted I have either referenced already or am able to do so at request. If you wish to dipsute the factuality of anything I have posted then by all means do so. That way we will rapidly determine who’s answer is factual when I bury you in reputable references.
If all you intend to do is repeat baseless and provably erroneous assertions and refuse to respond when your incorrect information pointed out, with cites, then this in not the forum for you.
This is the forum for facts, and you seem to have none at all.
What exactly are you asserting here? From everything I’ve read, fishery collapse has been raised as a serious problem by serious scientists. A quick google reveals this NYT Article quotes both supporting views from some academics and dissenting views from NOAA who seem to claim US fishing stocks are fine but international stocks still face risks. Honestly, I haven’t been keeping up with the issue since I saw it in SciAm mumble years ago so I could be missing something major.
You didn’t address vision’s initial claim that corn feeding caused acidic gut environments so I did a bit of googling and found this
This doesn’t intuitively jibe for me. I pay higher prices for grass fed beef at my local farmers market (mainly because I’m used to Australian grass fed beef and American beef tastes watery) and it’s significantly more expensive. Are you saying that farmers could potentially skip a costly and controversial step and sell their beef for higher prices and yet are failing to do so? Sure, grass fed beef is a niche product now but basic economics suggests farmers should be flooding the market with it.
Cite? I’m pretty certain beef prices have fallen significantly over the last century. I can’t seem to find figures now but I recall researching this a while back.
Cite and Cite? The first one seems pretty absurd to me just going by the sheer amount of water infrastructure that’s been built over the last 200 years. Why do we need so many massive dams and indoor plumbing if we’re using less water per capita? How come the western world has a far higher water per capita usage than the developing world? How can we run all this industry that consumes massive quantities of water and still use less than in 1807?
As for the second, what are your definitions? I hear plenty of stories about the loss or near loss of “heirloom” varieties. Only two varieties of strawberries account for the bulk of the market, what used to be hundreds of varieties of pears is now only a dozen or so. Tomatos were going the same way before the heirloom revival. Sure, if you could every boutique farm and eccentric pioneer, we might have a greater number of species, but the distribution of species follows a long tail. Just a few species account for the bulk of the food we eat and everything I’ve read indicates that the head of the distribution is getting fatter, even if the tail might be getting longer.
By the by, what’s up with all the spelling errors in that recent post?
Moderator note
Blake, you are not new here, so you should know we strive to keep a civil tone in GQ. I would suggest you dial it back a notch. Maybe several notches.
This is not an official warning, since I think you are still within GQ rules. However, I think it will be beneficial to tone it down a bit.
Your point that the discussion should be kept factual is well taken, however. I request that *all * posters refrain from polemics on the issues that have arisen.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
While it has been interesting so far, I think I’m outa this thread.
A discussion ought to be more than mere disagreement. At this point it reminds me of “arguing” with a 9/11 Scholar for Truth, to be honest.
Thanks for jumping in Shalmanese. Your questions are good questions and maybe Blake will answer them.
I’m off to worm the sheep and help a neighbour do preg checks on a couple of heifers.
Blake,
I’m finding your posts vehemently dismissive and scarily misinformative enough to question whose axe you’re grinding.
My experience as a gardener and conversations with cattle/dairymen belie many of your claims,for which you assure citation. Since opposing cites can be easily found,wherein lies fact?
As for the OP,Christopher nails it in post #8. Even the "organic hippies" probably agree that the synthetic fertilisers yield the highest N value per unit application.ive heard talk/ rumour/gossip that besides the oil… there was another reason for war in iraq etc the base chemicals used in the making of herbicides and insecticides /pesticides all originate from the ““dead sea”” or in iraq , is this true ??? or just simply urban legend.
and is also true that the food production in USA and europe etc would all collaspe within a decade without these chemicals ??
ive found some info on it , eg a company in egypt that sells base chemicals for herbicide/insecticides.
http://www.ma-industries.com/products-solutions/crop-protection/insecticides
and this is some info on chemical use in the usa .
quote from the last artical “” By contrast, widespread use of herbicides to kill weeds did not begin until the development of synthetic organic chemicals in the late 1940s. Currently, herbicides are routinely used on more than 90% of the acreage of most U.S. crops.
is this an urban legend ??
Thanks in advance
Keano