Hacker News Reader

Comment by sebleon | Hacker News Reader

Right, I've heard the Western narrative on Norman Borlaug and the "Green Revolution".

I'd highly encourage you to read through the work of Vandana Shiva. [1] She'll provide a well-researched, critical view as an actual stakeholder in India's food system.

I look down upon petro-chemical fertilizers because of their disastrous effects on the environment and food security. Happy to elaborate, but Dr. Shiva work does it better.

[1] http://vandanashiva.com/?p=291

View on HN

You keep throwing the phrase "petro-chemical fertilizers" around but I can't see how it can make sense except for denigrating the concept and spreading FUD (which is counterproductive). Ammonia is just NH3 and there is nothing "petro" (i.e. hydrocarbons) in it, that hydrogen can be obtained anywhere and the nitrogen is literally around you.

Can you please elaborate on how fixing nitrogen on industrial scale is "disastrous"? What difference do you see between bio-available nitrogen that originated in root nodules and chemical reactor?

I just listened to a podcast (50 things that made the modern economy http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04f77rg) about the Haber-Bosch process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

According to the podcast and the wiki page, the current source of hydrogen for ammonia is natural gas. Additionally the process is energy-intensive, using high temperature and pressure.

These things don't necessarily make it mandatory that it's petro-chemical, but due to the way we currently run it it is.

And the current source of electricity that runs HN is most probably fossil fuels. Does it make HN "petro-website"? It's clearly a derogatory term that serves no constructive purpose. I believe we should strive for zero-emission hydrogen production (which is clearly possible given that hydrogen can be easily used to utilize excessive production from "green" sources) instead of pushing luddite worldview.

The key point of my post was "the current source of hydrogen for ammonia is natural gas" It can be made from other sources, but it is not. Hence petro-chemical. Like plastic or nylon.

> You keep throwing the phrase "petro-chemical fertilizers"...

Given that most fertilizers are composed of chemicals derived from petroleum, it's accurate. I don't use the term "conventional farming" because these techniques are extremely modern.

> Can you please elaborate on how fixing nitrogen on industrial scale is "disastrous"

To be clear, fixing nitrogen is fine, bacteria do this already naturally. The problem with fertilizers used at the industrial scale is that they end up ruining local water supplies + killing local ecosystem of bacteria and insects [1]. After a few years of using industrial fertilizers, famers end up ruining their soil and end up being dependent on fertilizer suppliers for future crops.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-fertilizers-h...

> most fertilizers are composed of chemicals derived from petroleum

Can you please elaborate further? Yep, in a lot of cases hydrogen for ammonia comes from natural gas. Nope, it doesn't have to be, in fact you can easily get it from water. What other "chemicals" do you have in mind?

> because these techniques are extremely modern

They are, but the concept of "not dying of famine" is also pretty modern if you consider an overall population.

> The problem with fertilizers… killing local ecosystem of bacteria and insects

I believe you confuse fertilizers with pesticides.

The nitrogen in the fertilizer is creating dead zones: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizer-runoff...

A quick googling will show many scholarly papers and articles describing this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com