Rich and Poor Nations to See Drop Off in Crop Yields | Hacker News Reader

Rich and Poor Nations to See Drop Off in Crop Yields

technologynetworks.com

I've been having excellent results in the home garden using the hugelkultur approach. Just bury logs and vegetative waste beneath a foot or two of topsoil. Adding some fungi spawn to the organic matter speeds up the process. The rotting organic matter acts like a big sponge to keep soil moisture high. Mycelia act to swap plant sugars from above, with nutrients from below. From a small plot, I was able to donate about 250 pounds of gourmet blue potatoes to local food banks this year.

Other than a little cow manure added to help feed the fungi and plant roots, no other fertilization was required. There are so many great low-tech approaches to get great yields of delicious produce, but it takes some extra initial labor inputs. Maybe when the AIpocolypse hits the labor market, this approach will be economical on larger scales.

How do you deal with pests?

what kind of pests? Sure, I have field mice here but between the owls and snakes, they disappear.

Moles also burrow everywhere around here but they just eat insects and their eggs afaik.

You don’t have bugs eating your plants?

While a little bug damage is expected here and there, you can still harvest a lot of high quality produce with minimal or zero pest management. Bugs generally go for weak and unhealthy plants, so if you can keep most of your plants healthy, you can just pull the weak ones if they get too many bugs.

Of course there are plenty of other things you can do, but if you have strong, healthy plants, you often don't have to do much. Birds and other larger animals however, can be a much bigger problem depending on your crop.

We get serious grasshopper damage around here, esp the last two years. It's cyclical, but not all crops are seriously affected. Root crops are usually very robust.

I tried neem and diatomaceous earth against the hoppers. Different mechanisms of action, not total control but good enough for root crops like potatoes. The pumpkins and other squashes also hold up well.

My reply was perhaps a bit too simple and optimistic, so thanks for your comment. Bugs can indeed do more than a little damage, and the bad years can be horrible! I guess the spirit of my previous comment was that it can be possible to find some success, without pesticides or an aggressive IPM program.

> not all crops are seriously affected

Crop diversity is the key, and a life saver when the pressure is on, or when things just don't go as planned for whatever reason!

I don't get terrible grasshopper pressure in my location, but a friend does and uses Nolo Bait as part of her management.

Only 16% of agricultural land today is used directly for food, providing 83% of calorie supply, while 80% is used for livestock, providing 17% of calorie supply [0].

Not all land used for livestock is usable for food crop agriculture. Though I suspect it still gives us plenty of margin.

If the population stays constant, we could probably deal with a 50-75% yield reduction without using more land overall, but gradually switching to a more plant-based diet. So, good news, we're not fucked yet.

There are many other solutions other than vegetarianism. Changing the ways we do agriculture, switching away from industrial processes, could greatly increase yield. Education in general about soil and plant ecology would probably help a lot globally.

[0]https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture

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