Destroy the soil and we all starve
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
My parents were farmers. We haven't depended on topsoil to fill our collective larder since those 1930s. We add nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and various minor minerals.
Nitrogen made from and by the petroleum industry. We use it to grow corn, a heavy feeder, turn that corn into a gasoline additive and pretend it's green. Phosphates are dug from the ground a few miles from where I live by giant drag lines. We use petrochemicals to compensate for massive mono-cropping and now we have gene-splicing. The soil? It's just a grow medium for petro-food.
Anyone who still pretends our modern cornucopia is the fruit of the soil is being willfully ignorant.
For example, Iowa has lost an estimated 10 inches of topsoil in the last 150 years. There are only six inches left. Dust-covered bedrock does not make good farmland.
This is true, but it's significantly less direct than the news stories have indicated. The issue is that Roundup is being used to eliminate milkweed, which are essential for monarch butterflies. It's not Roundup or Roundup Ready crops that are harming monarch butterflies, but what they're being used to eliminate.
These distinctions are important.
The free-marketers and the greens are by and large ignoring the elephant in the room: unsustainable human population growth.
Technology is reaching the limit as far as pie-slicing goes. Virtually every single macro problem facing the planet is exacerbated by overpopulation.
Natural polyculture methods have higher yields than chemical monoculture methods. There will be less of a particular type of corn or soybean, but more food overall.
Though some farmers, such as Masanobu Fukuoka was able to have significantly higher rice yields (& even more overall food of different types) using natural polyculture methods than chemical monoculture methods.
Note that permaculture is of a different tradition than biodynamic farming. Both are good in their appropriate usages. Appropriate for the climate, land, water context, etc.
Also, I think your premise that "natural polyculture" can scale up to feeding the high 10 digits of people in anything resembling the kind of society we expect to live in is unrealistic, to say the least.
The UN has a report that small scale, distributed farming is more efficient & yields more food than large monoculture farms. It's been measured.
http://www.technologywater.com/post/69995394390/un-report-sa...
The only "disadvantage" is more people will be required to grow food. However, given the amount of people who are out of work & economically displaced, this would be a good thing. These people will be given autonomy & food sovereignty.
There is historical evidence that monoculture, petrol farming does not work. Look at the "green revolution" in India. India is moving back toward natural farming techniques because they work.
You're kidding, right? Small-scale peasant farmers have historically been the most downtrodden and oppressed group. Serfdom or outright slavery is the norm.
"There is historical evidence that monoculture, petrol farming does not work."
No, there is historical evidence that it does work. China hasn't had a major famine in close to fifty years, and India hasn't had one since the 1940s.
Yes, there are still hungry people there, but you don't see the kind of mass die-offs that were common under the "natural farming techniques".
"The only "disadvantage" is more people will be required to grow food."
Cool. You get to go first.
http://crops.missouri.edu/audit/images/CornYields_MO.jpg
What was that you were saying about "does not work"?
Note that even in a horrible year, the yield is still about 3x what they were getting in the early 1900s. In a good year it's 7x-8x.
Things that do not work: the overuse of till farming, soil erosion, drought, loss of habitat of wildlife, water pollution, inefficient water usage, desertification, famine, uneven food distribution, the reduction of nutrients in food, the obesity epidemic of the consumers of monoculture petrol agriculture, methane pollution from concentrated livestock, to name a few...
Note that the graph you present is a myopic & reductionistic lens on the system's performance. It is also based on the evolution of the tradition of monoculture till farming, which can work (in an unoptimal way) in forgiving (even rainfall through the year) climates, but devastates the ecosystem in brittle (uneven rainfall through the year) climates.
> No, there is historical evidence that it does work. China hasn't had a major famine in close to fifty years, and India hasn't had one since the 1940s.
Yes, look at the "fertile crecent", that is Iraq, Iran, etc. It was once a lush paradise that has been till farmed to desert. Look at the farmers in India who are going back to natural methods because they are going into debt due to chemical agriculture's exploitative & inefficient practices.
In China, look at the Loess Plateau being transformormed from desert into green land with Natural & Permaculture methods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A
And famines happen all over the world. Centralized food production results in unequal food distribution.
Re: traditional agriculture, we have been improving on a fundamentally broken tradition for thousands of years; We & Earth's ecosystems have suffered. It's time to go back to basics & work with, not against, nature.
Reductionistic policy creates many externalized consequences, because we optimize for the things that we measure. In a monoculture mindset, we optimize for one crop. In a systemic mindset, we optimize for the entire system. Polyculture farms grow food by acre than monoculture farms. The many plants interact with each other to form a symbiotic food web, having introduce chemicals.
Natural farming techniques, such as no till farming, have been shown to consistently out perform chemical monoculture agriculture.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk&feature=youtu.be and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka
One "challenge" is the diversity of the ecosystems on Earth call for a diversity in natural growing methods. There are many bioregions. The natural farmer needs to be in tune with the land & the ecosystem.
On a side note, we have an epidemic of overly reductionistic thinking, which tends to blind us from the bigger picture.
> Cool. You get to go first.
I am. I'm taking part in the solutions to humanity's biggest issues. You are invited to as well.
Measuring actual, you know, food output is "myopic"? Okay.
"Yes, look at the "fertile crecent", that is Iraq, Iran, etc. It was once a lush paradise that has been till farmed to desert"
That was done with "tradtional, natural farming methods", dude.
"Centralized food production results in unequal food distribution."
You couldn't be more wrong. Centralized food production and distribution is exactly why we don't have famines any more.
Where we do see famines, it's where the central distribution mechanism has been destroyed by war or by the government in the area being otherwise fucked up.
Your "must grow locally" idea is guaranteed to produce at least localized famine when the crop fails (as will from time to time).
Before mechanized agriculture China had a famine in one or more provinces almost every year, for over a thousand years.
"I am"
No, you aren't. Writing about it online and actually living the life of an agricultural stoop-labor peasant farmer are two different things. Entirely.
Maybe you should give it a try before advocating it.
Unchecked population growth will exceed the limits of any system. No amount of conservation and "permaculture" will reduce the footprint of a nonmiserable human to less than a substantial fraction of what is currently, much less zero. You can't manufacture or farm virgin wilderness by any means. We eclipsed optimum population and blazed by sustainable population in the last millennium. We pay the price in this one.
Good thing we're not seeing that, then. The world population growth rate has halved since its peak in the early 1960s, and the rate is continuing to decline.
"You can't manufacture or farm virgin wilderness by any means."
Good thing modern farming techniques don't need virgin wilderness, then.
Good thing? World population was 3 billion in 1960, in the post-war baby boom when population growth was 9% on an extremely anomalous rebound above historical rates. So, the world added 270M people that year to 3 billion.
In 2012, the world hit 7 billion people with a population growth rate of 4.5%. You are right, the rate was half of the 1960 peak. So, it added 315M people that year to 7 billion.
Now that you've seen the arithmetic, what do you think has a bigger impact on the environment, 270 million people added to 3 billion people, or 315 million people added to 7 billion people, who are consuming a hell of a lot more than they did in 1960?
Easing off the accelerator while the world is driven to hell is nothing to pat ourselves on the back for. We need to slam the brakes and go in reverse.
> Good thing modern farming techniques don't need virgin wilderness, then.
Let's just pave and plow every single inch of the planet until we have a lifeless moonscape then. Do you know nothing about ecology? Have you never taken a hike off the beaten track?
How does "we don't need to use virgin wilderness" equate to "let's pave and plow every single inch of the planet"?
Be specific.
"We need to slam the brakes and go in reverse."
I'll repeat what I said to the other guy: you first.
In fact, virtually every advanced society is either population-neutral or actually losing people.
WRT: "Have you never taken a hike off the beaten track?"
I grew up without electricity or running water, and currently live in Alaska.
You?
Virtual all arable land is already cultivated and grazable pasture is cowburnt now with population 7B. The notion that it's not a problem to scale up because we can just keep chopping down rainforests for lumber, soy and palm oil plantations etc is sickening. No, agriculture doesn't need wilderness, but the inhabitants of earth do.
> I'll repeat what I said to the other guy: you first.
I have << 2.1 children; I've done my part.
> In fact, virtually every advanced society is either population-neutral or actually losing people.
So what? The rest of the world is churning out babies and are more than eager to move. Overpopulation is a global problem. Arithmetic again. Mathematically and physically of course population growth will end at some point. But it's the major driver of all the major social, environmental, and political problems facing nations and the earth today, and it's the easiest one to do something about.
Do you think that population growth just slowed down by magic? In developed countries, family planning is universally accessible. In developing countries where overpopulation is most acute, countries with well-run organized population programs like Thailand, Iran, and China have been extremely successful at managing population growth and have reaped the benefits.
You're clearly more interested in preaching that listening to what I say.
Technology increases the yield from current land. By a lot. Thus reducing the need to "pave and plow" more of the planet.
The United States, for instance, has considerably more forest now than it did at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Where do you actually see slash-and-burn agriculture and similar wilderness-destroying methods of farming? Bingo: in the low-tech peasant farming operations that you and the other guy hold out as models.
The point is we have industrial agriculture, pesticides, herbicides, and massive amounts of petrofertilizers and other chemicals already widely deployed to artificially increase crop yields providing the great majority of the food supply and we've farmed virtually all arable land already, and food security is still a problem. There will be billions more to feed before population peaks.
What I am saying is that neither modern industrial ag nor permaculture fantasy agriculture or organic farming can sustainably feed the earth's growing population. Population is the problem.
Umm, permaculture takes a systemic approach utilizing science & natural laws. It's working with nature not against nature.
What is a fantasy is monoculture & trucking in fertilizer to squeeze the blood from the turnip of the devastated ecosystem & expecting it to grow forever.
Calling a practical lens, that requires a different set of values & thought, a fantasy is a bit pessimistic & ignorant of humanity's ability to adapt. The transition is happening right now. You may not notice the transition if you are abstracted away from the communities that are changing how how we live & how food is grown. But don't let ignorance & assumptions be your guide on this one.
Many third world countries are adopting small scale, systemic methods because they work. Gardeners produce way more efficiently than large monoculture farms.
When we move into a low energy economy, those who adapt will prosper, those who don't will perish.
If you want to use fewer chemicals then you need to use GMO seed. Course a loud minority doesn't want farmers to use GMO seed despite a mountain of scientific evidence that it's safe.
I worked as an agronomist for twenty years. The overwhelming majority of farmers want to save the soil while balancing that with protecting the rural environment for their children. I trust them more than the hand wringing editorial writers to make the right choices.
Interesting. Reference?
When I was in the Midwest farming communities in Indiana and Ohio, the row crops were heavily corn, wheat, and soy beans. Then after harvest, there were lots of dead corn stalks, wheat stalks, and soy bean plants on the ground, and those plants got plowed under.
Heavily those plants were carbon, and the first cut guess where the carbon came from was CO2 in the atmosphere and not from the existing soil. So, net, all the plant matter was heavily from the atmosphere and adding to the soil. So, typically annual plants, year by year, add to top soil. Indeed, it is fair to say that that was mostly the origin of the top soil.
For another example, as a child, we lived in one house for about 16 years, and I got to mow the grass twice a month or so for much of that time. Well, over the 16 years, the top soil rose with respect to the concrete driveway and walkways, rose 1-2 inches. So, we added to the top soil.
So, if we are losing a lot of top soil from, say, Iowa, then where it is going? Well, it could blow, but then it stands just to add to top soil in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, not a net loss.
Or, we're carrying the top soil away via the corn kernels, wheat seeds, and soy beans themselves? Tough to believe that the seeds take more soil than the rest of the plant adds.
Or the top soil could get washed into rivers which about has to be the Mississippi River. So, should be able to see all that Iowa top soil along the Mississippi River and, then, into the Gulf of Mexico. Can the USGS and Corps of Engineers find that top soil for us?
I can believe that the tree cutting of the mountains in the East US by 1930 or so resulted in a lot of top soil from the mountains washing into the local valleys, but Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, etc. are nearly flat as a table, in part because at one time they were lake bottoms.
I'd want to see a good and careful argument about loss of top soil in Iowa.
Sure, until we run out of phosphorus[0].
Peak oil is worriesome for a variety of reasons, but peak element / mineral (or more important, exhaustion of readily available or recoverable sources of same) is much more so - there's no wind or solar equivalent for certain elements.
Exactly which of the above will run out in the next 1000 years? You've made a statement without any evidence. Even peak phosphorus mentioned in other comments seems as dodgy a concept as peak oil.
Or do you mean they are not following the religion of mothernature knows best and using science and technology for sustainability instead.
Phosphorus. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378008...
This is it. When growing food, soil and labor are not the limiting factors. Petroleum is. If you have lots of oil, you can perhaps do hypdroponics in a desert; if you don't, all your farming will need heavy subsidies to cover for its petroleum consumption.
I don't expect world to care about soil until it becomes limiting factor. Call me when they resume growing grain in Siberia.
There's also habitat loss for insects & other organisms. There's also pollution of water from the excess nitrogen. There's also the poisoning of the people who eat chemical agriculture foods. Note the obesity epidemic & it's relation to the disruption of gut bacteria. Herbicides & Fungicides disrupt biological processes in humans.
You mention "scare tactics". The problem is temporarily mitigated by mining & importing the nutrients. This is inefficient on fossil fuels because we are trucking in nutrients that are available with natural systems.
Here's another account a farmer using natural systems to build soil. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk&feature=youtu.be
His yields increased & he is the most profitable farmer in his local area.
I suspect that the number of farmers is going to grow very substantially in the next 20-50 years as people recognize that you can't steward 1000 acres all by yourself.
The practical limit of how many people an acre of land can support is driven almost entirely by how many people are working it. There's the upper limit on inbound sunlight of course, but that's a pretty high limit relative to what industrial agribusiness is doing these days.
>The practical limit of how many people an acre of land can support is driven almost entirely by how many people are working it.
Does that not imply that loss of soil will not result in starvation, just the need for more farmers?
Do you agree or disagree with, "Destroy the soil and we all starve"?
If you can have 2x as many people work on a piece of land and get 2x the production from it (relative to industrial agribusiness) that's very interesting.
That means that the limit for how much food we can get is due to the number of farmers, not the amount of acres. And the idea that we could ruin 20-30% of the farmland in the world and still recover is very encouraging, because you can make up for that kind of loss by simply increasing the number of farmers and production would go up more than enough to make up for it.
Also even once land is "ruined" it's still not ruined forever. It just takes some years of rest and rehabilitation before it is fertile again. You can grow peanuts to fix nitrogen. You can plant grass and graze cattle on it for several years to fix large amounts of biomass into the land and kickstart the process of renewal.
Medieval farmers knew about this and they had a "two field" system where they farmed one field and left the other fallow. Eventually they figured out that 50% rest wasn't strictly necessary and went to the three field system where a field got 33% rest. Right now most farmland gets 0% rest which is part of the problem.
Lets suppose that there are diminishing returns to adding farmers. Eventually you run into the limits of sunlight of course. But if most farmland is only 10% efficient and lets say that quadrupling the number of farmers per acre only triples production. By teaching people to be farmers and to manage their land very jealously we could have well over half the fields in recovery all the time and still have enough food.
I think a pretty serious limit would be that most plants need space, you can only fit a limited number of a crop in an acre and after a certain (fairly low) point having more farmers would not help anything.
Here are people in LA that grow a huge amount of food in their backyard, 1/10 of an acre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM
Here's a guy in Canada that makes a legit living urban farming 1/3 of an acre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnCIlq0KPw0
There are tons of additional examples on youtube of other people doing very similar things.
The point, though, is that it's very intensive on a labor per acre basis. You can't do this kind of farming with big tractors over thousands of acres with just a few people, you need several people per acre for it to work. But it does work!
Yes there is a limit eventually, but the point isn't as low as you think.
From some back of the napkin math, it seems that current farming techniques yield about 50,000 pounds of potatoes per acre, so on the 1/10 acre scale in terms of vegetable matter they outpace the LA farm (though this will vary by crop. It might make more sense to compare calories per acre).
I think you have a point, it's certainly worth looking into whether the gains from more labor-intensive farming are greater than the cost of labor when adopted en masse.
For example as farming gets more labor intensive you can do things like cut steps into a hill to stop erosion or to till and plant always perpendicular to the slope of the hill so that there aren't any easy channels for runoff to head downhill.
I've read that in the US there are 9 calories of fuel in every 1 calorie of food delivered to the table. In other places around the world, it's more like 1 calorie of fuel to every 1 calorie of food.
In other words, many places are turning fuel directly into food on a 1:1 basis. It takes us 9 times as much fuel to make food, which is pretty friggin awful.
If you don't mind that he's an outspoken, right-wing, traditional Christian kinda guy Joel Salatin has some very interesting ideas about getting a lot of use out of land with very, very little fuel and not much feed input. Here's one video but there are tons more in the sidebar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13i1ZUovj6Y
Big farms have a better ROI. Invest $1M into large scale farms and you get more profit out than investing $1M into small scale farms.
Large farms are more efficient with money and labor. Small farms are more efficient with space.
Wheat is, in bulk, $0.125/lb right now. At a farmers market, there are a few things that fetch $12.50/lb, but not too many. There are plenty which sell for $1-$2/lb.
That does account for 10x of the cost difference though, thanks.
Not saying the result you got is necessarily wrong, but I'm very skeptical of economic comparisons that don't carefully control for these sorts of things.
Most tomato plants picked commercially are short plants that have a relatively low density per meter squared (at least where I lived at in the mid-west).
Now when I grow my own plants I can grow them at much larger heights and in higher densities than can be effectively machine harvested. Plants that I grow myself have a much higher yield than the average field crop, but at the cost of much more intensive labor.
Not help anything? Those farmers have to eat. After a certain low point you are in Nigeria.
Subsistence farming has not historically been a great lifestyle.
Degradation of soil - or specifically - the ability of topsoil to retain enough nutrients to support agriculture - is not the primary problem we are facing today.
The key issues are -
#1 Reclamation of fertile land for housing the burgeoning population is the largest reason for declining food production - which in turn leads to the increasing use of chemical fertilizers for enhanced yield from the same or reduced available land.
#2 The % of population engaged in agriculture as compared to pure consumers of agricultural produce. This is perhaps what msandford meant. The net number of agricultural workers 'producers' is rapidly declining due to higher yield 'jobs' off farm. This impacts output/acre significantly.
However the ceiling for human resource in farming is pretty low. Perhaps we need to look at a metric like Man month/unit of produce.
The need of the hour is to change the basic value chain. Consumers have no stake in (and dont care about) the production or the land itself.
Farmers are being marginalized by increasing land prices/roi on selling farmland for other purposes.
Landowners/Bulk Consumers are driven by volumes - not necessarily by sustainability. This is like strip mining.
Perhaps a new platform is required to realign the value chain. The above is particularly true for India - which will also be one of the hardest hit - earliest.
That has not been the case. Yields have improved in lock-step with the decrease of farmers. This is largely due to improvements in farming equipment, better hybrids, transgenic traits and other technological improvements.
I agree. The biggest problem is our culture taking an overly simplistic reductionistic approach to create solutions (aka the silver bullet). There are a number of issues that all need to be addressed. That being said, Degradation of soil is a major issue that needs to be addressed; if it's not addressed, we will have compounding issues.
Note that 12 million hecacres of arable land is lost every year from desertification, caused by soil degradation.
http://www.un.org/en/events/desertificationday/background.sh...
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/a-c...
(disclaimer: I am not a grower but the current iteration of my career is working for a Biotech which has developed teams of Beneficial Microbes for Agricultural and Environmental Applications).
Sensationalist garbage. No farmer willingly treats their land like that, and I'd wager that even the average farmer knows more about soil science and biogeochemistry than Monbiot does. But they don't get sinecures to write clickbait garbage for biased rags.
People absolutely will exploit, consume, and even destroy resources they own if they think it will give them sufficient local advantage. Why would land be an exception?
> the average farmer knows more about soil science and biogeochemistry than Monbiot does
There are farmers whose scientific grasp seems sound and position has a lot in common with Monbiot.
Google "Wes Jackson", or just look elsewhere on this page where I've posted some links.
It is possible, if the Western world stops shipping our surplus foodstuff to Africa and ruining the local farms by giving food away for free.
We should instead help rebuild the agricultural industry so that Africa can finally feed itself.
If it ends up as sludge in a lake or river, can't we dredge and get it back?
Yes, I know that would be expensive. Just askin'
Ever look up at the sunset and see the deep red colors in the atmosphere. That's the light reflecting off the dust. Some of it lands here, other lands there, and much of it lands in the ocean since it covers most of the surface of the Earth.
Yes, a lot does go into the rivers (or at least used to), but there it is intermixed with all kinds of other materials, many of them dangerous for human health.