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Obdicut posted:Did you just completely ignore what I said? I really don't even know why you think that this ratio has no meaning or value.
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Jan 13, 2014 16:20
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:I really don't even know why you think that this ratio has no meaning or value. I've explained it over and over; are you just not reading the posts? We have a finite amount of fossil fuel, a very finite amount. This means that anything that depends on it is unsustainable. It doesn't matter the rate at which it uses it, it's unsustainable. It doesn't matter if it's 10:1 or 2:1 or 1.0001:1, it's still unsustainable. It is completely irrelevant to cite the number. Can you explain what you're not understanding about this, or what meaning you think that ratio has? Not the fact that it's unsustainable, because, again, any ratio would be unsustainable: what meaning is there in that particular ratio?
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Jan 13, 2014 16:25
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:I wonder how many calories it takes to grow your own food and walk it to your table. Here's an example of what I mean: Is this supposed to be an example of sustainable agriculture? Not everyone has a big backyard to grow some fruit plants in, or lives on arable land even if they do have a backyard, and it's not as if you grew enough food to live off of. All you did was supplement your groceries with some home-grown tomatoes and blackberries. I agree that our current agricultural practices are unsustainable, but the solution won't be people growing fruit in their backyard. I have pear, pecan, and fig trees in my backyard; they're a great way to make cheap but delicious desserts(and wine with the pears). I give my neighbors the produce I don't use, but that is not scalable up to a national or global level. Examples of sustainable large-scale grain production would be far more effective in demonstrating your point.
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Jan 13, 2014 16:46
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Really? karthun likes to throw insults at the people who he disagrees with and I'm the one that's "spewing bile" (lol)? I looked over all his posts in this thread and didn't see him throw a single insult. You're reaching, and projecting quite a bit to avoid any sort of criticism or discussion. You aren't seriously engaging with anyone, and it'll be no surprise when shortly people stop responding to your posts. You also keep trying to dance around anyone's points with an appeal to sustainable agriculture, but no serious discussion of what that means. This kind of wreaks of western privilege though, since these organic, sustainable practices which don't involve fertilizers at all will not scale to feed humanity. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 17:07
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Obdicut posted:Did you just completely ignore what I said? The point of that statistic is to demonstrate how reliant our current system is on petroleum. Which it is. No, it doesn't follow that "because of that number, unsustainability", but to say it's irrelevant is a bit much. Also it would matter if the ratio was 1.0000001:1 because then our systems would be incredibly efficient and not as reliant on petroleum for production. Saying that it would be unsustainable if we cut our fossil fuel inputs by an order of magnitude is closing in on a "heat death of the universe" level argument. Yiggy posted:You also keep trying to dance around anyone's points with an appeal to sustainable agriculture, but no serious discussion of what that means. This kind of wreaks of western privilege though, since these organic, sustainable practices which don't involve fertilizers at all will not scale to feed humanity. Permaculture doesn't exclude the use of fertilizers nor is it going to replace the entire agriculture industry (for a lot of reasons, but the fact that it can't is a good one) but it does offer methods for some of our food production to become less reliant on fossil fuels. Which is a good thing. down with slavery fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 17:17
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down with slavery posted:The point of that statistic is to demonstrate how reliant our current system is on petroleum. Which it is. No, it doesn't follow that "because of that number, unsustainability", but to say it's irrelevant is a bit much. Exactly
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Jan 13, 2014 17:22
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down with slavery posted:Saying that it would be unsustainable if we cut our fossil fuel inputs by an order of magnitude is closing in on a "heat death of the universe" level argument.
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Jan 13, 2014 17:24
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down with slavery posted:The point of that statistic is to demonstrate how reliant our current system is on petroleum. Which it is. No, it doesn't follow that "because of that number, unsustainability", but to say it's irrelevant is a bit much. That statistic, on its own, is meaningless, though. It shows that we're reliant on petroleum because it's petroleum. it doesn't demonstrate 'how' reliant it is because the 10:1 ratio would need to be compared with a much more complex set of numbers to know if that's actually big or not. If we had 10^24 calories of fossil fuel reserves, that ratio would be sustainable for 91 million years, assuming a global population of ten billion each eating 3000 calories a day. quote:Also it would matter if the ratio was 1.0000001:1 because then our systems would be incredibly efficient and not as reliant on petroleum for production. The efficiency calculation is incomplete without the total amount of reserves. quote:Saying that it would be unsustainable if we cut our fossil fuel inputs by an order of magnitude is closing in on a "heat death of the universe" level argument. ... What? We have limited amounts of fossil fuel. You think that, if we cut down fossil fuel inputs for agriculture only, that everything else would be fine? No, we'd still run out of fossil fuels, long, long before the heat death of the universe. You really think agriculture makes up most of fossil fuel usage? quote:Permaculture doesn't exclude the use of fertilizers nor is it going to replace the entire agriculture industry (for a lot of reasons, but the fact that it can't is a good one) but it does offer methods for some of our food production to become less reliant on fossil fuels. Which is a good thing. The point that is trying to be made to booty shorts repeatedly, which is a very simple argument and I really don't get why he gets it: The problem is that we rely on fossil fuels, which are limited in amount and produce CO2, which is causing catastrophic global warming. That we use 10cal fossil fuels to make 1cal of food means that, to know how long that can be sustained for, you need to know the total number of calories of fossil fuels available, and all other factors involving their use. Nevertheless, reducing that number is a good thing, but it's not a solution, because there's still a limited amount of fuel and agriculture is not the prime user of fuel. If we had a ratio of 100:1 of calories of fuel to food, but those fuel-calories came from fully-sustainable sources, then it would not matter how incredibly inefficient it is. The ratio is unimportant, except in context, and no context has been given, not even the absolutely necessary for that statistic to have any meaning context of how many total calories of fossil fuel are available. Nobody is arguing that we can sustain our usage of fossil fuels, here. No one is arguing improving efficiency of fuel usage on food wouldn't [edit: hopefully nobody got confused, I said it backwards the first time] be a 'good', all other things being equal. What's being argued is that that ratio of 10:1 is completely goddamn meaningless without a lot of other context, and throwing it around as though it's a meaningful examination of efficiency is counterproductive because it makes people arguing for sustainability look like they have no clue what they're talking about. Give me 100/1 energy calories to food calorie ratio any day, as long as that's sustainable energy. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 17:59
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In that case, hook up non-coal/gas electricity to electrodes in a water tank and fill up the hydrogen tractor. Problem solved.
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Jan 13, 2014 18:14
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:I wonder how many calories it takes to grow your own food and walk it to your table. Here's an example of what I mean: Congrats, you have a garden. Do me a favor sometime and try make a loaf of wheat bread by only using your own garden and equipment in your home, good luck. Same with rice and maize. Potatoes are actually quite easy to grow, as long as it doesn't get too hot, or too cold or too humid, or too dry. P. infestans will eventually make your entire potato plot its bitch for a couple of years. But hey, thats the cost of being self-righteous. The point I am trying to make here is that the practices that you use with the fruits and vegetables for your garden are not appropriate nor will not scale up to the staples needed to feed 7 billion people.
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Jan 14, 2014 00:26
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karthun posted:Congrats, you have a garden. Do me a favor sometime and try make a loaf of wheat bread by only using your own garden and equipment in your home, good luck. Same with rice and maize. Potatoes are actually quite easy to grow, as long as it doesn't get too hot, or too cold or too humid, or too dry. P. infestans will eventually make your entire potato plot its bitch for a couple of years. But hey, thats the cost of being self-righteous. Then people will have to stop eating so many grains.
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Jan 14, 2014 01:22
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Then people will have to stop eating so many grains. Try telling that to the third world and see if it makes a difference. You may be happy living in a place where you don't face the threat of starvation daily, but don't expect the billions without a choice in what they eat to follow you.
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Jan 14, 2014 01:59
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Then people will have to stop eating so many grains.
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Jan 14, 2014 02:00
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Then people will have to stop eating so many grains. Hahahahahahahaaaaaa. What are they supposed to eat then? The fact is that eliminating mechanized agriculture will lead to the deaths of several billion people at least. I'm willing to overlook fossil fuel chat as just a misunderstanding on your part, but if you think removing mechanized agriculture is a solution then you have no idea what you're talking about. The solution is to use mechanized agriculture powered by sustainable energy like wind, solar and nuclear. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 02:10
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Then people will have to stop eating so many grains. And replace them with...?
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Jan 14, 2014 02:16
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Then people will have to stop eating so many grains. It's nice when someone is just honest and finally says 'I want most of the world to starve to death' in these topics.
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Jan 14, 2014 02:23
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Then people will have to stop eating so many grains. Yep, because the world can survive off of calorie-sparse vegetable matter. All this history of human civilization following grain cultivation is bogus maaaan. 
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Jan 14, 2014 04:05
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Haaha, look at you guys get your panties in a bunch. I said people will have to stop eating so many grains, but is this the same thing s me saying I want billions to die? No. In this post I will try to explain what I mean. I know what it's like to live in the third world. I was born in the third world. I was a teen when I finally set foot in my father's country, the United States (it is quite a shock, let me tell you). Most of my birth country's arable land goes to the monoculture mass production of cacao and banana, which I don't agree with. People here can't grow wheat or other grains, so we don't eat much bread. Bread is expensive because and is a commodity. We have to import the grain because it does not grow here. Also, your precious wheat is basically turned into bleached four. Mills remove all the healthy stuff (the germ and such) and this flour is so un-nourishing that they have to pump the stuff that was removed to make it a nutritional food. It takes acres and acres of wheat to have a substantial harvest, and that is simply impossible where I live. You need farmers, mills, bakers, etc... Rice cultivation is a bit different, but it's very labor intensive and is also not nutritionally complete. These are loving facts. I really wish we could continue living the way we do now. Please don't think that my belief that humans are relying too much on grain means that I want the human population to be decimated. I am aware that the poor and needy will suffer the most should our food system collapse, while the rich countries that caused it will coast through. Harvested, dry grains have advantages over other staple foods such as the starchy fruits (e.g., plantains, breadfruit) and roots/tubers (e.g., sweet potatoes, cassava, yams) in the ease of storage, handling, and transport. These qualities have allowed mechanical harvest, transport by rail or ship, long-term storage in grain silos, large-scale milling or pressing, and industrial agriculture, in general. I don't think there is a way for us to continue modern agriculture. Too much of our grain goes to feed animals who then are fed to the fatties in the US. We have taken up too much land, and use too much fertilizer on depleted soils to make up for the fact that we have used up much of our good soil. I will say this again: I wish we could continue eating so much white bread and red meat, but we can't, so we have to switch to more fruits and veggies. There is still hope for farmers in the third world, we have to teach them to not follow modern farming methods, and instead rely on things like permaculture for their food needs. It is possible to feed 7 billion or more with a mix of farming methods, but the way we are doing things now is ridiculous. quote:Synthetic fertilizers have dramatically increased food production worldwide. But the unintended costs to the environment and human health have been substantial. Nitrogen runoff from farms has contaminated surface and groundwater and helped create massive “dead zones” in coastal areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico. And ammonia from fertilized cropland has become a major source of air pollution, while emissions of nitrous oxide form a potent greenhouse gas. e: jesus christ goons like their white bread 
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Jan 14, 2014 14:02
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Do you still not get why the 10:1 ratio thing is a total red herring, and that nobody at all, absolutely no one, is arguing that our current agricultural system is sustainable?
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Jan 14, 2014 15:23
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:I really wish we could continue living the way we do now. Please don't think that my belief that humans are relying too much on grain means that I want the human population to be decimated. I am aware that the poor and needy will suffer the most should our food system collapse, while the rich countries that caused it will coast through. Harvested, dry grains have advantages over other staple foods such as the starchy fruits (e.g., plantains, breadfruit) and roots/tubers (e.g., sweet potatoes, cassava, yams) in the ease of storage, handling, and transport. These qualities have allowed mechanical harvest, transport by rail or ship, long-term storage in grain silos, large-scale milling or pressing, and industrial agriculture, in general. Right all this is true but also doesn't address that 'we can ship it from the rich countries by rail' doesn't actually solve the problem, and instead creates a wonderful system where the poor nations become entirely dependent on the wealthy ones for a super basic part of the human diet. Like, this isn't 'lol goons bread lol', this is 'the human body needs poo poo like this, especially in the developing world'. If we shift to some kinda personal vegetable farm only system what happens to, say, a single mother who has to work to keep her infant child provided for, do they get subsidies for their personal farm, do they share their neighbor's? This is some Great Leap Forward poo poo and you do know how that ended right?
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Jan 14, 2014 15:51
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Right all this is true but also doesn't address that 'we can ship it from the rich countries by rail' doesn't actually solve the problem, and instead creates a wonderful system where the poor nations become entirely dependent on the wealthy ones for a super basic part of the human diet. Like, this isn't 'lol goons bread lol', this is 'the human body needs poo poo like this, especially in the developing world'. Look, let's face facts here. Most of the environmental movement consists of privileged Whole Foods shoppers that always seem to forget that the third world exists. I mean seriously, personal farming? Are you out of your mind? How does that even work in dense living areas? You know, areas where it's most ecologically sustainable for people to live?
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Jan 14, 2014 16:15
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Solkanar512 posted:Look, let's face facts here. Most of the environmental movement consists of privileged Whole Foods shoppers that always seem to forget that the third world exists. Yea I wasn't going to even get into how someone in the slums of India's urban areas is supposed to farm to feed their entire family.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:00
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Solkanar512 posted:Look, let's face facts here. Most of the environmental movement consists of privileged Whole Foods shoppers that always seem to forget that the third world exists. However living in a densely populated environment offends my natural sensitivities and it must be bad for nature because
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Jan 14, 2014 17:00
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Solkanar512 posted:Look, let's face facts here. Most of the environmental movement consists of privileged Whole Foods shoppers that always seem to forget that the third world exists. Well now, let's think this through a little bit. Dense urban areas could very well still have farms--rooftop gardens for one, but even if that's impossible, you could fund hydroponics facilities or utilize basement storage space to grow things like cauliflower or root vegetables. Certainly it's not really viable presently, but the technology certainly exists to at least give it a go, doesn't it? I mean, look at your typical apartment complex. There's usually a quad of some sort, or some open area that's on the grounds of the complex. If apartment complexes were given, say, incentives to provide viable soil for growing (or maybe even seeds to new tenants), then at the very least you'd get a smattering of apartments that offer and encourage their residents to grow their own vegetables. With the Internet as a resource, pretty much anyone can google how to grow any given vegetable and go to town. It could be a start.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:06
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Well now, let's think this through a little bit. Dense urban areas could very well still have farms--rooftop gardens for one, but even if that's impossible, you could fund hydroponics facilities or utilize basement storage space to grow things like cauliflower or root vegetables. Certainly it's not really viable presently, but the technology certainly exists to at least give it a go, doesn't it? You could never feed a significant percentage of a dense urban city with the acreage of the city, even if you made every square meter of rooftop and park into a garden. Farming takes lots of space. Moreover, cities are hotspots of air pollution. I am fully for greening up cities, and it can play a small part in feeding a city, but without some huge tech change--like cheap sustainable electricity, absolutely necessary for hydroponics--you're not going to be able to make much of a dent.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:11
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Well now, let's think this through a little bit. Dense urban areas could very well still have farms--rooftop gardens for one, but even if that's impossible, you could fund hydroponics facilities or utilize basement storage space to grow things like cauliflower or root vegetables. Certainly it's not really viable presently, but the technology certainly exists to at least give it a go, doesn't it? Feeding human beings is not an 'it's a start' situation. Rooftop gardens are fun hobbies but they can't feed an entire community in an apartment building. Like, seriously the world has tried the whole 'no we can just make personal farm collectives guys, this will work' method, it was in The Great Leap Forward and China loving starved. We know what happens, the answer is atrocity.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:15
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Obdicut posted:You could never feed a significant percentage of a dense urban city with the acreage of the city, even if you made every square meter of rooftop and park into a garden. Farming takes lots of space. Moreover, cities are hotspots of air pollution. I am fully for greening up cities, and it can play a small part in feeding a city, but without some huge tech change--like cheap sustainable electricity, absolutely necessary for hydroponics--you're not going to be able to make much of a dent. Well, from what I can recall (I'm by no means an expert), most of Havana's consumption needs during the Special Period was covered by production in or near Havana itself. I'm not saying it's a dead-set cure-all for food production everywhere, but I think you're being rather cavalier in dismissing the potential of alternative agricultural models.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:20
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Obdicut posted:You could never feed a significant percentage of a dense urban city with the acreage of the city, even if you made every square meter of rooftop and park into a garden. Farming takes lots of space. Moreover, cities are hotspots of air pollution. I am fully for greening up cities, and it can play a small part in feeding a city, but without some huge tech change--like cheap sustainable electricity, absolutely necessary for hydroponics--you're not going to be able to make much of a dent. Tatum Girlparts posted:Feeding human beings is not an 'it's a start' situation. Rooftop gardens are fun hobbies but they can't feed an entire community in an apartment building. Oh. Well that's kind of gloomy. But I suppose I'm still thinking first-world in a sense--supplement supermarket shopping with home-grown foods. But the energy problem is something that can't be ignored. :/
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Jan 14, 2014 17:22
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Yes, let's have basement hydroponics, that in no way is going to be more energy intensive or less sustainable than existing practices... I live in a city and own a house there, meaning that the space:people ratio is as high as it can reasonably get. I have roughly 1000 sqft of outdoor space, counting my roof, some of which doesn't get much light due to surrounding buildings. The backyard garden is nice for bonus food, but it isn't going to feed 2 people. If I converted all of it to growing space, it still wouldn't feed me and my fiancée. That's pretty much a best case scenario for a city. Personal agriculture won't work for a large number of people in the world.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:23
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Well now, let's think this through a little bit. Dense urban areas could very well still have farms--rooftop gardens for one, but even if that's impossible, you could fund hydroponics facilities or utilize basement storage space to grow things like cauliflower or root vegetables. Certainly it's not really viable presently, but the technology certainly exists to at least give it a go, doesn't it? One slight problem: The density of the human population depends on the volumetric area, whereas the density of crops depends on the surface area. X^3 versus X^2. Sure have your rooftop garden, but that's just a toy or hobby not a serious source of food.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:46
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V. Illych L. posted:Well, from what I can recall (I'm by no means an expert), most of Havana's consumption needs during the Special Period was covered by production in or near Havana itself. I'm not saying it's a dead-set cure-all for food production everywhere, but I think you're being rather cavalier in dismissing the potential of alternative agricultural models. During that period the government encouraged and paid for people to move from cities to small farms. It's not a good example. I'm not being in the least bit cavalier, it's just a matter of actual available acreage. Here is an excellent study done by very pro-urban farming guys I respect: http://www.urbandesignlab.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/urban_agriculture_nyc.pdf Their conclusion is that using all available vacant lots and absolutely best urban farming practices, in NYC you could feed about 174,000 people from urban farming: seriously a drop in the bucket. However, by focusing on crops which are specifically not land-intensive, crops that don't survive transport well, etc., you can increase the impact of urban farming. However, as I said, without extensive technological advancement (sustainable energy and sustainable water filtration), large-scale urban farming is not even possible.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:50
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Obdicut posted:During that period the government encouraged and paid for people to move from cities to small farms. It's not a good example. I'm not being in the least bit cavalier, it's just a matter of actual available acreage. I'd like to advance the point that by the middle of the century (2050), the general census is that something like 70-80% of the Earth's population is going to be living in dense urban centers. This is a problem that, one way or the other, will have to be addressed. I thought this was an interesting idea. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/05/21/185758529/vertical-pinkhouses-the-future-of-urban-farming
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Jan 14, 2014 19:28
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I'm guessing it will be addressed by horizontal farming closer to city centers but outside the limits, probably in repurposed suburbs which people no longer can live in due to the energy dependence. I read the article but I have my doubts that the energy savings from being free from pests is going to ever make up for the energy costs of pumping water, and producing the light that would come free from the sun when growing outdoors. I imagine we could do something for certain crops that are particularly resilient in the face of low-light and low-water conditions but horizontal farming has a huge set of advantages. Someone in this thread posted a thing which said transport costs are only like, 10-20% of the total energy cost of growing crops(citation needed for sure). So even if we eliminated those completely, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that the light from the sun provides a huge amount of energy that will need to be replaced in any vertical farming system.
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Jan 14, 2014 19:46
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Soil contaminantation is a major issue in urban farming and in suburban reclamation. Just because it's dirt, doesn't mean it's safe to grow food in.
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Jan 14, 2014 20:48
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Knockknees posted:Soil contaminantation is a major issue in urban farming and in suburban reclamation. Just because it's dirt, doesn't mean it's safe to grow food in. And bringing us back to the original topic of discussion...
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Jan 14, 2014 21:46
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Science 
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Jan 14, 2014 21:59
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Knockknees posted:Soil contaminantation is a major issue in urban farming and in suburban reclamation. Just because it's dirt, doesn't mean it's safe to grow food in. It's also that frankly a lot of places aren't great for growing crops---soil quality is much more complicated than "add fertilizer*, since the actual soil type affects what you can grow. Then the local climate limits crop growing as well. Then there is the availability of water for irrigation. And so on...
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Jan 14, 2014 23:31
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Jeffrey posted:Someone in this thread posted a thing which said transport costs are only like, 10-20% of the total energy cost of growing crops(citation needed for sure). So even if we eliminated those completely, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that the light from the sun provides a huge amount of energy that will need to be replaced in any vertical farming system. Well beyond not needing pesticides and herbicides hydro or aeroponics also consume less water and nutrients and are less susceptible to damage from environmental factors. Dwindling water resources are an issue and it can make traditional food production harder in a lot of places thus driving up the cost of food. The actual numbers are probably guess work so there's no point in speculating but I don't think it's completely unfeasible that it could be economically viable at some point in the distant future. Who knows what food, water, LEDs, electricity and the necesarry chemicals cost in 50 or 100 years. It's clearly not a solution right now but we're in a very tranformative period in terms of population and the resources we rely on. One thing that might make it more feasible is GMOs. Maybe it's possible to engineer plants to grow at much faster rates. Presumably plants didn't evolve to consume nutrients and energy at unlimited, ideal rates since it wouldn't be available in the soil and they have to follow the day/night/seasonal cycles. There's a limit to how much fertilizer you can dump on a field because it'll just be washed away and mess up our rivers and coastal waters, there's only so much light and plants have to wither and die when winter comes. You don't have that limit in a closed, artifcial system. Maybe we can make plants that can be blasted with energy and harvested 8 times a year - or maybe there's just hard biological limits. I'm very much not talking about greening our cities with rooftop gardens - it's factory produced frankenfood but that might be the only thing that could eventually compete with traditional farming practices.
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Jan 14, 2014 23:53
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Solkanar512 posted:Look, let's face facts here. Most of the environmental movement consists of privileged Whole Foods shoppers that always seem to forget that the third world exists. Yeah this ends up being a huge problem for "permaculture" because actual permaculture relies on the food being consumed very close by to where it was grown to continue a cycle. V. Illych L. posted:Well, from what I can recall (I'm by no means an expert), most of Havana's consumption needs during the Special Period was covered by production in or near Havana itself. I'm not saying it's a dead-set cure-all for food production everywhere, but I think you're being rather cavalier in dismissing the potential of alternative agricultural models. With severe rationing (sometimes quite below known minimums for extended times), with large parts of Havana being vacant lots already due to deteriorated buildings being torn down, and with Havana and its metro area being around 2.6 million people with a few thousand acres of land total. And with Cuba having very very favorable growing conditions in general. A city that doesn't have favorable year round growing conditions and doesn't already have a lot of vacant lots or crumbling buildings to clear to form them wouldn't be able to achieve even the quarter-rations Havana citizens often had to deal with between harvests in that time period. Slanderer posted:It's also that frankly a lot of places aren't great for growing crops---soil quality is much more complicated than "add fertilizer*, since the actual soil type affects what you can grow. Then the local climate limits crop growing as well. Then there is the availability of water for irrigation. And so on... Not to mention that we really do want to reduce fertilizer usage where possible just for economy's sake.
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Jan 14, 2014 23:54
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Slanderer posted:It's also that frankly a lot of places aren't great for growing crops---soil quality is much more complicated than "add fertilizer*, since the actual soil type affects what you can grow. Then the local climate limits crop growing as well. Then there is the availability of water for irrigation. And so on... This also is why it's often better from an environmental standpoint to focus on growing crops in their optimal zones, wherever those are, than to focus on "local" agriculture. From the numbers I've seen, the gains in production from growing the right crop in the right place can reduce resource requirements more than enough to offset the increased transportation requirements.
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Jan 15, 2014 01:09
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