
Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues - a_imho
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/
======
CapitalistCartr
I've been reading topsoil doomsday stories since the seventies. I've seen them
written from the thirties. They completely ignore modern farming. We don't
rely on topsoil, or care. Modern farming, especially since the fifties, is
chemistry. The soil is merely a growing medium. We test it and add whatever is
needed via petrochemical fertilizers. Better soil is better for the farmer,
but far from necessary.

And whomever says a millennium to make 30mm of topsoil knows nothing about the
subject. I've seen nature make that much in less than a decade many times.

~~~
vbuwivbiu
and minerals ?

~~~
pdfernhout
Ground-up rock dust works wonders:
[https://remineralize.org/](https://remineralize.org/) "Through our education
and outreach, projects, research, and advocacy, Remineralize the Earth
facilitates a worldwide movement that brings together gardeners and farmers,
scientists and policymakers and the public to create better soils, better
food, and a better planet. ... “Remineralization is one of the most important
missions on the planet at this time. Together, we can remineralize gardens,
farms, landscapes, and forests. We can grow nutrient-dense food and improve
the nutrition and well-being of all life. And in the larger picture, it’s a
key strategy to stabilize the climate!”"

~~~
vbuwivbiu
interesting, because the mineral content of food is a matter of chance
usually. For example certain plants accumulate certain minerals more than
others (e.g. brazil-nuts:selenium, cocoa:nickel) but the soil they're grown in
may have more or less of those minerals, so it's hard to control one's intake

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JoeAltmaier
The numbers are way off. It took around 10 years to get 4" of topsoil on my 80
acres of timber soil (clay). Not 1000 years.

And we have 111ft of that kind of soil here in Iowa. It going to take a hell
of a long time to go through that. Its been farmed since the early 1800's. And
not all gone, not by far.

I didn't read any further after that, maybe the article does have something to
say. But I doubt it.

~~~
nxsynonym
Sorry, but I'm leaning towards trusting the FAO as opposed to anonymous
anecdotal evidence.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you may be on the
top end of the world-wide average, but how does your 80 acres of usable soil
help the rest of the world when push comes to shove?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Really? With the numbers so absolutely at odds, it only takes a single sample
to disprove outrageous claims.

So don't believe me if you like (though I could go dig a hole and take a
picture of the black line that separates topsoil from subsoil), but its
probably more outrageous to cling to the idea that somehow Iowa is at the top
end of a curve that goes from 10 years to 1000 years.

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nvahalik
If I may, a wonderful book called “The Alchemy of Air” by Thomas Hager is a
very enlightening book on this very same issue during the late 1800s.

EDIT: I was mobile earlier but wanted to throw a bit of a teaser in here. This
book (along with Hager's "The Demon Under the Microscope) are excellent reads
and I high recommend them.

Essentially, there were many "doomsday scenarios" wherein the context of the
late 1800s was that vast supplies of natural fertilizer were used up and
people were very worried about food supplies. Long story short, the "fixing"
of nitrogen from the air not only alleviated the short term issues but also
had a huge influence in wars and who was in power in the early 20th Century.

Consequently, this books ends with some pretty questions surrounding the
impact of what all of this extraneous nitrogen might do long term—the impacts
of which are already seen in rivers and streams... but the ocean and other
areas as well.

~~~
Red_Tarsius
> _Essentially, there were many "doomsday scenarios" wherein the context of
> the late 1800s was that vast supplies of natural fertilizer were used up and
> people were very worried about food supplies._

Assuming scientists will come up with a new technology is a bad survival
strategy. At this rate, we expect our children to find a way around climate
change, ocean acidification and soil erosion. Mankind is one fat dude who'd
rather dream about diet pills than stop eating.

~~~
workthrowaway27
I don't think we really expect our children to do that. It's just there aren't
any good options right now. The world is so dependent on hydrocarbons and
large scale agriculture that there is no viable alternative.

~~~
socialist_coder
Not viable? Just depends on who you ask or what your definition of viable is.
We need to rip that bandage off now and reduce our standard of living by
however much it takes to get into a sustainable symbiosis with our planet.

Fossil fuel companies: bankrupt

Cheap Chinese goods: gone

Meat in every meal: nope

Cheap processed foods: gone

It would be a huge lifestyle change for everyone on the planet. Difficult, but
certainly viable.

~~~
workthrowaway27
Fossil fuel companies being bankrupt is not viable. Fossil fuels allow the
modern world to function. How are you going to get food distributed across the
country without fossil fuels? How are you going to make sure critical
infrastructure continues to run?

Edit: I'm not saying fossil fuel dependency is a good thing, but it's a fact
of life, and any realistic proposal for moving away from fossil fuels needs to
start with accurately understanding just how important they are.

~~~
sliverstorm
_I 'm not saying fossil fuel dependency is a good thing, but it's a fact of
life_

It's easy to believe they are utterly indispensable. They are just so
_convenient_ , and we love to convince ourselves convenience is really
necessity. But would the world truly collapse into the dark ages if fossil
fuels petered out in the next decade, and we no longer had that option?

How are you going to transport food? You ignore that food was shipped around a
long time before fossil fuels. More of a pain, of course, but we did it all
the same.

~~~
workthrowaway27
Yes, but society was structured under different assumptions then. I live in a
city in the desert. There wouldn't be cities in the desert (with modern living
standards) if we didn't have fossil fuels to get food, building supplies,
electrical wiring, etc. out here.

Yes, society can function without fossil fuels, but probably not with the same
number of people, and certainly not with the same standard of living.

~~~
ci5er
And not in coastal California. ..

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peterwwillis
Apparently this same story has been circulating since at least 2014, using the
same quotes from the same people and organizations, from some menial Googling.
So far no sources for any claims in the article, though an agronomy student on
Reddit appeared to back up the 30% number.

This seems like clickbait to me.

Edit: This article is from December 5, 2014.
[https://www.ashlandmass.com/DocumentCenter/Home/View/446](https://www.ashlandmass.com/DocumentCenter/Home/View/446)

------
abakker
I've pitched this before, but here goes:

If someone can come up with an adequate filter for pharmaceuticals, it seems
that the recapture of human waste is our best path forward. Yes, there is a
logistics problem for transferring it, potentially, dehydration is the best
method, but we consume the output of our farms, and it seems that on a
conservation of mass basis, we should be sending it back to the farms when
we're done with it.

~~~
mooman219
If by waste you mean excrement then this is not a good idea in the slightest.
First you have bacteria, viruses, and parasites that must be killed off. If it
isn't properly treated, you end up with a situation similar to that of what we
saw in the recent North Korean refugee who suffered from parasites. After
that, as you mentioned, there are pharmaceuticals which are notoriously hard
to filter out. Next on the list is heavy metals that can become concentrated
in excrement. Even after addressing these concerns, if the process to treat
the waste is too costly, then there goes the benefit.

I would compare some of the challenges this faces to those that are faced when
turning salt water into fresh water through desalination (probably not a
direct comparison).

~~~
simook
I encourage you to do a little more research on this. Bad and good bacteria
exists in this world regardless of how Human's try to control it. Waste
processing plants use a combination of bacteria and UV to treat wastewater.
That process is very similar to what nature does with animal and human waste.

However, moving human waste is a tough problem and requires substantial
resources (fossil fuels, infrastructure, electricity, etc...) and the act of
moving it is usually the source of contamination.

I think it's completely valid and beneficial to compost human waste, but that
needs to be done on a local/individual scale.

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JoeAltmaier
Farming will be obsolete well within 60 years. Direct manufacture of
foodstuffs will arrive before that. Already folks build machines that take in
water and electricity and some organic components, and produce food. How long
before a nano machine sews together C,H,O and N into carbohydrate chains on
command? Then, electricity will equal food.

Topsoil, climate will soon become irrelevant to producing foodstuffs.

~~~
thriftwy
Modern agriculture is turning Oil into Foodstuff anyway.

That's why Oil is so expensive while agriculture is universally subsidied.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Don't know about the expensive part. But it also requires farmland, soil,
chemicals. The idea is, dispense with all that, including transportation, and
create starch, sugar etc at the point of consumption directly. Or baby steps
in that direction. Heck, even 'organic' farming can be seen as working in this
direction if it wasn't so expensive otherwise.

------
macawfish
tech enthusiasts need to seriously consider taking permaculture and
polyculture out of the fringe bucket

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gdubs
If you're interested in looking deeply at alternative agricultural practices,
I recommend "Restoration Agriculture". [1] It's rooted in permaculture, but
more broadly about restoring biomes that are naturally abundant and diverse.

The central hypothesis is that we've become far too invested in annual plants.
They require and enormous amount of labor and petrochemicals to sustain. The
book presents alternative methods that, like permaculture in general, look to
harness natural processes and perennial trees and shrubs to great effect.

1: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16441733-restoration-
agr...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16441733-restoration-agriculture)

------
graeme
Is there any counterpoint to this?

My great worry about us (and capitalism) is that we are good at short term
allocation, bad at long run planning. Is there a way around this soil problem,
or some way in which the stat is misleading?

~~~
mc32
Including capitalism on there seems gratuitous. USSR was no better at land
stewardship than us. Cuba, N Korea, the same.

It's more about human nature than capitalism or any economic system in
particular. If anything capitalism is capable of including externalities, if
we choose to. If we don't, eventually, we will face the issue, as many others.
Not the ideal way to dal with issues which are decades in the future.
Classical example is national debt and of course, climactic change.

~~~
Daishiman
It's funny that you mention Cuba because they actually do take care of
preserving their soils, unlike most of the Caribbean which has completely
degraded soild due to centuries of sugarcane plantations with no regards to
the environment whatsoever.

[http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/sustainable-technologies-
safe...](http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/sustainable-technologies-safeguard-
the-soil-in-cuba/)

~~~
mc32
Thanks for pointing that out. Do you know when they began with the program to
better manage their soil?

I still feel land management / mismanagement is independent of economic
system. One does not intrinsically offer to protect natural resources over
another, but i could be wrong.

~~~
evanlivingston
After the Special Period in Cuba which began in 1989 with the collapse of the
soviet union Cuba was forced to become substantially more self-sustaining.
Previously they were able to farm in much more extractive ways and offset
their agrictultural output from trade with the USSR. Once the USSR disappeared
it was extremely difficult to import agricultural chemicals and import food.
Food in Cuba isn't great today, but it's pretty sustainably created.

I would argue that an economic system that concentrates power has the ability
to create and enforce a monopoly on land usage. Political or economic systems
that allow for a minority control of usable land are much more inclined to use
that land for the benefit of the controlling minority, and so far that seems
maximizing profits in the short term. When we speak of land management what do
we mean? The best "returns"? What is being returned to us? I'm inclined to
agree that the values used inland management _can_ be independent of economic
system, but an economic system that brings with it a predefined value-set
based around extracting profit via exploitation is going to manage the land
according to those values. Until we have values that supersede the values of
the economic system then the econmic's system's values with be the dominating
ones.

While I find his philosophy a bit lacking, Derrick Jensen has some great
writing on how we value and manage land. [https://www.amazon.com/Language-
Older-Than-Words/dp/19314985...](https://www.amazon.com/Language-Older-Than-
Words/dp/1931498555)

------
iamcasen
Is organic farming all that much better? Are there any concrete numbers that
indicate how that timeline of 60 years might be extended with different
farming practices?

It seems to me like we might have to make a big push towards solar-powered
hydroponics or something of that nature.

How depressing. Maybe soylent green is more of a realistic future than we
thought...

~~~
bryanlarsen
In my personal experience, organic farming causes much more soil loss than
conventional farming.

Organic dryland cereal farming depends on tillage for weed & pest control. Not
only is the land plowed during planting and after harvest, every third year
the land is left fallow. While left fallow it is plowed monthly.

Conventional farmers have substantially reduced their usage of tillage
increasing their chemical usage instead. Those chemicals may be not be good
for the ecosystem, but they result in orders of magnitude less soil loss.

~~~
nas
Speaking as someone who grew up on a grain farm and has owned a farm, this is
correct. Obviously it is hard to generalize but low or no tillage farming has
vastly lower soil erosion compared to conventional or organic tillage
practices. For some reason, people have the set idea that organic practice
must be good because its what our forefathers did. In reality, little we do
regarding farming is actually sustainable. You are hauling tonnes of material
away from the field every year. Those things are not going back, whether you
are organic or conventional.

Also, it is a matter of relative severity of problems. Soil loss is much worse
than depletion of soil nutrients. As said, organic is potentially much worse
for soil loss (although different practices like intensive use of cover crops
can help).

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gumby
You merely have to spend a brief time in California's Central Valley to
realize that it's an extractive industry (consuming topsoil, water from a non-
renewable aquifer, and oil) no different from mining. When you see orchards
plowed up for replanting not only the old trees are removed but all the
topsoil too.

Robots are our only hope.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
We just need to grow things in sensible places with better water resources.
There is plenty of unused land in the US to do that.

~~~
njarboe
California has lots of water resources. Just a little bit better management
and all those orchards can get watered. Nuts are high value in dollars,
nutrition, and taste. We need something the Chinese want to trade for iPhones.

~~~
fjsolwmv
California could make iPhones.

~~~
gumby
Really? It's a labor intensive process despite the level of automation (5
years ago there were at least manual steps; don't know today). More
importantly: IIRC Apple makes about $150 in profit per phone while Foxconn
makes under $5/unit. Seems like the cost differential would be much more than
$5/unit.

