
Destroy the soil and we all starve - alexcasalboni
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/treating-soil-like-dirt-fatal-mistake-human-life
======
CapitalistCartr
In the United States articles have been bemoaning the loss of our topsoil
since the 1930s. They seem to follow a template. We need our soil; we'll die
without it. Then explaining the rate we're losing it at; how much we have
left, finishing with dire warnings.

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.

~~~
scottshepard
I believe that erosion is a bigger issue than loss of nutrients.

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.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
I am definitely not a fan of our current system, but your post illustrates the
problem. Under that topsoil is meters of subsoil before the bedrock. The
current agri-corps can continue to play the chemistry set game with our food
for another century or more if we let them. The rise of "Roundup Ready" crops
is helping to eradicate the monarch butterfly. Multiple articles about the
plight of the honeybee have been posted to HN. These are externalities to
their profits unless and until we change that.

~~~
daeken
> The rise of "Roundup Ready" crops is helping to eradicate the monarch
> butterfly.

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.

~~~
ambler0
I'm all for correcting oversimplified news stories, but I don't understand why
you call this "significantly less direct". As far as I can see, it's exactly
one step less direct, i.e. as close as you can get without killing them
directly. As you say, milkweed is essential for them. It's literally the only
plant this species lays its eggs upon.

~~~
daeken
It's significantly less direct because Roundup has no effect on the Monarch
butterflies. The issue is the way it's being used by farmers. If it were not
being used to eliminate milkweed, there would be no effect whatsoever on the
butterfly populations. We would have the same problem with absolutely any
other herbicide.

~~~
joshuapants
Or if milkweed were replanted in other areas still within the Monarchs' path
but not mixed in with the crops. Many towns have butterfly gardens, but
something on a larger scale would work too.

~~~
daeken
I wonder what kind of scale you would need to make this work? I'd be curious
to see numbers on it, and whether or not it's feasible; definitely a great
option if so!

~~~
ambler0
In any case, it doesn't hurt to try and grow some milkweed in one's own yard,
which many of us in my area do.

------
msandford
Probably one of the most boring and most important problems in the world. Not
enough is being done to address these issues, mostly because it would threaten
huge commercial farms.

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.

~~~
hollerith
I don't understand your comment.

>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"?

~~~
msandford
I totally agree with the statement.

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.

~~~
joshuapants
> That means that the limit for how much food we can get is due to the number
> of farmers, not the amount of acres

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.

~~~
msandford
Agreed, but industrial agribusiness is predicated on huge automation and the
idea that one farmer can farm hundred or thousands of acres. That's an
efficient use of labor, but not of acres. We might be getting to the point
that land is more valuable than labor and thus it makes sense to spend more
human effort per acre than in the past.

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](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](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.

~~~
joshuapants
The LA example is interesting, I'd be interested in seeing a more detailed
breakdown of what exactly they grew because pounds of food aren't exactly
fungible (a pound of lettuce has 77 calories, a pound of potatoes has ~350).

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.

~~~
msandford
It might also make sense to look at it from a gallons of fuel per acre too.
Even if you only break even in terms of production, if you can eliminate the
reliance on diesel and all the compromises that must be made there might be
substantial wins nonetheless.

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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13i1ZUovj6Y)

------
nikhilsoman
I think this point is moot.

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.

~~~
throwaway48303
> 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.

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.

------
wwweston
If you're interested in a closer look at the topic, you could do worse than
looking at the work of Wes Jackson and his Land Institute:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/a-c...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/a-conversation-
with-wes-jackson-president-of-the-land-institute/72927/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2fqNxyqubQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2fqNxyqubQ)

[http://landinstitute.org/](http://landinstitute.org/)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Jackson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Jackson)

------
chflamplighter
Although erosion is a problem driving an overall loss of naturally occurring
plant available nutrition, most growers mitigate this loss with the addition
of nutrient rich materials (chemical fertilizers, Poultry Litter, Organic
Material, nutrient packages, etc). With these additions growers can ensure a
nutritious enough soil for production. The real issue is the loss of the
ecology found within that soil through erosion and chemical intensive
production practices. If you think about it, soil is basically a plants
stomach. It is constantly cycling nutrition to and from a plant accessible
form mainly through microbial mediation. Just like your digestive system,
soils contain critical populations of Beneficial Microorganisms which are a
requirement for crop production. As an additional tool along with Nutrient
inputs, growers are introducing Beneficial Microorganisms into their
production programs. As a result Growers see a more balanced level of plant
accessible nutrition and a more efficient utilization of those Nutrient inputs
thus driving an overall increase in the ecological fitness and production of
their crops. I personally think we should place the highest value on soil,
water --- heck all of our Natural Resources but it is an interesting time as
we pick up the pieces left by our agricultural production systems looking
towards an ever increasing population.

(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).

------
VOYD
One word - Electrolytes.

~~~
shortavion
That gave me a hearty chuckle! Thanks.

------
throwaway48303
"orgy of soil destruction" "allow contractors to rip their fields to shreds
for the sake of a quick profit" "This is what topples civilisations" "macho
commitment to destructive short-termism"

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.

~~~
wwweston
> No farmer willingly treats their land like that

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.

------
mschuster91
I don't exactly believe that the world has sustainability problems or is
unable to support 10b people.

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.

~~~
cplease
Feeding people is, sad to say, among the least of our problems. One that,
incidentally, we are lousy at already with 7 billion people in the world and a
big fraction hungry or food-insecure. It's not just a matter of waste or
inefficiencies either. We're approaching resource limits. But yes, we could
feed 10B people on rice and beans, for a time, and give everyone sufficient
calories, for a time. There's still the little issues like global warming,
poisoning of air and water, die-off of other species, and so on. Yes,
population WILL peak sometime in the next 100 years, and growth is slowing,
but we are already billions past what we can sustain now much less provide
everyone with a decent standard of living, and adding billions more at a
frightening rate.

------
bcheung
Aquaponics is a great solution to the problem of lack of farmable soil and
water shortages. It uses only 10% of the water for the same yield. It also
grows faster, is more nutrient rich, and can be done pretty much anywhere you
can store water.

------
ccleve
Can someone explain to me where all of the eroded topsoil goes? It doesn't
just blow away. It goes somewhere. Conservation of matter, right?

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'

~~~
pixl97
Simple answer, everywhere.

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.

------
tehchromic
the fact that important topics like these appear on tech sites like this one
is incredibly positive. a good question is: what can the tech industry and
culture actually do about it? lots, and way more than it is doing, is one
opinion.

------
anigbrowl
What an awful, incoherent article. I had to read almost to the end to learn
that the basic problem was too much ploughing. I don't have time to get fully
pre-educated on every environmental problem I am supposed to be angry about;
maybe if Monbiot and other advocates put a little bit effort into explaining
the issue of soil erosion they'd attract more support for their position.

~~~
throwaway48303
You lasted longer than I did. It only took me a few paragraphs to realize
Monbiot has never actually talked to a farmer.

------
chucksmart
War, plague, or famine. Which would you prefer?

