
Why It’s Time to Stop Punishing Our Soils with Fertilizers - clumsysmurf
http://e360.yale.edu/features/why-its-time-to-stop-punishing-our-soils-with-fertilizers-and-chemicals
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Johnny_Brahms
There is also the small problem that we soon won't be able to. Peak phosphorus
is a thing, and while it won't affect us in the west much, it will lead to
famine.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus)

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FrozenVoid
The key problem article missing(it talks about symptoms): earthworms which are
crucial to soil maintenance and growth of humus are eradicated by tilling the
earth, pesticides and other chemicals(worms die in acidic soils).
[http://www.dw.com/en/earthworm-numbers-dwindle-
threatening-s...](http://www.dw.com/en/earthworm-numbers-dwindle-threatening-
soil-health/a-37325923)
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170508095152.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170508095152.htm)

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rmason
The plant doesn’t give a hoot whether the ‘nitrate ion’ it eats comes from a
bag of manufactured fertilizer or decomposing organic matter.

\- Norm Borlaug, inventor of the green revolution and winner of the 1970 Nobel
Peace prize

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dejv
Well, since 70s we learned a lot about the soil ecology.

We can talk about N, which plant can't access directly. Roots have to produce
different substances that are eaten by various organism in soil and they then
break the N into form that could be accessed by plant.

Commercial fertilisers give the plant N in form that could be consumed
directly, so the plant is not motivated in producing compounds for rest of
soil organisms. Once they are all dead the plant is reliant to those
fertilisers.

So this is, simplified version, of how plants gets N, but similar situations
are with other compounds, especially K, which kinda change the structure of
soil and basically lock it for other type of living organisms and nutrients.

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delbel
this just isn't true, and fertilizers work really well. "With average crop
yields remaining at the 1900 level the crop harvest in the year 2000 would
have required nearly four times more land and the cultivated area would have
claimed nearly half of all ice-free continents, rather than under 15% of the
total land area that is required today."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_environmental_aspects)

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dejv
Yes, fertilizers works very well in the same way junk food works very well if
the only thing you want to measure is the amount of fat human could produce.

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maehwasu
"In the face of a proposed 21 percent cut in the USDA’s budget by the Trump
administration, Haney also stressed the importance of unbiased, government
studies in a field where research is often dominated by the very corporations
that benefit from overuse of fertilizers and chemicals."

It's quite interesting that while the above sentence has two very strong
conflicts of interest, only the corporations' conflict is noted by the author.

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mangamadaiyan
Out of curiosity and ignorance, what are the two conflicts of interest you
refer to?

