[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.

[sophacles]

Right, it's like when you don't give a person food. You aren't harming him - his own body is doing that as a secondary effect of simple food denial.

These distinctions are important.

[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!

[cplease]

So what? Is biodynamic farming going to feed 10B people?

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.

[briantakita]

> So what? Is biodynamic farming going to feed 10B people?

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.

[cplease]

Really? So, we go from, say, 450M agriculture waged workers today, to 2 billion. Or 3 billion. Or 5. Slaving away with hoes on their tiny biodynamic farmsteads . Problem solved, 10 billion fed (although living in abject circumstances, ignoring pollution etc. here). Let's take it to 15 billion people. What does the planet earth look like then?

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.

[briantakita]

Really. Don't let the marketing of large chemical manufactures fool you.

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.

[Turing_Machine]

"These people will be given autonomy & food sovereignty."

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.

[cplease]

@briantakita If you read between the lines, what that says is all of our options are bad.

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.

[Turing_Machine]

"Unchecked population growth will exceed the limits of any system."

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.

[rmason]

If you want to save the soil then you can stop plowing and go no-till. Course if you go no-till you need to use more chemicals.

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.

[evjim]

Permaculture is an option for notill, no chemical. Mix a variety of crops that benefit eachother. But it makes automation harder.

[graycat]

> For example, Iowa has lost an estimated 10 inches of topsoil in the last 150 years.

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.

[selimthegrim]

That top soil is going either into the Atchafalaya or right off the continental shelf. None of it is hanging around the delta anymore.