Quote:No, that doesn't seem to address it actually. I asked you to explain your assertion that "fertilizer with mono-cultures" are destroying soil. You didn't explain anything to do with that. You just cited an article about the dangers of nitrogen over-fertilization.


There is a reason you can't Google up anything about mono-culture fertilizers, or any thing about fertilizer requiring more water. It's because there is no such thing in either case. You are misinterpreting these articles.


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Let's take these one by one.


About depleting the topsoil. It's true that when you crop a soil you use the nutrients in the soil. That's unavoidable and has been happening for a few thousand years. So when your article says farmers are depleting topsoil 10x faster than can be replaced NATURALLY (key word), what they mean is for the health of the soil you must amend it on an annual basis. In simple terms, you truck in about 2 tons/acre of a good compost with active biologicals every fall. Standard practice.
That's a broad brush, it may be for you, but is it for Corn/Soybean, the main food cash crops?


Again, I will point out, no half educated farmer in their right mind would pay $1-3 million for a tract of farmland, and then spend the next 20 years ruining the soil before they've paid off the loan. That's ludicrous. Every farmer would go bankrupt if they couldn't grow a crop and their land was also no longer worth anything. Think about it. I do, no country should subsidize Corn when they are the best in the World at growing it, yet we do. People are wacky.



So no, the "farming system" is not completely killing all the soil and leaving large swaths of unusable land. Nor is it stripping all the topsoil off of large tracts of land and leaving barren wasteland. Land is too valuable in the U.S. and frankly it's very easy to fix.
I quoted a USDA study saying that the efficacy of modern no-till etc in restoring top soil was uncertain. I noticed you didn't address it. Using your logic I would ask, if soil is so easy to fix, why not make deserts into fields/top soil? I think you know that there is more involved than just adding some nutrients.



I'll also ask, where is this wasteland of barren soil? Again I'll use my area as an example. The Central Valley has been farmed for well over a hundred years now. We have the worlds largest area of class 1 (the best) soil. Feel free to Google it. If we are destroying soil on a 20-30 year timeline how can that be? Where are all the barren fields? There are none. Seriously, lots of food is grown outside of California.  Try here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...ndle-food/



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Onto "mono-culture" fertilizers.


What they are talking about is rotational crops vs mono-culture crops or what we would call row crops. In this area that's vines and almonds.


Rotational crops are when you grow a crop from seed for 1 season only, harvest it, plow it under, and the next year rotate it with a different crop and so on. That on it's own will leave you with healthier soil because you have varied plant matter being incorporated into the field each year, and they all carry different levels of different nutrients.


A mono-culture crop is one that is planted for 20 year - forever. Outside my window I'm looking at vines that were planted in 1918. They're still going strong by the way, no barren soil. This definition is not what I am talking about. I am addressing growing the same crop with traditional 1 year yields like Corn. Not vines, not grapes. Call it limited rotation or w/e but I think you knew what I was talking about.  "Daberkow and Gill (1989) estimated that only 5 to 10 rotations were being used on over 80% of the cropland in the United States, and they typically involve only two crops in the rotation." http://agron-www.agron.iastate.edu/Cours...d%20PP.pdf


What the article is saying is with a mono-culture crop, incorporating the fields own waste materials in not sufficient to replenish all the soils needs. In vines for example, at the end of the season the leaves fall off and you disc them under the soil. That reincorporates a certain amount of nutrients into the field. In the spring, you prune the vine, shred the pruning and again disc them back into the soil. That again replenishes a certain amount of nutrients. But still that isn't sufficient.


Left only to that, the soil will suffer. Again, what they are stressing in a good soil amendment program added to that.



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Now let's address your link: <a class="bbc_url" href='http://12.000.scripts.mit.edu/mission2017/fertilizers-2/'>http://12.000.scripts.mit.edu/mission2017/fertilizers-2/</a>


When I first replied to you I stated I felt these things were more of an issue elsewhere, mostly in developing countries where Ag education is poorer and there are much less restrictions. I don't disagree, but just cause the problem is worse elsewhere doesn't mean it isn't happening here or effecting us.



I find it curious you quoted that wall of text but left out the very first line "Poor agricultural practices can cause serious problems for the environment. Prolonged fertilizer..." No one is even arguing this, why would I quote it?



Then later in figure 3 of the article they showed nitrogen fertilizer consumption by region. Which showed this country uses 6% of the global total while Asia as a whole is using well above 60%, South America 12%, and Central Asia 8%. Never said it wasn't worse in other places.



That sounds an awful like what I said. From your own link.


Again, I will restate, we monitor nitrogen applications very carefully so they do not leach into groundwater. We only apply what the plant is capable of uptaking. Also some common sense here: Why would I want to pay for extra fertilizer (it isn't cheap) to have it leach out of my root zone before it can be utilized? It's just not something that's done here. It also harms the plants in season by making them overly vegetative and less fruitful, so there is even more initiative to not overdo it. And yet overuse of fertilizer was done widespread as recently as 1998 in the US. And you haven't shown any proof at all that its not still being done in industrial farming i.e. the growth of cash food crop year after year. Which was and is the main focus of my comments on the topic. I understand you do that in California. I want to know what they do in much less regulated heartland Missouri, Nebraska etc.



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To move onto your lettered points.


A) We've destroyed 300 years of topsoil in 30 years: No, I hope I've sufficiently addressed this. If you have an issue with topsoil being artificially replenished with compost and other amendments that's fine. But that's not the same as saying it's being destroyed. Is it the same as it was before? Then it was destroyed, removed, replaced, changing the verb doesn't change what happened.
Clearly fertilizer does not have the same amount of nutrients in it, causing the decreased nutritional content of food, which was the whole point of bringing this up in the first place.



B ) Excessive fertilization destroys soil quality: Yes, continuously pumping large amounts of fertilizer, unchecked, for decades will ruin soil quality. That's well known and has been for a long time which is why it doesn't happen for myriad reasons
I've already went into. The onus is on you to prove that statement. I have already shown it was indeed happening widespread, as recently as 1998. 



C) At least in the recent past (90's) farmers were engaged widespread in these bad practices: I'm not sure where you're pulling this from and if you're talking about U.S. Farmers or globally. You'd probably have to reach back to a very specific period from like 1975-1985 where we had both the means (fertigation) and lack of understanding to do that in the U.S. and call it widespread. We might be lowly farmers but we aren't total idiots that would willfully ruin our own soil and in turn, productivity, and in turn again, livelihood. I still can't really wrap my head around why you think anyone would do that. See the number (13) on that quote from my last reply on widespread overuse of fertilizer, goto the article and you will find where that came from
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As to your last point, I think you are again misunderstanding. Water not used by the plant is supposed to leach back into the ground. It is not lost by any means. It recharges the same groundwater supply we use daily. I think you're reading about water retention being diminished and interpreting that as we're losing water.


What the article is stating is water is not held in the root zone of the plant for as long a period. It drains quicker through the soil, it isn't lost. Meaning the plant itself has water available to it for a shorter period of time. Hence, you are using more water to grow the same amount of crop, you have proven my point for me! But just in case: https://phys.org/news/2013-08-future-cru...uifer.html Thats 2013 btw. 39% of the ground water aquifer already gone (in a aquifer that supplies 30% of the nations water). Even with 80% increased efficiency they projected it would run dry in 100 years instead of 50. You are right that you don't lose 'water,' but it doesn't do us any good if its run off to the ocean and not in our aquifers. Wells don't run dry on their own.



And finally, last point.
Fertilizer cannot take more water because it does not have a root system

 

Response in red. I am obviously pro-farming, having already stated that people should have their own garden. You seem to suggest that our system is perfectly stable and sustainable. I am not sure I agree, even tho I believe our farming methods have improved. People can do what they want. This is it for me tho on this, although it was fun.

 

Healthcare is important. Obviously we have gotten a bit far off tract. Fruits and veggies and exercise are the easiest way to reduce most of the chronic diseases in the US.

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