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?
It should be for everyone although I certainly won't claim everyone does it. I mean, you realize you're claiming we both under-fertilize the soil, leaving it barren, and at the same time arguing we over-fertilize in other parts of your argument. And even that has changed from your original argument that just the fertilizer we use "kills" soil.



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.
Ummm, ok?
Different topic.



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.
What would you like me to address about it? No-till doesn't restore anything, it a conservation practice. I kinda view it as irrelevant to the discussion and If you're arguing that the results of the practice are uncertain then its neither strengthens or weakens either argument so there's no point in addressing it. Fixing the nutrients levels of good soil is pretty easy - it takes like 10 days out of my farm year. Unfortunately, you cannot just create good farming areas wherever you'd like because soil is only a part of the picture. there are other factors, largely climate, to consider.
Borderline different topic/goalpost shift



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: <a class="bbc_url" href='http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140516-dust-bowl-drought-oklahoma-panhandle-food/' title="External link">http://news.national...panhandle-food/</a>


 

You linked an article about an area in trouble due to drought?
Different topic again.


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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." <a class="bbc_url" href='http://agron-www.agron.iastate.edu/Courses/Agron497/Ecology%20in%20Sus%20Agr%20CAF%20and%20PP.pdf' title="External link">http://agron-www.agr... CAF and PP.pdf</a>


 

No I did not know what you were talking about, hence why I asked you to explain it. You explained it by linking an article about overuse of Nitrogen that went into mono-cropping so it was a bit unclear as to what you were talking about. So what you originally said was "fertilizer with mono-cultures is killing the soil." But what you actually meant was limited rotation crops.... happen? Also kill the soil? Again, a bit vague and completely different from where you started.


 

I'm reading Section IV of your link that your quoting and I don't see anything about soil being killed or harmed by your new claim/revision.


 

By the way, let me quote Section II of your link:
"Even the suggestion of applying more than

recommended rates of nitrogen or other nutrients to assure maximum yields is today largely a thing of the past. Economics dictate against such practices, and concern about leaching through the root zone and loss by surface soil erosion further reduces the likelihood of over application of chemical fertilizers."
A sentence into the first paragraph if you're interested. Sounds familiar actually.




What the article is saying is with a mono-culture crop, incorporating the fields own waste materials in not sufficient to replinish 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 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?
I disagree. When you use a term like "the farming system" you imply that it is accepted practice. It is not.



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.
When I put forth I thought it probably happens more elsewhere, it certainly seemed you disagreed. Weird.



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.


 

No. If I'm understanding you right you're referring to this?:
13. Barak P, Jobe BO, Krueger A, Peterson LA, Laird DA., “Effects of long-term soil acidification due to agricultural inputs in Wisconsin” Plant Soil 197:61–69 (1998).

 

You understand that is the references right? To a long-term study completed in 1998? That is such a far cry from proof of anything happening in practice its not even funny - it's a study! Get out of here with that.



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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.
Probably a bit better actually since we test for any deficiency and correct them. Again, I will not claim everyone does that, I know a lot that certainly take a minimum level approach. I don't really know what your solution is here... not farm land? Hunter-gatherer days? Like I've already said, if you farm land you take nutrients out of the soil. Its required. It would deplete soil eventually if not amended but to say that's a widespread practice that soil is killed or left ruined is just plain false.



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.
Pfffffffffffft, see above. Also, please refer to the quote I added from your linked article above.



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 rention being deminished 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: <a class="bbc_url" href='https://phys.org/news/2013-08-future-crucial-agricultural-aquifer.html' title="External link">https://phys.org/new...al-aquifer.html</a> 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.
I guess this will be as close as I get to an admission that you don't fully understand any of this. You do not lose water in that scenario, you pump it back out at a quicker interval. So what you're actually wasting is electricity, not water. Btw, your article from 2013 doesn't mention fertilizer, over-fertilization, nitrogen or anything of the sort in it once. They are just pumping groundwater faster than it recharges - it has nothing to do with anything we are talking about.



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

 

You really need to have a better understanding when you throw out claims like these. I'm not sure you actually answered one thing above in a straightforward or sensible manner. Most of the articles you linked aren't even referring to what you're trying to claim and every time I refute and explain something you subtly shift your argument. It's pretty clear you don't have a fundamental knowledge of any of this and you're just googling links you think agree with you because you read something once on the internet that alarmed you.

 

I don't suggest our system is perfect or sustainable at all - we're always learning like any other industry. But I take a large exception to someone putting forth the belief that farmers are destroying large swathes of land on a commercial scale and it's part of some kind of plan or accepted practice among us. And then when I asked where this farmer-destroyed barren land is you linked a drought stricken area and passed it off as caused by farmers? That's about as disingenuous as it gets.

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