Without using natural gas derived nitrogen fertilizers the Earth can only sustain half as many humans.
Everyone hates Monsanto but how much has no-till farming increased productivity? How much has it reduced erosion?
Cooperative farmers don't seem very well paid. I enjoy gardening, what I have learned is that I would never want to have to produce all of my own food either on my own or on a commune.
The methods in use in commercial farming are far from optimal. The chemical companies deliberately produce 'fertilisers' that do not provide the full spectrum of nutrients - resulting in both a requirement to continually buy more of their products and also reducing the health of humans and thus also resulting the sale of supplements and drugs.
Rockdust and compost tea are two proven, truly organic methods for healing the soil, improving the nutrient density of food and thus reversing many of the problems we face.
Nope, rock dust does not seem to be a source of nitrogen. looks like a good source of cal/mg for your garden with some trace minerals. That's a finite mined mineral. Compost tea is great for your garden, there is not enough feedstock to brew up enough compost tea to provide the amount of nitrogen needed to grow food to feed the current number of people on a planet. 50% of the nitrogen in human tissues comes from nitrogen fertilizers derived from natural gas. There is just not enough manure and biomass to replace that even if you collect all the human manure and livestock manure and compost all of the excess biomass.
This is a complex topic, I did not bring up rock dust to suggest it contains nitrogen. The point here is that the modern farming methods deny the reality of soil health such that they effectively treat the soil like a whore! Instead of carefully evolving methods that keep the land in balance, the industrial approach simply seeks to create as much profit as possible, so fertilisers are designed to make plants look 'big' but with little attention given to the minerals that cause health and even that improve taste. Compost tea is used to improve overall soil health and thus also plant health - resulting in greater nutrient fixing and greater availability for plants. I do not have data specifically to hand regarding the effects of compost tea on the need for nitrogen being added to soils, but I think it is possibly the case that less would be needed as a result of its use.
I am not suggesting that industrial farmers adopt these methods (although some have done with great success) - rather I am suggesting that we need to reclaim the use of our land and produce our own foods locally in ways that involve a complete cycle of composting and regeneration from the materials present in the compost, for example.
By industrially removing nutrients from our homes and moving them to waste treatment plants and sewerage processing centres - we inevitably leave the soil depleted. Additional (natural) methods of soil improvement, such as mulch/bark breakdown over time, work well too - but these are not fast enough for the cash hungry farmers and they might argue, not practical enough either.
Just like every other human endeavour, efficiency makes a big difference and care/passion/heart improves quality a great deal. By combining efficient use of resources, with greater understanding and balance, we can all produce higher quality foods than the vast majority of industrial farms do - but it will take an evolution and greater self determination. Call me 'old fashioned' but I would rather live in a world where children learn to live in harmony with the planet than to decide which of 100 false genders they belong to and how to be a professional 'ball thrower'. In fact, this isn't really a matter of my preference, it is a matter of survival.
I have never seen that statistic before, so I have no idea of its origin or accuracy. I certainly do know though that 1 person can feed themselves from a relatively small amount of land (compared to the size of the planet) with enough understanding and diligence. When community forms, the job becomes exponentially easier. I would be interested to see the research that makes clear that all of the compostable material in the world cannot account for the nitrogen needs of the world's food baring plants.
I grow plenty of my own organic produce, there is no question it is higher quality, my only point it that only some humans can live in such a way, if there are to be 7 billion humans some must live off of foods grown with fertilizers derived from natural gas. This is where my statistic came from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
Thanks for that link, I was not aware of the fine points of that situation.
I notice, though, that the nitrogen availability from the Haber process i 'credited' with causing the population explosion!
So it is not really valid logic to say that the process is needed, when it is the cause of the evidence for it's own need. This is a bit like a heroin addict saying that he absolutely needs heroin because heroin has changed his makeup/balance - when in truth the alleged need is only present due to the heroin.. It is a circular reasoning.
I still suspect that it is possible for the many billions of people to grow food without such industrial nitrogen generation, but I suspect a wiser outcome is for us to recognise the effect our lack of balance is having on life here and making intelligent decisions to reverse the situation.
it would be more like an alcohol addict saying he needs alcohol, because in fact alcohol withdrawal can be fatal. now that we have 7 billion people, with half of the tissue made from natural gas, not using that anymore would be fatal to having that many people.
The lack of nitrogen is one major problem the other problem is with soil erosion, traditional farming and organic farming uses tilling to various degrees, over time this leads to a loss of topsoil which threatens the productivity of the land. No till farming doesn't till up the land and destroy the soil structure, there is far less soil erosion, deeper roots that need less watering and less runoff but to do it they have to use herbicides. People are trying to develop organic no till techniques but so far have not had much success.
We have had a ton of success with agroforestry. Many polyculture methods are not included in scientific research because of the difficulty in keeping track of so many variables.
There are solutions, and I have every confidence that we will be able to continue to develop them.
In a sense it is more like alcohol, yes - though as with alcohol there is a tried and tested process for ending the dependency.
In System Engineering we have the concept of parallel systems, whereby the legacy system is replaced with a new approach, but the old system is run in parallel for a while to make sure the new system works as intended. If we allow the chemical corporations to be absolutely required for survival DUE to their OWN previous effects, it would be like allowing us to be dependent on alcohol or heroin dealers for our survival.. Not good at all. If we look at the polluting effects of the situation it is likely that death will be the outcome anyway if no changes are made.
I am aware that soil erosion is a problem. In terms of effective replacements for herbicides, there are several ideas here: 1. living mulch - whereby plants are deliberately allowed to spread that prevent other plants from gaining roots (e.g. strawberries or less dense plants). 2. A completely different approach is used, such as is found in permaculture - e.g. food forests. 3. Wood chip mulch - which can be a by product from food forests. All of these will prevent soil erosion.
Soil erosion is specifically worsened by having large open fields with no wind breaks - again, this is an effect of the greed driven farming methods in use today, whereby ancient and natural forests are completely removed.