this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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Summary

Grocery prices are expected to rise globally as soil degradation, driven by overfarming, deforestation, and climate change, reduces farmland productivity.

The UN estimates 33% of the world’s soils are degraded, with 90% at risk by 2050. Poor soil forces farmers to use costly fertilizers or abandon fields, raising prices for staples like bread, vegetables, and meat.

Experts advocate for sustainable practices like regenerative agriculture, cover cropping, and reduced tillage to restore soil health.

Innovations and government subsidies could mitigate impacts, but immediate action is critical to ensure food security.

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Gee, spoke about heavy metals being deposited in our fields via exhaust and tractor tires a while ago and was called stupid. It's not stupid, tractors are bad for soil and should be replaced with drones.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wow, I didn't realize drones had gotten powerful enough to plow, seed, and harvest. That's amazing, do you have any links to plowing drones? Sounds cool.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

The entire point is to not plow ever. It's bad to penetrate the soil.

We have drones that can farm. I'm not going to list them all because it's clear you lack any foundational knowledge and just need a summary, so here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_drone

My own family uses drones in farming here in the US. Not for everything, yet, but gee, if our government would fund it, it would happen immediately. Idk how this is surprising.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not many people have mentioned this so I guess I'll bring it up:

The two major factors negatively impacting sustainability of agriculture are

  • Ammonia (NH3) is mined as a way to enrich agriculture with Protein, more specifically the ammonia bonds with nitrogen allowing plant development, but it's not exactly infinite. Synthetic Ammonia can be produced but is extremely emission heavy as it is often a petrochemical byproduct with the vast majority of Hydrogen (H) is produced from fossil fuels refining.

  • Modern Invasive Pests/Disease are commonly spread across continents. Lack of plant biodiversity leads to viral outbreaks called "blights" which can lower or even wipe out entire regions of crops. Invasive species most notably insects can plague regions for years without any natural predators. Globalization and Industrialization have created these hurdles, but the yield of such practices are absolutely necessary to feed the current human population.

There are no solutions except reducing the human population. Which isn't going to happen, because people are stupid animals and the people we've empowered all over the world are morons who cannot read the writing on the wall.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This isn't even true. The carrying capacity of earth for people hasn't been met. We can absolutely engineer things to be both sustainable and livable at current populations. Rhetoric that advises we "depopulate" is borderline neo-fascism, the same stuff Christians say to bring on the apocalypse.

James Cassidy at Oregon State University has his SOIL lecture series on YouTube. We have many ways to repair our soil and to improve farming. Killing people/ "depopulating" isn't one of them. Shame on you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I'm saying we need to have less kids and you're saying that belief is christofascism, lmao

Despite many noteworthy christofascists supporting population growth such as Elon Musk.

Have fun engineering an entirely new way to supply food for over 7 Billion people that nobody has ever tried before. I look forward to your results. It's a good thing you were taught by the world's greatest minds over on fucking YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Read again, he's a soil scientist and professor at OSU that made his lecture available for free on YouTube.

You didn't say "less kids," you said smaller population.

And I can see how much of an appetite you have for learning things that aren't "kill kill death death," so yeah. Won't waste more of my time explaining. You can't even be bothered to understand that professors can post lectures online.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

And you, after watching a couple of lessons on YouTube, are here lecturing me despite knowing absolutely nothing of my qualifications. I retract nothing.

“kill kill death death,”

You're the first person to mention killing or death in this entire thread.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why is "unproductive" in quotes?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I guess journalists are finally implying nuance exists.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Just use the animal agriculture land instead.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

Dustbowl part Deux: Electric Boogaloo

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Perfect reason to hand out more BCs. Need to keep the pop for only wanted children. More human than tons of starving unwanted kids.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I'm gonna fucking uninstall this app I'm having a nervous breakdown fuck off i just want some memes not existential fucking dread GAAAAHHHH

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

There's also porn here, you know...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

"Why is WW3 and world-ending climate change so stressful? Can't you just post memes about Mondays and lasagna?"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

tell me about it, dude.

We're on the precipice of total collapse. Farmlands failing, Ocean Currents are collapsing, Climate change is accelerating, Intellectuals are being demonized in favor of ignorance and fascism... The possibility of WW3 hanging over us thanks to all of the previous.

the next 20 years are going to be the cursed time that "may you live in interesting times" was talking about.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

How nice of you to conveniently list out all the current events worth having an existential crisis over, in a reply to a person having an existential crisis

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

They didn't list them all, the climate change one is more nuanced than that: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/23/earth-breach-planetary-boundaries-health-check-oceans

Yes there are 9 planetary boundaries for us to be able to live here, and we've crossed 7 of them.

People SHOULD be having existential crises. Wtf are existential crises for if not SPECIES ENDING EVENTS? That's why we evolved to freak tf out over this, to help us care enough to address it. That you all would rather numb yourself to it is a testament to how shitty of a species humans truly are. Our ONE fucking advantage is not intelligence, but adaptability. Go on, adapt. Get this shit figured out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Dawg they are having an existential crisis. A bunch of us are, because just about every thread on the big communities on here remind us of how shit things are every day. I wouldn't rather be numb to it, and I'm not suggesting other people to be numb to it. I'm saying it's funny that someone wrote a comment about how much this site reminds them of all the shit going on, then someone replies directly to them with a list of more shit.

Please don't get yourself into the mindset that because everything is shit, we all have to feel like shit all the time too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

I exist to serve.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

One of solution to this problem is veganic farming.

Agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and biodiversity loss, mostly through deforestation for the cultivation of animal feeds; enteric fermentation from ruminants like cattle, fertilizers and manure; and soil degradation from intensive farming practices. There is currently a push to transform our farming systems to attempt to alleviate the almost-assured catastrophic burden of increasing amounts of atmospheric carbon. Many forms of agriculture claim they have evolved to follow a more regenerative form of agriculture by increasing soil organic matter (SOM), thus capturing said carbon in their soils. This study reports SOM results from one veganic agriculture (VA) farm from a study period of seven years. There was an observed increase of SOM from 5.2% to 7.2%, equating to an increase of 38.46% over the study’s duration, suggesting that VA is an effective farming mechanism for increasing soil organic matter utilizing 100% plant-based regenerative practices and materials to nourish the soil. The VA farm also realized respectable yields per hectare, reporting a 46% increase in total crop production. This was all achieved by growing a diversity of plant-based crops, implementing four-year crop rotations, building soil fertility through plant-based inputs, cover cropping, and leaving the farm’s fields covered as often as possible. Additionally, by its processes, the VA farm fully eliminated the industrial chain of animal agriculture and associated land use and methane emissions, suggesting VA to be a holistically regenerative form of agriculture, in comparison to animal-based forms of any other system.

Source

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

has not been peer reviewed.

Then I read their methods ... It should not pass peer review. Their variable control is shit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

However all they appear to advocate for, are the things that historically we have done, and are mentioned in the article.

Veganic Farming? Its just Vegans trying to hijack a normal process of crop rotation and cover cropping so they can make some snide remark that apparently it is animal feed that's the problem.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Veganic farming has been around since 1996.

That is very dismissive as veganic farming avoids the problems of pollution from fossil fuels, manure, chemicals, over enrichment and crop contamination.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago

Veganic farming is the solution to this problem.

It avoids nitrates, run-off and e-coli outbreaks.

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