At between 20 to 300 lbs per acre, yes. Generally most legumes will need 60 lbs per acre, so most will be self sufficient in ideal weather.
For 60 bushel per acre soybeans still require fertilizing with monoammonium and diammonium phosphates, as well as ammonium acetate, and to go beyond 70 bushels consistently supposedly does require supplemental nitrogen although this has yet to be recreated in studies.
In the yield size we see, they didn’t. That’s the point. Food crops cannot sustain the current human population. Before humans came along an area had a variety of plants which did not have their stalks and fruit systematically harvested and transported elsewhere. They grew in the ground and their produce would rot where it landed, enriching the soil.
I don’t think “Food crops cannot sustain the current human population” is the most accurate. I think adding on an “indefinitely” or something similar would be more accurate. The problem is that there’s plenty more land and resources that could go to crops, but it’s more of a problem of how sustainable it is long term.
Topsoil erosion could outpace soil conservation especially with synthetic fertilizer, but if people aren’t getting food now or in our lifetime then it’s not caused by an inability to grow enough crops. It’s caused by companies being driven by the profit motive. It’s more profitable to let food go to waste than get it to people who can’t afford it.
Currently the technology is there to make more than enough crops for everyone, but how sustainable that is in the long term is not something that has been a priority. If more effort is put into making factory farming actually sustainable, which is the way things are starting to go although pretty gradually, then the only thing stopping people from getting food is the incentive to destroy/ let it rot rather than take any potential loss from not artificially inflating prices
How about this correction, then: “Food crops can only be sustained for some period of time at which point it won’t affect me and in that case it might as well be 100% sustainable because I completely lack empathy or attachment to humanity.”
Echoing malthusian sentiments of “there’s not enough food for everyone” is not helping anyone.
Pointing out the actual problem which is that big farms that exist right now aren’t there to get food to people they are there to make money and they don’t care if it’s sustainable or if anyone gets to eat, is what I did. You’re the one glossing over.
I have accurately assessed the problem that you are attempting to ignore, I gave no potential solutions but if you want one then just reduce meat consumption and production (preferably through regulations and tax incentives) which will reduce crop usage by maybe 20-30%.
Even in a perfect socialist utopia without greed The Fields Are Not Sustainable. If human population stays where it is or grows again then there will be no other solution than reducing the population through child policies or similar measures, or famine will be inevitable.
Despite your fantasy world, the fields are not sustainable.
Modern industrial farming is not sustainable for the next hundred years, no, but there are a lot of levers to work to transform it into something that will reliably feed future generations.
One lever is amount and kind of meat in the average diet. It takes something like seven pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. Modern chicken breeds are amazingly efficient at converting feed grain to chicken meat, but even they are something like two pounds in to one pound out. Reducing the percent of meat in our diets would make our food go significantly further.
I disagree with that. In Western countries typically half to two thirds of agricultural land are used for meat and dairy production. We have plenty of food available to sustain the current or even growing populations without depending on mineral fertilizers. Farming techniques have significantly evolved over the past two hundred years and the crop yield of an intelligently managed field without mineral fertilizers is not signficantly lower than what is achieved by conventional farming. With the added difference that conventional farming is actively destroying the soil and killing the insects that are vital to maintaining agriculture.
So you’re saying that agricultural practices need to change to make is sustainable but you also disagree that it isn’t sustainable? It doesn’t sound like you disagreed at all, mate.
And where did the Dinos get the poo from? From eating plants. Plants that either used bioavailable nitrogen or captured nitrogen from the air.
The nitrogen cycle has been interconnected between soil, air and biomass nitrogen since forever. There simply is no fundamental need to use mineral fertilizers, as was claimed in a comment earlier.
At between 20 to 300 lbs per acre, yes. Generally most legumes will need 60 lbs per acre, so most will be self sufficient in ideal weather.
For 60 bushel per acre soybeans still require fertilizing with monoammonium and diammonium phosphates, as well as ammonium acetate, and to go beyond 70 bushels consistently supposedly does require supplemental nitrogen although this has yet to be recreated in studies.
So, you still need to mine ammonia.
So how did these plants exists before mineral fertilizers?
In the yield size we see, they didn’t. That’s the point. Food crops cannot sustain the current human population. Before humans came along an area had a variety of plants which did not have their stalks and fruit systematically harvested and transported elsewhere. They grew in the ground and their produce would rot where it landed, enriching the soil.
I don’t think “Food crops cannot sustain the current human population” is the most accurate. I think adding on an “indefinitely” or something similar would be more accurate. The problem is that there’s plenty more land and resources that could go to crops, but it’s more of a problem of how sustainable it is long term.
Topsoil erosion could outpace soil conservation especially with synthetic fertilizer, but if people aren’t getting food now or in our lifetime then it’s not caused by an inability to grow enough crops. It’s caused by companies being driven by the profit motive. It’s more profitable to let food go to waste than get it to people who can’t afford it.
Currently the technology is there to make more than enough crops for everyone, but how sustainable that is in the long term is not something that has been a priority. If more effort is put into making factory farming actually sustainable, which is the way things are starting to go although pretty gradually, then the only thing stopping people from getting food is the incentive to destroy/ let it rot rather than take any potential loss from not artificially inflating prices
How about this correction, then: “Food crops can only be sustained for some period of time at which point it won’t affect me and in that case it might as well be 100% sustainable because I completely lack empathy or attachment to humanity.”
Echoing malthusian sentiments of “there’s not enough food for everyone” is not helping anyone.
Pointing out the actual problem which is that big farms that exist right now aren’t there to get food to people they are there to make money and they don’t care if it’s sustainable or if anyone gets to eat, is what I did. You’re the one glossing over.
I have accurately assessed the problem that you are attempting to ignore, I gave no potential solutions but if you want one then just reduce meat consumption and production (preferably through regulations and tax incentives) which will reduce crop usage by maybe 20-30%.
Even in a perfect socialist utopia without greed The Fields Are Not Sustainable. If human population stays where it is or grows again then there will be no other solution than reducing the population through child policies or similar measures, or famine will be inevitable.
Despite your fantasy world, the fields are not sustainable.
Modern industrial farming is not sustainable for the next hundred years, no, but there are a lot of levers to work to transform it into something that will reliably feed future generations.
One lever is amount and kind of meat in the average diet. It takes something like seven pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. Modern chicken breeds are amazingly efficient at converting feed grain to chicken meat, but even they are something like two pounds in to one pound out. Reducing the percent of meat in our diets would make our food go significantly further.
I disagree with that. In Western countries typically half to two thirds of agricultural land are used for meat and dairy production. We have plenty of food available to sustain the current or even growing populations without depending on mineral fertilizers. Farming techniques have significantly evolved over the past two hundred years and the crop yield of an intelligently managed field without mineral fertilizers is not signficantly lower than what is achieved by conventional farming. With the added difference that conventional farming is actively destroying the soil and killing the insects that are vital to maintaining agriculture.
So you’re saying that agricultural practices need to change to make is sustainable but you also disagree that it isn’t sustainable? It doesn’t sound like you disagreed at all, mate.
Cow poop
And what about the ~700 million years before cows existed?
They did exist (or some form of it), just not in quantities that could feed billions of people.
Most of the plants we eat today are products of selective breeding to make them more palatable and easier to mass produce.
Dino poo
And where did the Dinos get the poo from? From eating plants. Plants that either used bioavailable nitrogen or captured nitrogen from the air.
The nitrogen cycle has been interconnected between soil, air and biomass nitrogen since forever. There simply is no fundamental need to use mineral fertilizers, as was claimed in a comment earlier.