Skip to main content

    • Our ability to pull nitrogen from the air fed a growing human population.
    • While a long list of variables drove this trend, from the increased use of pesticides to new varieties of corn, wheat, and rice, one of the most important factors was the introduction of synthetic fertilizer. Plants thrive on nutrients in the soil, and these mass-produced fertilizers led to the doubling of crop yields between 1950 and 1990. We learned how to feed ourselves because we learned how to feed plants.
    • 9 more annotation(s)...

    • Biodiversity offers resilience to recover from climate disasters. After the Orissa supercyclone of 1998, and the tsunami of 2004, Navdanya distributed seeds of saline-resistant rice varieties as "Seeds of Hope" to rejuvenate agriculture in lands that were salinated as a result of flooding from the sea. We are now creating seed banks of drought-resistant, flood-resistant, and saline-resistant seed varieties to respond to such extreme climate events. Climate chaos creates uncertainty. Diversity offers a cushion against both climate extremes and climate uncertainty. We need to move from the myopic obsession with monocultures and centralization to diversity and decentralization.
    • After Hurricane Mitch struck Central America in 1998, farmers who practiced biodiverse organic farming found they had suffered less damage than those who practiced chemical agriculture. The ecologically farmed plots had on average more topsoil, greater soil moisture, and less erosion, and the farmers experienced less severe economic losses.

    • The inherent fertility of soil used to be an important factor in food production. Now it’s more or less irrelevant. Modern industrial agriculture now depends on the use of high inputs of nonrenewable resources, particularly oil, gas and fertilizer raw materials, to keep crops growing. Our future is so heavily mortgaged to the exploitation of such agricultural inputs that we have overshot the ability of the planet to support us in a sustainable way. The World Wildlife Fund estimates the overshoot at about 25 percent. In other words, modern society is living off global principal. Anybody with a bank account knows that living off principal rather than just the interest is an unsustainable option.
      • fred first
        fred first on 2011-03-09

        Anthrobleme:a scar on the earth caused by mankind's activities

    • 2 more annotation(s)...

    • Pakistan’s two large reservoirs, Mangla and Tarbela, which store Indus River water for the country’s vast irrigation network, are losing roughly 1 percent of their storage capacity each year as they fill with silt from deforested watersheds.
    • Ethiopia, a mountainous country with highly erodible soils, is losing close to 2 billion tons of topsoil a year, washed away by rain.
    • 4 more annotation(s)...

    • The world is losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it. At the same time, population is growing exponentially – 9.3 billion by 2050, according to UN projections.
    • It takes tens of thousands of years to make 15 centimeters of topsoil, about 6 inches' worth.
    • 1 more annotation(s)...

    • Blame Peak Oil. Not only is demand for fertilizer up, but it is made from natural gas, which has increased in cost along with oil. Five percent of the world's natural gas is used in making it
    • Blame Meat. In the United States almost half of the fertilizer is used for feed or pasture. As demand for meat grows with Asia's exploding middle class, more fertilizer is needed per calorie of food delivered, since meat is such an inefficient way of delivering calories.

  • Yields are the driving force of modern agriculture. Whether a farmer is growing corn to feed his dairy cows or someone else’s, he gets paid by the ton. If he can apply a little extra of something that is cheap or free (fertilizer or manure) in order to ensure a high yield, that’s a no-brainer.But...

    www.grist.org/...need-a-new-set-of-farm-policie
    - Preview

    nitrogen soil agricultural OurPlanet

1 - 15 of 15
Showing 20▼ items per page
List Comments (0)

Sponsored Links

Ads by Google
Move to top