I’m a 32 year old farmer from northeast Nebraska, and I’m transitioning from conventional to organic. I will say that my farm’s local ecology is better on my organic acres. With good hybrids and getting your minerals balanced you can have comparable yields. It is good. I used a dry pelletized fertilizer for organic use made from poultry litter, blood meal, and feather meal. High in nitrogen and uses waste products from the poultry farms, and biologically beneficial to the microbiology.
What’s the price if you don’t mind me asking for the pelletized fertilizer? I’m also in transition to organic, attempting to do it with no till and utilizing cover crops. We do have poultry manure but because we’re so close to the bay, the state really limits how much you can use.
If you are commercially successful (make as much money as conventional farming) and yields are comparable then there will be mass conversion to your process. I hope your more environmentally friendly process rocks it!
That's correct but to a large degree, synthetic fertilizers destabilized soil biology and plant immunity making herbicides pesticides and everything else necessary.
@@lewisoscar synthetic fertilizers and tilling and mono cultures come joined in industrial agriculture, it's cultural ideology. Know that the key actor in plant process are the fungus : tilling, fertilizer and monoculture dammage the fungus and its mycorhyzes. Fertilizers are the worse of them.
Well, I would just like to add the fact that the green revolution happenned to save the US heavy industry (no demand for churning out tanks, lets churn out farming equipment instead), not the world hunger. Here in Brazil we have agroforestry experiments that produce more food per hectare than conventional farming, while also improving the soil every planting cycle instead of depleting it.
How exactly does this improve the soil? I understand that you could get some erosion protection but active improvement seems like a push. Also, conventional ag shouldn't deplete the soil over time if you have a proper fertility program, yes nutrients are used growing the crop but if you properly replace those nutrients you shouldn't be deteriorating on the whole.
@@Beyonder8335 Because the organic matter covering the soil degrades and decomposes, incorporating itself in the organic horizon of soil, also serves as an environment for the growth of fungi and bacteria that add to the biodiversity of soil and stimulates the process of making nutrients available to plants. It is well known that a well-managed agroforestry patch, even when eary in the ecologicla sucession and planting sensible crops like lettuce and other common market vegetables, over time needs less and less irrigation and external fertilization, because the technique makes the system as a whole more resilient.
Not only that. When you aggregate trees and crops, together you get better root structure in the soil, gradually improving its ability to absorb and maintain water, have the benefit of wind barriers, housing for friendly animals (pollination/natural pest control), better mychorrhizal network (which leads to better nutrient availability in the soil), all of that. Monoculturing is pretty bad in general, even organic monoculturing.
@@THENEW6 I definitely see the erosion protection elements as well as the fungi but I’m not sure I agree with the rest of this. Hosting beneficials is a 2 way street, yes it can be beneficial but you can also host pests that way, so it’s not necessarily all good. I’d also question how much interference the trees would cause with the crops, just with how extensive their roots can be, and also how the shade would impact things. Depends a lot on spacing though with those though. Monoculture really isn’t that bad, the reason it’s so widely used is because it generally works out to be the most efficient way to do things. Polycultures sound good in theory but often times they’re nearly impossible to actually execute. Planting/harvest logistics, limited options for weed control, etc. are all very difficult. Organic in any system is really no better than conventional, and particularly lacks in yield.
I would just like to point out, the Sri Lanka example isn’t quite right. Sri Lanka imports its fertilizer. It was having currency problems that massively pushed the exchange rates, so they were entirely unable to import fertilizer. It was in response to that issue that Sri Lanka decided to become all-organic. Not the other way around
Yeah ma boy even forgot that there a nutrient differnce in food if they were grown organic or fertiliezed . Its good that He speaks about what mom and Pop teached him but its should be now the future. I wonder why he is not speaking about soil starvation or how fertiliezed ground can get an imbalance . I would guess meant in an good way but done in an bad way.
@@GardenofEdens He did this presentation in an expert, learned and erudite manner. It was highly informative, and essential viewing for city dwellers. I have a feeling that your take on it is from a place of self-interest, and prejudiced to an 'organic farming' point of view.
@@GardenofEdensevery single crop you can think of would be priced at least 4 times because it simply isn't possible to get the same productivity as using fertilizers. Get a 100 acre plot, go all organic and then come here and talk.
Look at the food on the shelf, look at obesity rates, looks at health stats. This is the nutrient provision said are responsible for. It is an utter failure.
Yes, the grains have been modified so that they grow evenly and resist herbicides and pesticides. But, they neglected the main reason for growing food, nutrition.
Correlation vs causation. There's a million variables that could be affecting our health outside of non organic farming.
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You don't really address the problem of biodiversity, soil washout and focus your rebuttal only on organic agriculture, and a very specific kind of organic. Organic is not the answer either. We need diversified, regenerative, permaculture inspired and smaller farms. The fact you need tractors for everything is a problem
Try yourself produce some food with your ideals. That regenerative permaculture stuff its fake, try cultivate tomato, cucumber, eggplant or pepper, it will be full of caterpillars without nutrients and chemicals, this is why almost no one eats those vegetables 150 years ago.
Artificial fertilizers and tillage are commonly used in agriculture, but their widespread use is not a definitive argument for their necessity. Historically, 97% of physicians practiced bloodletting, a method now obsolete:) . Similarly, reliance on artificial fertilizers is being challenged by advances in soil science. The Green Revolution was best what we could do, but recent understanding of plant-soil-microbe interactions shows that regenerative agriculture can match or surpass traditional (degenerative farming) yields. This method enhances soil health, sequesters carbon, and produces nutrient-rich food, presenting a sustainable alternative to conventional practices.
A soil test can point out not only the level of NPK needed but micronutrients as well.Conservation and/or no-till help facilitate an increase in soil organic matter as well since it is not 'turned' under,which accelerates the decomp of plant material left after harvest.
@@brianmurphy8790 100% wrong. Commercial variations are made to grow fast and that is a trade off. It's not the fertilizer. Basic chemicals are the same no matter what. Stop being a sheep.
@@brianmurphy8790 Middle school science class kid. Two of the same chemicals from different sources are still the same chemicals. It is scientifically impossible to tell the difference between organic and synthetic fertilizers in their basic state. And you can get any mineral in synthetic fertilizer. Just because NPK is the only thing most people talk about that doesn't mean that's the only thing available.
This video is symptomatic of where the sort of agriculture vs ecology divide we currently have goes completley wrong. You're misunderstanding a ton of stuff here and therefore completley missing the point that others make. Especially when you're talking about the environmetal problems. You talk about the CO2 intensity, but that's just half the problem. The other half is that the nitrogen being spread goes into our natural parts of the country as well. Via runoff and via wind. The problem there is that the species living there, generally a specialized to low nitrogen environments and go -at least locally- extinct where these nitrogen amounts go into nature. That's not some wishy-washy eco stuff we don't have to care about. 2 thirds of the food items in our supermarkets rely on pollinators to even exist. If we kill the areas that support our pollinators, we kill our food supply as well. The nitrogen in the water also majorly messes with the systems there. You touched a bit on this, but not to the extent it's worth. Eutrophication isn't just something that affects our bigger rivers, where it often happens due to companies etc., as you said. It's a huge problem close to the sources in the small streams. And that's due to agricultural runoff. And as said before it also hits our terestrial systems via wind. This shit is an overlooked problem and also the reson why your conclusion about how organic farming should be used is (partially) wrong. It's a shit situation, but we're currently forced to fight on multiple fronts. Farming practices must care about ecology and climate and food security. That's a threeway thing, not two. And the problem with ecology isn't the use of nitrogen in general, it's how excessively it's used and when. And the economical incentives, which, contrary to your statement, don't work in favour of the problem here! The problem here in large parts isn't inorganic nitrogen prills. It's organic nitrogen, because it has different cost incentives. Because machines and workhours are more expensive than nitrogen in that case. The general problem isn't the nitrogen in the field where it is applied. It's a problem everywhere else, So we don't want to get it there. How do we do that? One example is for liquid manure to be spread close to the ground, instead of being sprayed high in the air - less wind-spread nitrogen - But those spreaders, which you also touched on very quickly cost more than the old ones and are more time-intensive to operate, while liquid manure is often there in abundance. The same thing is true for other methods and for other organic fertilizer types. In my area in southern Germany, there's loads of cattle farming for example, we have too much manure. But disposal of manure is expensive. So what do farmers do? They spread more on the fields than is sensible. Sometimes even so much, that yield decreases again. But that decrease in yield is financially better, than disposing of surplus manure. Especially in spring when the snow melts and the manure tanks are filled to the brim, they often spread it too early, meaning rain washes it into rivers. Why is that done? Because the tank was full. That simple. Looking at it from the other side: Why would there have to be controls for nitrogen amounts, if the economic incentives already worked against it. They exist to curb exactly those kinds of problems. But the biggest thing here - as mentioned in the beginning - is that I think you completley miss the point being made. Farmers still tend to operate on a pattern of thinking where their job is more or less solely the production of food. And you do this here too. What not just "townspeople" know, but is also said by experts especially in ecology, but also by now by economists and people in the agricultural sciences is that that role of farmers MUST change. Farmers must fill two jobs in the future. Production of food and on the other hand being stewards of nature. And when those experts critizize farmers it's because that second part is not realized. Another way to see this is spraying. You touched on it from the perspective of fuel efficiency. And you're correct there. But the other problem here is again: wind dispersal. Not just while spraying, but wind caused soil erosion blowing contaminated soil into nature. And then the pesticides kill insects and pollinators in these few refuges they have left. We need to finally get out of this us vs them mentality in this shit conversation. We NEED to realize that and start talking to each other again instead of being constantly annoyed at what we perceive as being said to us - instead of actually listening what is said. Quick example of this: I 100% bet that people reading this here will instantly in their head go "But why are you blaming farmers". Without realizing that I didn't. Why would I blame workers for following financial incentives. It's their livelyhood. I blame the financial incentives and I blame the broken system. Now the other way around: Let's not blame ecologists and nature protection NGOs for where politicians misplace those incentives. As someone studying ecology, but coming from a farming background: The internal conversations of both, are mostly the same. What my farmer uncle complains about while sitting in the pub in the evening, is the same as the thing my professors complain about when we sit in the bar. And it's the same thing NGO activists complain about. Because essentially the NGOs take the ideas from the professors and then lobby politicians to implement them. And the politicians fuck it up and in the end noone is happy. The way to get through this is to fight that together, not alone.
I honestly think a silver bullet we could try is focusing on soil regeneration as part of the transition from conventional agriculture. If we can fix the soil we can fix the food system.
While I enjoy your content and your expertise, I have to point out that your argument is premised on a false dichotomy, a fallacy which, in my view, is representative of a failure to acknowledge the issues of land, value, and labour distribution that we have inherited from the industrial revolution in the global North and from colonization and neocolonization in the global South. Farmers in the North are now mostly landowners, business owners and jacks of all trades who have to juggle impossible constraints to pry their share of their work's value out of the hands of the corporations that sell them the tools and inputs they work with and buy the goods they produce. This puts them under unacceptable pressure and, as a result, unfortunately sometimes leads them to do unacceptable things such as exploiting their labourers and endangering them, others, and ecosystems. These awfully common outcomes are not a result of farmers being bad people, but of an unacceptable land-use system. We can see this system being put in place in rural areas of the global South, where an area the size of Switzerland is being grabbed by corporations every year (Oxfam and Actionaid report on this, among others). What's interesting is what is being lost there : highly resilient small-scale subsistence farming that is sustainably providing local communities with healthy diets and dignified working and living conditions. While the methods used probably wouldn't allow these communities to actually feed large urban centers, it is interesting to note that they are making a far more intensive use of land than the monocultures that are replacing them and kicking them into exploitation for the few and unemployment for the others. As land ownership concentrates, small towns and villages become empty and lifeless while vernacular culture and traditions are all but lost and farmers' lives are made increasingly difficult, and their farm workers' lives considerably worse yet. Failure to consider radical alternatives both asserts that this state of affairs is beyond questioning, and leads to the kind of deadlock you present in this video : "fertilizers are causing harm, but we need them to keep things going the way they already are - hopefully some scientist will solve this some day"... On the one hand, why would we ever want keep things the terrible way they are now, and on the other, while this hypothetical low-carbon fertilizer might go into production if there's a colossal financial incentive for a manufacturer, that's not really the way things have been headed up to this point ! So here's a thought : many city-dwellers are unemployed or in bullshit jobs and would actually move to the countryside if it allowed them to be part of lively communities and work a dignified, useful job. The resources necessary to keep them alive and not too unhappy are already being spent on wages for these jobs and unemployment benefits. So maybe we could organize society differently, we definitely have the means to do so. Maybe we could use land and labour differently, and maybe we should experiment with that, or push for universities and government agencies to be funded and encouraged to experiment with it. Here's a thought experiment you could get some content out of : if you had the same plot of land you're currently working on but could throw unlimited labour at it with an aim to optimize outcomes on all fronts, what would you do ?
We have always done farming in Uganda 🇺🇬 following organic principles for tens of thousands of years. You shd get some time and come here to educate yourself on how proper organic farming works.
oh, you don't say? (sarcasm) in the west, they justify their system of pillaging and poisoning the land because it supposedly feeds the world's poor...
The central appeal, that 3 billion people wouldn't be alive today without artificial nitrogen fertilizer, seems to beg a lot of questions. I have gone country by country in Europe and found that the populations before the Haber-Bosch process was introduced on any scale and now - and they are very similar. There has been no population boom in Europe thanks to chemical fertilizers. Italy sustained a population of 45 million with no chemical fertilizers, Germany 70 million, the UK 50 million. Clearly chemical fertilizers have not doubled these populations. Saying Organic Farming worked "in the Middle Ages" is bad faith arguing. It worked REALLY recently. Within living memory. The only argument for 3 billion people being alive because of chemical fertilizers seems to be most African and some Asian countries that do not produce much food themselves, but have it shipped in. So, if you really think about it the argument for chemical fertilizers is that it allows non-farming countries to eat and expand wildly past their historical population levels. But Europe's population boom in the 1800's and early 1900's happened before Haber-Bosch. So in response to the thumbnail "The reason you can exist," as someone of European extraction I can say I would almost certainly exist without chemical fertilizers. They seem to have had no effect whatsoever on my country's population.
The alternative to “unconstrained population growth” is population control by malnutrition and famine, so this is as good an argument as any. Also it’s true that the Haber-Bosch process came at the tail end of Europes population boom, but earlier improvements were only made possible by the other hallmarks of modern farming like synthetic fertilizers and agricultural equipment.
Do we even really want a large population dependent on oil lol? When oil runs out having billions of people dependent on oil seems pretty.... Bad? When oil runs out just have billions of people die I guess.
If you have your head stuck in giant monocrops then you need synthetic fertilizers yes. But i'm running an organic farm and i focus on low inputs not high yield per m². Wich is your typical's farmers problem. Blindsided by the desires to squeeze more out of every m².
This comment above nails the misconception. Monoculture annuals to scale up with standardization need to be chemical and not biological which means nitrogen fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide and standard machinery to harvest too. High Input (energy use and input of chemicals) to increase yearly yields (along with GM-Plants). Year on year however that's unsustainable and also negative for biology/ecology and we're already seeing human health. As you say shift to lower total yields but higher diversity using perennial permaculture with mixed use of plants and animals also if mixing mono-crop productions then add grazing/animal manure and fallow/nitrogen fixers. In the video he confuses the need for high input agriculture (fertilizer) for high density unproductive populations... ie industrial agriculture is needed for such imbalance. The problem as ever is High Population for Small Land Area in the UK thanks to mass migration and over-development vs resources eg UK imports a significant amount of it's food.
@@TransportSupremoI mean... It is if it's sustainable. What's the point in more production if you can only maintain it for a really short period of time? Lower production over thousands of years vs high production over 200 years? Idk.
So, this is far too complex a subject for most people to get in a few videos. Older forms of farming always had a way of adding to the soil, but they also did field rotations, grew different things in different fields, and shared fields. Each household had a small portion to just them and was responsible for tending a larger section with the rest of the households as both a village/town share and a tax to both church and to whoever 'protected' that region. That will not work with cities though. Which is where the more modern technologies have to come into play just due to scale. The thing is, if you want healthy food than older style community gardens or private gardens are the way to go. Where you can emulate or even replicate all those older methods. Look into the "victory" gardens during and after WWII for examples of this. What is more you can blend the two where suited without the toxic effects a modern farm generates. That applies to our meat industry too. There is a third triangle here as well, the more corporate farming becomes, the fewer household farmers we have, not only do we get less crop rotation generating more direct environmental problems (repeated over fertilization to replant same crop year after year), but we get fewer locations where the food is "processed" for distribution to the population. This is not only higher risk of spreading illness through the food chain, but it creates a weakness that could be exploited for food availability and variety. Household farms that are commercially viable are actually a security issue for the nation and we need them back.
This is dangerous thinking. He wants you to eat only from mega-supermarkets with food grown on massive monoculture farms. Remeber, it's the only way we can feed the world!
@@lksf9820 I have heard that, I have yet to find a single study to prove it. Only it being claimed by those who have a vested interest in keeping the current system going regardless of its health impacts on the consumers. I have looked. Not a single study I can find that has been independently run backs those claims up. Most show it has a lower impact when done correctly and a slightly larger impact the way the average person with a few plants in the back yard does it. Result is net even.
Thanks for the great comment... I'd be curious if there are any places you'd recommend for learning about older types of farming and the history of farming like you describe?
Amen! I had this idea for quite some time - if you want to have affordable pesticide free food then you need to grow it yourself. I just recently got my allotment and I'm preparing it for the first season, trying the "organic" ways. Btw I think that the social root of this problem is that "city folks" like myself are too disconnected from the food production. I think it woul work well if we could somehow cut some of our office jobs working hours and dedicate let's say one day per week to actually get our hands dirty. This could also help some of the farmers especially with labour intensive jobs (weeding instead of herbicides). But this sounds like a utopia. Anyhow I think that the farmers frustration lays on the fact that everyone is telling them what to do but there is no one to actually help. This must be frustrating. Looking at the times of WWII there was a whole social movement around farming and despite of the reason the outcome was pretty great for everyone.
the problem with being NPK focused means you are lacking trace minerals, herbicides causes cancers, pesticides cause neurological issues, antifungal/antimicrobe kills off the good forms along with the bad and you get dead soil...I agree that organic only methods won't work with just 15% of land being used to feed the city dwellers. So that just means that the city dwellers will have to go become farmers and get their hands dirty. I'm from the Midwest in the US which is the breadbasket. My state is larger then the UK. Average farm is 370 acres, 51% of the state is in farmland 26 million acres. Nitrogen has a role to play but the factory farm is producing empty slop of calories and needs to change
And how do you share the agricultural land when millions of urbanites come to the countryside to find some land? Then you'll get consolidation of landlords renting farmland, followed by the institution of basically a new feudal age
@@cameronmclennan942 you don't share land you put more land into ag...I don't know much about Europe but the US has a lot of acres that can be Ag that are not being used. Instead of HR and middle management useless jobs more people could be farming. Right now we have the ideal of raising the cheapest food with the bare minimal labor and it shows. Instead of the one mega 1500 acre farm you could have the 5 300 acre farms with 5 different families with less need to use heavy machinery as you have 5 time the number of man hours instead of one man forced to rush to get the 1500 done...the draw back is food will raise in price
@@cameronmclennan942 ...interestingly, higher labor input per acre means increased yields per acre (well studied). So with more people on the land, we can actually produce more per acre - more work equals more food more or less. Moving people from useless work (30% of people say their own job is useless) to farming would increase food production before adding any land into production. It is not fixed - low-labor, high-tech farms produce less food per acre (although save labor costs, but by leaning on fossil fuels).
I am an organic farmer myself. It might surprise you though that I agree with you, at least to some point. Where I farm, intensive farming is not possible. The terrain is to steep, ground too shallow. Were I to disturb it the first summer storm (and there are many, more with each coming year) would flush away my fields. In such conditions I think organic farming makes sense. The sheep (yep, I too have sheep) graze the grass and I cut hay in the meadows that are not too steep. Putting additional fertilizers into such ground would inevitably lead to runoff and be just wasted. The land can support as much as it can and thee is little I can do to improve it. That is why I went organic. But the idea that everything should go organic is absurd. I think people even now fail to understand how much unpaid and underpaid work, how much lost time and capital goes into food that they think is still too expensive. And god forbid something isn't available all year around. Not only do I oppose the idea of organic everywhere. I think even with current practices, food prices should at least double. At least then we would think before we buy (and then often throw away). I am daily amazed by people who are willing to put 50k under their ass (car), but find every reason to skimp on what goes into their ass (food). Keep up the good work! I enjoy your videos a lot!
Firat good living soil is a carbon sink. Second the micro organisms in soil science knows about are less than 1% so soil science knows very little. Third artificial fertilizer herbicide n pesticide etc kills soil life causing soil degradation that'll eventually cause less arable land. This will cause food shortage and higher prices leaving more people hungry. Good soil same as other good things take time. Do some more research on soil health and also on impact of agrochemicals on health. Organic farming is not easy but putting aside corporate profits, it's doable.
"The Rodale Institute has been running side-by-side field studies for the last 30 years, comparing organic and conventional agriculture. Results show that after a 1 to 2 year transition period, when yields tend to decline, there is no difference between conventional and regenerative farming in terms of yields. In stressful conditions, particularly during droughts, the regenerative fields perform better because they are more resilient - the soil can absorb more water because it contains more biomass. And certainly farmers we work with say the yields are the same, while their input costs go down." - Philip Fernandez, Agriculture Project Manager at EIT Food
I've seen that study and it's very flawed and misleading. They frame it as though the thing creating the higher/more stable yields is the regen/organic practices, however when you actually read the article they talk about how soil organic matter is what allows the higher water infiltration. However that's not exclusive to these practices at all. You can maintain/build organic matter levels perfectly well in a conventional system, so this doesn't really prove anything.
i agree as farmer I know what you mean , we will all be going hungery with out fertliser , some of these mad schemes , ie SFI , and wish people understood the cost of growing a crop , its much more than what you pay in the supermarket , You are speaking so much sense here ,
so if fertilizer caused the population explosion we would have been better off without it, our soils would be healthier long term (especially without herbicides, fungecides, pesticides) the humans would be healthier and thinner (with out the excess bread / carbs ) wildlife would be more abundant and we wouldn't have a problem with anthopogenic climate change.
I think that you will find that it was mainly the invention of antibiotics that caused the population explosion, because people didn't die of common bacterial infections, also in the UK when the NHS was founded after WW2 many elderly people stopped committing suicide, they would kill themselves rather than be a burden on their families before social health care was implemented.
I'd love to hear this argument presented to folks like Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin, John Kempf, Ray Archuletta, Alan Savory, Richard Perkins, Geoff Lawton, Mark Sheapard....
As a farmer myself, I agree. I can say, however, that we must use the adequate fertillizer for the soil type and must be places as close to the plant as possible for more efficient uptake.
As a chemist, this is one of my favourite topics. Habber was a fascinating character. The nitrogen cycle is also critical to maintain my planted fish tank; not only to maintain the plants, but the nitrite can very rapidly kill all the fish (blocks the hemoglobin, same as carbon monoxide).
Those who practice soil regeneration techniques do not have to replace what was taken from the soil because their soil is alive, not dead as with tilled soil. The microbial community is in symbiosis with the plants' roots. The plant feeds the microbes, and the microbes convert elements into forms the plant can absorb. Forests don't need to be fertilized because the soil is alive. In order for plants to grow in dead soil, which is often referred to as dirt, you have to pour chemicals on the ground. This type os agriculture is based on a non renewable resource, which is getting more and more difficult to get. Natural gas is what is used to make most commercial fertilizer. There will be shortages of this within the next decade. Pouring expensive chemicals on the ground is not the only way to grow food. People are growing food on a large scale using no chemical inputs, and producing more food per acre than those farms practicing chemiculture. Rege nerative Ag is the type of ag these innovative farmers are using. This video may have been backed by the big ag industry, so beware of bias that helps them.
Firstly I support farmers and farming, just because I am critical doesn't mean I am against farmers, just the methods employed. Nitrogen fertiliser is made from fossil fuel and we need to stop extracting fossil fuels so where does that leave farming? Also the problem isn't only fertiliser but the handmaidens insecticides and fungicides. Have you seen One Hundred Beating Hearts?
Quite a topic to take on in less than half an hour. I agree and disagree with the title because of the narrow definition of organic farming. I agree monoculture farming needs inputs to function but I've seen farmers around the world saddled with debt to grow cash crops that don't pay the bills. I feel like a distinction is needed between calorie crops and vegetables as it is a good metaphor for nitrogen fertilizer, you can survive on calories alone and look relatively healthy but you won't be whole if you just eat calories aka nitrogen. I enjoyed your video and appreciate the tie in of city vs country life and how they are not compatible though I laughed when you said you went "off topic" because it seemed like it was the main purpose of the video. If you read this comment I would like to hear if you have encountered mark Shepard's work in restoration agriculture. If you see that information and still think you need fertilizer to be a farmer then I would like to hear about it but he manages to grow wholesale crops that can feed a village with combination agroforestry farm. America is a different context but I'm curious what you make of it. It just seems only using one layer of the forest doesn't use the sun as efficiently but you are a true blue agronomist, I'm just a chemist lol. Good luck over there
A strong defense of commercial farming is great. The comments show a higher level of conversation than most videos. I love the food forest idea and want to know more about conventional agriculture too.
Here is why organic farming is a very good idea. First, there is a section of the population committed to it - producers ( farmers) and consumers. It may not be for you or the majority ( which includes me) but farming should be able to meet everyone’s needs. Second, it is always important to have a diversity of practice just as we store varieties of plants and animals we do not use or are not commercial. It is in the nature of any practice that it evolves and we cannot anticipate future needs. Third it provides a valuable critique of accepted practice and forces us to question what we do. In a democratic society we debate, reflect and adapt. It is one thing to say it is unrealistic to have wholly organic farming but it should not blind us to the important role advocates of organic farming play in our society.
In the US, about half of the corn is used for ethanol, not food. Very high yields are not needed to feed the world if crops are eaten and not used for fuel.
Farmer from canada here who is looking to move towards organic. Nitrogen is probably the easiest thing for me to get in terms of nutrients. Clover can generate more nitrogen than the subsequent crop can take up even at the top end yields. My two holdups are that i need to get into the ground earlier to grow the higher price crops and weed control in the absence of chemical sprays. In terms of nitrogen however I believe in conjunction with cattle i can make money growing my nitrogen fertilizer instead of the $40 dollars an acre in cost from buying it. Nutrient wise the hardest i would have is phosphorus, no nearby ocean with sea birds doing me a favour
@@kylemullen1139 get yourself some sea salt and mix 500g to 5-10 gallons of Irrigation water. It has almost all nutrients even the trace ones. Everything washes int the oceans
The first step to return to organic agriculture is restore the billion or so horses used for transport which created the mountains of manure used to fertilize the fields, and the collection of human manure in the cities and ship it to be spread on fields, as was done historically in most of the world (including Britain). Never mind the disease issues...
Any large herbivore, in the UK under a slowing down AMOC is the inability to grow crops because of increased drought so more animals are going to needed or the soil will suffer.
Don't forget all the farmland needed to produce the grain(oats usually) and forage to feed the horses. The use of human manure is sketchy at best considering the heavy metals contained in many muninciple waste treatment plants!!
This fellow is getting (rightly) battered in the comments. Sometimes you swing and its a hit, other times you miss wildly. I suggest reading Montgomery's "Growing a revolution" this isn't about single solutions for every farming situation. Location specific solutions, with moderated synthetic inputs. The bog standard modus operandi of most British farmers is unnecessarily high input. Less passes with the Deere can only be a good thing for your land and your pocket.
I farm, grew up dairy farming. Then beef for ten years. Now I currently have no cattle, Just 5 draft horses I work. My diet is 95% animal based. I do not eat vegetables, and few grains as I am celiac. Mostly I eat meat, dairy, eggs, never drink juice, just milk water, coffee tea. If we stop feeding people vegetables and grains, replacing it with a low carb high fat diet we could plant 80% of current arable cropland into sod, for hay and pasture, the tremendous increase in ruminants, primarily cattle, would reduce the need for commercial fertiliser considerably. Such a diet would leave people much healthier also. We were not designed to process roughage like a cow.
Right, you are a man who puts serious effort into your content and points so I will address you as such. Firstly, yes, organic is a terrible category, its a meme, it doesnt refer to anything and most organic farms are modern style farms that just avoid/minimise insecticide and fertiliser use, Your actual conversation is with the deep ecologists and perma culture farming. I am not an expert in their work or theory but i know enough about them to address many of your points. 1. "We would produce 50% less food and or require far far more land to support the same food production". There is a problem here, it treats all food production as the same. The elephant in the room on this talking point, is meat agriculture. Thanks to biology which you certainly know already, i.e trophic chain, 90% of calories are lost every time something is eaten. That "we would produce 50% less " statistic does not address that we massively over produce for meat, about, roughly 80% of crop agriculture is done to feed animals, not humans. To give you some context FE, if industrial beef agriculture, on its own, was eliminated, it would free up te land mass of south america, (single countries there often being the same size as the entirety of Europe), i.e in scale, just beef. How much do you think industrial fertiliser would be vital then, and I say industrial, does not matter if its cows shitting it out or if it was manufacturered in a plant, perma culture agrees in that there isnt a real distinction here unlike "organic". But yeh, a huge percentage of food production right now, is because of dietary preferences, not because its necessary. Cows in particular are quite literally a resouce black hole, and are also an atrocity on the ecological health topic, the haber process is responsible for 1.7% of emissions? Industrial animal agriculture is responsible for an order of magnitude more then that, especially cows, like, cows are a league of their own. 2. ""we have the connection to nature", you do not, modern farming is an industrial system with similar ecological damage to a heavy industrial plant and chemical plant, not to mention farming ideology for the last, 200-300 years has been about conquering and mastering nature. A huge percentage of the natural fauna of the UK is extinct, and most of the ecosystem is in horrible shape, ireland is far far worse where its literally an ecological desert. The natural biosphere of south and central britain, and ireland, is temperate rain forest, not what we currently have, britain cut down these forests for its navy and energy needs a few centuries ago etc. What you call nature is a broken biosphere that is only a few feet away from total collapse etc. And, I don't blame farmers for this by the way, either for their current circumstances or what they do with food, this is not something we can just beat up farmers with. Its capitalism, capitalism forces the farmer into alot of these terrible practices, capitalism is why we have as much carbon in the air for the entirety of transport infrastructure on the planet as because of industrial meat agriculture. But most of the fertiliser and insecticide use and land use for farming is also because of industrial meat agriculture. Most of us are eating far more meat then would fulfill dietary or nutritional needs, notwithstanding that certain crops produce sufficient protein to support society.
Farmers are naturally conservative and don't like gambling on new methods invented in an ivory tower. Their business model is a huge gamble where profit and loss depends on weather and global markets. Most of those who espouse cuddly organics have no real world farming experience.
@@johnharrison1743 and when their methods are failing, they still don’t change. They just wonder why someone isn’t saving them from their own mistakes.
We definitely tend to be skeptical till something is proven, but we certainly change when methods are failing or when something is proven effective. If what you're claiming is the case then why has farming changed so astronomically over the past 100 years.
@@michaelmay6859 Salesman aren't gonna make sales if the product hasn't been proved effective. Why are you so dead set that farmers are too stupid to adapt despite the abundant evidence of the contrary?
It's not great if he completely disregards more sustainable and effective forms of agriculture that LITERALLY produces more food per acre than traditional farms. The issue is that it requires more labor, and with a population the size we have you'd think that wouldn't be an issue.
I recommend Glenn Davis Stone's book: The Agricultural Dilemma: How not to feed the world. It's basically about the tensions between large-scale farmers and smallholders. I also recommend Jan Douwe vd Ploeg's book New Peasantries.
Regenerative farming is the way forward, reducing artificial fertiliser as much as possible. Keeping the ground covered and using cover crops to fix nitrogen. Also bringing back animal manure to cereal crop fields.
I agree with you, and thanks for explaining organic farming on scale. As a home grower I find that organic fertilisers need to be buried at lest 1 month before the plants go in the ground, it can be a lot of work and just not practical on scale. My Grandfather who was a farmer said that on average British soil is not nearly as good as the USA, so having the Yanks tell us how to farm is crazy.
I think its important to remember that 80 percent of corn and soybeans in the us are used for animal feed. Synthetic nitrogen is necessary for a western diet where we eat meat 3 meals a day. This is known to be unhealthy and this level of crop production also has large ecological impacts, both of which could be fixed by diets with less meat! Big ag likes to scare us by saying current production is necessary for our survival in an attempt to scare us, but in actuality farming this way simply enables us to kill ourselves with subsidized low quality meat and corn syrup.
I agree Americans produce too much corn, however most Americans don’t get enough protein and animal proteins are among the healthiest, especially grass fed. So I disagree that Americans should to eat less meat.
There is a strange protein fixation and the amount needed for an individual is really blown completely out of proportion by many average Joe's who aren't nutritionists. In the UK people are generally eating too much protein! This is a quote from the British Heart Foundation website. "In the UK, we eat more protein than is recommended. This isn’t automatically a problem, but it depends where your protein is coming from. Meat-heavy diets have been linked to increased risks of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers and may also shorten your life." I'm sure this is the case in many other countries too, probably more so in the US.
@@MoonRayFish this is not so here in the states, Americans, mainly animal rights activists, and elites like to try say study’s show that we’re supposed to eat .36 grams of protein per pound of body weight, even the department of health says this, but in reality the study they’re referring too says that the .36 number is the bare minimum to not become deficient and cause bone loss and other complications. Most nutritionists day to shoot for 1 gram per pound of body weight, and they say most Americans don’t get enough protein. Also, what you said about meat heavy diets being linked to heart diseases and diabetes is completely false, animal proteins are some of the healthiest, and they’re also the easiest and most efficient for humans to digest.
What I wrote above is a quote from The British Heart Foundation, informed by thorough peer reviewed research, doctors and nutritionists, all working to solve heart problems. So unless you are a heart doctor, you really can't argue with that quote.
Thank you for including Kristian Birkeland in the history of nitrogen fertilizers. He was mostly a pioneer in astrophysics, and did not in his day, or yet, receive adequate acknowledgement for his discoveries.
This is absolutely correct. A lot of farmers have turned to composting and manure due to the fertiliser prices, and it's resulted in lower yields for many of them already.
Good video, however on Sri Lanka that excuse that the leader did was in response to their currency reserves dwindling already due to fertilizer import costs. He tried to do it as a stop loss but it tanked the economy like someone deciding that they can go without an oil change but then their engine grenades.
interesting points. I'm thinking out loud here...what if governments encouraged citizens to grow their own food and offered tax breaks for those who did? what if there was an understanding that there would be a decline in production for a few years until things began moving in an upward direction? what if people were encouraged to embrace agricultural jobs with subsidies? I am being genuine in asking this...
Firstly, how will everyone grow their own when most people don't have sufficient land to do it? 2. How will they find the time when they presumably already have full time jobs? Farming is a full time job 3. People growing the own, often does not produce enough food and has worse environmental outcomes.
I've never heard anyone say they're against fertilizers. Although I do think they're responsible for the toxic algae blooms that happen. But nevertheless people are concerned about the herbicides and pesticides, not the fertilizers.
Its funny how the entire community is fact checking you. Maybe reflect back on your thoughts and assumptions thar you are wrong? You describe how naturally nitrogen is fixed via bacteria and literally certain plants are able to achieve that by hosting bacteria in nodes. Microbiology health is most important in the soil. Which artificial fertilizers kill. Sure the plants cant tell the difference till the fungus, microbes, abd insects in the soil die which causes further nutruent deficiency, then disease and malnourishment which requires more chemicals and toxins
All that is preventable with proper soil analysis. something farmers weren't doing even 20 years ago as much as today since the low costs of artificial fertilizers. Regenerative farming is not organic farming. It still benefits from artificial fertilizers but requires precise amounts.
Yes well said Completely compromising healthy soil and then relying on junk to spray to reduce pests is a false economy We are what we eat and it is showing up with immune disorders worldwide
I have a video request here, which I think would be fun. I like reading time travelling novels, where many protagonists choose to mess around with agriculture, as way to get ahead in whatever past time period they are sent to. Could you do a video in such a topic. Lets's say you woke up one day as a landlord in medieval England. How would you use your modern knowledge to organize the farming process in that period.
Umm OK,,, 😄 the original style of farming that sustained and grew the entire WORLD'S population to 8 BILLION people, suddenly doesn't work. But GMO seeds that wont grow a new crop, that require herbicides, and artificially "replentishing" the soil (without iodine) is "sustainable". Thats why after 40+ years of GMO farming, over 50% of the world's population is iodine deficient... and struggling nations depend on corporations for new seed, removing their food-freedom and self-sustainability. More BIG AG propaganda here folks. "All hail Lord Monsanto". "Control the food, control the people" - Henry "Satan himself" Kissenger Thats what GMO & synthetic farming is about folks. CONTROL.... of YOU and your family.
Yes it is strange that for the last 60 years equipment and chemical companies have made 90% of the wealth from agriculture while farmers make less than 10%
Infertile GMO seeds don't exist, and they don't require herbicide. Herbicide is a tool to kill the weeds, GMO technology just allows you to use different herbicide chemistry.
@@Beyonder8335 GMO seed is fertile once only. It cannot reproduce . Herbicides are mineral chelates Chelated nutrients can be insoluble to plants GMO seeds are modified to grow without those minerals chelated . Weeds don't get them either and suffer Results= you don't get them either And people suffer....
@@Chase_Telemetric that’s just straight up false. GMO seeds are perfectly capable of reproducing, such “terminator seeds” do not exist. If this is true, why is there volunteer corn on my farm? We plant GM corn and the losses from the combine have no trouble sprouting the next year. If what you’re saying was true then this wouldn’t be an issue. I’m not sure where you got this information about herbicides, but honestly I’m not even sure how to debunk it because it’s so nonsensical. I mean for one, not all herbicides are mineral chelates, and the ones that are really aren’t going to tie up nutrients in a significant capacity. They haven’t somehow modified GM crops to just… not need nutrients. That’s ridiculous, the reason Gm crops aren’t harmed by herbicides is because they’re modified to be able to break down the herbicide. Nothing to do with nutrient availability.
Organic agriculture (no matter how enlightened the techniques used) can't support as many people as industrial agriculture and that's actually a marvelous thing. Smaller and leaner populations equal a better quality of life across the board. In an ideal world non-organic inputs into the process would only be employed in case of an emergency as a fireman solution.
Interesting video with some good points. Fertilizers can be useful sure. I think most people have bigger concerns with pesticides/herbicides/fungicides than chemical fertilizer. Most people who support organic farming would also accept that overpopulation is a problem as well so I don’t know if using that is a useful rebuttal. Both family planning and changing agricultural techniques can be components of achieving sustainability.
It's not even overpopulation inherently being the problem, it's that so much of the population (especially city people) are a burden on the food system. They don't produce anything of their own, and they are the majority. If the population was further spread out into rural areas, and more people produced a percentage of their own food this would make a significant impact.
If there's a market for it, then it's a viable business, and lots of people do want to buy organic food, so it's a pretty good idea for those who can sell to meet that demand. As for the bulk of your argument: firstly, there were a lot of things that allowed a massive growth in population in the last few hundred years, including a lot of other innovations in agriculture, so you might be overplaying the impact of nitrogen fertilisers there. As for whether or not we could and should have more sustainable agriculture, and how much loss of yield per acre we get without synthesised agricultural chemicals: there are a lot of conflicting data, and it's going to be interesting to see how things pan out in this arena as more data continue to come in. It will ultimately be a question of how much increase in farmland we will tolerate in order to reduce which wider environmental imacts and, either way, how farmers can be paid enough considering how valuable they and their work are.
Thanks you for this very interesting video, I'd like to add that fossil fuel made fertilisers and pesticides and diesel will runout one day as a finite resource (even if we don't stop them for climate change) humanity will by thermodynamic necessity have to reduce its population size because of lower agricultural yields and return to an organic farming with - as you point out - a vastly reduced population. It could get ugly on the degrowth side of things unless there's some awakening. I made a documentary about this called Ecosophia on my YT.
I think your big misconception is that these products are made directly FROM fossil fuels. It's a part of the production process but mostly for heat and power. The exception would be natural gas and nitrogen fertilizer, however natural gas is methane and we can get renewable sources for that. So as the cost would increase for those finite resources, the production would naturally end up switching to other options.
@@VerdeAramiu What??? Growing animals requires a dozen times more machines than growing plants. First, you need machines to grow and harvest animal feed, then you need machines and sorts of things to build (like slaughterhouses, buildings where those animals stay.... )... and so on and so on. What are you talking about?
@@DiamondKing-em7oc no my friend cattle and pig are easy, in some farms in brazil 1 people can take care of 5000 pigs alone, 1000t of food only made by one person in 3 month. Next to me on my state in Brazil, I know a farmer Who Dairy 100 cows alone, 1200 to 2000 litres every day of the month, he is realy rich. At noon his son help him
I’ve worked on farms farming naturally and the waste from disease and pests is phenomenal…. Let alone growing wheat of a high enough quality for human or animal consumption
I was more or less with you until at 16:28 you said that "organic produce is not more nutritious." This surprised me because we've known for decades now that the nutrient density in vegetables has decreased significantly since the early twentieth century. Theres a famous carrot study about this that I need to look up. The argument from pro-Organic agronomists is that intensive farming and the industrial application of NPK has sucked out the trace minerals from soil, while simultaneously killing the beneficial bacteria and fungi in soils which digest and fix them into bioavailable forms. It's easy to find elders who swore that food when they were young was much more flavorful. It's frankly absurd to me to suggest that we could kill soil biology, rely solely on fertilizer mixes, and still produce food as healthy and delicious as we used to.
It starts much earlier. 4:31, when talking about 'plant nutrition being described in strictly chemical terms, there's no whimsey". In what world is a whole community of species "whimsey"? Soil health is something so important that it already makes entrance into conventional farming. We can't just grow one symbiote while having killed the other and expect it to just work. Mycorrhiza completley break that "strict chemical" equation by being a system of incredibly multifactorial catalysts.
It's actually (edit: partially, not completely) true, he just didn't explain it at all. It's because of the breeds of fruits and vegetables we grow. A lot of them have been grown to have monstrous size, and this came at the cost of everything else. Imagine a human who did nothing but lift and grow all day, no reading, no culture, nothing, just lifting. You would have one huge muscle guy, but he wouldn't be able to take orders, talk to anybody, or function like a human. A similar thing has happened to our produce. They don't create any of the structures or undergo any of the processes that would lead to a more nutritious plant, they just grow really big and that's about it. It's why personally I've been collecting older seed and plant varieties in my garden, and why I give them out for free to anyone who asks. I've had them tested at the local agricultural uni and despite me using the exact same methods and the exact same soil for both, the local and older varieties are much more nutritious despite being smaller. It's just that when you're sitting at your stall and some old boomer comes along to buy some produce and he asks you why your tomatoes are so wrinkly and small and yellow, you can't really tell them it's because they have healthy anti-oxidants and taste better. They don't listen. And the people buying at supermarkets care even less; they'll leave anything that doesn't look perfect on the shelf. So there's little money in it. No stores will buy it from you. Locals don't want it. It's objectively better for you and we try to sell them, per weight, same price as the modern varieties but they don't get sold. (also edit: There's special fertilisers and gardening soil sold that include micronutrients that are useful for certain plants, so you can get those without organic farming. So yes, you can objectively introduce it all into the soil without using organic farming. We just don't because it's cheaper and nobody cares about health, only how the product looks and how cheap it is, as I described above.)
Food is shit because it has been bred for volume and visual appearance and easy logistical handling rather than taste and nutrition, not because of magic organic nitrogen fairies.
@@ratelslangen Nobody's saying it's fairies or anything mate, read what they're saying. They're not even talking about nitrogen, you've missed the entire point. They're talking about micronutrients which were historically added to the soil by either sediment or microbes or other organic means, inefficiently if in any way. We can now add those micronutrients via fertilisers AND as you said use breeds that extract them from the soil and add them to their fruit as well, it's just that we don't because of cheapness like I explained in an above reply. Your attitude's literally the reason this stupid debate exists, just tell them kindly and explain everything openly. The truth doesn't require you being a jerk to be heard. (edit: Not to mention that the video just threw that out as if people knew that and gave no explanation! Of course they have a right to demand an explanation.)
@@FarmerSlav I'd say there's still something missing in your part (even though it's a lot better than the pars in the video). It's not just micronutrients missing in the equation, it's also soil biome missing. Depending on how you work the soil, how much and which pesticides you use etc. Just because nutrients are in (or on) the soil, doesn't necessarily mean the plants can get to them. Mycorrizha and some bacteria make what is already there more available to the plants, requiring less stuff to be there in the first place. Which does change required fertilization amounts.
Eventually Exhaust the Soil. With about 9000 pounds of phosphorus per acre in the top 6 inches of most soils I don’t think we should be too concerned. Not to mention how many tons of gaseous nitrogen above every acre?
I think your vids are great, I'd like to recommend a topic. It doesn't sound like you're very much a proponent of regenerative agriculture, but I think it's worth a look. There's lots of info on UA-cam about it already, although I'd say its a very new science if not a new practice. I'd like to hear your take on it, especially if you have criticisms of it. I recommend John Kempf's talk at Groundswell that's on UA-cam or his blog for a starting place. In my opinion regenerative ag is all about a pragmatic approach to maximising organic methods, but indirectly by focusing on soil and overall ecosystem health. Any movement will have different factions, but regen ag seems fundamentally aligned with how our food production must change and simultaneously feed us all. I like that you point out that even though there's a lot about modern agriculture and our food system in general that we can help to improve, ignoring farmers contributions and vilifying the we people we pay to make our food is absolutely backwards thinking.
I'm kind of in the band of designed "doped" biochar fertilizers, where the fertilizer is bound into a biochar base. This would be slow release, bound nitrogen and other nutrients... Less runoff and carbon storage at the same time. Biochar based fertilizers if you want to google
It’s true that Sri Lanka had currency problems first. And it’s true that the farmers didn’t know how to do organic. And it’s also true that the government warped the market by subsidizing fertilizer imports. However, it’s still exceedingly likely that yields would have tanked regardless. Counterfactual statement, but I’ll make it anyway (Cum laude in History at Columbia University, ha ha). This reminds me of the old “Communism didn’t fail because it’s never been tried” argument. It’s patently obvious that organic, even with lots of preparation and even subsidies, can’t currently feed us. By all means improve the science behind it, but legislatures should educate themselves about the realities and not push farmers, who have enough problems as it is.
If fertilizer is bad for the environment its because of its negative effect on the microbiology. I think you can definitely feed the world without fertilizer, but not if we just stop cold turkey. Farms converting from conventional to organic/regenerative takes time, knowledge, and a mostly importantly a big paradigm shift.
A lot of organic fertilizer like manure and bone meal contains nitrogen that was pulled from the atmosphere by the Haber Bosch process if you trace it back lol
There is the certified organic zealotry and then there are a bunch of more ecological methodologies that still use some conventional methods and inputs that are called organic outside of the anglosphere (which includes India) Also how to feed the world without synth N (suboptimal but doable, with planning, coordination and research reorganization): 1. price of a carbohydrates go up as production drops. 2. stop most grain inputs for feedlot beef as a global security issue 3. farmgate food waste due to low commodity prices drops, also food waste by consumers drops for staple foods 4.everyone starts cover cropping or intercropping with legumes where feasible (remember the price of N inputs went up) 5. Invest were there are economic (and not absolute agronomic) productivity gaps. Africa's low grain yields are not an inevitability. Also urbanization in Africa is anomalous bc it has occurred without sufficient labor in cities, some migration out of cities in a food crisis, 6. research on more efficient removal of contaminants or vice versa the nutrients from treated sewage 7. the economics of grain cropping vs rangeland changes over vast parts of Africa, the Americas, and northern Asia 8. increased agricultural land likely inevitable because people respond to price of grain 9. increase double cropping +cover crop in oceanic and subtropical areas 10. urban ag that includes potatoes and other calorie crops for added security. 11. reassess industrial food biproducts for human consumption (examples: date pit flour, more whey fortification) 12. realignment of research to new foci on arbuscular mychorrizal fungi and other microbes in near organic crop systems, transgenic N fixation, biostimulants, sustainable ocean farming for protein Regarding Cuba, it is its urban noncalorie crop agriculture that is praised, a critical omission for lay supporters but easily determined by anyone curious about how agriculture works. It is a basketcase right now for broadacre production of anything right now. Half of the acreage out of production since the start of the special period. I really like your channel, but your biases about certain topics as a farm kid from a particular palce and time are obvious to informed viewers.It is probably worth acknowledging without wringing your hands over them. Do you have another ag-aware mate at uni who doesnt agree with everything you say? That might be a good once-over for another perspective. The videos will probably age better that way. Very excited to see what comes next.
I disagree with the title but thats about as far as i disagree. I don’t have any issues with synthetic fertilizers when they are applied properly, they are extremely helpful especially when starting up new plots that you plan to transition to organic fertilizers later on. They speed up the process, but i don’t think that they are the be all end all of feeding the world. As others have said what we need is more people in the business of growing food, and we need more access for smaller farmers to the equipment seed and fertilizers that they need to grow food in an economically viable fashion. And on a smaller scale organic agriculture agroforestry and permaculture principles are very good for increasing yields, but it does take more work that is the key, so we need more farm workers and for farming to be more affordable and heavily promoted by governments. One of the issues that is keeping this from happening is the monopolization of seed and food product production by monopolistic giants like Monsanto, DuPont, cargill ect, that restrict seed use through strict patents and dangerous Geneticaly modified crops that require specific pesticides and herbicides to grow which is detrimental to soil health and the health of the ecosystem in general which after use holds the users in a sort of blackmail situation where they can no longer grow anything but what those companies provide. Whether we want to see it or not farmland has to be a part of the ecosystem of our planet otherwise it will collapse from the loss of natural cycles that the living biota of the earth regulate and create. Also i agree with you in terms of government actions being poorly educated and misguided, they want to change a system that has been going on for decades in months or a few years, its not going to happen without starving people, and for certain crops using tractors and synthetic fertilizers in todays age seems like the only way to produce enough of it effectively, and with this I generally mean grain and cereal crops. You will never be able to produce these crops in the quantities that are demanded without it, but everything else totally can be more diversified away from monoculture plantations and grown on smaller scale farms in a very economical way using more “organic” farming methods using the term organic loosely here.
Not only are there productive commercial veganic farms, it is the norm for natural environments to function with very little influence from animals. Animals have never been a primary means of returning fertility to the soil, they constitute less than 5% of natural biomass. Bacteria and fungi decomposing plant matter and minerals is the primary means by which soil is kept fertile. Vegan agriculture also requires about a tenth of the land that animal based agriculture does, so even if we had to take another tenth to use exclusively for green manure, such as alfalfa which fixes all of it's nitrogen, or green manure fertilized with composted municipal solids, we're still returning 80% of the land and maintaining the same productivity.
I think the farming community could really benefit from the bifurcation of the organic classification. A product being organic can mean very little but only because we are trying to fit so many things into that one label. I concur that if a plant needs nitrogen, applying just nitrogen is logical. It seems to me that the organic certification or at least a variation of it is better served to show consumers what produce was grown in a farm with non toxic weeding methods as opposed to one that just dumps gallons of herbicide, for example. Pest management could probably be it's own category. Pesticide use has a value but we've also seen the devastation it causes when misused or overused. If a farm can use compost/mulch to suppress the weeds and feed the soil, synthetic fertilizer to keep his plants healthy (when needed) and passively resistant to pests while attracting natural pest predators, that to me is the spirit of organic farming even if certifying bodies disagree. The tastiest produce tends to come easier for gardeners who treat their produce as food for nutrition as opposed to farmers who only see the produce as a commodity to be sold. Of course, there needs to also be a legitimate conversation about lifting the burden of climate change off of farmers because that was complete horseshit from the start. Can you blame a farmer for seeing his produce as purely money when he is being squeezed left, right and center by every agency under the sun?
Given how much food is overproduced and wasted, perhaps producing in line with biological limits of our local area would both save the environment and make us respect the food we have more and throw away less? No one wants to go back in time, but if we can apply better methods and ration fertilizers to be less harmful, aren't we getting more for less?
Nitrogen fixing bacteria were discovered only 27 years before the invention of the Haber-Bosch process in an Era characterized by anything but a unified system of science and economic planning. It is still not the norm to for example simply mulch with crop waste so that the sun's uv doesn't kill nitrogen fixing and nitrifying bacteria in the top layer of soil. That crop waste is fed to animals, with it's carbon going to feed them and pollute for very marginal production rather feeding the bacteria and fungi in the soil
Well about offset by photosynthesis, Most of the biomass produced on agricultural land decomposes in a year, so you can't really count it as offset I suppose..
Indeed, artificial fertilizers are the reason about half the people on earth are alive, and they aren't a renewable resource... it's a stupid idea to hedge your population on a limited supply of fertilizer just because the higher yields make you feel like a superior farmer. "Organic" is also a narrow view. Like what about intensive no-till regenerative methods? Basically if you are talking about monocrop fields then your perspectives on fertilizer are going to always favor fertilizer, because you have a very ineffective soil setup that isn't designed for biologic efficiency, and you need fertilizer to deal with that since only artificial fertilizers can penetrate soil effectively in the span of just a season. Wait till the phosphate shortages hit, and god speed to those who aren't planning on that happening.
Brazil have huge phosphate reserve but it not being Extract due to comunist ambiental laws. In the easiest mine to produce there enough to mor 500 hundred years
Having only done something one way is not an argument that it's the only way it can be done. 90% of applied synthetic fertilizer is not even used by the plant. And nothing was even said about the potential to reuse humanure, which would supply us with 100% of our fertility needs. Also, no mention of detrimental effects of synthetic fertilizer. no one has ever argued that synthetic ferts don't work, but that safer alternatives are needed.
You skipped the fact that ammunition factories made ammo using Huber process, after WWII the factories kept pumping out product but the peace was tough on business. So salesmen figured out that it worked “great” for plants and modern chemical fertilizer was born. BTW plants have to convert the synenthic fertilizer to a usable form, unless it’s organic chemically, the plant can absorb it right away, no waste of plant energy
Organic matter decomposes into their "synthetic" forms prior to plant uptake. Nitrate is nitrate, doesn't matter if it started as proteins in organic matter or came from potassium nitrate. Minerals like calcium or magnesium are uptaken in their ionic form, and again it doesn't matter if it comes from synthetic fertilizer or organic matter/rock dust. A calcium ion is a calcium ion.
Sri Lanka's debt ratio reached 100% of GDP three times, starting as far back as 1988. Don't know that we can blame the collapse solely on banning fertiliser in 2021.
The flush toilet has gone a long way to making chemical farming a big business. Victor Hugo in Les Miserables wrote about the destructiveness of the new (to him) sewer systems in Paris and how it would harm the poor. England's people sh*t away tons of organic material a day and pay billions through taxes for processing plants that clean it to some degree (but not completely). Composting toilets and a system to collect the compost could provide massive amounts of organic material for farms. But that will never happen because modern people have an aversion to sh*t and one even has to use an asterisk in the word to avoid the censors.
if you'd googled it, you'd find the UK timber industry apparently fertilises 1000s of hectares of land every year and has used fertiliser since before the 1st world war. "In Britain the use of fertilisers has greatly increased the productivity of forests growing on nutrient-poor soils. In fact, many sites could not otherwise have been successfully afforested." Source The UK Forestry Commission www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi5z-XS18GGAxWlXUEAHQX0BhEQFnoECD4QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.forestresearch.gov.uk%2F1991%2F03%2Ffcbu095.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3Gkg_FK7U6QYCM7vvtqpzk&opi=89978449 Edit: since fertiliser replaces nutrients exiting the cycle during harvest, obviously woodland which isn't harvested doesn't have the nutrients taken out, so doesn't need them artificially replaced.
a single channel with practical, concise, well thought out video, by someone who actually farms: ~400 views impossible bullshit by "gurus" who only talk about how farmers should farm: millions of views comments: magical thinking everywhere guys, you can't create or destroy energy. if you put in a bunch of energy into fertilizer then give that to plants, the plants won't have to use that energy for nitrogen fixation, instead putting that energy into food. that's it. you can't get away from this. not by rotating crops, not by coming up with some food forest, not by anything. we produce as much fixed nitrogen as the rest of all nature because we have enormous amounts of energy at our disposal, which plants in the British countryside simply don't have. if you take that away, things will grow that much slower and billions of people will starve, there is no way around this.
Destroying soil microorganisms with chemicals is a failure long term Loss of topsoil and reliance on high input cost fertiliser and pesticides is why farmers are going bankrupt Land management is a skill
@@Chase_Telemetric They are going bankrupt because it costs nothing to ship food from the 3rd world. Poor people starve, farmers lose jobs, capitalists make a profit. And I can't take this "chemicals" talk seriously. Water is a chemical, all food is 100% chemicals, the bacteria in soil are made of and eat chemicals. Life is a chemical reaction. These are basic facts.
@@Chase_Telemetric A skill that you don't know much about given your claims. Used properly fertilizer and pesticides do NOT kill your microbiology in the soil, and where is it you're hearing of people going out of business due to topsoil loss? High inputs sure but that's not really an inherent thing but rather companies pushing up prices in recent years.
I’m a 32 year old farmer from northeast Nebraska, and I’m transitioning from conventional to organic. I will say that my farm’s local ecology is better on my organic acres. With good hybrids and getting your minerals balanced you can have comparable yields. It is good. I used a dry pelletized fertilizer for organic use made from poultry litter, blood meal, and feather meal. High in nitrogen and uses waste products from the poultry farms, and biologically beneficial to the microbiology.
What’s the price if you don’t mind me asking for the pelletized fertilizer? I’m also in transition to organic, attempting to do it with no till and utilizing cover crops. We do have poultry manure but because we’re so close to the bay, the state really limits how much you can use.
@@jlkkauffman7942 I’ll have to double check, it is less volatile than raw manure though. It’s nature safe 13-13-13
You should check out advancing eco-agriculture. It would be right up your alley.
If you are commercially successful (make as much money as conventional farming) and yields are comparable then there will be mass conversion to your process. I hope your more environmentally friendly process rocks it!
@@davidjslack netting as much money as the vast majority of conventional farmers isn’t a very high bar, unfortunately
Synthetic fertisiler is not the reason people avoid non organic food. Pesticides, herbicides and insecticides are.
That's correct but to a large degree, synthetic fertilizers destabilized soil biology and plant immunity making herbicides pesticides and everything else necessary.
Unfortunately we can't feed almost 9 billion people without those either.
@@diamondbackecological "synthetic fertilizers destabilized soil biology" I wonder to what degree when compared to tilling and mono cultures,
@@caparaorc How do you know it ?
@@lewisoscar synthetic fertilizers and tilling and mono cultures come joined in industrial agriculture, it's cultural ideology. Know that the key actor in plant process are the fungus : tilling, fertilizer and monoculture dammage the fungus and its mycorhyzes. Fertilizers are the worse of them.
Well, I would just like to add the fact that the green revolution happenned to save the US heavy industry (no demand for churning out tanks, lets churn out farming equipment instead), not the world hunger.
Here in Brazil we have agroforestry experiments that produce more food per hectare than conventional farming, while also improving the soil every planting cycle instead of depleting it.
How exactly does this improve the soil? I understand that you could get some erosion protection but active improvement seems like a push.
Also, conventional ag shouldn't deplete the soil over time if you have a proper fertility program, yes nutrients are used growing the crop but if you properly replace those nutrients you shouldn't be deteriorating on the whole.
@@Beyonder8335 Because the organic matter covering the soil degrades and decomposes, incorporating itself in the organic horizon of soil, also serves as an environment for the growth of fungi and bacteria that add to the biodiversity of soil and stimulates the process of making nutrients available to plants. It is well known that a well-managed agroforestry patch, even when eary in the ecologicla sucession and planting sensible crops like lettuce and other common market vegetables, over time needs less and less irrigation and external fertilization, because the technique makes the system as a whole more resilient.
@@THENEW6 oh I see it’s just an organic matter thing that makes sense then.
Not only that. When you aggregate trees and crops, together you get better root structure in the soil, gradually improving its ability to absorb and maintain water, have the benefit of wind barriers, housing for friendly animals (pollination/natural pest control), better mychorrhizal network (which leads to better nutrient availability in the soil), all of that. Monoculturing is pretty bad in general, even organic monoculturing.
@@THENEW6 I definitely see the erosion protection elements as well as the fungi but I’m not sure I agree with the rest of this. Hosting beneficials is a 2 way street, yes it can be beneficial but you can also host pests that way, so it’s not necessarily all good. I’d also question how much interference the trees would cause with the crops, just with how extensive their roots can be, and also how the shade would impact things. Depends a lot on spacing though with those though.
Monoculture really isn’t that bad, the reason it’s so widely used is because it generally works out to be the most efficient way to do things. Polycultures sound good in theory but often times they’re nearly impossible to actually execute. Planting/harvest logistics, limited options for weed control, etc. are all very difficult. Organic in any system is really no better than conventional, and particularly lacks in yield.
I would just like to point out, the Sri Lanka example isn’t quite right. Sri Lanka imports its fertilizer. It was having currency problems that massively pushed the exchange rates, so they were entirely unable to import fertilizer. It was in response to that issue that Sri Lanka decided to become all-organic. Not the other way around
Yeah ma boy even forgot that there a nutrient differnce in food if they were grown organic or fertiliezed .
Its good that He speaks about what mom and Pop teached him but its should be now the future.
I wonder why he is not speaking about soil starvation or how fertiliezed ground can get an imbalance .
I would guess meant in an good way but done in an bad way.
@@GardenofEdens He did this presentation in an expert, learned and erudite manner. It was highly informative, and essential viewing for city dwellers. I have a feeling that your take on it is from a place of self-interest, and prejudiced to an 'organic farming' point of view.
That not the point , the point is that with out fertilzer😢 they could not produce enough food , I am a gamer of over 60 years .
@@GardenofEdensevery single crop you can think of would be priced at least 4 times because it simply isn't possible to get the same productivity as using fertilizers. Get a 100 acre plot, go all organic and then come here and talk.
@@nomnommonsterr 1.9 million acres under RegenAg in US at end of 2023, this is double the 2022 figure.
Look at the food on the shelf, look at obesity rates, looks at health stats.
This is the nutrient provision said are responsible for. It is an utter failure.
Yes, the grains have been modified so that they grow evenly and resist herbicides and pesticides. But, they neglected the main reason for growing food, nutrition.
Correlation vs causation. There's a million variables that could be affecting our health outside of non organic farming.
You don't really address the problem of biodiversity, soil washout and focus your rebuttal only on organic agriculture, and a very specific kind of organic. Organic is not the answer either. We need diversified, regenerative, permaculture inspired and smaller farms. The fact you need tractors for everything is a problem
He is an industry shill. He wants you to continue eating pesticides and forever chemicals.
Too much thinking for this guy.
Exactly!
Try yourself produce some food with your ideals. That regenerative permaculture stuff its fake, try cultivate tomato, cucumber, eggplant or pepper, it will be full of caterpillars without nutrients and chemicals, this is why almost no one eats those vegetables 150 years ago.
@@bennycarter5249he’s too busy doing it
Artificial fertilizers and tillage are commonly used in agriculture, but their widespread use is not a definitive argument for their necessity. Historically, 97% of physicians practiced bloodletting, a method now obsolete:) . Similarly, reliance on artificial fertilizers is being challenged by advances in soil science. The Green Revolution was best what we could do, but recent understanding of plant-soil-microbe interactions shows that regenerative agriculture can match or surpass traditional (degenerative farming) yields. This method enhances soil health, sequesters carbon, and produces nutrient-rich food, presenting a sustainable alternative to conventional practices.
It's not all about NPK.
Synthetics don't replace other depleted minerals.
A soil test can point out not only the level of NPK needed but micronutrients as well.Conservation and/or no-till help facilitate an increase in soil organic matter as well since it is not 'turned' under,which accelerates the decomp of plant material left after harvest.
Yes, they absolutely do. Magnesium is still Magnesium no matter how you get it.
@@stoamnyfarms
It's common knowledge, to some, that commercial farming with synthetics produces food that is pretty much void of nutrients.
@@brianmurphy8790 100% wrong. Commercial variations are made to grow fast and that is a trade off. It's not the fertilizer. Basic chemicals are the same no matter what. Stop being a sheep.
@@brianmurphy8790 Middle school science class kid. Two of the same chemicals from different sources are still the same chemicals. It is scientifically impossible to tell the difference between organic and synthetic fertilizers in their basic state. And you can get any mineral in synthetic fertilizer. Just because NPK is the only thing most people talk about that doesn't mean that's the only thing available.
This video is symptomatic of where the sort of agriculture vs ecology divide we currently have goes completley wrong. You're misunderstanding a ton of stuff here and therefore completley missing the point that others make. Especially when you're talking about the environmetal problems.
You talk about the CO2 intensity, but that's just half the problem. The other half is that the nitrogen being spread goes into our natural parts of the country as well. Via runoff and via wind. The problem there is that the species living there, generally a specialized to low nitrogen environments and go -at least locally- extinct where these nitrogen amounts go into nature. That's not some wishy-washy eco stuff we don't have to care about. 2 thirds of the food items in our supermarkets rely on pollinators to even exist. If we kill the areas that support our pollinators, we kill our food supply as well. The nitrogen in the water also majorly messes with the systems there. You touched a bit on this, but not to the extent it's worth. Eutrophication isn't just something that affects our bigger rivers, where it often happens due to companies etc., as you said. It's a huge problem close to the sources in the small streams. And that's due to agricultural runoff. And as said before it also hits our terestrial systems via wind. This shit is an overlooked problem and also the reson why your conclusion about how organic farming should be used is (partially) wrong. It's a shit situation, but we're currently forced to fight on multiple fronts. Farming practices must care about ecology and climate and food security. That's a threeway thing, not two.
And the problem with ecology isn't the use of nitrogen in general, it's how excessively it's used and when. And the economical incentives, which, contrary to your statement, don't work in favour of the problem here! The problem here in large parts isn't inorganic nitrogen prills. It's organic nitrogen, because it has different cost incentives.
Because machines and workhours are more expensive than nitrogen in that case. The general problem isn't the nitrogen in the field where it is applied. It's a problem everywhere else, So we don't want to get it there. How do we do that?
One example is for liquid manure to be spread close to the ground, instead of being sprayed high in the air - less wind-spread nitrogen - But those spreaders, which you also touched on very quickly cost more than the old ones and are more time-intensive to operate, while liquid manure is often there in abundance. The same thing is true for other methods and for other organic fertilizer types.
In my area in southern Germany, there's loads of cattle farming for example, we have too much manure. But disposal of manure is expensive. So what do farmers do? They spread more on the fields than is sensible. Sometimes even so much, that yield decreases again. But that decrease in yield is financially better, than disposing of surplus manure.
Especially in spring when the snow melts and the manure tanks are filled to the brim, they often spread it too early, meaning rain washes it into rivers. Why is that done? Because the tank was full. That simple.
Looking at it from the other side: Why would there have to be controls for nitrogen amounts, if the economic incentives already worked against it. They exist to curb exactly those kinds of problems.
But the biggest thing here - as mentioned in the beginning - is that I think you completley miss the point being made. Farmers still tend to operate on a pattern of thinking where their job is more or less solely the production of food. And you do this here too. What not just "townspeople" know, but is also said by experts especially in ecology, but also by now by economists and people in the agricultural sciences is that that role of farmers MUST change. Farmers must fill two jobs in the future. Production of food and on the other hand being stewards of nature. And when those experts critizize farmers it's because that second part is not realized.
Another way to see this is spraying. You touched on it from the perspective of fuel efficiency. And you're correct there. But the other problem here is again: wind dispersal. Not just while spraying, but wind caused soil erosion blowing contaminated soil into nature. And then the pesticides kill insects and pollinators in these few refuges they have left.
We need to finally get out of this us vs them mentality in this shit conversation. We NEED to realize that and start talking to each other again instead of being constantly annoyed at what we perceive as being said to us - instead of actually listening what is said.
Quick example of this: I 100% bet that people reading this here will instantly in their head go "But why are you blaming farmers". Without realizing that I didn't. Why would I blame workers for following financial incentives. It's their livelyhood. I blame the financial incentives and I blame the broken system.
Now the other way around: Let's not blame ecologists and nature protection NGOs for where politicians misplace those incentives.
As someone studying ecology, but coming from a farming background: The internal conversations of both, are mostly the same. What my farmer uncle complains about while sitting in the pub in the evening, is the same as the thing my professors complain about when we sit in the bar. And it's the same thing NGO activists complain about. Because essentially the NGOs take the ideas from the professors and then lobby politicians to implement them. And the politicians fuck it up and in the end noone is happy. The way to get through this is to fight that together, not alone.
I honestly think a silver bullet we could try is focusing on soil regeneration as part of the transition from conventional agriculture. If we can fix the soil we can fix the food system.
Well put.
Too big brained for this guy, he eats only wheat and corn syrup slop.
I'm doing my part!
ua-cam.com/video/84aR-WfOdn4/v-deo.html if farmers were paid to not use chemical fertiliser, I suspect they would be happy to!
I don’t eat organic food to avoid fertilizer. I eat organic food to avoid herbicides and pesticides.
I got bad news for you….
We use it on that to 😅
Pesticides are used on organic crops too lol
While I enjoy your content and your expertise, I have to point out that your argument is premised on a false dichotomy, a fallacy which, in my view, is representative of a failure to acknowledge the issues of land, value, and labour distribution that we have inherited from the industrial revolution in the global North and from colonization and neocolonization in the global South. Farmers in the North are now mostly landowners, business owners and jacks of all trades who have to juggle impossible constraints to pry their share of their work's value out of the hands of the corporations that sell them the tools and inputs they work with and buy the goods they produce. This puts them under unacceptable pressure and, as a result, unfortunately sometimes leads them to do unacceptable things such as exploiting their labourers and endangering them, others, and ecosystems. These awfully common outcomes are not a result of farmers being bad people, but of an unacceptable land-use system.
We can see this system being put in place in rural areas of the global South, where an area the size of Switzerland is being grabbed by corporations every year (Oxfam and Actionaid report on this, among others). What's interesting is what is being lost there : highly resilient small-scale subsistence farming that is sustainably providing local communities with healthy diets and dignified working and living conditions. While the methods used probably wouldn't allow these communities to actually feed large urban centers, it is interesting to note that they are making a far more intensive use of land than the monocultures that are replacing them and kicking them into exploitation for the few and unemployment for the others.
As land ownership concentrates, small towns and villages become empty and lifeless while vernacular culture and traditions are all but lost and farmers' lives are made increasingly difficult, and their farm workers' lives considerably worse yet. Failure to consider radical alternatives both asserts that this state of affairs is beyond questioning, and leads to the kind of deadlock you present in this video : "fertilizers are causing harm, but we need them to keep things going the way they already are - hopefully some scientist will solve this some day"... On the one hand, why would we ever want keep things the terrible way they are now, and on the other, while this hypothetical low-carbon fertilizer might go into production if there's a colossal financial incentive for a manufacturer, that's not really the way things have been headed up to this point !
So here's a thought : many city-dwellers are unemployed or in bullshit jobs and would actually move to the countryside if it allowed them to be part of lively communities and work a dignified, useful job. The resources necessary to keep them alive and not too unhappy are already being spent on wages for these jobs and unemployment benefits. So maybe we could organize society differently, we definitely have the means to do so. Maybe we could use land and labour differently, and maybe we should experiment with that, or push for universities and government agencies to be funded and encouraged to experiment with it. Here's a thought experiment you could get some content out of : if you had the same plot of land you're currently working on but could throw unlimited labour at it with an aim to optimize outcomes on all fronts, what would you do ?
We have always done farming in Uganda 🇺🇬 following organic principles for tens of thousands of years. You shd get some time and come here to educate yourself on how proper organic farming works.
oh, you don't say? (sarcasm) in the west, they justify their system of pillaging and poisoning the land because it supposedly feeds the world's poor...
Uganda's food insecurity levels remain classified as 'serious' by the 2023 Global Hunger Index.- UN food programe
The central appeal, that 3 billion people wouldn't be alive today without artificial nitrogen fertilizer, seems to beg a lot of questions.
I have gone country by country in Europe and found that the populations before the Haber-Bosch process was introduced on any scale and now - and they are very similar. There has been no population boom in Europe thanks to chemical fertilizers. Italy sustained a population of 45 million with no chemical fertilizers, Germany 70 million, the UK 50 million. Clearly chemical fertilizers have not doubled these populations. Saying Organic Farming worked "in the Middle Ages" is bad faith arguing. It worked REALLY recently. Within living memory.
The only argument for 3 billion people being alive because of chemical fertilizers seems to be most African and some Asian countries that do not produce much food themselves, but have it shipped in. So, if you really think about it the argument for chemical fertilizers is that it allows non-farming countries to eat and expand wildly past their historical population levels. But Europe's population boom in the 1800's and early 1900's happened before Haber-Bosch.
So in response to the thumbnail "The reason you can exist," as someone of European extraction I can say I would almost certainly exist without chemical fertilizers. They seem to have had no effect whatsoever on my country's population.
Excellent post
The alternative to “unconstrained population growth” is population control by malnutrition and famine, so this is as good an argument as any. Also it’s true that the Haber-Bosch process came at the tail end of Europes population boom, but earlier improvements were only made possible by the other hallmarks of modern farming like synthetic fertilizers and agricultural equipment.
So you are saying there possibly would be a global famine, just not in europe, so oh well.
Do we even really want a large population dependent on oil lol? When oil runs out having billions of people dependent on oil seems pretty.... Bad?
When oil runs out just have billions of people die I guess.
what is an example of a "non farming" country?
If you have your head stuck in giant monocrops then you need synthetic fertilizers yes. But i'm running an organic farm and i focus on low inputs not high yield per m². Wich is your typical's farmers problem. Blindsided by the desires to squeeze more out of every m².
This comment above nails the misconception.
Monoculture annuals to scale up with standardization need to be chemical and not biological which means nitrogen fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide and standard machinery to harvest too.
High Input (energy use and input of chemicals) to increase yearly yields (along with GM-Plants).
Year on year however that's unsustainable and also negative for biology/ecology and we're already seeing human health.
As you say shift to lower total yields but higher diversity using perennial permaculture with mixed use of plants and animals also if mixing mono-crop productions then add grazing/animal manure and fallow/nitrogen fixers.
In the video he confuses the need for high input agriculture (fertilizer) for high density unproductive populations... ie industrial agriculture is needed for such imbalance.
The problem as ever is High Population for Small Land Area in the UK thanks to mass migration and over-development vs resources eg UK imports a significant amount of it's food.
Producing far less food per acre isn't much good
@@TransportSupremoI mean... It is if it's sustainable. What's the point in more production if you can only maintain it for a really short period of time?
Lower production over thousands of years vs high production over 200 years? Idk.
@@hhjhj393I mean what you are saying is “sustainable” entails the eradication of over half of the human population. That’s an antihuman argument
@@hhjhj393 Not even 200 years at this rate, more like 50, look at the rate of desertification on Earth, we are in trouble
So, this is far too complex a subject for most people to get in a few videos. Older forms of farming always had a way of adding to the soil, but they also did field rotations, grew different things in different fields, and shared fields. Each household had a small portion to just them and was responsible for tending a larger section with the rest of the households as both a village/town share and a tax to both church and to whoever 'protected' that region. That will not work with cities though. Which is where the more modern technologies have to come into play just due to scale.
The thing is, if you want healthy food than older style community gardens or private gardens are the way to go. Where you can emulate or even replicate all those older methods. Look into the "victory" gardens during and after WWII for examples of this. What is more you can blend the two where suited without the toxic effects a modern farm generates. That applies to our meat industry too.
There is a third triangle here as well, the more corporate farming becomes, the fewer household farmers we have, not only do we get less crop rotation generating more direct environmental problems (repeated over fertilization to replant same crop year after year), but we get fewer locations where the food is "processed" for distribution to the population. This is not only higher risk of spreading illness through the food chain, but it creates a weakness that could be exploited for food availability and variety. Household farms that are commercially viable are actually a security issue for the nation and we need them back.
This is dangerous thinking. He wants you to eat only from mega-supermarkets with food grown on massive monoculture farms. Remeber, it's the only way we can feed the world!
Food from urban agriculture has a carbon footprint 6 times larger than conventional produce.
@@lksf9820 I have heard that, I have yet to find a single study to prove it. Only it being claimed by those who have a vested interest in keeping the current system going regardless of its health impacts on the consumers.
I have looked. Not a single study I can find that has been independently run backs those claims up. Most show it has a lower impact when done correctly and a slightly larger impact the way the average person with a few plants in the back yard does it.
Result is net even.
Thanks for the great comment... I'd be curious if there are any places you'd recommend for learning about older types of farming and the history of farming like you describe?
Amen! I had this idea for quite some time - if you want to have affordable pesticide free food then you need to grow it yourself. I just recently got my allotment and I'm preparing it for the first season, trying the "organic" ways. Btw I think that the social root of this problem is that "city folks" like myself are too disconnected from the food production. I think it woul work well if we could somehow cut some of our office jobs working hours and dedicate let's say one day per week to actually get our hands dirty. This could also help some of the farmers especially with labour intensive jobs (weeding instead of herbicides). But this sounds like a utopia. Anyhow I think that the farmers frustration lays on the fact that everyone is telling them what to do but there is no one to actually help. This must be frustrating. Looking at the times of WWII there was a whole social movement around farming and despite of the reason the outcome was pretty great for everyone.
the problem with being NPK focused means you are lacking trace minerals, herbicides causes cancers, pesticides cause neurological issues, antifungal/antimicrobe kills off the good forms along with the bad and you get dead soil...I agree that organic only methods won't work with just 15% of land being used to feed the city dwellers. So that just means that the city dwellers will have to go become farmers and get their hands dirty. I'm from the Midwest in the US which is the breadbasket. My state is larger then the UK. Average farm is 370 acres, 51% of the state is in farmland 26 million acres. Nitrogen has a role to play but the factory farm is producing empty slop of calories and needs to change
And how do you share the agricultural land when millions of urbanites come to the countryside to find some land? Then you'll get consolidation of landlords renting farmland, followed by the institution of basically a new feudal age
@@cameronmclennan942 you don't share land you put more land into ag...I don't know much about Europe but the US has a lot of acres that can be Ag that are not being used. Instead of HR and middle management useless jobs more people could be farming. Right now we have the ideal of raising the cheapest food with the bare minimal labor and it shows. Instead of the one mega 1500 acre farm you could have the 5 300 acre farms with 5 different families with less need to use heavy machinery as you have 5 time the number of man hours instead of one man forced to rush to get the 1500 done...the draw back is food will raise in price
@@cameronmclennan942 ...interestingly, higher labor input per acre means increased yields per acre (well studied). So with more people on the land, we can actually produce more per acre - more work equals more food more or less. Moving people from useless work (30% of people say their own job is useless) to farming would increase food production before adding any land into production. It is not fixed - low-labor, high-tech farms produce less food per acre (although save labor costs, but by leaning on fossil fuels).
I am an organic farmer myself. It might surprise you though that I agree with you, at least to some point.
Where I farm, intensive farming is not possible. The terrain is to steep, ground too shallow. Were I to disturb it the first summer storm (and there are many, more with each coming year) would flush away my fields. In such conditions I think organic farming makes sense. The sheep (yep, I too have sheep) graze the grass and I cut hay in the meadows that are not too steep. Putting additional fertilizers into such ground would inevitably lead to runoff and be just wasted. The land can support as much as it can and thee is little I can do to improve it. That is why I went organic.
But the idea that everything should go organic is absurd. I think people even now fail to understand how much unpaid and underpaid work, how much lost time and capital goes into food that they think is still too expensive. And god forbid something isn't available all year around. Not only do I oppose the idea of organic everywhere.
I think even with current practices, food prices should at least double. At least then we would think before we buy (and then often throw away). I am daily amazed by people who are willing to put 50k under their ass (car), but find every reason to skimp on what goes into their ass (food).
Keep up the good work! I enjoy your videos a lot!
Firat good living soil is a carbon sink. Second the micro organisms in soil science knows about are less than 1% so soil science knows very little. Third artificial fertilizer herbicide n pesticide etc kills soil life causing soil degradation that'll eventually cause less arable land. This will cause food shortage and higher prices leaving more people hungry. Good soil same as other good things take time. Do some more research on soil health and also on impact of agrochemicals on health. Organic farming is not easy but putting aside corporate profits, it's doable.
"The Rodale Institute has been running side-by-side field studies for the last 30 years, comparing organic and conventional agriculture. Results show that after a 1 to 2 year transition period, when yields tend to decline, there is no difference between conventional and regenerative farming in terms of yields. In stressful conditions, particularly during droughts, the regenerative fields perform better because they are more resilient - the soil can absorb more water because it contains more biomass. And certainly farmers we work with say the yields are the same, while their input costs go down."
- Philip Fernandez, Agriculture Project Manager at EIT Food
I've seen that study and it's very flawed and misleading. They frame it as though the thing creating the higher/more stable yields is the regen/organic practices, however when you actually read the article they talk about how soil organic matter is what allows the higher water infiltration. However that's not exclusive to these practices at all. You can maintain/build organic matter levels perfectly well in a conventional system, so this doesn't really prove anything.
i agree as farmer I know what you mean , we will all be going hungery with out fertliser , some of these mad schemes , ie SFI , and wish people understood the cost of growing a crop , its much more than what you pay in the supermarket , You are speaking so much sense here ,
so if fertilizer caused the population explosion we would have been better off without it, our soils would be healthier long term (especially without herbicides, fungecides, pesticides) the humans would be healthier and thinner (with out the excess bread / carbs ) wildlife would be more abundant and we wouldn't have a problem with anthopogenic climate change.
I think that you will find that it was mainly the invention of antibiotics that caused the population explosion, because people didn't die of common bacterial infections, also in the UK when the NHS was founded after WW2 many elderly people stopped committing suicide, they would kill themselves rather than be a burden on their families before social health care was implemented.
No, that's an Ideal fake world.
Yeah. Higher human population and consumption isn't a good thing IMO.
I'd love to hear this argument presented to folks like Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin, John Kempf, Ray Archuletta, Alan Savory, Richard Perkins, Geoff Lawton, Mark Sheapard....
If you think only wealthy people should eat, go with those guys
@@aaronswanson6719 schizoid
As a farmer myself, I agree. I can say, however, that we must use the adequate fertillizer for the soil type and must be places as close to the plant as possible for more efficient uptake.
Thank you for being wrong and driving me to research, reinforcing my beliefs.
Don’t get lost in the information echo chamber
As a chemist, this is one of my favourite topics. Habber was a fascinating character. The nitrogen cycle is also critical to maintain my planted fish tank; not only to maintain the plants, but the nitrite can very rapidly kill all the fish (blocks the hemoglobin, same as carbon monoxide).
As a basic slag from the steelworks, I appreciate this video finally giving me the recognition I deserve.
Those who practice soil regeneration techniques do not have to replace what was taken from the soil because their soil is alive, not dead as with tilled soil. The microbial community is in symbiosis with the plants' roots. The plant feeds the microbes, and the microbes convert elements into forms the plant can absorb. Forests don't need to be fertilized because the soil is alive.
In order for plants to grow in dead soil, which is often referred to as dirt, you have to pour chemicals on the ground. This type os agriculture is based on a non renewable resource, which is getting more and more difficult to get. Natural gas is what is used to make most commercial fertilizer. There will be shortages of this within the next decade. Pouring expensive chemicals on the ground is not the only way to grow food. People are growing food on a large scale using no chemical inputs, and producing more food per acre than those farms practicing chemiculture. Rege nerative Ag is the type of ag these innovative farmers are using.
This video may have been backed by the big ag industry, so beware of bias that helps them.
Firstly I support farmers and farming, just because I am critical doesn't mean I am against farmers, just the methods employed. Nitrogen fertiliser is made from fossil fuel and we need to stop extracting fossil fuels so where does that leave farming? Also the problem isn't only fertiliser but the handmaidens insecticides and fungicides. Have you seen One Hundred Beating Hearts?
Quite a topic to take on in less than half an hour. I agree and disagree with the title because of the narrow definition of organic farming. I agree monoculture farming needs inputs to function but I've seen farmers around the world saddled with debt to grow cash crops that don't pay the bills. I feel like a distinction is needed between calorie crops and vegetables as it is a good metaphor for nitrogen fertilizer, you can survive on calories alone and look relatively healthy but you won't be whole if you just eat calories aka nitrogen. I enjoyed your video and appreciate the tie in of city vs country life and how they are not compatible though I laughed when you said you went "off topic" because it seemed like it was the main purpose of the video. If you read this comment I would like to hear if you have encountered mark Shepard's work in restoration agriculture. If you see that information and still think you need fertilizer to be a farmer then I would like to hear about it but he manages to grow wholesale crops that can feed a village with combination agroforestry farm. America is a different context but I'm curious what you make of it. It just seems only using one layer of the forest doesn't use the sun as efficiently but you are a true blue agronomist, I'm just a chemist lol. Good luck over there
A strong defense of commercial farming is great. The comments show a higher level of conversation than most videos. I love the food forest idea and want to know more about conventional agriculture too.
I'm curious how much fertiliser we could save, If we eliminate food waste.
Here is why organic farming is a very good idea. First, there is a section of the population committed to it - producers ( farmers) and consumers. It may not be for you or the majority ( which includes me) but farming should be able to meet everyone’s needs. Second, it is always important to have a diversity of practice just as we store varieties of plants and animals we do not use or are not commercial. It is in the nature of any practice that it evolves and we cannot anticipate future needs. Third it provides a valuable critique of accepted practice and forces us to question what we do. In a democratic society we debate, reflect and adapt. It is one thing to say it is unrealistic to have wholly organic farming but it should not blind us to the important role advocates of organic farming play in our society.
Best video yet on this channel. Well argued. And the 'Oxford' joke was noted/recognised. Nice one.
Organic can work with more small scale farmers ,expwxting the big boys to go organic is madness
Farmers are getting a hard time. Good to hear from someone who's on their side
In the US, about half of the corn is used for ethanol, not food. Very high yields are not needed to feed the world if crops are eaten and not used for fuel.
Farmer from canada here who is looking to move towards organic. Nitrogen is probably the easiest thing for me to get in terms of nutrients. Clover can generate more nitrogen than the subsequent crop can take up even at the top end yields. My two holdups are that i need to get into the ground earlier to grow the higher price crops and weed control in the absence of chemical sprays. In terms of nitrogen however I believe in conjunction with cattle i can make money growing my nitrogen fertilizer instead of the $40 dollars an acre in cost from buying it. Nutrient wise the hardest i would have is phosphorus, no nearby ocean with sea birds doing me a favour
Building a fungal rich soil structure might help make what phosphorus is in your soil more soluble for plant uptake
@@kylemullen1139 get yourself some sea salt and mix 500g to 5-10 gallons of Irrigation water. It has almost all nutrients even the trace ones. Everything washes int the oceans
@@Chase_Telemetricuntil the P isn’t adequately in your soil anymore and your production collapses to unprofitable levels
The first step to return to organic agriculture is restore the billion or so horses used for transport which created the mountains of manure used to fertilize the fields, and the collection of human manure in the cities and ship it to be spread on fields, as was done historically in most of the world (including Britain). Never mind the disease issues...
Any large herbivore, in the UK under a slowing down AMOC is the inability to grow crops because of increased drought so more animals are going to needed or the soil will suffer.
Don't forget all the farmland needed to produce the grain(oats usually) and forage to feed the horses.
The use of human manure is sketchy at best considering the heavy metals contained in many muninciple waste treatment plants!!
People associate “organic” farming as opposed to using pesticides rather than fertilizers most of the time
This fellow is getting (rightly) battered in the comments. Sometimes you swing and its a hit, other times you miss wildly.
I suggest reading Montgomery's "Growing a revolution" this isn't about single solutions for every farming situation. Location specific solutions, with moderated synthetic inputs. The bog standard modus operandi of most British farmers is unnecessarily high input. Less passes with the Deere can only be a good thing for your land and your pocket.
I farm, grew up dairy farming. Then beef for ten years. Now I currently have no cattle, Just 5 draft horses I work. My diet is 95% animal based. I do not eat vegetables, and few grains as I am celiac. Mostly I eat meat, dairy, eggs, never drink juice, just milk water, coffee tea. If we stop feeding people vegetables and grains, replacing it with a low carb high fat diet we could plant 80% of current arable cropland into sod, for hay and pasture, the tremendous increase in ruminants, primarily cattle, would reduce the need for commercial fertiliser considerably. Such a diet would leave people much healthier also. We were not designed to process roughage like a cow.
I never heard that solution before, definitely food for thought, no pun. Thanks
I'm an environmental student planning on becoming an agricultural consultant. Thank you for this reality check.
Right, you are a man who puts serious effort into your content and points so I will address you as such.
Firstly, yes, organic is a terrible category, its a meme, it doesnt refer to anything and most organic farms are modern style farms that just avoid/minimise insecticide and fertiliser use,
Your actual conversation is with the deep ecologists and perma culture farming. I am not an expert in their work or theory but i know enough about them to address many of your points.
1. "We would produce 50% less food and or require far far more land to support the same food production".
There is a problem here, it treats all food production as the same. The elephant in the room on this talking point, is meat agriculture. Thanks to biology which you certainly know already, i.e trophic chain, 90% of calories are lost every time something is eaten.
That "we would produce 50% less " statistic does not address that we massively over produce for meat, about, roughly 80% of crop agriculture is done to feed animals, not humans.
To give you some context FE, if industrial beef agriculture, on its own, was eliminated, it would free up te land mass of south america, (single countries there often being the same size as the entirety of Europe), i.e in scale, just beef. How much do you think industrial fertiliser would be vital then, and I say industrial, does not matter if its cows shitting it out or if it was manufacturered in a plant, perma culture agrees in that there isnt a real distinction here unlike "organic".
But yeh, a huge percentage of food production right now, is because of dietary preferences, not because its necessary. Cows in particular are quite literally a resouce black hole, and are also an atrocity on the ecological health topic, the haber process is responsible for 1.7% of emissions? Industrial animal agriculture is responsible for an order of magnitude more then that, especially cows, like, cows are a league of their own.
2. ""we have the connection to nature",
you do not, modern farming is an industrial system with similar ecological damage to a heavy industrial plant and chemical plant, not to mention farming ideology for the last, 200-300 years has been about conquering and mastering nature. A huge percentage of the natural fauna of the UK is extinct, and most of the ecosystem is in horrible shape, ireland is far far worse where its literally an ecological desert. The natural biosphere of south and central britain, and ireland, is temperate rain forest, not what we currently have, britain cut down these forests for its navy and energy needs a few centuries ago etc. What you call nature is a broken biosphere that is only a few feet away from total collapse etc.
And, I don't blame farmers for this by the way, either for their current circumstances or what they do with food, this is not something we can just beat up farmers with. Its capitalism, capitalism forces the farmer into alot of these terrible practices, capitalism is why we have as much carbon in the air for the entirety of transport infrastructure on the planet as because of industrial meat agriculture. But most of the fertiliser and insecticide use and land use for farming is also because of industrial meat agriculture. Most of us are eating far more meat then would fulfill dietary or nutritional needs, notwithstanding that certain crops produce sufficient protein to support society.
The tautology of “they won’t do it because it doesn’t work” ignores that farmers are generally fearful and disdainful of new ideas.
Farmers are naturally conservative and don't like gambling on new methods invented in an ivory tower. Their business model is a huge gamble where profit and loss depends on weather and global markets. Most of those who espouse cuddly organics have no real world farming experience.
@@johnharrison1743 and when their methods are failing, they still don’t change. They just wonder why someone isn’t saving them from their own mistakes.
We definitely tend to be skeptical till something is proven, but we certainly change when methods are failing or when something is proven effective. If what you're claiming is the case then why has farming changed so astronomically over the past 100 years.
@@Beyonder8335 two things. 1) Salespeople 2) Government programs
@@michaelmay6859 Salesman aren't gonna make sales if the product hasn't been proved effective. Why are you so dead set that farmers are too stupid to adapt despite the abundant evidence of the contrary?
this is a great vid from a surprisingly small channel
keep it up, your content's great! :3
It's not great if he completely disregards more sustainable and effective forms of agriculture that LITERALLY produces more food per acre than traditional farms. The issue is that it requires more labor, and with a population the size we have you'd think that wouldn't be an issue.
Just wanted to say I appreciate all the comments here constructively rebutting this video.
I recommend Glenn Davis Stone's book: The Agricultural Dilemma: How not to feed the world. It's basically about the tensions between large-scale farmers and smallholders. I also recommend Jan Douwe vd Ploeg's book New Peasantries.
I agree 100% with this video. Only good thing about organic Ag is it allows small farm owners to run a profitable business.
Regenerative farming is the way forward, reducing artificial fertiliser as much as possible. Keeping the ground covered and using cover crops to fix nitrogen. Also bringing back animal manure to cereal crop fields.
I agree with you, and thanks for explaining organic farming on scale. As a home grower I find that organic fertilisers need to be buried at lest 1 month before the plants go in the ground, it can be a lot of work and just not practical on scale. My Grandfather who was a farmer said that on average British soil is not nearly as good as the USA, so having the Yanks tell us how to farm is crazy.
I think its important to remember that 80 percent of corn and soybeans in the us are used for animal feed. Synthetic nitrogen is necessary for a western diet where we eat meat 3 meals a day. This is known to be unhealthy and this level of crop production also has large ecological impacts, both of which could be fixed by diets with less meat! Big ag likes to scare us by saying current production is necessary for our survival in an attempt to scare us, but in actuality farming this way simply enables us to kill ourselves with subsidized low quality meat and corn syrup.
No need to rethink the way you and your diet interact with nature, Fritz Haber solved everything 100 years ago!!!
I agree Americans produce too much corn, however most Americans don’t get enough protein and animal proteins are among the healthiest, especially grass fed. So I disagree that Americans should to eat less meat.
There is a strange protein fixation and the amount needed for an individual is really blown completely out of proportion by many average Joe's who aren't nutritionists. In the UK people are generally eating too much protein!
This is a quote from the British Heart Foundation website.
"In the UK, we eat more protein than is recommended. This isn’t automatically a problem, but it depends where your protein is coming from. Meat-heavy diets have been linked to increased risks of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers and may also shorten your life."
I'm sure this is the case in many other countries too, probably more so in the US.
@@MoonRayFish this is not so here in the states, Americans, mainly animal rights activists, and elites like to try say study’s show that we’re supposed to eat .36 grams of protein per pound of body weight, even the department of health says this, but in reality the study they’re referring too says that the .36 number is the bare minimum to not become deficient and cause bone loss and other complications. Most nutritionists day to shoot for 1 gram per pound of body weight, and they say most Americans don’t get enough protein. Also, what you said about meat heavy diets being linked to heart diseases and diabetes is completely false, animal proteins are some of the healthiest, and they’re also the easiest and most efficient for humans to digest.
What I wrote above is a quote from The British Heart Foundation, informed by thorough peer reviewed research, doctors and nutritionists, all working to solve heart problems.
So unless you are a heart doctor, you really can't argue with that quote.
What about using both organic and chemical so you improve the soil culture and feed the plants? Plus, adding organic matter will be slow release.
Thank you for including Kristian Birkeland in the history of nitrogen fertilizers. He was mostly a pioneer in astrophysics, and did not in his day, or yet, receive adequate acknowledgement for his discoveries.
This is absolutely correct. A lot of farmers have turned to composting and manure due to the fertiliser prices, and it's resulted in lower yields for many of them already.
Building soil biology takes more than a season.
2-3 rotations are required to rebuild 40years of trashing the soil with chemicals
Good video, however on Sri Lanka that excuse that the leader did was in response to their currency reserves dwindling already due to fertilizer import costs. He tried to do it as a stop loss but it tanked the economy like someone deciding that they can go without an oil change but then their engine grenades.
interesting points. I'm thinking out loud here...what if governments encouraged citizens to grow their own food and offered tax breaks for those who did? what if there was an understanding that there would be a decline in production for a few years until things began moving in an upward direction? what if people were encouraged to embrace agricultural jobs with subsidies? I am being genuine in asking this...
Firstly, how will everyone grow their own when most people don't have sufficient land to do it?
2. How will they find the time when they presumably already have full time jobs? Farming is a full time job
3. People growing the own, often does not produce enough food and has worse environmental outcomes.
I've never heard anyone say they're against fertilizers. Although I do think they're responsible for the toxic algae blooms that happen. But nevertheless people are concerned about the herbicides and pesticides, not the fertilizers.
Its funny how the entire community is fact checking you. Maybe reflect back on your thoughts and assumptions thar you are wrong? You describe how naturally nitrogen is fixed via bacteria and literally certain plants are able to achieve that by hosting bacteria in nodes. Microbiology health is most important in the soil. Which artificial fertilizers kill. Sure the plants cant tell the difference till the fungus, microbes, abd insects in the soil die which causes further nutruent deficiency, then disease and malnourishment which requires more chemicals and toxins
Yeah this guy is a BOZO
All that is preventable with proper soil analysis. something farmers weren't doing even 20 years ago as much as today since the low costs of artificial fertilizers. Regenerative farming is not organic farming. It still benefits from artificial fertilizers but requires precise amounts.
@@santinasar King BOZO!
Yes well said
Completely compromising healthy soil and then relying on junk to spray to reduce pests is a false economy
We are what we eat and it is showing up with immune disorders worldwide
I have a video request here, which I think would be fun. I like reading time travelling novels, where many protagonists choose to mess around with agriculture, as way to get ahead in whatever past time period they are sent to. Could you do a video in such a topic. Lets's say you woke up one day as a landlord in medieval England. How would you use your modern knowledge to organize the farming process in that period.
Umm OK,,, 😄 the original style of farming that sustained and grew the entire WORLD'S population to 8 BILLION people, suddenly doesn't work.
But GMO seeds that wont grow a new crop, that require herbicides, and artificially "replentishing" the soil (without iodine) is "sustainable".
Thats why after 40+ years of GMO farming, over 50% of the world's population is iodine deficient... and struggling nations depend on corporations for new seed, removing their food-freedom and self-sustainability.
More BIG AG propaganda here folks. "All hail Lord Monsanto".
"Control the food, control the people" - Henry "Satan himself" Kissenger
Thats what GMO & synthetic farming is about folks. CONTROL.... of YOU and your family.
Yes it is strange that for the last 60 years equipment and chemical companies have made 90% of the wealth from agriculture while farmers make less than 10%
Infertile GMO seeds don't exist, and they don't require herbicide. Herbicide is a tool to kill the weeds, GMO technology just allows you to use different herbicide chemistry.
@@Beyonder8335 GMO seed is fertile once only. It cannot reproduce .
Herbicides are mineral chelates
Chelated nutrients can be insoluble to plants
GMO seeds are modified to grow without those minerals chelated .
Weeds don't get them either and suffer
Results= you don't get them either
And people suffer....
@@Chase_Telemetric that’s just straight up false. GMO seeds are perfectly capable of reproducing, such “terminator seeds” do not exist. If this is true, why is there volunteer corn on my farm? We plant GM corn and the losses from the combine have no trouble sprouting the next year. If what you’re saying was true then this wouldn’t be an issue.
I’m not sure where you got this information about herbicides, but honestly I’m not even sure how to debunk it because it’s so nonsensical. I mean for one, not all herbicides are mineral chelates, and the ones that are really aren’t going to tie up nutrients in a significant capacity. They haven’t somehow modified GM crops to just… not need nutrients. That’s ridiculous, the reason Gm crops aren’t harmed by herbicides is because they’re modified to be able to break down the herbicide. Nothing to do with nutrient availability.
Organic agriculture (no matter how enlightened the techniques used) can't support as many people as industrial agriculture and that's actually a marvelous thing. Smaller and leaner populations equal a better quality of life across the board. In an ideal world non-organic inputs into the process would only be employed in case of an emergency as a fireman solution.
Interesting video with some good points. Fertilizers can be useful sure. I think most people have bigger concerns with pesticides/herbicides/fungicides than chemical fertilizer.
Most people who support organic farming would also accept that overpopulation is a problem as well so I don’t know if using that is a useful rebuttal. Both family planning and changing agricultural techniques can be components of achieving sustainability.
It's not even overpopulation inherently being the problem, it's that so much of the population (especially city people) are a burden on the food system. They don't produce anything of their own, and they are the majority. If the population was further spread out into rural areas, and more people produced a percentage of their own food this would make a significant impact.
Obese people may be more of a burden on resources than people experiencing a famine.
If there's a market for it, then it's a viable business, and lots of people do want to buy organic food, so it's a pretty good idea for those who can sell to meet that demand. As for the bulk of your argument: firstly, there were a lot of things that allowed a massive growth in population in the last few hundred years, including a lot of other innovations in agriculture, so you might be overplaying the impact of nitrogen fertilisers there. As for whether or not we could and should have more sustainable agriculture, and how much loss of yield per acre we get without synthesised agricultural chemicals: there are a lot of conflicting data, and it's going to be interesting to see how things pan out in this arena as more data continue to come in. It will ultimately be a question of how much increase in farmland we will tolerate in order to reduce which wider environmental imacts and, either way, how farmers can be paid enough considering how valuable they and their work are.
Thanks you for this very interesting video, I'd like to add that fossil fuel made fertilisers and pesticides and diesel will runout one day as a finite resource (even if we don't stop them for climate change) humanity will by thermodynamic necessity have to reduce its population size because of lower agricultural yields and return to an organic farming with - as you point out - a vastly reduced population. It could get ugly on the degrowth side of things unless there's some awakening. I made a documentary about this called Ecosophia on my YT.
BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR SEAS OF MONOCULTURE CORN AND WHEAT!? WHO WILL EAT ALL OUR HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP AND STARCHES!?
I think your big misconception is that these products are made directly FROM fossil fuels. It's a part of the production process but mostly for heat and power. The exception would be natural gas and nitrogen fertilizer, however natural gas is methane and we can get renewable sources for that. So as the cost would increase for those finite resources, the production would naturally end up switching to other options.
You are right. But we can reduce the pollution caused by farming by reducing food waste and eating more plants than animals.
growing plants require more mechanical labor done with machineries that pollutes then the raising of animals
@@VerdeAramiu What??? Growing animals requires a dozen times more machines than growing plants. First, you need machines to grow and harvest animal feed, then you need machines and sorts of things to build (like slaughterhouses, buildings where those animals stay.... )... and so on and so on. What are you talking about?
@@DiamondKing-em7oc no my friend cattle and pig are easy, in some farms in brazil 1 people can take care of 5000 pigs alone, 1000t of food only made by one person in 3 month. Next to me on my state in Brazil, I know a farmer Who Dairy 100 cows alone, 1200 to 2000 litres every day of the month, he is realy rich. At noon his son help him
You should see the waste from organic farms!
I wonder if this video was paid for by Agrichem industry 🤔 i would rather we farmed with nature instead of trying to beat it at every turn.
I’ve worked on farms farming naturally and the waste from disease and pests is phenomenal…. Let alone growing wheat of a high enough quality for human or animal consumption
I was more or less with you until at 16:28 you said that "organic produce is not more nutritious."
This surprised me because we've known for decades now that the nutrient density in vegetables has decreased significantly since the early twentieth century. Theres a famous carrot study about this that I need to look up. The argument from pro-Organic agronomists is that intensive farming and the industrial application of NPK has sucked out the trace minerals from soil, while simultaneously killing the beneficial bacteria and fungi in soils which digest and fix them into bioavailable forms. It's easy to find elders who swore that food when they were young was much more flavorful.
It's frankly absurd to me to suggest that we could kill soil biology, rely solely on fertilizer mixes, and still produce food as healthy and delicious as we used to.
It starts much earlier. 4:31, when talking about 'plant nutrition being described in strictly chemical terms, there's no whimsey".
In what world is a whole community of species "whimsey"? Soil health is something so important that it already makes entrance into conventional farming. We can't just grow one symbiote while having killed the other and expect it to just work. Mycorrhiza completley break that "strict chemical" equation by being a system of incredibly multifactorial catalysts.
It's actually (edit: partially, not completely) true, he just didn't explain it at all. It's because of the breeds of fruits and vegetables we grow. A lot of them have been grown to have monstrous size, and this came at the cost of everything else. Imagine a human who did nothing but lift and grow all day, no reading, no culture, nothing, just lifting. You would have one huge muscle guy, but he wouldn't be able to take orders, talk to anybody, or function like a human. A similar thing has happened to our produce. They don't create any of the structures or undergo any of the processes that would lead to a more nutritious plant, they just grow really big and that's about it.
It's why personally I've been collecting older seed and plant varieties in my garden, and why I give them out for free to anyone who asks. I've had them tested at the local agricultural uni and despite me using the exact same methods and the exact same soil for both, the local and older varieties are much more nutritious despite being smaller.
It's just that when you're sitting at your stall and some old boomer comes along to buy some produce and he asks you why your tomatoes are so wrinkly and small and yellow, you can't really tell them it's because they have healthy anti-oxidants and taste better. They don't listen. And the people buying at supermarkets care even less; they'll leave anything that doesn't look perfect on the shelf.
So there's little money in it. No stores will buy it from you. Locals don't want it. It's objectively better for you and we try to sell them, per weight, same price as the modern varieties but they don't get sold.
(also edit: There's special fertilisers and gardening soil sold that include micronutrients that are useful for certain plants, so you can get those without organic farming. So yes, you can objectively introduce it all into the soil without using organic farming. We just don't because it's cheaper and nobody cares about health, only how the product looks and how cheap it is, as I described above.)
Food is shit because it has been bred for volume and visual appearance and easy logistical handling rather than taste and nutrition, not because of magic organic nitrogen fairies.
@@ratelslangen Nobody's saying it's fairies or anything mate, read what they're saying. They're not even talking about nitrogen, you've missed the entire point. They're talking about micronutrients which were historically added to the soil by either sediment or microbes or other organic means, inefficiently if in any way. We can now add those micronutrients via fertilisers AND as you said use breeds that extract them from the soil and add them to their fruit as well, it's just that we don't because of cheapness like I explained in an above reply.
Your attitude's literally the reason this stupid debate exists, just tell them kindly and explain everything openly. The truth doesn't require you being a jerk to be heard.
(edit: Not to mention that the video just threw that out as if people knew that and gave no explanation! Of course they have a right to demand an explanation.)
@@FarmerSlav I'd say there's still something missing in your part (even though it's a lot better than the pars in the video). It's not just micronutrients missing in the equation, it's also soil biome missing. Depending on how you work the soil, how much and which pesticides you use etc. Just because nutrients are in (or on) the soil, doesn't necessarily mean the plants can get to them. Mycorrizha and some bacteria make what is already there more available to the plants, requiring less stuff to be there in the first place. Which does change required fertilization amounts.
Eventually Exhaust the Soil. With about 9000 pounds of phosphorus per acre in the top 6 inches of most soils I don’t think we should be too concerned. Not to mention how many tons of gaseous nitrogen above every acre?
I think your vids are great, I'd like to recommend a topic. It doesn't sound like you're very much a proponent of regenerative agriculture, but I think it's worth a look. There's lots of info on UA-cam about it already, although I'd say its a very new science if not a new practice. I'd like to hear your take on it, especially if you have criticisms of it. I recommend John Kempf's talk at Groundswell that's on UA-cam or his blog for a starting place.
In my opinion regenerative ag is all about a pragmatic approach to maximising organic methods, but indirectly by focusing on soil and overall ecosystem health. Any movement will have different factions, but regen ag seems fundamentally aligned with how our food production must change and simultaneously feed us all.
I like that you point out that even though there's a lot about modern agriculture and our food system in general that we can help to improve, ignoring farmers contributions and vilifying the we people we pay to make our food is absolutely backwards thinking.
Thanks for your comment! We'll definitely get onto that in a few months when we've gotten through all the historical stuff
I'm kind of in the band of designed "doped" biochar fertilizers, where the fertilizer is bound into a biochar base. This would be slow release, bound nitrogen and other nutrients... Less runoff and carbon storage at the same time. Biochar based fertilizers if you want to google
It’s true that Sri Lanka had currency problems first. And it’s true that the farmers didn’t know how to do organic. And it’s also true that the government warped the market by subsidizing fertilizer imports. However, it’s still exceedingly likely that yields would have tanked regardless. Counterfactual statement, but I’ll make it anyway (Cum laude in History at Columbia University, ha ha). This reminds me of the old “Communism didn’t fail because it’s never been tried” argument. It’s patently obvious that organic, even with lots of preparation and even subsidies, can’t currently feed us. By all means improve the science behind it, but legislatures should educate themselves about the realities and not push farmers, who have enough problems as it is.
If fertilizer is bad for the environment its because of its negative effect on the microbiology. I think you can definitely feed the world without fertilizer, but not if we just stop cold turkey. Farms converting from conventional to organic/regenerative takes time, knowledge, and a mostly importantly a big paradigm shift.
A lot of organic fertilizer like manure and bone meal contains nitrogen that was pulled from the atmosphere by the Haber Bosch process if you trace it back lol
There is the certified organic zealotry and then there are a bunch of more ecological methodologies that still use some conventional methods and inputs that are called organic outside of the anglosphere (which includes India)
Also how to feed the world without synth N (suboptimal but doable, with planning, coordination and research reorganization): 1. price of a carbohydrates go up as production drops. 2. stop most grain inputs for feedlot beef as a global security issue 3. farmgate food waste due to low commodity prices drops, also food waste by consumers drops for staple foods 4.everyone starts cover cropping or intercropping with legumes where feasible (remember the price of N inputs went up) 5. Invest were there are economic (and not absolute agronomic) productivity gaps. Africa's low grain yields are not an inevitability. Also urbanization in Africa is anomalous bc it has occurred without sufficient labor in cities, some migration out of cities in a food crisis, 6. research on more efficient removal of contaminants or vice versa the nutrients from treated sewage 7. the economics of grain cropping vs rangeland changes over vast parts of Africa, the Americas, and northern Asia 8. increased agricultural land likely inevitable because people respond to price of grain 9. increase double cropping +cover crop in oceanic and subtropical areas 10. urban ag that includes potatoes and other calorie crops for added security. 11. reassess industrial food biproducts for human consumption (examples: date pit flour, more whey fortification) 12. realignment of research to new foci on arbuscular mychorrizal fungi and other microbes in near organic crop systems, transgenic N fixation, biostimulants, sustainable ocean farming for protein
Regarding Cuba, it is its urban noncalorie crop agriculture that is praised, a critical omission for lay supporters but easily determined by anyone curious about how agriculture works. It is a basketcase right now for broadacre production of anything right now. Half of the acreage out of production since the start of the special period.
I really like your channel, but your biases about certain topics as a farm kid from a particular palce and time are obvious to informed viewers.It is probably worth acknowledging without wringing your hands over them. Do you have another ag-aware mate at uni who doesnt agree with everything you say? That might be a good once-over for another perspective. The videos will probably age better that way. Very excited to see what comes next.
I disagree with the title but thats about as far as i disagree. I don’t have any issues with synthetic fertilizers when they are applied properly, they are extremely helpful especially when starting up new plots that you plan to transition to organic fertilizers later on. They speed up the process, but i don’t think that they are the be all end all of feeding the world. As others have said what we need is more people in the business of growing food, and we need more access for smaller farmers to the equipment seed and fertilizers that they need to grow food in an economically viable fashion. And on a smaller scale organic agriculture agroforestry and permaculture principles are very good for increasing yields, but it does take more work that is the key, so we need more farm workers and for farming to be more affordable and heavily promoted by governments. One of the issues that is keeping this from happening is the monopolization of seed and food product production by monopolistic giants like Monsanto, DuPont, cargill ect, that restrict seed use through strict patents and dangerous Geneticaly modified crops that require specific pesticides and herbicides to grow which is detrimental to soil health and the health of the ecosystem in general which after use holds the users in a sort of blackmail situation where they can no longer grow anything but what those companies provide. Whether we want to see it or not farmland has to be a part of the ecosystem of our planet otherwise it will collapse from the loss of natural cycles that the living biota of the earth regulate and create. Also i agree with you in terms of government actions being poorly educated and misguided, they want to change a system that has been going on for decades in months or a few years, its not going to happen without starving people, and for certain crops using tractors and synthetic fertilizers in todays age seems like the only way to produce enough of it effectively, and with this I generally mean grain and cereal crops. You will never be able to produce these crops in the quantities that are demanded without it, but everything else totally can be more diversified away from monoculture plantations and grown on smaller scale farms in a very economical way using more “organic” farming methods using the term organic loosely here.
Thanks, now I don't have to feel guilty for not buying organic carrots at the store.
Not only are there productive commercial veganic farms, it is the norm for natural environments to function with very little influence from animals. Animals have never been a primary means of returning fertility to the soil, they constitute less than 5% of natural biomass. Bacteria and fungi decomposing plant matter and minerals is the primary means by which soil is kept fertile. Vegan agriculture also requires about a tenth of the land that animal based agriculture does, so even if we had to take another tenth to use exclusively for green manure, such as alfalfa which fixes all of it's nitrogen, or green manure fertilized with composted municipal solids, we're still returning 80% of the land and maintaining the same productivity.
This channel gives so much info. Thank you so much
I think the farming community could really benefit from the bifurcation of the organic classification. A product being organic can mean very little but only because we are trying to fit so many things into that one label.
I concur that if a plant needs nitrogen, applying just nitrogen is logical. It seems to me that the organic certification or at least a variation of it is better served to show consumers what produce was grown in a farm with non toxic weeding methods as opposed to one that just dumps gallons of herbicide, for example. Pest management could probably be it's own category. Pesticide use has a value but we've also seen the devastation it causes when misused or overused.
If a farm can use compost/mulch to suppress the weeds and feed the soil, synthetic fertilizer to keep his plants healthy (when needed) and passively resistant to pests while attracting natural pest predators, that to me is the spirit of organic farming even if certifying bodies disagree. The tastiest produce tends to come easier for gardeners who treat their produce as food for nutrition as opposed to farmers who only see the produce as a commodity to be sold.
Of course, there needs to also be a legitimate conversation about lifting the burden of climate change off of farmers because that was complete horseshit from the start. Can you blame a farmer for seeing his produce as purely money when he is being squeezed left, right and center by every agency under the sun?
Given how much food is overproduced and wasted, perhaps producing in line with biological limits of our local area would both save the environment and make us respect the food we have more and throw away less? No one wants to go back in time, but if we can apply better methods and ration fertilizers to be less harmful, aren't we getting more for less?
Funny logic. But would it be worthwhile to kill the soil to sustain human growth? And would this be sustainable forever?
Your point relies on the idea that conventional ag "kills the soil", which it does not.
I loved the rant against the Bureaucracy.
As a consumer of organic products I mostly care of about glyphosate. Synthetic fertilizer doesn’t bother me much.
I agree with you on the futility of organic farming. However, some of your statements regarding runoff losses of nutrients mischaracterise the issue.
thank you for listing the sources
This was really informative and enlightening, thank you.
Food forests really work if I owned the land and only fed my ass and no one else. It also helps to have a trust fund or a regular job.
Ouch! Truth hurts
Nitrogen fixing bacteria were discovered only 27 years before the invention of the Haber-Bosch process in an Era characterized by anything but a unified system of science and economic planning. It is still not the norm to for example simply mulch with crop waste so that the sun's uv doesn't kill nitrogen fixing and nitrifying bacteria in the top layer of soil. That crop waste is fed to animals, with it's carbon going to feed them and pollute for very marginal production rather feeding the bacteria and fungi in the soil
03:50 Vaclav Smil - there's a man who deserves to be more widely known...
Well about offset by photosynthesis, Most of the biomass produced on agricultural land decomposes in a year, so you can't really count it as offset I suppose..
Indeed, artificial fertilizers are the reason about half the people on earth are alive, and they aren't a renewable resource... it's a stupid idea to hedge your population on a limited supply of fertilizer just because the higher yields make you feel like a superior farmer.
"Organic" is also a narrow view. Like what about intensive no-till regenerative methods? Basically if you are talking about monocrop fields then your perspectives on fertilizer are going to always favor fertilizer, because you have a very ineffective soil setup that isn't designed for biologic efficiency, and you need fertilizer to deal with that since only artificial fertilizers can penetrate soil effectively in the span of just a season.
Wait till the phosphate shortages hit, and god speed to those who aren't planning on that happening.
He doesn't want you to think outside the box. He'd rather you keep eating your wheat and corn syrup slop.
Started my food forest as soon as I saw the phosphate data. No way I wanna be reliant on the supermarket when that shortage hits.
Brazil have huge phosphate reserve but it not being Extract due to comunist ambiental laws. In the easiest mine to produce there enough to mor 500 hundred years
i'm 35 seconds in and you don't even realize that piss is more valuable as a fertilizer than poop.
Having only done something one way is not an argument that it's the only way it can be done. 90% of applied synthetic fertilizer is not even used by the plant. And nothing was even said about the potential to reuse humanure, which would supply us with 100% of our fertility needs. Also, no mention of detrimental effects of synthetic fertilizer. no one has ever argued that synthetic ferts don't work, but that safer alternatives are needed.
You skipped the fact that ammunition factories made ammo using Huber process, after WWII the factories kept pumping out product but the peace was tough on business. So salesmen figured out that it worked “great” for plants and modern chemical fertilizer was born. BTW plants have to convert the synenthic fertilizer to a usable form, unless it’s organic chemically, the plant can absorb it right away, no waste of plant energy
Organic matter decomposes into their "synthetic" forms prior to plant uptake. Nitrate is nitrate, doesn't matter if it started as proteins in organic matter or came from potassium nitrate. Minerals like calcium or magnesium are uptaken in their ionic form, and again it doesn't matter if it comes from synthetic fertilizer or organic matter/rock dust. A calcium ion is a calcium ion.
Sri Lanka's debt ratio reached 100% of GDP three times, starting as far back as 1988. Don't know that we can blame the collapse solely on banning fertiliser in 2021.
The flush toilet has gone a long way to making chemical farming a big business. Victor Hugo in Les Miserables wrote about the destructiveness of the new (to him) sewer systems in Paris and how it would harm the poor. England's people sh*t away tons of organic material a day and pay billions through taxes for processing plants that clean it to some degree (but not completely). Composting toilets and a system to collect the compost could provide massive amounts of organic material for farms. But that will never happen because modern people have an aversion to sh*t and one even has to use an asterisk in the word to avoid the censors.
I feel like the way to fix this problem is to make a way to make fertilizer not so Co 2 intensive
This is what happens when oversmart people who think they know all try to tell you what your problem is and try to tell you the solution!!!
How do the massive amount of forests grow without fertilizers? I’ll wait, time to think to all you reductive thinkers.
if you'd googled it, you'd find the UK timber industry apparently fertilises 1000s of hectares of land every year and has used fertiliser since before the 1st world war. "In Britain the use of fertilisers has greatly increased the productivity of forests
growing on nutrient-poor soils. In fact, many sites could not otherwise have been
successfully afforested." Source The UK Forestry Commission www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi5z-XS18GGAxWlXUEAHQX0BhEQFnoECD4QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.forestresearch.gov.uk%2F1991%2F03%2Ffcbu095.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3Gkg_FK7U6QYCM7vvtqpzk&opi=89978449
Edit: since fertiliser replaces nutrients exiting the cycle during harvest, obviously woodland which isn't harvested doesn't have the nutrients taken out, so doesn't need them artificially replaced.
a single channel with practical, concise, well thought out video, by someone who actually farms: ~400 views
impossible bullshit by "gurus" who only talk about how farmers should farm: millions of views
comments: magical thinking everywhere
guys, you can't create or destroy energy. if you put in a bunch of energy into fertilizer then give that to plants, the plants won't have to use that energy for nitrogen fixation, instead putting that energy into food. that's it. you can't get away from this. not by rotating crops, not by coming up with some food forest, not by anything. we produce as much fixed nitrogen as the rest of all nature because we have enormous amounts of energy at our disposal, which plants in the British countryside simply don't have. if you take that away, things will grow that much slower and billions of people will starve, there is no way around this.
Destroying soil microorganisms with chemicals is a failure long term
Loss of topsoil and reliance on high input cost fertiliser and pesticides is why farmers are going bankrupt
Land management is a skill
@@Chase_Telemetric They are going bankrupt because it costs nothing to ship food from the 3rd world. Poor people starve, farmers lose jobs, capitalists make a profit.
And I can't take this "chemicals" talk seriously. Water is a chemical, all food is 100% chemicals, the bacteria in soil are made of and eat chemicals. Life is a chemical reaction. These are basic facts.
@@Chase_Telemetric A skill that you don't know much about given your claims. Used properly fertilizer and pesticides do NOT kill your microbiology in the soil, and where is it you're hearing of people going out of business due to topsoil loss? High inputs sure but that's not really an inherent thing but rather companies pushing up prices in recent years.
@@Beyonder8335 all good mate
Let me know how it goes. If you want
@@Chase_Telemetric huh? What am I meant to be updating you on?