[Texgreen] How we are screwing up our agriculture

[Roger Baker]

[A short description of our agri-profiteering sins by Arthur Noll  
from the energyresources yahoogroups list. -- Roger]



I'm not going to respond to everything here, but a couple of things
really stuck out.

If we are doing essentially the same thing as ancient cultures,
then there is nothing wrong with comparing. And we are doing very
similar things, with very similar results. Erosion, depletion,
salting of irrigated soils. About the only thing science has done
is to tell us in more detail just how destructively we are behaving.
There is extremely little in the way of solutions offered for the
basic problem of erosion-depletion with the cultivation of annual
crops. You kill the perennial plants-grasses and trees- that have
deep, extensive root systems year round holding the soil, collecting
whatever fertility comes along, constantly there, growing and dying
for much larger portions of the year, making a large sponge of humus,
and instead plant annuals that even at their peak of growth, have
pathetic root systems in comparison, and none at all for significant
parts of the year. They don't hold soil or soil nutrients very well
at all. In order to kill weeds, or the return of grass and trees, the
soil is turned over, exposing it to the air, which breaks down humus
even faster. The fertility built up over long periods of time under
perennials, rapidly slips away. This is a fundamental problem.
There are lots of things that modify this problem, but nothing really
solves it. There is no known replacement for a year round living
mass of roots. The ancients had this problem, we have it, and our
capabilities in science have done very little to deal with it. Cover
crops help, but just about double the energy expended. Contour
plowing helps, but does not solve the problem. Terraces also help,
and the ancients often invested very heavily in terraces - and many
terraces are found in ruins. They aren't a sure answer. There is
one group of researchers trying to breed perennial grains, (search on
Wes Jackson) but there are some fundamental problems with that, too.
Maybe those problems can be overcome, but I'm not holding my breath.
Long rotations of fields can renew fertility, but the labor
requirements and temporary abundance of cultivation push
overpopulation, and rotations must be cut back and back.

With regard to maintaining fertility, all science has done is come
up with the stop gap solution of mining minerals and using fossil
fuel energy to crack nitrogen, making synthetic fertilizer to make up
for what has slipped away. And to add insult to injury, tremendous
amounts are deliberately thrown away, when human waste is not
recycled, but gets mixed with industrial toxins in common sewer
systems and is basically thrown away. It goes back to another theme
I like to harp on, that of market systems valuing abundant things as
cheap, with the resultant problem that people do not conserve "cheap"
resources. Why conserve soil nutrients, when synthetic fertilizer
could be made so cheaply with abundant, cheap fossil fuel? Virtually
nobody bothered. In fact, if you tried, you could not compete in teh
market, your food would be more expensive. And so people have
destroyed vital resources, have literally flushed down the drain,
fertility that took many thousands of years to accumulate. The
stupidity is mind boggling.

Ok, next glaring problem. Nitrogen is abundant in the
atmosphere, yes. In the form of N2. N2 is a very stable molecule,
the bond is strong. To get nitrogen compounds that plants can use,
you must break these nitrogen atoms apart, and join them separately
to other atoms. Breaking strong molecular bonds takes significant
energy. Usually once broken, the nitrogen is bonded to hydrogen, to
make ammonia. The hydrogen has come most easily from natural gas,
obviously it can come from other sources, but the same problem
exists, it exists in stable molecules like water, that take
significant energy to break apart. So while nitrogen is common, it
is like the concept of "water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to
drink". Nitrogen, nitrogen, everywhere, and ammonia found only in
stink. Alice is completely right, nitrogen is a serious limiting
factor. She tried to tell you of the energy requirement to break N2
apart, but you apparently didn't see the significance.

Arthur