Because of him
Food is a hot topic these days, as what’s on our plates affects us every day. The synergy of war, harvesting, energy and economic costs is adversely affecting global food prices and availability. Drought affects last soybean crop in South America 1st3rdand 4order Exporting producers whose output fell by 10% or more, European production and exports of wheat from Ukraine and Russian bakeries were disrupted by war and sanctions. For the United States, the growing season is now beginning and whether hot, dry conditions affect production remains to be seen. There are real concerns about short-term food availability and prices that have attracted opinions and solutions from the political elite with one of the most amazingly misinformed proposals coming from Samantha Power, who served as a United Nations Ambassador under Obama and now heads the US Agency for International Development under President Biden. On ABC News This week, she said:
“Currently the shortage of fertilizer is real because Russia is a big fertilizer exporter. And even though fertilizer is not sanctioned, less fertilizer is coming out of Russia.”
And Power says:
“So we are working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost. And this can accelerate the transition that farmers should ultimately make.”
Since the time when humans first gathered into cities and countries, the scourge of famine and famine has followed. Only in the past few decades has global food security finally addressed this historic threat. Modern food security is largely rooted in two of the most important scientific achievements of the last century, the Haber-Bosch process for converting atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia fertilizer which currently uses about 1% of global energy and 3-5% of global natural gas production.
The second is Norman Borlaug’s attempt to breed high yielding field crops. Both are Nobel Prize-winning scientific achievements and the positive impact on human health and global political stability in recent decades has been immeasurable. High-yield agriculture allows the current population to eat enough compared to challenges that have occurred throughout human history. The political controversy is that feeding the world at the enormous cost of energy and fossil fuel footprints has been the issue and now even more so with much of the production concentrated in Russia sanctioned.
To this problem, a simple solution has been proposed that agriculture must move from dependence on fertilizers to a sustainable future where the use of energy and fossil fuels will no longer be necessary. again. Power says the now is an opportunity not to waste, and one of her solutions is to look to centuries past, using compost and manure as much as her Irish ancestors did in previous generations. the amount of industrial fertilizer consumed globally today.
Plants and all life around us need nitrogen, most of which is reserved for proteins and nucleic acids (e.g. DNA) in living systems. The nitrogen cycle of life has been running for billions of years on Earth, and Mars rovers are in part looking to see if Mars once had a similar system. Generating bio-usable nitrogen from atmospheric nitrogen would take energy, for example, from lightning, or the function of an enzyme in a capable bacterium.
Although some plants like soybeans “fix” nitrogen from the air, it’s not actually the plant itself, but the plant bacteria that absorb and nourish it in its roots. Once atmospheric nitrogen is metabolized by physical or biological processes, it can be used by other living systems. Because nature’s way of converting atmospheric nitrogen to fixed nitrogen is as sporadic as lightning and volcanic eruptions or relatively low-density biological fixatives the usable nitrogen is not concentrated in areas where humans users for cultivation. Of all the new nitrogen available for all uses in the biosphere, more than half of this global nitrogen is made by humans using a process pioneered by Haber-Bosch.
There is simply not enough nitrogen naturally available to sustain current global food production. There is no free lunch, to feed humanity requires enormous energy which has adverse effects on the environment, hence the concern of sustainability advocates who then look to the past for the future. future.
Consider the effects of discontinuing fossil fuel-based fertilizers. It doesn’t work once we have a sustainable amount of food as a starting point that, when harvested and used to produce compost and manure, can be recycled to regenerate the same amount of food in the future. years to come and the years to come without ever needing the input materials of industrial fertilizers. The green dream of feeding all the present 9 [7.9] billions of people and more come with a light environmental footprint, if it only worked this way, unfortunately, this is the agricultural version of a perpetual motion machine. It would be like putting a flywheel generator on an EV (electric vehicle) connected to a battery to generate power while driving and expect to be able to fully charge the battery for each trip to the starting level of the vehicle. it and then can drive the same distance day after day never needing to recharge the plug-in again.
The losses inherent in any system make this impossible and so the EV has a socket for new energy input. The same holds true for agriculture, which can never be a closed system with one crop per year allowing continuous production the following year. This is why Haber-Bosch fossil fuel fertilizers are so essential to world agriculture. It provides the means to provide large amounts of nitrogen input for each new crop production and thus supplies the world to an unprecedented degree. Fertilizers, better genetics, and better control of pests and weeds provide the world with why the global collapse predicted by futurists in the 1970s didn’t happen.
For example, returning agriculture to Ireland in the early 1800s was a politically dangerous illusion, contrary to all that has been learned and experienced at great human cost, especially in from a diplomat from a place where there was a terrible famine in history. The consequences of a world without fertilizers will be borne by millions of people permanently away from an ocean. As a diplomat, above all else, she should be aware of man’s grieving history and hunger unless we have an abundance of unicorn manure to bolster our agriculture. world, which will lead to food shortages, conflict and migration. While this may be a new job opportunity for a top diplomat to manage the conflict, the rest of us may want to avoid this nightmare, history has seen. results and it doesn’t end well. As George Santayana said in 1905, “Those who do not learn from history are condemned as repeat offenders”.
Addendum from Charles Rotter.
HE is remaining anonymous because he is still teaching at a university and doesn’t need to deal with mad academics attacking him.
We’ve got a preview of what will happen under Power’s recommended course of action.
This is an excerpt from a thing about Power’s ignorant claims.
Sri Lanka made an abrupt shift from chemical fertilizers to manure and compost last year. How come out?
Sri Lanka is the future.
https://www.unprepared.life/p/the-coming-famine?s=r
I strongly recommend reading the second article from Unprepared
And yes, our current head of USAID really did say some vile words:
Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
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