Why the global soil shortage threatens food, medicine and the climate

CNBC ^ | June 5, 2022 | Andrea Miller

[Tupelo]

Sometimes, I read ^%^& like this and want to smile, then I remember that probably 40%-60% of the people reading this
are going to say, “Well, this is coming from the United Nations, so there may be something to it.

If we ever get rid of the Democrats, then the UN should be next.
Neither does anything that benefits anyone but their bank account.

[entropy12]

Go watch where the Mississippi meets ocean at mouth of delta. You will observe depositing of million of tons of dirt from the heart of North America into the Gulf. Ditto with all other rivers. That muddy water you can see is top soil washed into rivers by rain and the rivers depositing into the ocean. That is why ocean waters are salty. God did not pour salt into oceans. It was carried by rivers from the land into the ocean.

[Nifster]

The Dust bowl was a concern about losing top soil

[Texas resident]

So moron approached me about paying me for them to put solar panels on my land. Heavily forested land. And it rains a lot here so we have a lot of cloudy days.

moron.

[ConservativeInPA]

They are just twisting normal science into a crisis. They can go and eat dirt.

[dennisw]

Where is me yummy Bill Gates hamburger made out of bacteria and seaweed?

[dowcaet]

Wanna bet that none of these writers of these UN Reports ever leave the comfortable confines of their luxurious offices in NY? The folks at the UN, WHO and every other large intergovernmental agency put out reports and the lemmings out there buy what they say because of their manufactured reputations as problem solvers!

[bobbo666]

Yah, you’d have to be an idiot to think soil “goes away”. Soil is simply a growing medium on the ground. It is made over years/decades by the buggers that live in it and weather. If it washes away ‘cause you are an idiot farmer, sell out and let someone refurbish the land who is not an idiot.

[BobL]

“Why the global soil shortage threatens food, medicine and the climate”

Plenty of soil available at my Home Depot.

[Pollard]

Never leave the soil bare. Hard to do with conventional ag but some people are doing it. Gabe Brown of ND plants corn into a rolled and crimped cover crop. No fertilizer, no pesticides, good yields and the cover crop is cheaper than fertilizer/pesticide, plus it adds organic matter to the soil and builds soil.

Rolling/crimping and seeding in one pass.

Corn planted into rolled/crimped cover crop of cereal rye.

His soil

Top soil loss and fertilizer/pesticide runoff has been a problem since tractors were invented and chemicals developed. Ray Archuletta does a presentation that has two slides. One is from the 1930s dust bowl and another one just a few years old that has just as much soil being blown away. The difference is, the 1930s soil was dark/brown and the recent soil was pale/tan.

Gabe Brown's soil can suck up any amount of rain. It used to be able to suck up and inch and then the rest would run off bringing a little soil with it.

I'm no green alarmist but soil is important and we've lost a lot of it. Desertification is a real thing too and is usually man made. Right now, China's trying to fix the desert they created.

[JD_UTDallas]

https://www.engadget.com/2018-10-03-future-indoor-agriculture-vertical-farms-robots.html

Vertical farming, no soil, use nuclear power to run the LED lights and better yet use the heat you would throw away from the nuke to turn salt water into fresh.

Build small modular reactors that are factory built all one design. Then scatter them where you need power and fresh water.

GE has one that’s is cost comparative with gas turbines BEFORE natural gas doubled in price recently.

https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300

The Brits have one too. Rolls makes sub reactors which is exactly what their SMR is and like the U.S. Navy the Royal Navy has never had a reactor melt down or lost one due to malfunction.

https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/

Waste heat to fresh water....

https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/potable-water-quality/article/16200489/vaporising-droplets-desalinate-water-in-milliseconds

This is a total recovery process there is no brine it makes solid salts that can be sold or landfilled which means inland saline aquifers can be used. The resources are huge.

https://water.usgs.gov/ogw/gwrp/brackishgw/

[ronnie raygun]

All deliberate to bring on the great reset

[entropy12]

Agree 100%. I never even de-thatch my lawn.

[LibWhacker]

What’s next, the planet is losing one drop of water every second?

[A Navy Vet]

Let me get this straight.

We were all going to die from a new ice age.
We were all going to die from ozone depletion.
Billions were going to die from mass starvation.
Pesticides were going to kill the world's population.
Urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution.
Decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
Americans born since 1946…now have a life expectancy of only 49 years, and if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
By the year 2000, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil.
Landfills are running out of room for our trash.
Y2K will cause global data meltdown and financial destruction.

Some older predictions.
Cars are just a fad - 1903
In 1904, The New York Times reported on a debate in Paris between a brain specialist and a physician about the dangers of driving automobiles at high speeds—because the brain can’t keep up.
1911 Thomas Edison predicted everything will be made of steel.
Recorded music will destroy all music ability - 1906.
Electricity is just a fad.
All women will be giants - 1950
Telephones will never catch on - 1876
TVs aren’t really going to be a big thing - 1946 Zanuck
People will only want to shop in stores - 1966.

I know I'm missing many failed predictions. Feel free to add.

[Vigilanteman]

Ronald Reagan once famously said that if the Communists were in charge of the Sahara Desert, it would be just a matter of time before there was a sand shortage.

[Rebelbase]

Corn yields in the US are up 80% since 1990.

[alloysteel]

Soil is - everywhere. What is not rocks or covered with permanent water is considered to be “soil”. Some soil is better for growth than others, but that is more a matter of major nutrients and water, and not so much of texture or inorganic composition.

In special conditions, plants can flourish even without a soil base, so long as they have nutrients and water supplied to the root system.

The retention of high-quality topsoil is, of course, a major objective, as this condition makes the cultivation of various crops a much more economically feasible proposition.

It used to be, that a crop of forty bushels to the acre, for corn, or twenty-five bushels of wheat on the same acre, was a good return, and in the agrarian past of this country, fed the population quite well. But greater urbanization used up a great deal of the more easily arable land, and the more marginal lands were pressed into service.

By going to more expensive ways to coax production from these marginal lands, methods like application of additional chemical fertilizers, pesticide control, irrigation, highly mechanized planting and harvesting technology, and, yes, the hated GMO seeds developed by scientists, provided yields like 240 bushels of corn per acre, and 200 bushels per acre for wheat. Even more astonishing results from greater concentration of input factors, as an escalating cost per unit of production, and you can see why the old equation of “wheat goes up, bread goes up” holds true.

It is also true that “wheat goes down, bread stays up” is also a fact of life if other corrective factors are not brought in.

[jcon40]

We farm in zone 9a, compost huge piles from our fields and free organic matter from tree chipping companies.
We plant cover crops in rotation which also builds soil and adds nutrients.
Our greenhouses (like most) produce 4-5 times compared to open field growing.
One 3000 sf greenhouse is now equipped with water source / radiant heat coils buried in the soil for heated seedbeds, not just for germination but continuous growing.
Increased heat = increased microbial action = stronger plants, more fruit and better quality.
Heated seedbeds alone can increase production 200-400%
Couple that with growing in a green house and your production is increased 4-5 times and the outcome can then be 8 to 20 times the production as open field growing per acre.

Much loss and degradation of top soil is from poor farming practices, over production, little investment back into the soil and other factors common to big ag operations.

There are many Solutions to these problems depending on where you live and what you have for space (even small spaces).
While big Farma and big guv do their thing, markets for smaller operations can turn hobby’s into food,fun and $$$.

Problems are often opportunities.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Another day, another “crisis only we can save you from by enslaving and exterminating you.”