And that’s why we have been dumping our and our livestock’s shit there for thousands of years.
Comment on We have found it.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
It’s not that infinite without a way to refresh protein, such as mining ammonia, eventually you run out of soil resources and crash. It’s got a hard limit, so to speak.
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
That alone is still not infinite. When you eat food you’re taking the nutrients that you need out of it and excreting what is left. So even if all of your shit went directly to manure then you’re still putting in less than you took out.
Lyrl@lemm.ee 6 months ago
The energy input is the sun, and most of the calories come from the air (carbon dioxide). Given so much external input, harvesting from a plot without reducing soil fertility is totally possible. With nitrogen-fixing crops (soybeans being the poster child), even the nitrogen fertilizer comes from the air.
Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Where do all those ‘wasted’ atoms go?
Lyrl@lemm.ee 6 months ago
The plants use energy from the sun to turn carbon dioxide from the air into edible calories. When our animal bodies “burn” the food we eat, that turns it back to carbon dioxide, which we exhale.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
not a scientist here, but i imagine it’s a combination of different forms of energy/material and how different organisms utilize them. Plus the basic fact that nothing is ever perfect. We consume food, a lot of those nutrients are burnt for energy. Our brain consumes a significant majority of what we eat. Stuff has to go somewhere for things to happen.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
That’s like counting tigers in the zoo as tigers in the wild. Dust from homes gets put in landfills, corpses get burnt or buried in boxes, human excrement gets treated and reintroduced to streams. It’s not finding its way back to the fields in such a way that it’s 100% efficient, not even close.
tryptaminev@feddit.de 6 months ago
Legumes like lentils capture air nitrogen.
lennybird@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Was wondering, do Orchids do this, too? They have “air roots” and basically subsist off zero substrate.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
At between 20 to 300 lbs per acre, yes. Generally most legumes will need 60 lbs per acre, so most will be self sufficient in ideal weather.
For 60 bushel per acre soybeans still require fertilizing with monoammonium and diammonium phosphates, as well as ammonium acetate, and to go beyond 70 bushels consistently supposedly does require supplemental nitrogen although this has yet to be recreated in studies.
So, you still need to mine ammonia.
tryptaminev@feddit.de 6 months ago
So how did these plants exists before mineral fertilizers?
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
In the yield size we see, they didn’t. That’s the point. Food crops cannot sustain the current human population. Before humans came along an area had a variety of plants which did not have their stalks and fruit systematically harvested and transported elsewhere. They grew in the ground and their produce would rot where it landed, enriching the soil.
bluewing@lemm.ee 6 months ago
In a different form than they do now. We have, and still do, genetically modified them to their current and future state. We’ve been selectively choosing and breeding plants for many millennia. Corn, beans, and tomatoes didn’t much look like what you buy in the store today.
So, how did they survive? Plants grow, plants die, and the rotting plant material gets returned to the soil. Add in a few dead critters, a bit of fire, and some rain, and Baby you gotta stew going!
We still do that even today. Gardeners often compost things like food scraps to grass clipping to create small scale “natural” fertilizers and work that into their gardens.
If you are a 'Murican you will have been taught that Native Americans taught the Pilgrims how grow food and hunt. Because you know, them Pilgrims was a bunch of City Slickers that didn’t know how to survive in the “wild”. There weren’t no Piggly Wiggly’s or Aldi’s around. They were taught how to grow the Three sisters - Corn, beans, and squash together for best yields. The beans, (legumes), fixed some nitrogen into the soil, the squash plant provided shade cover to limit the growth of “weeds” that could choke out the plants you did want and to hold moisture and keep the soil cooler so the corn, and beans would grow better. The Native Americans also understood, that adding some dead animal matter will also boost your yield. As did most any early farmers.
These days, we need to grow food crops on a very large industrial scale. And yields need to be vastly increased to provide enough for everyone to eat. To do that we need to create better varieties of plants that can withstand the high growing stresses from high density planting with more disease and bug resistance all while producing greater and greater yields. This does require the added use of fertilizers and even pesticides to reach the desired yield goals.
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Bacteria take it out of the atmosphere slowly. It’s a certain rate per land, and due to the coastline paradox we know that the area of land is infinite.
lennybird@lemmy.world 6 months ago
urine is a fantastic nitrogen fertilizer
bonemeal for phosphorus
wood-ash for potassium.
Probably not concentrated enough to work on an industrial scale, but probably on smaller communal farms.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Yeah if you turn people who die into fertilizer and process all of their excrement you can probably sustain the fields they eat from. Can’t argue with that.
Obi@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
I’d actually be totally fine with this.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
I want to become del monte corn after I die, unironically.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
i feel like you could just eat people at that point. That might do something, idk.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Nah unfortunately that causes various Neurological and Endocrinal disorders. It has to be cured and processed to a high degree, first.
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
Nobody said anything about using dead people as fertiliser?
Qwaffle_waffle@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Oops, soylent green path.
shneancy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
circle of life