Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues

I agree the article is hyperbolic, but there's a wealth of research showing that this approach has long-term negative consequences on soil health and the crops themselves, leading to long-term declines in yields.

Not to mention the contamination of rivers and underground aquifers with nitrogen and potassium leading to widespread algal blooms deoxygenating rivers and leading to mass deaths in (literally) downstream aquatic ecosystems.

One thing the industrial approach ignores entirely is the community of bacteria that live in symbiosis with plants. This includes both nitrogen-fixing bacteria (which presumably we bypass by just adding nitrogen directly).

The better approach is to understand farming as part of greater ecosystem flows, and to work with the soil and not treat it as a barren Petri Dish.

Sure, nearly-dead soil can work fine for growing plants. But it results in less healthy plants and runoff, which then has a cyclical effect. The byproducts of petro-fertilizers end up in the environment, which then ends back up in animals and plants. By not relying on healthy bacteria and fungi to naturally infuse plant roots with the nutrients and water they need, we are only getting short term benefits of reliable production. In the long term we will end up slowly poisoning the ecology that we absolutely need to keep agriculture sustainable.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you may be on the top end of the world-wide average, but how does your 80 acres of usable soil help the rest of the world when push comes to shove?

You would have had a whole succession of different types of plants to slowly work the rock surface. Then humans show up, rip out all the trees that kept that hard-won top soil in place, and it all runs off out to sea in no time. Basically it's about places like Iceland, not Iowa, I guess.

Assuming scientists will come up with a new technology is a bad survival strategy. At this rate, we expect our children to find a way around climate change, ocean acidification and soil erosion. Mankind is one fat dude who'd rather dream about diet pills than stop eating.

Well call them the Elite Shitters

I would compare some of the challenges this faces to those that are faced when turning salt water into fresh water through desalination (probably not a direct comparison).

https://www.epa.gov/biosolids

https://www.dcwater.com/biosolids

This wouldn't be nearly enough though. The amount of human waste is, however, dwarfed by animal waste.

That's why Oil is so expensive while agriculture is universally subsidied.

It's more about human nature than capitalism or any economic system in particular. If anything capitalism is capable of including externalities, if we choose to. If we don't, eventually, we will face the issue, as many others. Not the ideal way to dal with issues which are decades in the future. Classical example is national debt and of course, climactic change.

The number they have for topsoil generation is how long it takes if you don't try to stimulate it. There are lots of ways to increase the rate of topsoil development. So that bit is a tiny bit misleading, because while some of what they are kind of implying is permanent can be reversed.

That said, the situation is very bad. Ways around could possibly include non-traditional agriculture (hydroponics et al) or other less palatable things, like dietary changes or increased farming regulation.

But the organization says of topsoil formation on its own web site:

The rate of topsoil formation can vary from < 0.25 mm/year in dry and cold environments to > 1.5 mm/year in humid and warm environments (Hammer 1981; Hudson 1981). Topsoil formation at the rate of 1 mm/year is equivalent to an annual addition of 12 t/ha. Therefore, the rate of topsoil formation has been considered as a factor in the model in assessing loss of productivity and tolerable soil losses.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/t0733e/T0733E06.htm

1 mm/year means 30 years to generate 3 cm of topsoil, not 1000 years. And human intervention can increase productive topsoil rather than deplete it, when the incentives are properly aligned.

I don't know if the 1000 years figure is a mistake, based on newer, more pessimistic measurements of soil formation rates, or something else.

Organic dryland cereal farming depends on tillage for weed & pest control. Not only is the land plowed during planting and after harvest, every third year the land is left fallow. While left fallow it is plowed monthly.

Conventional farmers have substantially reduced their usage of tillage increasing their chemical usage instead. Those chemicals may be not be good for the ecosystem, but they result in orders of magnitude less soil loss.

I couldn't get through any of the paywalls, but there are articles out there that suggest that it is.

A lot of other factors are important too. Good rotation, being careful about what strains are used (many crops have been bred/modified for high yields, but that yield often comes at the expense of the soil).

This is very much a solvable problem. The 1000 year number in the article is how long it can take under just normal circumstances, but that can be sped up a LOT using various techniques including proper tillage, animal grazing, etc.

The big "problem" is that all of these things will make crops more expensive, but any other solution is going to quickly become even pricier than that so it should still be done.

> It seems to me like we might have to make a big push towards solar-powered hydroponics or something of that nature.

Right now the costs (particularly start-up costs) are too high for this to be totally viable, but I think it will become a much more significant method of growing food down the line.

But in reality the faster people realize that genetically modified products are more nutritious and less harming to nature, the better are our chances of survival.

Not sure what you mean by this. In the past old trees were burned on the spot; today they are chipped and the chips taken for use as mulch or other things. Neither process involves removing topsoil.