An engineered barley plant that ‘orders’ soil bacteria to manufacture fertiliser
slcu.cam.ac.uk
slcu.cam.ac.uk
Bacteria evolve frighteningly quickly.
Excuse me, I'll just be over here laughing so hard I can't breathe.
In terms of how long it'll take: evolution is slow in terms of number of generations per organism, but it's relentless. The more widely any modification is deployed, the more interactions there are, and the quicker in terms of time some adaptation will occur; and, once an advantageous adaptation does occur in one place, seed dispersal will allow it to spread quickly.
As an example that I single out because I read about it recently in the delightful "Lives of weeds" by Cardina (https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501759000/live...), the adaptations of plants to deal with the "irresistible" Round-Up pesticide are highly improbable, but there were trillions of chances, and so it didn't take long for them to develop; and, once developed, they spread very quickly.
That said, I think you're correct about not being so concerned. If the symbiotic relationship was so exploitable, it'd probably be a great evolutionary advantage to do so. The signal being a sugar itself, as you note, doesn't surprise me.
By “definition” I meant “the rhizopine signaling pathway”, implying that no pathway → no symbiosis. Of course that signal insensitive strains or species can exist. It’s a symbiote and not a parasite, after all.
E. g. make non-legumes act like legumes. The actual paper is https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2117465119
Legumes also provide amino-acids that are lacking in cereals, which makes a legume-cereal combination a healthy well-balanced diet.
Crop rotation doesn't prevent mechanization or reduce farm productivity in any way, rather the opposite because it improves soil health.
So, my question: what is the benefit of this? Would that further improve yield in combination with crop rotation?
While crop rotation has its place, it's hard to argue with how much more grain we can produce per acre now vs even 100 years ago.
It’s kind of hard to compare US and Western European agriculture apples to apples, since the US is so heavily focused on commodity crops for export. But it’s pretty clear where the corn comes from.
So the productivity of the land isn't a concern. The goal is to have a system where one guy can produce enough food for 400 people.
There are some implications of moving in the other direction that you might not like. In the one-farmer-feeds-400-people model, food is very cheap because it represents a trivial amount of work. In a model that devoted more resources to cultivating the same land at higher yields, one of two things would happen.
The less likely option is that food would become much more expensive because of all the additional labor. This would preserve the general standard of living of Americans, except of course that they'd all be much poorer because so much of their money would be spent on food. But they'd all be poorer together.
The more likely option is that the price of food would only rise a little, and a class of extremely poor people would provide agricultural labor. This would be a blow to American egalitarianism.
At least with respect to corn, US farms produce 4 tons per hectare more each year than the global average, and have substantially higher yields than the 4 nearest competitors[1].
> the United States has a large amount of relatively unused land and a comparatively tiny population to work it
We've actually increased forrest cover substantially in the last 50 years, which is great.
[1]https://agfax.com/2022/03/07/corn-how-competitive-is-the-u-s...
> The typical farm in Brazil produced corn and soybeans in 2020. Corn was a second crop following soybeans and was produced on approximately 78 percent of the typical farm’s acreage during the five-year period.
For corn to be a secondary crop following soybeans, at the same time it's produced on 78% of the farm's acreage, something has to be weird. Either soy is so much more productive and valuable than corn that its yield can be worth more while less than a third as much land is devoted to producing it (why not just grow more soy?), or a given acre might sometimes produce corn but more often produce soy over the five-year period, while being counted as "an acre used in the production of corn".
Then, the productivity of the farm is given in yield per hectare. But we've already seen that "hectares" is a funny measurement. What's the yield per hectare-month?
Also, this is fully compatible with American strategy being to use as little labor as possible:
> Labor costs as a proportion of total costs were relatively higher for the typical farms in Russia and the Ukraine.
(Annoyingly, the article's chart doesn't display the detail the article discusses. But "operating costs", the category that includes labor, are anomalously low for the US, beating everywhere except Argentina.)
On that model, high productivity per acre would be more of a happy coincidence.
Not relevant to the topic, but sad:
> Economic profit for the five-year period was positive for the typical farms in Argentina and Ukraine. [But not for Russia, Brazil, or either US farm.]
I’m not discounting the labor angle entirely, but there seems to be some consensus that for at least some crops US farms are quite productive.
The reason a US farmer chooses what to plant each year is the same as everywhere else: Given the state of their soil, the expected weather in their plots, legislative incentives and some guesses on crop value, they plant whatever they think will keep making the most money. The increase in soybeans as a useful rotation crop come from higher price per bushel vs 2000, and the increase demand making it easier to sell it in their local elevator. The extra $4 a bushel makes it much better than doing all kinds of extra treatments to the soil to keep trying to run more corn. As prices rise and fall, practices change to match.
And this is why modifying plants to lower the need of fertilizer can make such a big difference: A crop that before might not have been economical can become more viable. If a farmer has to risk soil health to have a somewhat profitable year, because anything else looks like losing money, they'll take the risk, in the same way that they'll cheap out in their pesticide applications. When the farmers are making good money with safer practices, they'll use them, and they'll keep investing. But for every 2012, when drought raised prices through the roof, and everyone else got their insurance payouts, there's many years where the farmer doesn't cover costs.
Always assume that the farmer is doing the best they can to make money, whether they have some organic apple orchard, or they are planting Monsanto soybeans.
The key thing is for how long soil will be able to keep that production rate up. Humanity is doing completely unprecedented things now - we have eradicated a lot of the predators and their feed species that kept ecosystems intact, and replaced it by artificial means... and eventually, that soil won't be able to keep up any more, but humanity will have grown a fatal addiction to cheap grain and other agricultural products (the fact we're growing plants to turn them into bio-fuel is maddening!).
And by then, it will be too late to fix the issues in the soil for at least a couple of years if not decades. Healthy soil is something that grew over hundreds and thousands of years after all, and humanity will blow through it in a century. What remains is to burn down forests like it's being done in the Amazonas area, but even that destruction will only yield something like two to four seasons and then it's gone (which is why the farmers burn down so much every year).
We're basically going hydroponics with sterile soil as a substrate. The limiting factors are fertilizer and water. This may not be ideal, but it frees up a lot of land for things other than wheat/soy/corn.
> we have eradicated a lot of the predators and their feed species that kept ecosystems intact, and replaced it by artificial means
The US and Europe are re-wilding substantial amounts of land, precisely because less is now needed to grow food.
The problem is that now the produce only consists of fertilizer. Just compare the taste and nutritional value of mass-manufactured produce vs. organic-grown produce - the difference (at least if you're not suffering from covid) will be massive.
Additionally, sterile soil without deep levels of old roots, fungi and other life in it has the downside that it will simply erode and, as a consequence of losing that structure, blow away sooner or later. The US literally went through this once in the 1930s [1] and at the moment 40% of the US are at risk for further desertification [2].
Yes, it may be more efficient in a short-term rabid capitalism POV to continue ruthlessly exploiting nature, but the long term of continuing as-is will only lead to an utter catastrophe and cascading effects - e.g. groundwater depletion once the soil compresses, effects on the local and regional climate (clouds and in consequence rain need evaporation of water) or heatwaves and as a direct consequence uninhabitability because pure sand can't buffer off heat.
Earth is at the moment right at the tipping point of a lot of crises: CO² and other climate gases such as methane leading to a greenhouse effect, the collapse of ice shelves, the permanent destruction of arable land, the compression of soil in deserts destroying groundwater, predators going extinct and throwing ecosystems out of balance, invasive species being transmitted by air and especially water cargo, humans ending up with half a dozen pandemic or almost-pandemic events in two decades because we keep intruding on animal reservoirs in our ever deeper search for space... we need to stop and seriously rethink how we want to live, if we want to leave our children a planet they can actually live on - and that's leaving the social issues like erosion of democracies, of international law, and of war and aggression and their impact on nature, completely out of the discussion!
And JFC the answer to the problems we're seeing is not geo-engineering or GMOs. That's band aids barely covering up the atrocities we have committed as a species!
[1] https://share.america.gov/u-s-scientists-work-to-stave-off-d...
[2] https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atm...
If the variety is the same I generally can't tell with things like onions, potatoes, and most fruits. As for flour you'd be hard pressed to see any difference. I bake and brew and spend some time looking at spec sheets for flours and barley and organic/not doesn't really register as a difference. Price tiers matter, but that doesn't correlate well with organic. It may be the case that less intensive agriculture makes sense for non-staple crops, but that isn't the issue here, we're talking about things like barley, wheat, corn, soy, and rice.
I'd also mention that organic doesn't mean anything about soil health, size of the farm, or really anything other than some specifics about chemical application.
> Additionally, sterile soil without deep levels of old roots, fungi and other life in it has the downside that it will simply erode and, as a consequence of losing that structure, blow away sooner or later. The US literally went through this once in the 1930s [1] and at the moment 40% of the US are at risk for further desertification [2].
This is largely being solved by a shift to no till agriculture.
> Yes, it may be more efficient in a short-term rabid capitalism POV to continue ruthlessly exploiting nature
This strikes me as religion, and not a judgement based on science or economics. Switching to more responsible irrigation, and reforesting old agricultural will go a long way towards alleviating those issues. More crops from less land leaves more land for undisturbed nature.
> Earth is at the moment right at the tipping point of a lot of crises: CO²
This is a great case for returning more former crop land to forests.
> And JFC the answer to the problems we're seeing is not geo-engineering or GMOs. That's band aids barely covering up the atrocities we have committed as a species!
It isn't really a bandaid, it's taking a traditional technique of using beans to fix nitrogen in depleted soil, and giving that trait to other crops. It's pretty amazing in fact. Humans have always shaped landscapes on REALLY large scales, and we going to continue to do so just by our very presence. It makes sense to use every tool available.
Paywalled, unfortunately, but a previous similar study by the senior author can be found at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10882-x
Land under cultivation in 1970 in the US was 464 million acres and is now about 384 million acres and production has nearly doubled. A lot of that 80 million acres has been re-wilded. We now have more tree cover than we have had for more than a century.
I love this turn of phrase. I might steal it.
Factory farming is the only reason your great grand parents survived childhood. It’s what allowed your parents to be born and live long enough to raise you.
An argument can be made that the internet and this website only exist because some really smart people weren’t worried about their next next meal every day and devoted their talents to making innovative technologies instead of foraging for food.
The most charitable word I can use to describe this comment is ignorant.
A Møøse once bit my sister... No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"...
—edit—
Much apologies I just can’t resist whenever someone mentions moose.
https://www.card.iastate.edu/ag_policy_review/article/?a=94
Becoming reliant on such intensive farming practices was a mistake, but here we are.
So if fallow time was factored in, in reality we have probably already run out of farm land to grow livestock and are at or just exceeding the available farmland to grow nutritional crops!
It makes the MIT population collapse model prediction for a global collapse in society by 2040 seem more believable when looking at the lack of farmland this planet has to grow decent nutritional crops.
But if we got everyone to first world conditions we still could be using mined fertilisers in 1000 years, along with using fossil fuels to run the planet in a fine utopia.
Of course I and a lot of others want to be visiting space in decades. Along with the population will start to explode again in decades. And lots of other things like traveling to the nearest star within 1000 years would take a lot of fossil fuel using current tech.
1000 years is a pointless thing to think about.
(I vouched for your comment)
> Been doing agriculture for >10,000 years without either.
Not necessarily endorsing the GP's point of view, but most of that 10,000 years was spent with much smaller populations ingesting much fewer calories per capita.
A point decades ago, at _least_. More likely centuries or millenia, depending on your definition.
On the other half is that fertilizers are either mined (unlikely) or manufactured from nitrogen in the air plus hydrogen. The downside is that the hydrogen is almost entirely made from natural gas.
So, fertilizers start as mostly fossil fuel energetically, and end up feeding algae blooms if overused. This seems like a huge deal to me, I've been keeping an eye on this kind of project for a long time. Reducing use of fertilizer means less fossil fuel use, and if it's generated locally and in the right amounts it is bound to help on the waste side too.
(A line of reasoning which could also be applied to GMO's where the underlying IP is controlled by big, greedy corporations.)
Figuring out how to maintain some food production capacity without debt peonage in developing countries is a policy problem more than a technical problem.
AFAIK, this has never happened. Monsanto states they have policy against it ever happening. The infringement lawsuits I'm aware of, including the ones the anti-GMO crowd like to trot out, sure seem like pretty clear cases of wilful infringement.
I acknowledge that all of the Monsanto Infringement lawsuits have involved farmers who a) Purchased Roundup-Resistant seed from Monsanto b) under contract with Monsanto c) that included a provision not to replant the seed derived from those crops.
It is my opinion, as a political stance, that that provision c is against natural law as well as the laws of man, and is therefore null and void. Farmers, even big corporate ones, should be allowed to replant the seed of their crops, and it's unconscionable to restrict that.
Like you, I take the view toward that (potentially hypothetical?) case that the farmer's evident intent to infringe Monsanto's intellectual property is irrelevant because he hasn't done anything wrong. In that case, he is not even party to an agreement, though note that violating a patent doesn't require you to be party to an agreement.
Here's a source (with citation). The page also contains an audio version of the text.
I have to say, that author is slipping in some very questionable policy analysis under the heading of "just the facts, please".
The “against natural law” is an interesting claim to me. Where is the comprehensive list of all natural laws? How can we prove that there is no yet undiscovered law guaranteeing Monsanto/GMO seed patent holder such rights? Didn’t the US founding fathers assert that Natural Rights included private property rights, including of natural things like land? It seems to be more of an assertion of intuitive feeling to assert a claim of “natural law” than any concrete proof.
And the “against the laws of man” seems to be false based on case law that I’ve read about in the news. Is your opinion/assertion that seeds / engineered plants should not be patentable? Should they be patentable, but sold at a loss or smaller profit?
Those seeds exist because they were engineered to solve a need. Is there a legal requirement for a farm to use engineered seeds? How much do you think the engineer would have to charge for unlimited license of those engineered seeds? I imagine it would be 20x - 1000x of a single harvest limited license for the same number of seeds. Do you agree?
I actually think that farmers should be allowed to save those seeds and replanting them, as long as they don't sell them. So I'm in favor of changing the way patent law works there.
Some GMO crops can lead to less pesticide usage as the plants can sometimes be engineered to be resistant to the pests targeted.
Weed plants don't generally attack the crop plant directly, instead they merely grow nearby and compete for various resources that the crops would otherwise be able to use.
GMO crops can be engineered to be resistant to specific herbicides. This leads to more of that herbicide (generally glyphosate) being used, since more herbicide = fewer weeds, and amounts of glyphosate that would kill non-GMO crops are tolerated by GMO crops.
If you want your assertions to be taken seriously around here, providing your own citations for your claims would help.
"A steady, linear trend for increasing number of herbicide area-treatments over the last 25 years was observed for all crops except soybean. The linear trend was not statistically significant for soybean [...]"
Read the whole paragraph. Less herbicide if the crop is roundup ready.
> it leads to loads of herbicide usage (glyphosate). The process of desiccation also leads to loads of glyphosate being used just prior to harvest, on non ‘Roundup Ready’ (glyphosate resistant) crops
You replied "Ummm no, less herbicide actually".
The Nature study you claimed supported your assertion said herbicide usage was steadily up, and more was used on non-roundup-ready crops.
I don't know if you meant "no" to reply to one or the other of those claims or both, but it doesn't matter because they both agree with drewmal.
Have you considered a career in politics?
Later on, in the conclusion section, the researchers acknowledge that farming is generally a complex system with many reasons for doing things, but nevertheless point fingers at herbicide-resistant GM crops in general (not roundup-ready in particular) as a reason for increasing herbicide usage.
> Some researchers have blamed glyphosate-resistant crops and the resulting evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds for increasing herbicide use in maize, soybean, and cotton2,6. While this explanation is plausible for these three glyphosate-resistant crops, it cannot explain the similar trends for increasing herbicide intensity in rice and wheat, since no glyphosate-resistant cultivars are commercially available for those crops. In fact, herbicide area-treatments increased at a faster rate in rice and wheat compared with the glyphosate-resistant crops, so the claim that glyphosate-resistant crops are the primary driver of increasing herbicide use is at odds with the empirical data. The broader problem of herbicide-resistant weeds (rather than the artificially narrow focus on glyphosate) may certainly have played a role in increasing herbicide use for all of the crops in this analysis. The most likely explanation, though, is probably a combination of inter-related factors and is far more complex than any single driver.
The alternatives to glyphosphate are quite a bit more concerning when it comes to human toxicity.
This bit about desiccation sounds like it isn’t very common at all, in a quick search I wasn’t able to find references to it from an ag university extension… and it would be quite expensive and hard to justify.
I guess the same happened with the push for plastics recycling by industry which also turned out be pure deception.
https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/26/plastic-fatalistic/#recyc...
They have a tendency to link GMO detractors to global warming denial and antivaxxers also.
> Contrary to often-repeated claims that today’s genetically-engineered crops have, and are reducing pesticide use, the spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds in herbicide-resistant weed management systems has brought about substantial increases in the number and volume of herbicides applied.
The linked paper does say insecticide use went down, but herbicide use went up.
> Overall, pesticide use increased by an estimated 183 million kgs (404 million pounds), or about 7%.
That said, I’d be surprised if GMO really has managed to reduce pesticide usage. I’m pretty skeptical of big-tobacco-like scientific studies. Do you know of a good study that shows this, and which isn’t funded by Bayer or some similarly motivated company?