11 Jun 2014, 9:09 pm
12 Jun 2014, 6:15 am
RunningFox wrote:
God I am sorry but are you really this stupid? Fertilizers that make our guts sick are an excuse to neglect the soil and thus the tasteless nutrient deficient foods you buy in the store. It not as if it is some how saving man kind because we are able to do it.
The fruits and veg that grow in my back yard are planted in dark black super nutritious soils with the proper minerals and microflora and because of that they taste better. If millions of people can do it themselves in their back yard there is no reason commercial farmers cant either. They just do it to save money. Nobody is being saving from starvation because of it.
You are in no position to insult someone else's intelligence, so I suggest you stop. I have tolerated it so far, but if you continue to insult me I will report you. I am being civil with you and I would like to request that you return that.
Fertilisers don't "make our guts sick" as a rule. We have been using fertilisers since forever, and if anything modern fertilisers are healthier than smearing fields with faeces.
You can't have it both ways - either fertilisers are being overused, or plants are growing up starved of nutrients.
Before we had fertilisers, yields were much lower, food was relatively more expensive (as a proportion of household budgets), and we couldn't support such a large population. Since modern fertilisers, and indeed as a direct result of using those fertilisers, yields have gone up and malnutrition has gone down.
Not everyone has access to the brilliant soils you are blessed with. In particular, sub-Saharan Africa needs to increase yields in areas that are undergoing desertification. Genetically modifying crops to be resistant to drought and make efficient use of soil nutrients is a good thing.
12 Jun 2014, 5:12 pm
The_Walrus wrote:
RunningFox wrote:
God I am sorry but are you really this stupid? Fertilizers that make our guts sick are an excuse to neglect the soil and thus the tasteless nutrient deficient foods you buy in the store. It not as if it is some how saving man kind because we are able to do it.
The fruits and veg that grow in my back yard are planted in dark black super nutritious soils with the proper minerals and microflora and because of that they taste better. If millions of people can do it themselves in their back yard there is no reason commercial farmers cant either. They just do it to save money. Nobody is being saving from starvation because of it.
You are in no position to insult someone else's intelligence, so I suggest you stop. I have tolerated it so far, but if you continue to insult me I will report you. I am being civil with you and I would like to request that you return that.
Fertilisers don't "make our guts sick" as a rule. We have been using fertilisers since forever, and if anything modern fertilisers are healthier than smearing fields with faeces.
You can't have it both ways - either fertilisers are being overused, or plants are growing up starved of nutrients.
Before we had fertilisers, yields were much lower, food was relatively more expensive (as a proportion of household budgets), and we couldn't support such a large population. Since modern fertilisers, and indeed as a direct result of using those fertilisers, yields have gone up and malnutrition has gone down.
Not everyone has access to the brilliant soils you are blessed with. In particular, sub-Saharan Africa needs to increase yields in areas that are undergoing desertification. Genetically modifying crops to be resistant to drought and make efficient use of soil nutrients is a good thing.
You dont seem to have a strong working knowledge of this subject. Fertilizing crops forces them to grow without the healthy nutrients they need, it depletes the soil of nutrients and yes it is bad for you gut. I guess you don't understand this but there are a total of 3 compounds in most modern fertilizer, they are industrially made in chemically factories. The number of minerals needed by plants to produce a mineral rich fruit far exceeds 3. The number of minerals needed by the human body to be healthy is more than 3. Those minerals get into the soil from decomposing organic matter. Bacteria and Mycelium at the lowest level are needed to break down the larger organic compounds into structures that plants can absorb, depending on the Ph of the soil it will either be more bacterial or more fungal.
We have not been using fertilizer "for forever" it has only been a few decades. Properly composted manure is what has actually been used for forever and yes it is more healthy. Let me break down the math for you, a few thousand years is a lot longer than a few decades. Texts that talk about 3 field farming and resting the earth for two years before replanting predate the Bible as do other texts that talk about using soil amendments to make plants grow stronger. Yes, fertilizer can be overused and it does cause plants to be nutrient deficient, that is actually exactly how it works.
The fact is that well decomposed manure makes plants more resistant to disease and pests. My fully gown back yard plants dont need pesticides. Manure and other decomp doesnt make the ground unsafe. Spraying plants with chemical fertilizer makes them weaker and thus the need for all the pesticides in the first place.
Yes I know yields have gone up since using fertilizer, did you know that 40% of the food grown today isnt even consumed? Its just thrown away before being eaten. A lot of it is just chucked because it has visual blemishes or it isnt the perfect shape to be put through the machine processing. A lot of the stuff that ends up on store shelves is then again still not actually eaten. We now take it for granted and no one actually knows how or where their food is produced anymore. Amazing.
I am sorry but I really do not care about sub-Saharan Africa, that might sound harsh but to me it just sounds like a crappy place to live now. Maybe they should stop diverting so much water and stop cutting down rain forests, but thats just my opinion. If they can make their plants drought resistant that is great for them. Maybe they would also be better off building green houses instead of simply evaporating enormous amounts of water on crops that are exposed in the desert. But w/e.
I grew up in colorado in a family of farmer great grandparents on one half of my family and a botanist grandfather on my moms side who hybridized waterlily's. The rest were military and lawyers. I spent my youth waste deep in pond water. My grandfather worked at the Denver Zoo building tanks and designing complementary ecosystems and was a founder of the Water Garden Society. I know what the fk I am talking about on this subject. I was used as child labor from the time I could hold my head above water and I didnt do it without learning a few things along the way. Alls you are doing is making baseless contrary statements with no logic combined with no evidence. To put it lightly, if i spread everything you have said over my tomato garden they would grow quite well. Maybe you should convert some of your civility into knowledge, combing the two will get you a lot further.
Last edited by RunningFox on 12 Jun 2014, 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
12 Jun 2014, 5:28 pm
12 Jun 2014, 7:00 pm
13 Jun 2014, 4:34 am
13 Jun 2014, 6:41 am
13 Jun 2014, 4:18 pm
