Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer
Isn’t it weird how no one- not ever- speaks about Nature’s fertilizer?
Alarming Signs Farmers Reduce Fertilizer May Wreck Crop Yields
There is growing concern farmers worldwide are reducing chemical fertilizer, which may threaten yields come harvest time, according to Bloomberg. The repercussions could be huge: Lower yields may exacerbate the food crisis.
There are alarming signs commercial farmers in top growing areas in the world are decreasing the use of essential nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
Revealed last week, SLC Agricola SA, one of Brazil’s largest farming operations, managing fields of soybeans, corn, and cotton fields in an area larger than the state of Delaware, will reduce the use of fertilizer by 20% and 25%.
Coffee farmers in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, some of the largest coffee-producing countries, are expected to spread less fertilizer because of high costs and shortages. A coffee cooperative representing 1,200 farmers in Costa Rica predicts coffee output could slip 15% next year because of soaring fertilizer costs.
The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) warned a reduction in fertilizer use would shrink yields of rice and corn come harvest time. Farmers in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam — the largest rice-producing countries — are spreading less fertilizer, and may result in a 10% reduction in output, equating to about 36 million tons of rice, or enough food to feed a half billion people.
More fertilizer equals more food production; Less fertilizer equals lower food production. It’s a simple concept to understand and may suggest an even larger food crisis is on the horizon.
The US won’t be spared. Chairman of the Kansas Wheat Commission Gary Millershaski said his “biggest fear” this spring is that farmers in North America skip out on applying nitrogen to wheat plantings. He said, if farmers did, this might suggest harvests would be a “lower class of wheat.”
In March, Tony Will, the chief executive of the world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer company CF Industries Holdings Inc., warned: “My biggest concern is that we end up with a very severe shortage of food in certain areas of the world.”
Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah provided Bloomberg Television’s David Westin with a timeline of when the “massive, immediate food crisis” begins. He said, “in the next six months.”
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Compost and manure worked back in the day. Will that work on large scale farming situations? IDK.
Only if they are integrated farming operations, where agriculture and livestock are done together. In the absence of that, we can recall that the Tree of Liberty is best fertilized with the blood of tyrants…
Easily but it’s not Bankster friendly. In fact the B3rg is reinventing cover crops and rotational farming as we speak but they want it under their control. You tube has tons of good videos on regenerative grazing and farming. Gregg Judy and Joel Salatan to name a couple. All the seed companies are developing methods of various degrees of chemical additives and the seeds to sell for it. Patented seeds of course.
I enjoyed that.
Thank you, Buddy! That was great!
Hardly see you anymore CB. Hope NYC isn’t wearing you down.
I’m still meaning to escape. But in the meanwhile….I am enjoying watching the circus. Especially the assclowns and freakshow.
Let’s cut through some of the BS if you’ll pardon the pun. Agribusiness/Rockefeller does not want regenerative farming. They want agribusiness and it’s loan generating/food poisoning benefits.
Organic farming is very doable without loss of yields but nature hates mono cropping and banks love mono cropping. Right now Banks are winning but there is a mountain of legitimate evidence to prove organic farming. Here is one good one. Take 28 minutes to educate yourselves.
I love how simply he puts things.
Eloquence comes from confidence in your field and this guy nails it.
He’s the best orator of the batch and has real experience. Gregg Judy is excellent at the grazing end of things but doesn’t farm. I’ve watched him progress from just a broke guy with a dream to having a huge totally organic and diversified farm system he is dedicated to teaching to others. He has even developed his own guard dogs for his sheep. Problem is that squeaky voice.
Spreading antibiotic, growth hormone , herbicide laden shit over hundreds of thousand of acres of cropland probably ain’t gonna’ work in the long term. #EatMoreBugs
Picture it… an army of rabbits nibbling their way across your field leaving hundreds of little fertilizer pellets on your soil, ready to feed your plants.
I’m kidding, sort of.
My new project is to turn my steep hillside into a gently sloping garden by hauling tractor bucket-loads of rabbit enriched soil from the barnyard to my front yard. They are fertile little beasties, in more ways than one.
Could the rabbit soil be collected easily for “redistribution?” I think so. When I first had rabbits, I had a screen beneath the three cages to catch the pellets. I just rake them now because I have rabbits all over the place now. I’m the rabbit lady… no cats for me.
Now, a friend in Oklahoma with horses collected all that manure in a corner of the pasture and folks came by and got compost for their gardens free of charge.
I am still planning a trip to visit a Giant Flemish buck near Paducah as soon as she weans these hybrids she managed to conceive with some random rabbit. So, I will bring you some good rabbit poop when I come that way.
Not sure anyone would want the manure from most CAFE animal farms though tons and tons exist.
On a large plantation, it is posable not very practical. NH3 – Anhydrous Ammonia super chargers the nitrogen levels in the soil. Application is much faster and cheaper than conventional methods. This process creates a hyper growth process. Farm yields are predictably higher than using a compost fertilizer. Some farms use ammonium nitrate NH4-NO3 granules. They work about the same, application is about the only difference. Using manure works but the process is not as easy as throwing shit all over the ground. It can burn the root of the seedlings quite easily if not applied with right process and time duration.
In short, it would be a challenge to compost a 1000 acre farm and you would never get the nitrogen levels you would get from chemical fertilizers. Equates to yields and costs.
However if you made it ten one hundred acres farms it would be eminently doable.
The purpose behind go big or get out was the destruction of family farming and along with it the knowledge and skillsets of a thousand years. Once it was complete- say fifty years- every human being would be completely dependent upon the good graces of the people who designed the shitshow we now depend upon. In the meantime you could induce the replacement “farmers” to use specific feeds loaded up with specific chemicals to result in specific outcomes, all of which would lead to even greater dependency on the folks who designed the shitshow.
“shitshow”
I see what you did there.
I always play to the back of the room.
Yo…Your guy has a hut???
Wouldn’t the widespread use of chemical fertilizers be more a lack-of-shit-show?
When I was very small, threeish to four, my father hired a truckload of local pickers to pick our cotton. I got to go out and play with the kids too small to pick, kept near the truck on a big quilt.
Many pictures taken of that, most of which I could produce, but suspect doing so would bring unwanted scrutiny. My father called his old friends Nigrahs or Darkies and I do not think either wins friends in that community any longer.
But, oh Lord, just pick a bale of cotton!
I couldn’t agree with you more. Corporate farming is a shit show, designed to control the herd.
If what you say is true, and I think it is, the population of the world would not be 7 Billion. It would be much less.
I was only answering the question that the poster asked. As you know, traditional farming is not so easy. You can’t plant the same soil over and over again. Its a process of field rotation. The soil needs to rest eventually without the introduction of high nitrogen fertilizers.
popps had a 55 gallon drum in his garden. half horse manure half water. all seedlings got water doses until they could stand.we ate a fresh veggie with every dinner. thanks pop.
There’s an abundant supply of manure in Congress..
I get a kick out of ZeroHedge publishing articles critical of censorship when ZeroHedge is the politically correct censorship site par excellence!
Hypocrites all!
ZeroHedge sucks!!!
Joe- Many folks here have been banned at ZH. I still read the site if I’m working but they ain’t what they useta be.
If you even type out a particular 3 letter word your post is immediately stopped. Thus we know who controls Zero Hedge.
Google
Yes those whacky Rockefellers. Captured education, Medicine, created Psychiatry as medicine, Coal, Oil, Banking(shared with their cousins the Rothschilds) and gave us Churchianity with a big assist from Rothschild by way of Sch-ofield and Samuel Untermeyer.
Llpoh claims they are wonderful people.
Agribusiness/Banking loves large farms and land tracts because they are easily quantifiable and controlled by credit. What they call “Arable Land” excludes most small farms by labeling them as “Marginal” farmland. I could digress for hours and so could you but it’s wasted voibiage most of the time. I’m just trying to snag the attention of a drive thru lurker or two.
Excuse me, but what is Llpoh ?
Long-time Big Dog on the Platform comments. Initials for Life Liberty Pursuit Of Happiness.
Thanks.
The ones I know were very gracious, welcoming and generous. Not sure I ever said wonderful. Just my personal experience with the Rockefellers.
I’ve been following these developments and I think this may be more about eliminating excess food out of the US system, much of which gets packaged up into direct food aid to the third world. Countries like Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc are highly dependent upon this direct food aid – if and when this food doesn’t arrive, millions will simply starve or head directly to Europe which accelerates the Cloward-Piven unfoldings there. These food aid dependent countries had very low vaccination rates so they can be better depopulated with the cessation of food aid. This elimination of excess global food will also drive the price of food way up and countries where the average person pays a substantial percentage of their income on food – Egypt, Palestine, Nigeria, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bolivia, Peru etc – will see political chaos. Again, all countries with poor vaccination uptake rates. Once population in excess food producing western countries begins to really decline in next three years from ADE and VAIDS excess food production will vanish entirely ad mass third world starvation is guaranteed.
Watch for coordination of excess food elimination in the major food exporters – USA, Canada, Argentina, Thailand, Australia with Russian and Ukraine removed by scripted war. I remembered a good book I read in college and I’ve included the link below – Hunger for Justice: The Politics of Food and Faith. It is written from a Liberation Theology perspective but it gives a very good description of how the USA uses food to control its Latin American client government policies and how these client governments use food to control their populations. Might be a good time to review as such old fashioned policies may be manifesting soon within our own borders – think California having control over the ports and enforcing its will on states that won’t follow its insane policies.
Quality post, ICE-9. I think you are correct.
Conjecture much?
USA uses food to control its Latin American client government policies and how these client governments use food to control their populations.
Most of Latin America and the third world are overrunning the border as we speak…
Whutup MyG? Reason #1 that we get our food production on a local or homestead level as much as possible. I’m sure that you have a garden planted….am i right?
push come to shove most people could survive without the grocery store.
I have a question I hope you see. What is intended to “backfill” Central America?
Rich Ukrainians?
Or is the plan to just plunder.
I would go with “plunder.”
I think, generally, exporting food to nations that are not food self-supporting is a bad idea. It creates an endless cycle whereby they remain unable to feed themselves. The US and Australian populations subsidize the overpopulation of these places, and damages their own farmland in the process. It is harsh, but just look at the rapid population expansion in Africa as example. Who is going to feed that continent? I would rather not see it be Oz or the US.
Whenever I see the commercials asking for donations to save the “poor starving Biafrans” I have to ask, what are you saving them for–so in 10 more years when they become fertile (because starvation increases fecundity, that’s why Bekiah in Mali has 10 children while Rachel in Queens has 1) you have to go in again and save them, it’s better to let them starve, I know it sounds cruel but so is Mother Nature. Yes it makes a good sound bite, but if you want to help, there are probably children in your own neighborhood who need dental care–
When I was pursuing academic excellence at the University of Oklahoma almost thirty years ago when it was still available there, I took an Anthropology electorate entitled Tribes of the Southwest. While the entire class enjoyed lectures and slide presentations from a well-traveled anthropologist who also taught on the side, each of us was to pick one of the tribes listed and offer four papers throughout the course over the topics listed and come to class for the lectures if we wanted.
I focused my research on the Zuni tribe and never missed a lecture. He was the best teacher I ever had who never taught.
The size and success of the tribes depended upon their subsistence food patterns, I learned. More successful tribes learned to hunt, gather and plant their own food, eventually raising a few meat birds and cultivating a grain crop which could be easily stored and ground to make bread.
The Zuni tribe, to this day, resists assimilation and do not intermarry with either the white people or foreign tribes. The tribe has a very detailed history not associated with other tribes (I suspect they came from snooty Mongolians but have no proof) in the region and they worship the Masked Gods, entities which appear at their festivals in the flesh and perform miraculous and creative dances. I wanted to visit the Zuni during a family trip to the Grand Canyon onceuponalongtimeago but Albuquerque’s famous zoo won the day.
The Zuni had an intricate community of families based on Matriarchal lines. Each “family” grouping was dedicated to certain tribe-sustaining function(s). If you were the “Water” family, you were responsible for wells and for irrigation of the crops for all the tribe as well as your own family’s needs. If you were the “Planting” family, you were holding the stored seeds or preparing to put the seeds into the agreed-upon ground.
So, I had to ask the professor/entertainer one day during my research: What if you didn’t want to plant food and wanted to be a water maker?
You go find someone to marry in the water family.
It actually does make sense.
Oh, and yes… the outhouse and latrine diggers were also in the fertilizer business because they also gathered waste from the animal pens to use as fertilizer. In Zuni culture nothing was wasted, not even waste.
…
And, yes… there is a “Priest family” grouping. And the masked god thing is fascinating.
In Zuni culture nothing was wasted, not even waste.
That’s how closed systems work. There is no such thing as waste.
you sir have it.
I spoke with my farmer friend about all of this in January. He had fertilizer left over from last year and is in good shape. He’s been selling some sparingly to his friends while keeping enough in reserve for his own fields but will be doing cover crops after harvest this year. He also told me the big farmers he knows in the midwest are also in good shape.
In other words, from my conversation with him, this year will be more or less normal as far as fertilizer because most already had for this year but next year, if nothing changes, will be a lost cause. If the factory farm was practicing Just In Time principles they are already screwed.
We are all, almost, Round-Up® ready though.
I couldn’t figure out which foods were messing me up until I started cutting things contaminated with glyphosate. It gives me a skin rash and irritates my guts.
I haven’t figured out how to avoid glyphosate or any other ‘cides besides growing my own. You can try to buy organic, you can pick foods that are not genetically modified to resist herbicides, but that shit is everywhere and seems to get tested and found in almost every product under the sun.
I just read some reports based on testing and common agriculture practices for various crops and put 2 and 2 together. It is true organic is a crap shoot.
Only when forced into the unnatural parameters of “common agricultural practices”.
Agribusiness is unsustainable anyway. Chemical farming has destroyed the soil life itself and is now nothing but a holding medium for chemicals. The runoff is killing our warters both fresh and salt. In tandem with industrial waste they are making the oceans into a desert. It isn’t at critical mass but will be at some point not too distant. My point is it’s unsustainable. I’m not fan of Gretta’s or the UN. They both prevent open honest discussion of pollution by making it a far left cause. They could care less about it except as a political weapon.
I think they are telling us that the contrived famine will begin in earnest Nov. 1. That’s 6 months.
Flea- Depends on how many vaxxed bite the big one, the shortage may not be as short as one may think.
No, maybe after the elections.
The family farm has one 49 acre field that is still in yearly production. Everything else has been planted in Pine trees that will not mature till 2050 and 2055. I doubt I will be around for that tree harvest. We did this back when my dad passed and I realized how inept my brother-in-law was running a farm. The 49 acre field is a Coastal Bermuda Hay field. It is high quality horse hay that can be cut every 28 days and with the proper fertilizers it will yield 150 square bales per acre for 6 months plus a first and last cutting that usually yields 100 bales but it is lower quality hay than the 6 month prime growing season. We have leased the land to another farmer for the past 20 years where he has made good money off of it and kept the field up.
This year he put up electric fencing re-opened the shallow well and put 60 calves on it. They will be grazing for two seasons on the pasture. It will take 4 to 5 years of land management to get the pasture back to the production levels it has had the past few years with the first year turn plowing the pasture and harrowing it up then re-sprigging it with Coastal Bermuda so the year will have no production that year. He will absorb the cost as those cattle should net more than what he can make with maximum hay production for 4 or 5 years. There will be no fertilizer on the pasture for the next two years.
For proper field management he should be running a rake through the field to break up the cow pies every few weeks for fertilizer for the field. He should also be blocking off sections to spray for weeds to maximize the grass growing. He will do that as he respects the land. This has been a good arrangement as the field rental pays the electric bills, insurance, and taxes for the farm, farmhouse, and my sister’s home with another $15k that is split between my mother, sister, and myself.
“For proper field management he should be running a rake through the field to break up the cow pies every few weeks for fertilizer for the field. ”
https://www.zin.ru/animalia/coleoptera/eng/afrsc_ru.htm
“He should also be blocking off sections to spray for weeds to maximize the grass growing. He will do that as he respects the land”
I also poison what I respect.
Sure. But it depends on the quality of the crap. Eat like crap, crap fertilizer is crappy.
They were using it in Asia for 2,000+ years. In fact it provided a job for someone who would collect the contents of “Night Soil” buckets in town and carry it to the fields.
They also have some interesting and unique parasites in Asia that are related.
Composting it kills them.
Reduce fertilizer and reduce crop yields. Well, that took a lot of thought.
Many farms in this area already use it.
The applicator is a big tank with a fork at the other end. The tines of the fork dig into the soil and the sludge is deposited about 6 inches into the ground then the trough created gets covered. The fields are marked with signs to stay off for 10 days.
The farm nearby the does it has been using it for at least 2 decades.
https://www.mlive.com/citpat/2008/08/human_waste_as_fertilizer_defe.html
I have no problem with human shit getting used. But “spreading sludge from Detroit” is NOT something I would ever put on anything that might be food. City waste is not manure, it’s drugs and chemicals and hormones and everything you don’t want.
I remember from elementary school learning about legumes and how they put nitrogen back into the soil. It was something farmers of old knew so they would rotate their crops.
My 82 year old Dad told me that he had to scoop one ladle of human manure in every potato hole in the family backyard vegetable plot when he was a little boy. No waste went to waste.
Time to buy more Black Kow®. But, don’t know if it’s sold outside of the Southeast.