Shortage of herbicides - hopefully more farmers will go organic

[womanofthehills]

Link to tweet

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Johnson says he’s encouraging farmers to develop weed control plans that don’t rely so heavily on herbicides. That could include tilling the soil to physically remove weeds or planting cover crops that outcompete them.

[fescuerescue]

1. That translates into food shortages

(not the organic part)

We have some bumps ahead.

Organic is great, but it will mean lower volumes.

[Igel]

2. Many can't believe or accept that.

Use of artificially produced fertilizers and herbicides and insecticides increases, pretty much across the board, per acre output.

Options: Reduce output, so there's less food; increase acreage under cultivation, resulting in more carbon released and fields cleared.

It's *possible* but very labor intensive (and hard on the soil) to overlap crops to keep output constant. But more labor = higher prices = more hunger.

The Green Revolution wasn't "green" by today's standards, but was a revolution.

Just like the Haber process might be from Haber (check into his history, and then try to remain 'pure'), but it's really important in saving many hundreds of millions of lives.

[fescuerescue]

3. yea this fertilizer shortage is the scariest thing I've read all day.

Things will get scary real fast if people can't buy food.

[Klaralven]

4. We should conserve US soils and resources instead of producing so much food

We export and donate huge amounts to other countries.

Lets slow down the depletion of US resources.

[NickB79]

5. MORE tilling? Great, the Gulf could really use more soil washed into it

This is what more tilling does. You strip the humus, leaving subsoil behind. Then you have no choice but to rely on massive inputs of chemical fertilizer to keep getting high yields.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/967376880/new-evidence-shows-fertile-soil-gone-from-midwestern-farms

Farming has destroyed a lot of the rich soil of America's Midwestern prairie. A team of scientists just came up with a staggering new estimate for just how much has disappeared.

The most fertile topsoil is entirely gone from a third of all the land devoted to growing crops across the upper Midwest, the scientists say. Some of their colleagues, however, remain skeptical about the methods that produced this result.

The new study emerged from a simple observation, one that people flying over Midwestern farms can confirm for themselves. The color of bare soil varies, and that variation is related to soil quality.

[TheFarseer]

6. Isn't this what machete knives are for?

When I was a kid, which was only the 80’s - 90’s, I chopped a ton of weeds out of corn and soybean fields. No chemicals, just a little hard work.