XUAN CANH, Vietnam — Truong Thi Nha stands just four and a half feet tall. Her three grown children tower over her, just as many young people in this village outside Hanoi dwarf their parents.
The biggest reason the children are so robust: fertilizer.
Ms. Nha, her face weathered beyond its 51 years, said her growth was stunted by a childhood of hunger and malnutrition. Just a few decades ago, crop yields here were far lower and diets much worse.
Then the widespread use of inexpensive chemical fertilizer, coupled with market reforms, helped power an agricultural explosion here that had already occurred in other parts of the world. Yields of rice and corn rose, and diets grew richer.
Now those gains are threatened in many countries by spot shortages and soaring prices for fertilizer, the most essential ingredient of modern agriculture.
Joined: Sep 03, 2005 Posts: 75 Location: Germany, State M-V
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 11:24 am Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
There are already some solutions to handle the fertilizer problem all around the world:
For rice it is even possible to produce more food without chemical fertilizer:
It's called the "Duck revolution". Invented by TAKAO FURUNO, a japanese peasant. He is practicing ecological farming since 1977 and in 1987 he got the idea to combine rice farming and growing ducks at the same place. Gradually he enhanced his idea by adding other organisms to his system. He published in 2001 all his knowledge in the book "The power of duck". The result of his work is the combination of rice growing together with growing of ducks and fishes in a paddy.
Even better is to let grow different sorts of Azolla ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla ), a aquatic fern in the paddies. Azolla works like legumes in fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere in the ground respectively in the water.
For crops/grains:
- Inter cropping of legumes and grains (not only one year after the other but instead at the same time at the same place): Legumes deliver nitrogen and the grain is the plant for the legume to creep.
- Instead of aritificial and costly fertilizer Bacteria (Diazotrophs, usually living in symbiosis with legumes) can do the work - even better, because plant and Bacteria (in symbiosis)are living together in symbiosis. Bacteria delivers nitrogen and the plant delivers carbohydrate (starch/sugar). Even better is the combination of these Bacteria with a special flavonoid (plant pigment) called naringenin (especially in tomatoes; e.g. in tomato puree or tomato paste). With this substance legumes are signaling in a chemical matter that they are needing nitrogen in exchange for delivering starch or sugar. The colonization of the roots of the legumes (or here: of the crops) is enhanced through the application of naringenin.
The enhancement of the growth of the plants is not only better because of the nitrogen but because of different substances which are produced through this symbiosis.
Here is a study which analyzed this effect at Brassica napus (rape, canola):
One firm (i am too lazy in the moment to find similar products with a description in english; i get no money or any advantage from this firm. It's just my private struggle against misinformation and agrimultis like pioneer, Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, et.al.) where you can buy this ecological (!) sort of fertilizer (there should be more, which are selling suitable Bacteria):
The price is 57 Euro (ca. 92 Dollar) plus shipment for one kilo (needed for an area of about one hectare) of powder. You have to mix it with water. It's quite expensive for the owner of a small garden, but perhaps you can convince your neighbours AND: If you are cultivating your garden in a ecological way (no articificial fertilizers, no insecticides, herbicides, etc.) then you only have to buy and apply it perhaps once in your lifetime, because then you don't kill your tiny little friends and they are happy in your soil till the end.
Joined: Sep 03, 2005 Posts: 75 Location: Germany, State M-V
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 6:42 am Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
The product Phylazonit contains Bacteria which can extract Phosphor of the soil, if there are phosphorous compounds in it, and make it available to the plant.
The availability of nitrogen is not the biggest problem i think but the price of it. In the moment you have costs about 200 Euros (320 Dollars) per hectare (2,5 acres), if i am remembering correctly, of fertilizer for producing rape or maize.
Fertilizer is like software products, water, energy, automobiles, weapons, drugs, chemicals, a multi billion dollar business.
Another company which offers a Bacteria-fertilizer:
Joined: Feb 20, 2005 Posts: 2805 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:09 am Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
manu wrote:
Keep some cows and oxen and make your own fertilizer. Learn to compost properly.
Riiiiight.
Quote:
Ms. Nha’s husband, Le Van Son, remembers villagers’ amazement in the 1990s when they learned that a pound of chemical fertilizer contained more of the major nutrients than 100 pounds of manure.
_________________ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 1:38 pm Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
Jupidu wrote:
The product Phylazonit contains Bacteria which can extract Phosphor of the soil, if there are phosphorous compounds in it, and make it available to the plant.
The availability of nitrogen is not the biggest problem i think but the price of it. In the moment you have costs about 200 Euros (320 Dollars) per hectare (2,5 acres), if i am remembering correctly, of fertilizer for producing rape or maize.
Fertilizer is like software products, water, energy, automobiles, weapons, drugs, chemicals, a multi billion dollar business.
Another company which offers a Bacteria-fertilizer:
This product has been tested in Australia for two years with success. Phospor and other minerals has to be added.
This comes at expense of acidification of soil.
Bacterias used as promoters are producing significant amounts of organic acids, which are increasing phosphate solubility.
link
Unfortunately most of crops don't like acidic soils and this can cause many secondary problems.
Amount of phosphorus made available that way is also far lower then this delivered with inorganic fertilizers.
On the other hand reported in your second reference nitrogen fixation results with preparate Twin N (TM) are very impressive and would solve most of nitrogen fertilization problems if true.
Joined: Sep 03, 2005 Posts: 75 Location: Germany, State M-V
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:07 pm Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
@Starvid
Artificial Fertilizer are nothing else but a mixture of different salts. Using this over and over again is damaging the soils. It's like doing irrigation with salty water. Rivers and lakes are getting too much fertilizer and algae are spreading out and in the sommer there could be a lack of oxygen in the lake or even in the river, fishes or other animals are dying.
@Manu
For a peasant with one or two acres that's for sure a possibility but when a cow breeding farm with thousand cows or more wants to distribute the manure on it's "nearby" ten thousand acres, then you need a lot of fuel!
A few weeks ago i joined a discussion with an old farmer from Mississippi here in Germany in the state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He made a visit with his wife in Europe. He wants to make his own fuel by building an oil mill and squeezing rape or cotton seed for example and therefore gathered information by a visit of a german farmer who is already doing this since over five years. He was only able to visit Europe because he is producing rolled sod.
The soils in America were once one of the most fertile in the world, even short after WWII. Then Europe was feed by this fertile ground.
Farmers could enhance their soil at least in a certain distance near their house by growing trees as practiced by the methods of agroforestry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agroforestry ), e.g. alley cropping. You have to wait at least ten years (poplar or willow) to harvest your investment, but for sure wood has soon more value than gold or oil.
Joined: Sep 03, 2005 Posts: 75 Location: Germany, State M-V
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:58 pm Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
Quote:
Unfortunately most of crops don't like acidic soils and this can cause many secondary problems.
I'm not a scientist for biology nor i'm a agri engineer, i'm just a graduated engineer for aeronautics and aerospace, but i read a lot of things about agriculture, forestry, permaculture, geology or also meteorology in the last four years.
In maintaining relationships i am really a bloody idiot, but i have some talent in mathematics, logic and a sort of gift of combining. And many things i read about soil and bacteria are appearing very logical to me.
1. The main goal of organisms is usually not to destroy their own environment.
2. Symbiosises are a very popular form of organsims for living together (e.g. diazotrophic Bacteria which are living in the nodules
of legumes).
3. Nature always wants to come into a form of balance (Temperature, amount of bacteria, ph-value etc.)
So if there is a state of too much acid in the soil e.g. by throwing a bottle full of vinegar into your garden then nature will clean it in a few days. Bacteria by itself are most probably not willing to destroy their environment by producing to much acid.
Soil is not comparable with a big vessel where you put in a lot of chemicals and afterwards there should be a certain new mixture with calculated properties in it.
But yes you can produce a too acid soil, if i remember correct by diverting too much manure or too much artificial fertilizer (don't know which one it was).
Quote:
Amount of phosphorus made available that way is also far lower then this delivered with inorganic fertilizers.
I read in a book (online available but only in german till now: "The last chance", about soil, bacteria and other soil organisms) that even in the best and fertile soil there is always only a small amount of available substances for the plant to be measured. The solution is that the organisms are always delivering or producing substances which the partner organism needs in the right amount - a so called "just-in-time-process", very clever 8 . Producing means use of energy and therefore (because of millions of years of experience) there is never a situation where to much surplus is produced.
Why should a bacteria produce nitrogen when it get's no sugar because the plant don't need nitrogen at the moment?
I never saw a soil analysis nor did i ever caused such a thing, but for me it sounds very logic and therefore true.
Joined: Apr 17, 2005 Posts: 2731 Location: Vancouver Island
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 3:59 pm Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
Jupidu wrote:
1. The main goal of organisms is usually not to destroy their own environment.
The main goal of organisms is to reproduce. There is lots of examples outside of humans that demonstrate organisms destroying their own environment by massively over reproducing. In the end the environment changes and their numbers are reduced/eliminated. _________________ shame on us, doomed from the start
god have mercy on our dirty little hearts
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:20 pm Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
strider3700 wrote:
Jupidu wrote:
1. The main goal of organisms is usually not to destroy their own environment.
The main goal of organisms is to reproduce. There is lots of examples outside of humans that demonstrate organisms destroying their own environment by massively over reproducing. In the end the environment changes and their numbers are reduced/eliminated.
such organisms are a failure, either in the population or species level. _________________ anagami.net
Joined: Apr 12, 2007 Posts: 1172 Location: Central NC
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:28 pm Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
zensui wrote:
strider3700 wrote:
Jupidu wrote:
1. The main goal of organisms is usually not to destroy their own environment.
The main goal of organisms is to reproduce. There is lots of examples outside of humans that demonstrate organisms destroying their own environment by massively over reproducing. In the end the environment changes and their numbers are reduced/eliminated.
such organisms are a failure, either in the population or species level.
So what? The organisms that fill the vacant niche are all for it.
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