I’ve just been sat looking at monoculture farms growing gasoline for two decades like “… cusp?”
… The entire fucking planet basically is.
This is the entire fucking doomsday scenario that has been predicted by the ‘Limits to Growth’ type models, its just that they predicted it being caused basically by the dynamics of ‘more mouths to feed’ + ‘all the easy to get oil and lng has already been got’ = food prices raise dramatically -> mass famine.
So… this just accelerated that, by taking something like 20% of the world’s inputs required for growing food, and taking them offline… likely for at least half a decade, even if the war ended right now, simply from the damage done to extraction/refinement facilities.
You can’t sustain the human population of this planet, in its current economic configuration, without mass use of chemical fertilizers in industrialized agriculture.
This is basically why Mike Rupert killed himself, he figured this out in his own way around 2 decades ago, and then basically became immensely depressed.
You knock a bunch of fetilizer plants offline?
Well, now, you’re looking at famine for tens to hundreds of millions of people, unless extremely competent emergency response plans are enacted.
A crisis of our own making, I’d say. So many options these days, but US farmers are stuck in their old habits of growing Monsanto corn and soy and then spraying it all with roundup. Remember when crop rotation & rest was a thing used to replenish the soil, instead of relying on petroleum-based fertilizers? Where’s all the manure from livestock going? Why isn’t curbside composting mandatory across the country?
Most nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas, which isn’t in short supply and shouldn’t be constrained by the war in the Middle East for US farmers. North America has plenty. Not sure what other fertilizer the article has in mind.
https://texasborderbusiness.com/u-s-natural-gas-production-hits-record-high-as-lng-exports-surge/
Waste from water treatment plants looked promising until it turned out to be full of pfas.
I’m still waiting for vertical indoor farming to take off. I would think it would need far less fertilizer and water. 🤷♂️
