• jrs100000@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    2 hours ago

    Im sure it will be great comfort to the billions who starve in a global famine while we spend decades building out the infrastructure for that.

    • cecilkorik@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      27 minutes ago

      That’s probably overselling the importance of fertilizer a little. A huge proportion of the food we grow is completely wasted, rots without anyone eating it, or doesn’t “look nice” so gets fed to animals who could just as easily eat other food sources. Another gigantic portion of the is grown inefficiently and stupidly for political and cultural and other asinine reasons, grown in inefficient places, or are inefficient crops to begin with. Sometimes it’s all of the above, and sometimes it’s not even grown for food at all, it’s grown for oil. We burn it, because that’s environmentally friendly, somehow. Famine is not a global agricultural problem, it’s an economic problem, sometimes an intellectual property problem and almost always a political problem, it has nothing to do with lack of fertilizer, it never has been, and it almost certainly never will be. The whole system is rigged top to bottom, and fertilizer isn’t going to make or break it.