Need to steward the land like they did back before chemicals fertilizers. Letting land lie fallow, crop rotations, green manure and like. Once you start with chemicals, you must continue and each year to a greater and greater amount.

If you don't want to be dependent on chemicals, you can't start them. If you want to get off chemicals, you may have to let the ground lie fallow for a couple (or few) seasons and till in green manure. Of course, getting off chemicals is tough ... so best not start them if you don't want to be on them for long term.

 

don't know about you, but i've never used chemical fertilizer on my gardens, no matter how big they got (one got up to a couple acres). My grandfather farmed without it. just took what the cows gave him and spread it on the fields.

There are a number of truly organic farms around here. (south central wisconsin)
Lots more work, I suppose, for the big farmer tho. So the big corporate farms probably won't even get away from chemicals.

The farmer neighbor we have puts his cows on the alfalfa/corn rotation fields all winter. They do a great job for him He fixes nitrogen in the soil using crops. Pretty darn good farmer.

 

I was recently at a meeting with some key ag people in our western NY region and one of the topics was the cost of fertilizers. 45% of the urea that the US uses comes from overseas, yet some groups/organizations, etc. are trying to ban manure because it is toxic. Huh???

 

For one thing, before we had chemical fertilizers there was a lot less industrial use of crops. When you eat it or feed it and it takes it's natural course there's a lot more left than if you're processing it for plastic or whatever else.
And I don't think the NIMBY's would ever let us make much better use of manure or human waste. We use sewage sludge here now and it works (although very little nitrogen in it) but the NIMBYs are very close to having it banned for farmland and they'd like to do the same with manure.

We can always let the land lie fallow every other year like a lot of farmers used to as long as we're willing to live with half as much food.

 

Of course we could survive with out artificial nitrogen, that was done for a great many centuries before the industrial age appeared. Of course the soil was not worn out then, and todays population could not survive on such meager amount of food such could produce.

 

Much of the world was starving without the development of ammonium nitrate fertilizers. This lead to quite a few political uprisings by starving peasants which eventually forged modern governments.

The demand or need for chemical fertilizers became an imperative by the Germans during WWI. They were running out of nitrates formed from animal based ammonia and they had been importing slatpeter from Chile. When war broke out, other nations banded together and cut off their supply. Theri need for ammonimum nitrate was not to feed their people, but to make explosives.

WWI would have ended much earlier had they not assembled different processes to make ammonia from the air and then converted it to usable ammonium nitrate on a large scale. They now had the material to make bombs and fertilizer to feed their people and troops.

After the war, the world became indistrialized and with the post-war baby booms, people realized they had to produce more food to feed the much larger populations in the cities. They saw value in the streamlined processes developed by the germans.

And now we live in a world where our poor are overweight!

But the quality of food is not as good. You can produce tons of sugar and starch crops, but the minerals are being depleted from the soils at an amazing rate. Indistrial acid rain also leaches more from the soil as well - rain water is not as pure as some would like you to believe.

In theory, the cycling of manure sounds elegant, but over the long run you may end up concentrating toxins, naturally made animal hormones, and even biological pathogens in a particulare area.
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IF you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are NOT reading this in The King's English, thank a veteran!

 

Of course we can survive just fine without chemical fertilizers just ask my friends the organic farm and my new organic farm no chemical fertilizers there and our plants look just fine without it.
Nitrogen can come from many sources it doesn't have to come from chemicals. There are many nitrogen fixing plants.

 

I don't use chemical fertilizers. I use cow patties and make manure tea with them. Makes things grow like crazy! I know some will say it's dangerous, but my parents did it, and their parents did it. I figure that if 3 generations have lived with it, then it must not be as dangerous as some think it is. We only use cow patties from our own animals, I wouldn't use any from commercial farms. The animals have been raised without any chemicals so their patties are natural. Now that I'm raising rabbits, goats, and poultry, I've been using their fertilizer too. Rabbit & goat poo can be used without having to compost it first so it's a real quick way to get things growing.

 

I have been organic for six years. No chems or poisons. I am producing just as much as if I had used the other stuff. It is more work but my family is worth it.
Hey, I heard on the weather channel the other day that 10 pounds of nitrate is formed per acre per year from lighting. God's trying to help us do it right.
As for the minerals and such, I found a guy whose family has been mining a dirt that has 72 minerals and trace elements in it since the 1800's. So I found my supply for that and have even been selling a little bit of it around here. I named it MAGIC DIRT.
Gary

 

Or is the question more like: Can our current population of 6 billion survive without chemical fertilizer? If one considers that a lot (most?) comes from natural gas, then some day we'll find out! Good that we're using all that natural gas up in Canada to heat up that tar sand to make crude oil to fill the SUV to get to McDonalds to eat all that yummy corn based food and HFCS softdrinks (sorry for the rant).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer

The Haber process now produces 100 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer per year, mostly in the form of anhydrous ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and urea. 1% of the world's annual energy supply is consumed in the Haber process (Science 297(1654), Sep 2002).

 

use of manures has been around since the dawn of time. yep some can carry disease and some can leach or leak too areas that it is not wanted.when applied properly it can sustain and nurture proper plant growth. with the addition of green manures some soils can be productive but the nutrients removed by crops must be replaced either through manures or other chemicals. growing a nitrogenous crop also helps, at one time when biotech first came out i was hoping too see grains crossed with a legume and cactus too reduce nitrogen needs and water needs of crops. cycling nutrient's from a waste water plant does return potash some phosphorus and a very little nitrogen plus organic matter too mined out fields. direct application of night soils would increase the amount of nutrients but would also increase the pathogen load (suns rays would take care of a lot of the pathogens but leaving material on the surface also increases the chance that something/one would come in contact with the material) for all the oder problems with liquid manure, the fast application and evenness of spread do have benefits. have personally seen biosolids "wake up" dead land that had been stripped for topsoil and base materials. here we have fought the nimby's and won partial victory in regards to returning nutrient's too soils.

 

the only fertilizer is the home grown stuff,, cow,pig chicken and rabbit

 

Ford Major, Are you concerned about the heavy metals and pharmaceuticals that are found in "biosolids" (septic tank sludge)?

 

Ford Major, Are you concerned about the heavy metals and pharmaceuticals that are found in "biosolids" (septic tank sludge)?

yes too a degree, they are tested for here and those that are not within acceptable guidelines are landfilled. there are removal methods for heavy metals. our areas plants have very low level readings of both. even some commercial fertilizers have contaminants, one of the things that needs work. and yep know the ins and outs of the industry from trout ladder too sludge application. (also the household plumbing and collector systems). soils that have been used for sludge application are monitored for residuals, as far as any land i know of that has been spread any elevated levels have been marginal too nonexistent. while things are far from perfect, here in ontario at least we are making headway in water/waste water treatment and applications of manurial substances. not just dumping them in streams or landfills or using more nat gas too incinerate them.

 

Fordy the only thing high in the sludge here is copper, I guess because of all the circuit board manufacturing that used to go on in town. Fortunately all the soils around here are badly deficient in copper so it's working out very well.

 

If you guys are interested, go on the dirt doctor's website & find out how to farm organically.

www.dirtdoctor.com

Patty

 

Individuals with farms on semi-decent land can survive without chemical fertilizers, provided they can defend those farms from desperately hungry hoardes coming to locust anything they can find.

6 billion people is more people than can be fed by food relying on nitrogen-fixing bacteria alone. You'd have to get rid of about half that number for the world to support without chemical fertilizers.

Chemical fertilizers are the only way our population got this high. Prior to their invention the extra people starved to death or died of illnesses which prevailed because of their poor nutrition, generally dying as children.

Every single one of our environmental problems can be traced to global overpopulation; anyone who has had more than 2 kids is part of the problem.

 

In my attempt to help feed the "world" and to render a return to feed my family I do not think I could make a go without chemical fertilizer. I recycle as much organic fertilizer as my beef herd generates, I apply manure from a local commercial chicken layer house, I use a pathogen free product from a waste treatment plant, I plant legumes in with my forage grasses but I still need approximately 28 tons per year of commercial fertilizer to produce the 55000 pounds of live weight feeder calves that leave the farm annually. It takes a lot of fuel to meet the needs, be it a car or a person!

 

I really doubt that the average farm could survive financially without chemical fertilizers. It is borderline now with the costs of fuel and fertilizers having gone up drastically the last few years.

While it is noble advocating the use of manures to produce crops please tell me how the average western Kansas farmer can obtain and apply enough manure to provide his farms fertilizer needs. I don't know the numbers but when I was still farming (early 1980s) most farmers in my area had around 1,000 acres of wheat and I expect that number has grown. FYI, the land is fallowed to obtain and hold enough moisture for the next crop.

While I can easily see home gardeners and small producers (under 40 acres) surviving quite nicely I will be very difficult or impossible for a FARMER to survive without chemical fertilizers---in my opinion.

 

While I can easily see home gardeners and small producers (under 40 acres) surviving quite nicely I will be very difficult or impossible for a FARMER to survive without chemical fertilizers---in my opinion.

It depends on your definition of a farm. How big, what are they growing? Do they have enough land to rotate crops with green manures? Pasture raised or feed lot? There are so many variables but All farming or ranching can be done organically if you are willing to make some sacrifices. The bigger the operation, the harder it is.

 

Buffy, the kind of big factory farm that she refers to is what is needed to produce enough for the 6 billion folk on the planet. Downsizing back to 40 acre boutique farms is fine to support those living on them and their local towns but cannot possibly produce enough to also support the urban centers.

 

The farmers I know couldn't survive without chem fert. Corn one year, soybeans the next, then corn, then soybeans, and so on. They would have to change their whole method of farming. Grandpa farmed many years with minimal chem fert, (liquid nitrogen applied to the corn patch) but the barn cleanings and a crop rotaion cycle of 5 crops and a fallow period helped keep the soil productive.

I suppose the NIMBY's would rather be poisoned from chem fert than plain old manure. I'ld prefer the manure.

 

The production from my farm, without using chemical fertilizer, would be IMO less than 1/3 the current output. All those that want to eat every third day or less need to promote eliminating chemical fertilizer from the production of food for the world. We have neither the acres nor the knowledgeable people to feed the current population without it.

 

The production from my farm, without using chemical fertilizer, would be IMO less than 1/3 the current output. All those that want to eat every third day or less need to promote eliminating chemical fertilizer from the production of food for the world. We have neither the acres nor the knowledgeable people to feed the current population without it.

I submit that with the dewindling petroleum reserves, we're going to need to figure it out.

Sustaining 6 billion people on fallow is not going to happen, but the choice to get off chemicals has been made for us. We're just going to run out some day ... and the longer you use chemicals the more you need them.

I think there's wake call coming ... and not everyone is going to have a full plate of food on that day.

My two cents ... as gloom and doom as it is.

 

Then again, if everyone could grow some of their own food then we wouldn't be as dependent on mega-farm corporations. Or even buying from small local farmers would help reduce the need for mega-farms. Change is coming, like it or not. And the mega-farm cheap food mentality will be the first casualty.