Back around 2009, I did a -- we'll say a study for lack of a better term of what it was. People end up focusing on transportation, and that is important, but the modern world is made up of industrial processes that are mandatory. We need to have ammonia. If we don't, humanity starves. We need steel. We need concrete. Those three things are the very base minimum of what we need just to continue living anything remotely like a modern place.
Ammonia in particular is an interesting case because it uses 2% of the world's natural gas production, and to replace that we'd need to replace the hydrogen created through catalytic cracking. To do that, we would have needed to use 1/3 of the entire planets non carbon-based power generation to generate massive amounts of hydrogen. In order to accomplish that, you would need to take away that energy for the purposes of heating homes or lighting homes or operating transportation.
Ammonia in particular is an interesting case because it uses 2% of the world's natural gas production, and to replace that we'd need to replace the hydrogen created through catalytic cracking. To do that, we would have needed to use 1/3 of the entire planets non carbon-based power generation to generate massive amounts of hydrogen. In order to accomplish that, you would need to take away that energy for the purposes of heating homes or lighting homes or operating transportation.
I have a problem with statements like that, because I've lived my entire life listening to people tell us what's going to work and then it doesn't work. Rubber needs to hit road and a thing needs to work.
Whether we like it or not, there's entire countries that weren't able to previously feed their own people with their farmland that are now exporting food because they started chemical fertilizer on what was previously sustenance farming. You can say it's wrong, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating -- and ammonium nitrate fertilizer helps feed the globe.
That's why I'm so much about proven technologies like hydroelectric and streetcars, because we know they can work because they did work, they are working, and they can continue to work.
Whether we like it or not, there's entire countries that weren't able to previously feed their own people with their farmland that are now exporting food because they started chemical fertilizer on what was previously sustenance farming. You can say it's wrong, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating -- and ammonium nitrate fertilizer helps feed the globe.
That's why I'm so much about proven technologies like hydroelectric and streetcars, because we know they can work because they did work, they are working, and they can continue to work.
One thing that a lot of studies do with respect to who is feeding the planet is they conflate a "small farm" and a "family farm". The study I found showed that the two are definitely not the same. Defining a "family farm" as a farm owned by one individual or group of individuals and a "small farm" as a farm that has less than two hectares of land, the study I found said that 85% of food was produced by "family farms", but only 35% of food was produced by "small farms". This is due to the fact that the majority of land is operated by family farms of all sizes and a minority of agricultural land is operated by small farms.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X2100067X
Historically, this reality that some families end up with massive and quite productive farms is one of the truths that led to the massacres of the kulaks in the soviet union, since some of the former serfs were more successful than the others.
According to one analysis, organic farming methods were generally between 20 and 50% less productive per acre for food crops.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/283996769/The-Yield-Gap-For-Organic-Farming
That's really bad. 20-50% reduced global productivity would put a lot of places that are ok today in bad shape.
On the topic of biofuels, my mind is actually changed -- you're right, we shouldn't be wasting like that. I didn't think they were that bad, but looking at just how much food they're using up, it's a vanity project we're spending overwhelming amounts of energy wastefully on, especially when there's questions about where regular people are getting their next meal from.
https://www.ifpri.org/blog/food-versus-fuel-v20-biofuel-policies-and-current-food-crisis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X2100067X
Historically, this reality that some families end up with massive and quite productive farms is one of the truths that led to the massacres of the kulaks in the soviet union, since some of the former serfs were more successful than the others.
According to one analysis, organic farming methods were generally between 20 and 50% less productive per acre for food crops.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/283996769/The-Yield-Gap-For-Organic-Farming
That's really bad. 20-50% reduced global productivity would put a lot of places that are ok today in bad shape.
On the topic of biofuels, my mind is actually changed -- you're right, we shouldn't be wasting like that. I didn't think they were that bad, but looking at just how much food they're using up, it's a vanity project we're spending overwhelming amounts of energy wastefully on, especially when there's questions about where regular people are getting their next meal from.
https://www.ifpri.org/blog/food-versus-fuel-v20-biofuel-policies-and-current-food-crisis
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