Discussion
Fossil gas is a feedstock for the Haber-Bosch process used to make fertiliser (but invented for making early 20th Century munitions).
Gas has been plentiful and cheap in the Persian Gulf and so it has made sense to build out decades of infrastructure to make fertiliser at point of source.
Consequently, about one third of the world’s fertiliser demand has been met by moving it through the Gulf and out into the wider world.
And now that’s not happening…
@urlyman Back to bird shit?
They tried to make us go to rehab
But we said guano, no, no?
I was reading some reports about Helium is mostly purified in Qatar, and the factory was shut down due to drone strikes.
This will have an effect on silicon chip manufacturing in Taiwan.
_not sure_ how reliable that story is; have only seen it repeated in a couple of places that I am not sure are reliable.
Have you heard of this? is it real?
@benh thanks Ben. I hadn’t heard about that.
actually I consider Toms Hardware to be fairly reputable, and they cover it
@urlyman funny how as we have an excess of animals and dung was used to enrich the soils, plus crop rotation, now usurped in favour of man made stuff shipped half way around the world to feed plants bred specifically for yield over quality, sprayed with man made pesticides and herbicides, because profit is more important over quality and health. We live in a sick world.
@urlyman a huge amount came from Russia. Also reduced.
We have processes for fixing atmospheric Nitrogen using biological systems or a lot of energy, which I think we need to ramp up a lot.
…For the northern hemisphere, fertiliser for next year’s growing season will be needed towards the end of this year.
We can expect food prices to rocket.
And in the UK, we have only a single fertiliser manufacturing plant left
@urlyman Er, this sounds suspicious to me.
There's a thousand-year-old agricultural trick, crop rotation. Considering that we now know how it works, particularly about the nitrogen-fixing ability of legumes, and that last year's nutrients won't be depleted from soil in a single year, wouldn't many farmers be able to compensate for fertiliser deficit lasting for one or two years?
=> My hunch is, the pressure would be on (some) farmers for the first year, and indirectly, on agricultural social security systems. We could see an upwards forcing on two- and three-year staple food commodity futures right away, which can leak into present because it would make profitable to hoard and hold food, but "the food futures are up" is a common pattern, and most governments have both the experience, the tools, and the financial capability of handling it for a year or two. I'd predict the systemic manifestations of this chain of events to first lead to increased political instability in the countries whose governments are already marginal, not a substantial sharp increase in global food prices.
@urlyman Would be kinda nice if we could use it for fertilizer and didn't need to burn it now would it
@larsmb short term, yes.
From what I understand, providing artificial nitrogen to a crop causes each plant to invest more in its overground and shallow soil self and less in its deeper root system, which causes the below ground mycelial network to atrophy, and the soil to become denuded
@urlyman already buying or trying for winter season here in the Antipodes. It’s tough.
…If it’s not already obvious, we need to be instituting a Dig For Victory style programme, except it won’t be about ‘victory’, it will be Grow Food To Live Better.
We need national communal regenerative farming started now. Which among other things, means compulsory land orders on wasteful tracts of privately-owned land.
But I guess we’ll wait until hunger ravages because we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power
"we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power"
I am 61 and the only change I'd make to that statement is to drop the "one of" clause. (And it's not just the UK. The German government is similarly brain-dead right now. The European right has collectively thrown its hat in the ring with the US right and are being dragged down in the undertow of stupidity.)
"we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power"
I am 61 and the only change I'd make to that statement is to drop the "one of" clause. (And it's not just the UK. The German government is similarly brain-dead right now. The European right has collectively thrown its hat in the ring with the US right and are being dragged down in the undertow of stupidity.)
On this, I recommend listening to relevant experts like @sarahtaber : https://mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/116233564682293022
Donald Trump's disrupting global fertilizer supplies by tariffs and by war is one of the many many reasons he needs to be stopped & removed from power.
But this is not a matter of not being able to feed everyone.
@michael_w_busch thanks. I’m not saying we’ll imminently not be able to feed everyone. However, some countries are more precarious https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116234479598267213
What I do say is we desperately need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels including gas. And for once in my life it would be great if instead of it only being psychopaths who don’t let a crisis go to waste, we actually sieze this moment to overhaul our food systems for what we materially need to do anyway
Permaculture.
Permaculture, goddammit. Everywhere. With wartime urgency and resources. Like these fuckers wanna build all those useless damned data centers. Permaculture.
Rehabilitate landscapes, save biodiversity, grow food, replenish groundwater, prevent flooding and pollution and wildfires, reverse desertification, mitigate climate change and more ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
When I learned these solutions exist, and saw even the "good cop" politicians not even TALKING ABOUT IT much less fucking doing it, that's when I realized we're in extremely deep shit and the powers that be have already written off most of us for dead.
…I’m a climate and biosphere collapse-concerned web designer. So aside from shit posting like an old fart, I tend to post about environment and tech.
Being a tech heavy community, Mastodon tends to prick its ears up a bit more when I post about tech. Posts about food systems like the above, not so much.
So by way of a lead in to where this thread is going shortly (and may subsequently continue), here following is a *tech* angle on the Straits of Hormuz being more or less closed…
@urlyman Mastodon has not only tech people. From my nature-biodiversity-climate-science bubble I can tell you that a lot of people are interested in #food and #FoodSafety ! So plse post more about #environment!
…The following is taken from a transcript of something I’ll share a link to in a bit.
“The majority of crude oil that passes through the Straits of Hormuz is classified as sour crude with a high sulfur content, and when you refine sour crude, you produce elemental sulfur as a byproduct.
When we pull ~17 million barrels a day of sour crude off the market, we’re not just losing fuel, we also are potentially losing sulfur…
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