Soil: The world beneath our feet

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/07/secret-world-beneath-our-feet-mind-blowing-key-to-planets-future

by ljf • 4 years ago

174 60 4 years ago

zeristor• 4 years ago

Lots of new ideas about plants encouraging bacteria around their roots, I guess this started before gut fauna in animals.

So many things to think about.

foobarian• 4 years ago

Every day we get a little bit closer to mass cultivation of truffles! Ahhh truffles.

bmitc2• 4 years ago

This is a great article. I forgot where I read it, but someone basically said that we need to stop treating soil as just dirt.

I have found out through my research that replacing invasive species and lawns with native plants and also composting organic waste, leaves, and twigs and returning that to your lawn are two of the best things a single person or group of persons can do to thwart climate change. Organic material decomposing in landfills generates methane, which is 26 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its greenhouse effects. Composting organic material generates much, much less methane, and you can use it to return sustenance back to your soil. Instead of taking twigs and leaves and removing it from your property, you can compost them as well and return it back to the soil or also just leave the leaves in some cases. Planting native plants is a big win all around, from soil conditions, to using less or no water or fertilizer, to improving wildlife and pollinator conditions. Additionally, replacing lawns, which should be viewed as wastelands and green deserts, with plants greatly increases carbon capture. These are things that nearly everyone can do literally right now. I've tried finding research, and my current knowledge is that composting could save as much as 8-10% of global emissions and restoring areas with native plants could save as much as 20-30% of global emissions.

A few specific references that I have been using are Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy, as well as his other books, and the Monarch Gardens project (https://www.monarchgard.com/) by Benjamin Vogt.

It blows my mind that people keep looking for technocratic solutions when we have solutions right in front of us that could be done right now. Take a look around next time you're driving around and just note all the lawn spaces sitting there and doing literally nothing. They could be replaced with native plants with zero negative impact, and it would do wonders for the local ecosystem.

throwaway1777• 4 years ago

What’s the difference between composting in the yard and composting in a landfill?

bwestergard• 4 years ago

Composting in the yard, if done correctly, is aerobic. In a landfill it will be anaerobic, generating more methane.

carapace3• 4 years ago

In a word, oxygen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_organism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_organism

- - - -

"Compost" and "composting" is a fairly specific kind of process, it's just not correct to call what happens in a landfill "composting" (or contrast with a midden which is just a pile of kitchen refuse, and also not "composting".)

The key difference in composting (as contrasted with just piling up waste material) is the specific formation of a kind of ecosystem within the pile. A healthy compost pile produces it's own heat. It's a concentrated and accelerated form of the natural processes that happen in healthy soil, and in many ways it really is a kind of organism.

(The dividing line between organism and ecosystem is not sharp. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_mat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoplax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war#Coloni... and so on... )

Anyway, in a landfill you get your pockets of mostly organic biomass, and decomposition happens, but it tends to be anaerobic (which generally is less healthy from the POV of human metabolism) and the results don't get integrated back into ecosystems rapidly (isolation is not complete, so they ooze back into the water table but they are almost always accompanied by toxic chemical wastes, so it doesn't really help.)

oh_sigh2• 4 years ago

If you do it wrong - nothing. As others have responded though, oxygen is the difference, and that is why you need to "turn" your compost every couple of days. If you don't, it will start to get very stinky - if you're doing aerobic composting shouldn't really have a smell, maybe something slightly earthy but that is it.

rhn_mk14• 4 years ago

How to find out which plants are native to which region?

algoatecorn2• 4 years ago

If you are in the US, most state universities will have an extension program that guides native plant selection. There are also quite a few regional native plant societies, many of which will even send free seeds.

mcbishop• 4 years ago

There are native plant nurseries.

hetspookjee4• 4 years ago

I struggle to find the answer too. I want to plant exclusively plants in my garden that are native to my region and find other properties. These sources do provide some information but none of them are really pleasant or on par with quality.

- garden.org - https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/home - http://eol.org # This shows some nice graphs of what pest might ward of other invaders but its quite the challenge to find it. For illustration on what I mean with the graph, here's a good example: https://eol.org/pages/45515235

I am dreaming of having the time and budget to expand on this website of EOL and develop an open source farm where non-tech users can contribute through tools like iNaturalist and collectively create the graph of life. In such a way that we can formulate the world as a LP problem where we maximize for bio-diversity with respect to the surroundings. Imagine being able to insert any terrain, be it France or Somalia, and have a recommended plantplan over time be delivered. I think it's a matter of time till we're there.

hosh• 4 years ago

Every year, landsats measuring soil temperature shows a spike in temperature at around spring planting. And this is because commercial agriculture kills off the soil in order to plant a single crop, maximized on yield. And every year, the soil fertility gets worse, because the ecology of fungi and microbes are not established or accumulating in the soil. It’s just planting on dirt.

It’s not just nutrients. Living soil retains water, and regulates the release of water That has an impact on the microclimate.

Going one step further, planting _edible_ native plants yields useful resources for humans, and helps decentralize food production systems. Add onsite composting and greywater.

hetspookjee4• 4 years ago

I read a while back a comment that put it really aptly: modern day agriculture is hydroponics with the exhausted ground being the substrate.

boredumb2• 4 years ago

Everyone should invest in a decent microscope. Whether it's some soil or a drop of pond water there is an absolutely insane amount of life that escapes the naked eye. Easily one of the best couple hundred dollars I've spent in my life.

pesfandiar• 4 years ago

What level of magnification would you consider decent in a microscope?

boredumb2• 4 years ago

you really only need 10x or 25x.

https://www.tiktok.com/@madscientistken

This guy does live streams almost nightly and I've found myself entranced more than I'd like to admit.

jacobolus• 4 years ago

And if you want to be inspired (whether or not you own a microscope) take a look at Journey to the Microcosmos on YouTube https://youtube.com/c/microcosmos/

hetspookjee4• 4 years ago

The LIDL sold me one 70euro a few years ago and it works marvels.

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

Closed-system farming, where basically everything is recycled - nutrients, water, biomass (except what goes onto people's tables) - is theoretically possible and this article describes what looks like a successful system. This is also the kind of thing you'd need on a large spaceship or Martian colony (where human feces/urine would also need to be recycled).

However, the increase in labor needed shouldn't be underestimated. Some automation is likely possible with advanced robots, but this would mean a much larger fraction of the population would be involved in agriculture, perhaps as much as 10X as are currently employed.

In the cited example in the article, apparently one worker has managed 7 hectares using a closed-system model, if we take 'single-handedly' at face value. In contrast, according to wikipedia, in the USA on average one worker can manage 100 hectares (1 square km) with industrial methods (lots of water and fertilizer wastage).

This would be a pretty radical social restructuring, probably not what most people have in mind when they talk about 'postindustrial society'.

black_knight• 4 years ago

You mean… “This will create a lot of new jobs – hooray!”

floren• 4 years ago

I think about farming a lot these days, especially when I'm reading about startups on HN.

Our culture has spent decades putting down agriculture as the lowest work, worse than waiting tables or running a cash register. Hell, I grew up on a farm and I still looked down on it.

When I compare it to building CRUD apps because a VC wants another unicorn, though, it seems pretty attractive. The work is hard, but the results are tangible, and you're fulfilling the most basic human need. Which is more worthwhile: actually growing potatoes, or programming Farmville?

I would love a future in which a much bigger percentage of the American population lived in clusters of small farms, growing food to feed themselves and to send to market. A community of 10-acre plots (why 10 acres? see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48753), with a co-op organization that gathers up people's produce and hauls it to the nearest city for sale.

where basically everything is recycled - nutrients, water, biomass (except what goes onto people's tables)

The parenthetical is an interesting problem... the current agricultural system seems to be a machine for pulling nutrients out of the soil, shipping them to cities, and then flushing them out to sea. Then we attack farmers for putting fertilizer into the soil.

algoatecorn2• 4 years ago

On the upside, new farming techniques may provide higher-skill and comfortable jobs in the field. Vertical farming will offer a ton of comfortable jobs (in the AC as opposed to outside in the sun). There will also be more expertise required in the ag industry moving forward, meaning higher-paying jobs.

The downside is that food will, and probably should cost more. Our percentage of income spent on food is incredibly low and many don't realize how lucky that is. But a more sustainable system will likely mean more expensive food. That will be a tough pill to swallow.

hetspookjee4• 4 years ago

The ecological field is in high need of people with coding skills, so to some extend you can do both! I also believe there are unicorn apps waiting to happen in the field of agriculture as the current approach is just horrible outdated and continues to fight a uphill battle.

carapace3• 4 years ago

However, the increase in labor needed shouldn't be underestimated. Some automation is likely possible with advanced robots, but this would mean a much larger fraction of the population would be involved in agriculture, perhaps as much as 10X as are currently employed.

I don't think it would be so radical. For one thing, only about 1% of us work in agriculture now, so even if it takes 10x that's still only 10%.

nyokodo• 4 years ago

so even if it takes 10x that's still only 10%

“Only 10%?” That is a massive shift in labor allocation that would be enormously disruptive if it were feasible which it likely isn’t at least in the medium term.

soheil3• 4 years ago

Without a radical change in the way we eat, by 2050 the world will need to grow around 50% more grain.

Is that the only way? What if we grow grains that need 50% less water? This article is mind numbingly preachy and ignores that technology can and always has been at the forefront of human progress. Yes, if we wake up one day in 30 years and find that we have made 0 technological progress then we will need 50% more grain.

rhn_mk14• 4 years ago

It's not the only way. We could keep eating grain but stop the multiplication of humans on the planet.

But technology won't solve the problem that if human eating habits stay on the current trajectory, they will eat 50% more grain.

I get it that this is not what you meant. But the progress of technology, while you can rely on it getting somewhere, is unpredictable. It'd be foolish to count on it without considering contingencies in case it doesn't deliver.

soheil3• 4 years ago

I know it's good to always hedge against risk. But to hedge against technological progress is shorting humanity as a whole and is a dark place to go. Arguments of type "let's reduce population" nonetheless stem from that line of thinking as you eluded to.

vixen99• 4 years ago

Stop the multiplication of humans sounds authoritarian. Is that how you meant it? A recent experiment along those lines didn't go so well. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/21/1008656293/the-legacy-of-the-...

nemo44x• 4 years ago

It’s a ridiculous article that proposes we use poor countries to cultivate fermented gruel for fats and protein and then rely on a radical farming method that struggles to replicate anywhere outside the handsome farmers small plot of land.

If you were to ask experts 50 years ago if you’d be able to feed todays population with their methods they’d say no. But we engineered methods to not only do this but annihilate global starvation. All without having to eat fermented gruel.

tastyfreeze• 4 years ago

Modern farming results in a lot of rainfall runoff. Healthy soil infiltrates and absorbs rainfall. The water then slowly makes its way to waterways and aquafers. We can use far less water by having healthy soil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rbSWey0pOg

Melatonic2• 4 years ago

In my opinion what we really need (if we are going to continue to live a lifestyle at all similar to what we have now) are big investments in new farming methods that allow food to be grown next to where people live. If you want to live in a big city now (which potentially can have big environmental benefits with multiunit housing and whatnot) your food probably comes from far away. Imagine if the highrise next to you instead grew tons of fresh vegetables, mushrooms, and other food and you could buy it direct from the "farm" at a store at the base? Nothing would be wasted in shipping - it would be as fresh as possible - prices could be low - and convenient as hell. I don't see any reason why we could not (with better understanding of soil) have complex systems of fungi and dirt in such a system as well.

soheil3• 4 years ago

I don't see any reason why we could not

Because of pollution from the city getting into the food and also as importantly the pollution from farming back into the environment.

black_puppydog• 4 years ago

would the farm next door also be farming beef & chicken?

mkurume• 4 years ago

There's a fantastic (and humorous) lecture from Dr. Elaine Ingham on soil science for anyone interested in digging into the science: https://youtu.be/ErMHR6Mc4Bk

perth• 4 years ago

Who is Sandy Loam? Who smudged the dirt docs?

kvetching• 4 years ago

Regenerative agriculture. Get rid of the feed lots and create a nationwide system throughout the farmland so that after every few years, all the land will have had cattle grazed upon it, adding nutrients back into the soil.

It's absolutely insane that Regenerative Agriculture was not mentioned once in this. There are farmers that have figured out ways to make their farmland fertile again. These practices just need to be expanded.

seanwilson2• 4 years ago

We face what could be the greatest predicament humankind has ever encountered: feeding the world without devouring the planet. Already, farming is the world’s greatest cause of habitat destruction, the greatest cause of the global loss of wildlife and the greatest cause of the global extinction crisis. It’s responsible for about 80% of the deforestation that’s happened this century. Of 28,000 species known to be at imminent risk of extinction, 24,000 are threatened by farming. Only 29% of the weight of birds on Earth consists of wild species: the rest is poultry. Just 4% of the world’s mammals, by weight, are wild; humans account for 36%, and livestock for the remaining 60%.
... While 1% of the world’s land is used for buildings and infrastructure, crops occupy 12% and grazing, the most extensive kind of farming, uses 28%. Only 15% of land, by contrast, is protected for nature. Yet the meat and milk from animals that rely solely on grazing provide just 1% of the world’s protein.

It's unreal when framing this as the "greatest predicament humankind has ever encountered" and all the stats pointing to intensive animal agriculture as the obvious problem that "eat less meat" isn't entertained as a serious option. We're literally growing food to feed to animals that we bred ourselves, while losing ~90% of the calories in the process instead of eating crops directly when meat isn't required to be healthy. I don't share the high hopes people have with things like lab grown meat either as we've been waiting for years for it to arrive at scale and affordable, and it's not going to replace all the cuts of meat people want.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets "If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This large reduction of agricultural land use would be possible thanks to a reduction in land used for grazing and a smaller need for land to grow crops."

Melatonic2• 4 years ago

Fungi in general are amazing - it blows me away that in western culture we place such little emphasis on their consumption. There are three kingdoms (for the most part) that we can choose to consume - Plants, Animals, Fungi. And yet we just almost ignore the third one for what reason again?

Many mushrooms are also a great meat alternative and have tons of health benefits not found elsewhere and can be great for the environment. They are, for the most part, less concentrated in protein than animals but still much higher than most plants.

hypertele-Xii• 4 years ago

They are, for the most part, less concentrated in protein than animals but still much higher than most plants.

According to Wikipedia, mushrooms generally have less than 5% protein. Almost every plant food I checked was higher, including wheat (15%), corn (10%), rice (8%), and potatoes (9%). (from United States Department of Agriculture).

Protein rich plants like lentils, soybeans, and nuts are upwards of 30%.

meetups323• 4 years ago

Some meat substitutes use fungus. IMO they tend to produce the best chicken substitutes, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn

QuikAccount• 4 years ago

We're literally growing food to feed to animals that we bred ourselves, while losing ~90% of the calories in the process instead of eating crops directly when meat isn't required to be healthy.

Most animal feed is the byproduct of things we are not eating[1]. This same study also address the land use concern. Most of it is not fit to grow crops with. I agree that people should reduce meat consumption but I find the general framing around this topic to be dishonest.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22119...

seanwilson2• 4 years ago

How does this contradict the 75% land reduction link where they take into account land used for animal crops? They cite this study too so they're aware of it and cover that "Less than half – only 48% – of the world’s cereals are eaten by humans. 41% is used for animal feed, and 11% for biofuels".

cato_the_elder• 4 years ago

"eat less meat" isn't entertained as a serious option

It's simply baffling that this always gets brought up without stating the obvious fact that many people love to eat meat, and have no obligation to put up with the boring diet these policies would impose on them.

And I think this is yet another reason that the naive libertarian attitude of "I just wanna grill" (which I am also guilty of subscribing to until a few years ago) is a recipe for disaster. If we don't actively stand against these policies, soon the only thing you can grill would be veggies.

Some think this is unlikely to happen. But the paper straws debacle tells us that a vocal minority can impose these things on others. And remember that Japan was vegetarian for centuries before the Great Emperor Meiji liberated them from the ideology [1].

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-meat-ban

ehejdud2• 4 years ago

I find your opinion on it baffling as well. The obvious fact is that is a selfish attitude. Do what you want, but that is a fact.

I don't think the animals feel very liberated either if you consider other life forms.

oh_sigh2• 4 years ago

You can love to eat meat, but still eat less of it. Many Americans are eating meat for literally every meal of the day, 7 days a week. That's complete overkill and one may even get more enjoyment out of meat by cutting back slightly on consumption. And I'm not sure where you get that "eat less meat" would be imposed on people, as opposed to individuals just choosing to eat less meat(like I have).

The "I need to eat meat every meal" crowd reminds me of a morbidly-obese person saying "I just like food more than you do". Maybe in limited circumstances it is true, but for the most part it seems more like a pathological dependence rather than harmless desire.

smileysteve• 4 years ago

The no true Scotsman of grilling meat as a libertarian (to not be impacting other's freedoms)

1. You raise the cow (on a non corn diet that you grow)

2. You harvest the methane from the cow (crop waste, maybe even your own waste)

3. You use the harvested methane from crop, cow, and self waste to grill

Otherwise, you're not accounting for your externalities (unless you pay for the same)

4. You replenish the soil to repeat

jvvw• 4 years ago

Read the book Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis, about soil, recently - very interesting.

calebm• 4 years ago

"meat and milk from animals that rely solely on grazing provide just 1% of the world’s protein."

Love the article, but this seems like a straw man. Meat and milk much more than protein. And it's difficult to replace things like butter without sacrificing health - look at margarine.

ehejdud2• 4 years ago

Yet Italian food doesn't use any and still extremely popular...

joeman1000• 4 years ago

Soil is incredibly ‘underrated’, this is a great article. It:

+ filters contaminants in the groundwater

+ stores water for later use

+ hosts the nutrients for plant growth and therefore human life

+ dampens the effect of massive rainfall events by being porous and soaking up surface runoff

We are doing so many bad things to our soil.

+ We’re leaching all the nutrients out of it without replacement

+ we compact the hell out of it, reducing permeability and the benefits I mentioned above

+ we cover it in concrete, meaning groundwater recharge is decreased and more rainfall becomes surface runoff, resulting in flooding

+ we let it erode due to this higher surface runoff

The erosion rate is higher than the rate at which it is replaced as well. We have a few meters of topsoil at any given point on earth, minus oceans and deserts and now urban centres. We absolutely are not treating this vital part of our life correctly.

It’s easy to write it off as nothing. I did the same until I was forced to learn about soil in so many different contexts as a civil engineer. Luckily curriculum nowadays teaches more sustainable practices in soil hydrology and the design of urban drainage networks. The old ways still linger though, which just treat it as an infinitely available engineering material.

docmechanic• 4 years ago

These two stats took the top of my head off:

"Only 29% of the weight of birds on Earth consists of wild species: the rest is poultry. Just 4% of the world’s mammals, by weight, are wild; humans account for 36%, and livestock for the remaining 60%."

iancmceachern• 4 years ago

This reminds me of blood. Most of us think of it as this fluid our body makes and uses to move oxygen, co2 and nutrients around. In reality it's far more complex then that. It does things, work, chemistry, and is non-newtonian. It's another organ.

Soil: The world beneath our feet

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