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An example of the journalistic malpractice I've been harping about.
Since the 1980s agriculture yields have grown in China, as has the nation's use of chemical fertilizers. In 2007, China consumed 32.6 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer, a 191% increase over 1981. . .Every part of this is nonsense. That China's use of fertilizer has increased by a large amount makes perfect sense given its rapid rise from abject poverty in that time period. It is not in itself a cause for alarm but it is stated as a scare statistic to honey-fuggle the gullible and ignorant.The team's results show that extensive overuse has caused the pH of soil across China to drop by roughly 0.5, with some soils reaching a pH of 5.07 (nearly neutral soils of pH 6-7 are optimal for cereals, such as rice and grain, and other cash crops). By contrast, soil left to its own devices would take at least 100 years to acidify by this amount. . .
The solution could be as simple as educating farmers. In Europe and the United States, fertilizer it is now used sparingly owing to an awareness of its environmental effects, including the pollution of rivers and lakes. But Chinese farmers are often unaware of the consequences of over-fertilization.
As noted in a previous post plants exude hydrogen ions from their roots as they grow to stay in electrical charge balance as they take up nutrients. This acidifies soil and the faster they grow the faster the PH drops. Anything one does to increase growth has the same effect. Increasing soil fertility would do this no matter whether "chemical" fertilizers were used or not.
Poor and uneducated farmers can certainly benefit from education, but so can the journalists, NGOs, politicians and advocates who spout nonsense. It is false that fertilizer is "used sparingly" in the US due to environmental concerns. The trend is to use ever more fertilizer in ever wiser ways to increase the benefits relative to the costs. Among the methods being used are precision techniques that measure and monitor land to place the right amount of fertilizer at the right place at the right time. Other methods include increasing use of time release formulations to dole it out as needed, coatings that thwart soil microorganisms that would otherwise consume it, and coatings to protect it from being locked up by minerals and made unavailable to plants.
Upendra Singh, a soil scientist at the IFDC, a non-profit public organization based in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, that carries out agricultural research, adds that Chinese farmers could also leave dead crop biomass on the fields to help rebalance the soil. In the worst cases, lime could be spread across fields, he says.Crop wastes increase acidification rather than reduce it, as do manures and most other soil amendments. Rock dusts such as lime are fertilizers. It is nonsensical to say that applying lime - which contains calcium and often magnesium in quantity as well as some trace minerals, all of which are essential to plant growth and contribute to nutrient dense foods - is a worst case. It's a best case, the exact thing that should be done whether "chemical" fertilizers are used or not.
It matters little to Chinese farmers what ignorant journalists say, but it matters to society. This is the same sort of misconduct that has plagued society so much of late and resulted in the current wide spread distrust of scientists as well as journalists and politicians.
back 40,
You've probably already seen this:
http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/
Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society: Chapter 1 of 5
If not, enjoy.
-jw
I appreciate the thought, but I don't have the bandwidth for tv (assuming the the "tv" in the URL means video).
Posted by: back40 at February 13, 2010 07:09 PMSorry, but I'm not sure I get the core point you are making here. Is it that the explanation for why China's soils are acidifying is wrong? Is it that the acidification of China's soils is not a concern? Is it that Chinese farmers should rapidly adopt the same precision techniques are American farmers? Some combination of those, and others?
Posted by: Jeremy at February 14, 2010 03:46 AMI don't believe for a minute that you don't understand what was written Jeremy. Be honest about your objections. It clearly doesn't say any of the things that you suggest, so what could your real thoughts be?
Posted by: back40 at February 14, 2010 08:23 AMback 40
Yes it is a video link, that I happened upon in the comments at "watts up with that". It's unfortunate about the bandwidth, so here is an excerpt from this
article: http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/01/
05/intellectuals_and_society
The Wright brothers, who fulfilled the centuries-old dream of human beings flying, were by no means intellectuals. Nor were those who conquered the scourge of polio and other diseases, or who created the electronic marvels that we now take for granted.
All these people produced a tangible product or service and they were judged by whether those products and services worked. But intellectuals are people whose end products are intangible ideas, and they are usually judged by whether those ideas sound good to other intellectuals or resonate with the public.
-and a review from B&N
INTELLECT IS NOT WISDOMby Anonymous
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February 08, 2010: The book opens with these four words, which many in today's culture have failed to realize. "George Orwell said that some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them, for no ordinary man could be such a fool." Intellectuals live in a world of ideas. Many of their "ideas" find their way into mainstream life via academia, print, or wielders of power who share their circle of influence. The danger here is that these ideas are often acted upon with no empirical test or external validation. A great read for anyone interested in how so called "intellectuals" have shaped history for better or more commonly for worse.
-jw
p.s. hope this isn't a "comments faux pas", if so please set me straight.
Regarding comment etiquette: I object to spam, that is, comments that are not responsive to the ideas in the original post but merely exercise some obsession. Most often these are cut and paste rants by some activist who slams the exact same stuff onto other blogs and I likely read them elsewhere. Boring.
I can see a possible connection in the Sowell stuff to this post, I think, and it may be encapsulated by this bit of his words: "it is far easier to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge. That is why so much social engineering backfires". It may be that the journalistic malpractice that I speak of is in service of engineering objectives: what the journalists consider to be noble lies.
Have I understood your point?
Posted by: back40 at February 14, 2010 10:51 PMActually, I wasn't making a point. I saw the video link on "watts up", watched the interview and wanted to buy the book after that. I thought you might enjoy the video interview as I get the feeling that you're a common sense, nuts & bolts, practical application kinda guy; whereas intellectuals often aren't. see- "intellectuals are people whose end products are intangible ideas, and they are usually judged by whether those ideas sound good to other intellectuals or resonate with the public."
The second comment/excerpt, was in lieu of the bandwidth intensive video.
I suppose I could make the point that journalists,
politicians, scientists and advocates who spout nonsense have close ties to intellectuals, but that wasn't my intent.
As for china's increased use of chemical fertilizer... big deal! everything is a chemical.
I doubt the crops care where their NPK comes from.
compost/animal excrement, Haber-Bosch etc. on a molecular level it's pretty much the same, isn't it? the main thing is getting the nutrients to the plants' root when they need it, "chemical" fertilizers allow for better QC/QA,transport, application, etc. without the "green revolution"
there would probably be a lot more hungry people.
As population continues to rise/living standards increase, it makes sense that food consumption will increase and so will fertilizer use. If they
lime their fields to balance ph, so what! doesn't
lime come from limestone?(ancient seashells) it's not like it's evil incarnate!
Oh well i suppose the chinese could just grow a bunch of blueberries, i hear they like acidic soil...
-jw