ATTENTION: SOIL AGRICULTURE INCLUDING FORESTRY, AS NOW PRACTICED, IS DEAD OR OBSOLETE…
Dead if we keep doing it with our current dependency on mined finite-supply mineral fertilizers and obsolete if we hope to maintain even the current population… NO MATTER WHETHER IT’S DONE ORGANICALLY OR WITHOUT GMOs. Too little is now being done to respond to this. Our response options are to make some modifications to soil agricultural technologies, to develop new forms of food and fiber production and use more efficient ways of consumption that could support even higher human populations, or by default, to return to low-intensity soil agriculture + hunting and gathering that could support only a small fraction of our current population at much lower technological levels.
Why? All life on the planet (with a few very rare exceptions…organisms living on heat near underwater volcanic vents instead of using photosynthesis) depends on a very thin layer at the surface of earth’s topsoils and the photic zone of the earth’s surface waters to provide life-supporting minerals like K, P, Mg, Fe, etc. This layer, call it the life-support mineral nutrient layer (LSMNL), where photosynthesis occurs and where minerals are bioavailable (in ionic form dissolved in water)and physically accessible by photosynthesizers is where the food web begins. The soil agriculture that provides us with our endosomatic energy (food kilocalories) and our own life-support mineral nutrient needs is carried out in the LSMNL.
Agronomics as it’s done today…the selling of plant products without the return of mineral nutrients in human biowastes back to the growing soils, inevitably takes minerals out of the LSMNL much faster than they are replenished by natural processes…weathering of rocks (mechanical or biochemical) and volcanic ash deposition. Deposition of sediments in riverine flood zones can also act to replenish flood plain areas’ mineral nutrient supplies but only a small portion of the earth’s total agriculture occurs on such flood plains.
