The whole story about cows and nitrogen... things are getting spicy in agriculture.
See, there are TWO competing schools of thought when it comes to farming. Well, three, but the third isn't really relevant.
School #1: Buy commercial chemicals, use big machines, kill everything that isn't beneficial. This works, but it kills the soil. America's soils are dying, and right now most of what we produce is on life support. The fact that the rail company won't ship fertilizer means this style of farming is going to die. It relies on cheap inputs (which are never coming back for many reasons.)
School #2: ZERO inputs. You rotate your crops, you use cover crops, you bring in animals to trample the soil, etc... You can never produce as much as #1 but you can do it cheaply. Well, not exactly -- it takes a lot of labor and a lot of know-how. This style of farming is increasing in popularity, but only a small fraction of our food is produced this way. However, I believe this is the future of farming, because it actually makes sense, and it builds the soil up rather than destroying it. That said, expect higher food prices because you are buying labor where before you were buying machines and chemicals.
School #3: This is fairy-land cityfolk telling farmers how to do their job. It is based on the fake science of climate change (formerly global warming, formerly global cooling, etc...) and it is completely unsustainable and just not profitable. It also includes people trying to say you can't grow more than one thing on a plot of land, or you have to control the methane outputs of the animals and natural processes on the land, etc...
What seems to be happening in the Netherlands is you have government trying to force #3 on people who were doing #2. In other words, people who know nothing are trying to tell people who know almost everything what to do.
The whole story about cows and nitrogen... things are getting spicy in agriculture.
See, there are TWO competing schools of thought when it comes to farming. Well, three, but the third isn't really relevant.
School #1: Buy commercial chemicals, use big machines, kill everything that isn't beneficial. This works, but it kills the soil. America's soils are dying, and right now most of what we produce is on life support. The fact that the rail company won't ship fertilizer means this style of farming is going to die. It relies on cheap inputs (which are never coming back for many reasons.)
School #2: ZERO inputs. You rotate your crops, you use cover crops, you bring in animals to trample the soil, etc... You can never produce as much as #1 but you can do it cheaply. Well, not exactly -- it takes a lot of labor and a lot of know-how. This style of farming is increasing in popularity, but only a small fraction of our food is produced this way. However, I believe this is the future of farming, because it actually makes sense, and it builds the soil up rather than destroying it. That said, expect higher food prices because you are buying labor where before you were buying machines and chemicals.
School #3: This is fairy-land cityfolk telling farmers how to do their job. It is based on the fake science of climate change (formerly global warming, formerly global cooling, etc...) and it is completely unsustainable and just not profitable. It also includes people trying to say you can't grow more than one thing on a plot of land, or you have to control the methane outputs of the animals and natural processes on the land, etc...
What seems to be happening in the Netherlands is you have government trying to force #3 on people who were doing #2. In other words, people who know nothing are trying to tell people who know almost everything what to do.