There was a post on the other site (~ 6 months back) where the headline was that a computer model predicted increasing crop YIELDS all the way out to year 2100. All the techno-utipians were rejoicing and talking about all the whiz bang agri-tech that is beating the doomsayers.
I did a bit of a deep dive and it was pretty interesting in the deep details. Basically all the big measurements are heading in a dismal direction. Like the number of acres, the size of the total crop, the costs, soil fertility, soil depth, aquifer depletion… We basically strip mined a lot of agricultural land and its all depleting in a non-renewable sense.
So farmers have indeed responded, kind of forking in two directions. One direction is to add more inputs (pesticides, irrigation, machinery etc) to bolster production. The other direction is to take lands right out of production…like shifting to dryland, shifting to grazing range or even totally abandoning everything.
So if you’re grasping for a “line goes up” narrative, YIELD is convenient to the story.
What YIELD is, is production per area figure. So like, if you jettison all these marginal failing fields, your “average” climbs. Because you’re making the denominator smaller FASTER than you’re making the numerator smaller. But production is falling!
So an example would be that a state with failing rainfall needs to reduce all tbr cornfields that depend on rain. Maybe 30% of the fields shift to beans or some other crop. So now, you look at only these remaining plots of corn and they are getting jacked from well water, pesticides, fertilizer and such. The Yield number is healthy even though your cost per corn / total production per corn crop number just took a bloodbath.
Its super wild how distorted and perverse the impression was coming out of the release of that study. Its basically propaganda?!
What YIELD is, is production per area figure. So like, if you jettison all these marginal failing fields, your “average” climbs. Because you’re making the denominator smaller FASTER than you’re making the numerator smaller. But production is falling!
yeah reminds me of how they claim less and less people are in poverty because some arbitrary $2.50 a day threshold while simultaneously the number of people with permanent malnutrition based stunting is increasing by hundreds of millions.
There was a post on the other site (~ 6 months back) where the headline was that a computer model predicted increasing crop YIELDS all the way out to year 2100. All the techno-utipians were rejoicing and talking about all the whiz bang agri-tech that is beating the doomsayers.
I did a bit of a deep dive and it was pretty interesting in the deep details. Basically all the big measurements are heading in a dismal direction. Like the number of acres, the size of the total crop, the costs, soil fertility, soil depth, aquifer depletion… We basically strip mined a lot of agricultural land and its all depleting in a non-renewable sense.
So farmers have indeed responded, kind of forking in two directions. One direction is to add more inputs (pesticides, irrigation, machinery etc) to bolster production. The other direction is to take lands right out of production…like shifting to dryland, shifting to grazing range or even totally abandoning everything.
So if you’re grasping for a “line goes up” narrative, YIELD is convenient to the story.
What YIELD is, is production per area figure. So like, if you jettison all these marginal failing fields, your “average” climbs. Because you’re making the denominator smaller FASTER than you’re making the numerator smaller. But production is falling!
So an example would be that a state with failing rainfall needs to reduce all tbr cornfields that depend on rain. Maybe 30% of the fields shift to beans or some other crop. So now, you look at only these remaining plots of corn and they are getting jacked from well water, pesticides, fertilizer and such. The Yield number is healthy even though your cost per corn / total production per corn crop number just took a bloodbath.
Its super wild how distorted and perverse the impression was coming out of the release of that study. Its basically propaganda?!
yeah reminds me of how they claim less and less people are in poverty because some arbitrary $2.50 a day threshold while simultaneously the number of people with permanent malnutrition based stunting is increasing by hundreds of millions.