Long Live Microbiomes (opens in new tab)

They are saying corn is toxic because it has round-up chemicals in it - and they can't be washed off.

So growing food in your backyard, assuming you don't spray it or have heavy metals in your soil that are ingested by the crop, are likely fine.

How alive is your backyard's soil? A lab would have to analyze it. It may or may not have the right minerals, depending on what you're trying to grow.

/s Is the water you use for irrigation chlorinated or fluorinated?

You'd probably be ok, if you only ate the veggies you grew yourself. But what about meat, dairy and other animal products? What about bread, rice and other cereals?

I think it depends on the history of your soil.

First, population is leveling off, not booming.

Second, yes, by definition regenerative agriculture is scalable.

It might require as much as double the labor requirements (so 3% of the population rather than 1.5%) but it's likely that automation will amortize that.

See "How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409 which describes some aspects of China's agriculture that are regenerative.

Also, I recommend Toby Hemenway's "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture" talk for background and future directions. http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with...

Geoff Lawton's "Greening the Desert" project converted salty desert to producing figs and other food in just two years. https://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-...

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Just to mention one (gross) example: It's a little-known fact that Eisenia fetida worms will devour "night soil" (#2's) and produce clean-smelling castings, while doubling in biomass in approximately 40-50 days. This could easily be scaled to handle urban sewage densities, returning that matter directly to the ecosystem without expensive treatment/chemicals etc.

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

Have in mind, animal products are our natural diet. the amount of nutrients per gr is way higher. 200g of liber is way more nutritive than 10kg of tomatoes, avocados, and other vegetables all together. And you can eat (as i do) local meat, which is eco friendly. Most of the vegetables you eat are overseas or from neighbour countries. Check the labels, you will be surprised.

I'm not sure if the amount of plants grown for direct human consumption is still too big. Especially the protein rich ones, like beans, lentils.

I believe the booming population thirsty for beef, chicken and similar massive products is driving the agriculture of corn, soybean and wheat to its limits.

No.

Did they accurately measure them in 1940? I would also think trace minerals vary at least a little based on geographical location.

Anyway here is a journal article by a Canadian govt scientist that refutes that minerals in food/soil is depleted:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915751...

> available in those same foods in 1940.

I guess most people today eat much more than five times the amount commonly available to people in the bloody days of WWII.

If so that's pretty upsetting and impossible unless you're a super athlete taking in 5x calories a day.

Check the citation.

How do you use a small set of scientific studies to prove one is better? Studies are reductionist, which is a very powerful and useful perspective...but not as useful when you have to measure a dynamic living system that can be optimized along maybe 100 dimensions or more? Worse, what is the funding source of these studies, and what incentives are tied to it?

So you have many different types of soils, and that will produce variations. You have different histories on those soils, you can measure for a dozen minerals, but what about those tiny trace minerals? Top soil optimization...nutrient run-off that creates fungal blooms in the ocean killing life in the ocean, price per pound to produce produce, shelf life of produce, how it looks, is the taste in fashion ----- so take those dimensions that you can measure things on --- and then multiply that by the number of different veggies and fruits and all their different types (eg. how many different apples are there??)

It's too massive problem space to solve with a few studies...and the financial incentives and ideological thinking further muddies the waters.

Scientific American is another magazine like Quanta. A lot of exacting discussion of very little substance.

worse, it might even be a promoted piece:

https://nofa.org/

https://www.skyhillfarmny.com/farmers-pledge

>Its "USDA citation" is to what amounts to a marketing-focused whitepaper.

Can you elaborate on this point?

'Minerals and trace elements'. Makes you wonder how they calculated the 'trace elements' (whatever those are) in food from decades ago? Easy! Just say you did.