
Can American soil be brought back to life? - clumsysmurf
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/soil-health-agriculture-trend-usda-000513
======
oldandtired
Like a lot of things, soil infertility is a symptom of a much larger societal
problem. Within society, there are many different competing groups that have
"the answer". Progressives want a specific list, conservatives want another
list, city dwellers want a list (irrespective of being progressive or
conservative), country dwellers want another, business owners want their own
list, workers want another, government wants a list, law enforcement wants
one, radicals want one, etc., stc., etc.

All of these lists of wants are at cross purposes. All of it is based on self-
interest. Very little of it is based on a wider responsibility for all
citizens and the country that supports them.

This won't change as people won't give up on their list of wants. The attitude
of "us and them" just reinforces the basic problems. Is there a solution? Most
certainly. But it requires a change in the basic attitudes of every citizen
and most will object to having to face who and what they are.

When a society is focus on "rights" instead of responsibilities then the
society loses its ability to think in the large. When a government is focussed
on it continuation and power it loses sight of its responsibility to build
society.

There is no short term solution that is a quick fix. In the case of America,
it is heading down the path of civil war and devastation because pretty well
every level in the American society is in the mindset of "them and us". This
is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes. Law enforcement has forgotten that
they are there to serve and protect the citizenry and not themselves.
Government is self-serving. Corporations are treating their customers as
slaves and a resource to control. The general population is focussed on their
own little problems of day to day self-gratification.

~~~
AdamCraven
You've hit the problem on its head, but the solution is not to try and change
people's behaviour on a large scale, but to incentivise based on the self-
interest you've mentioned.

From the consumers perspective, there is little indication as to the quality
of soil something has been grown in. But there must be an effect on the plant
itself if it is grown in poor soil in the form of lower macro, trace minerals
and other indicators of plant health detectable within the plant.

Like the organic standards that cover production methods, we need an opt-in
food quality standard. If plants were tested after production for indicators
of plant health and labels could be put on vegetables indicating quality.
Self-interest of the consumers buying higher quality foods would quickly
incentivise farmers into increasing plant quality, which in turn will correct
our soil.

~~~
oldandtired
I grew up in an area in which the major crop was sugar cane. Some years ago
(15 or so), I was talking to my father about the fertility of the soil in the
area.

He passed onto me a conversation he had had with one of his farmer friends. He
was told that the soil was totally infertile and was only there to hold up the
cane. All nutrients came from fertiliser that they put into the soil.

In this case, the results is sugar which you can't tell how good the plant is.

There have been a number of farmers over the years in that area who did crop
rotation and field resting. But they were far and few between. In other areas,
they are using recycling methods to put organic matter back into their fields.
However, this is not common, even though there are groups of farmers who see
the benefit of these processes for themselves and the surrounding environment.

Part of an education process that we undertake with our young people is for
them to understand where food comes from, including when we have the
opportunity to teach them gardening (vegetables), animal husbandry and the
killing, dressing and butchering of animals for food (sheep and goats).

Some take the lessons well, some do not. But they do start to understand where
their food comes from.

Too many people have no idea of what is needed to produce the food they
consume. No idea.

Testing foods can be quite simple. The taste of good quality well grown food
(meat, vegetables, fruit, milk, eggs, etc.) is quite different to those that
are grown in the common farming practices of today.

I am currently enjoying eating 7-8 year old mutton and it is better than the
best spring lamb that I have had. They ate and they wandered and were not
stressed.

~~~
dennis_jeeves
>I am currently enjoying eating 7-8 year old mutton and it is better than the
best spring lamb that I have had.

Where do you get this?

~~~
oldandtired
The sheep were originally given to me by people who just wanted to get rid of
them, I still have a goat that was originally intended for someone else and I
had been asked if I could look after it for a few weeks. The person who was to
receive it moved into a nursing home and it was subsequently given to me. My 6
year old granddaughter has been keen to be involved with doing the goat, which
I'll be doing later. If the weather is still cold when I get back from
visiting my parents, I'll be looking at doing it then. In the meantime, he
will be fattened up as much as possible.

I have 2 acres just on the edge of town and for many years, we have run some
level of stock on it. All of the various beasts have ended up in my freezer.
The last lot I killed, dressed and butchered myself (with the help of a number
of young people) out of necessity as no butcher would come in for just 3
sheep.

As the sheep had little need to run anywhere and had luscious feed, they
turned out to be so tender. I did try to source some more via the local
butchers, but found that would be extremely expensive as most of the sheep are
culled for lamb and not kept for wool in our region.

If you ask around, you might find some appropriate beasts that you can get
cheaply (whether that be steers, goat or sheep). Though you may find getting
them to the abattoir and then to the butcher somewhat expensive.

------
escape_goat
> The federal crop insurance program is based on farmers planting the same
> crop in the same place each year to have a record for production, and it is
> not flexible enough to account for practices like cover crops.

If you want to take an actionable item away from this article that fits
(potentially) the skillsets of your friends and neighbours on Hacker News, it
is this one. This is a data problem and an actuarial problem. Solving it can
result in net social benefit disproportionate to the investment in
infrastructure, politicial capital (to change legislation), and (already
existing) government programs required.

I don't know if, politically, there are any groups who would be organized to
swing into action in opposition to federal crop insurance reform, but they or
any who may shake out of the math (presumably there's some practices and crops
_cough_ corn that benefit from less information, relatively speaking) have an
uphill battle to fight against a variety of constituent-motivating narratives.
It's hard to argue against big government spending when tens of millions of
dollars is at stake.

~~~
24gttghh
So, after the Dust Bowl, there were all kinds of things promoted by the
Federal Gov't like crop rotation, contour farming, and planting wind breaks to
keep the soil from blowing away. When did we forget that lesson?

And I looked up what I think is an actual rule regarding Crop Rotation when it
comes to the FCIC[0]:

>(B) ASSIGNED YIELD.—If the producer does not provide satisfactory evidence of
the yield of a commodity under subparagraph (A), the producer shall be
assigned— (i) a yield that is not less than 65 percent of the transitional
yield of the producer (adjusted to reflect actual production reflected in the
records acceptable to the Corporation for continuous years), as specified in
regulations issued by the Corporation based on production history
requirements; (ii) a yield determined by the Corporation, in the case of— (I)
a producer that has not had a share of the production of the insured crop for
more than two crop years, as determined by the Secretary; (II) a producer that
produces an agricultural commodity on land that has not been farmed by the
producer; or _(III) a producer that rotates a crop produced on a farm to a
crop that has not been produced on the farm;_

Just search the doc for "rotate". It is only mentioned once. I think the FCIC
only applies to wheat and some other grains.

[0][https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/75-30%20-%2...](https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/75-30%20-%20Agricultural%20Adjustment%20Act%20Of%201938%20&%20Federal%20Crop%20Insurance%20Act1.pdf)

------
exDM69
I recently took part in a course on doing farm work with horses. It was a
large garden where all the farm work had been done exclusively with horses for
about 10 years, after decades of using tractors. The tractors had turned the
soil into hard, clumpy clay which yielded bad crops and required more and more
fertilizers every year. In about a decade of using horses, manure and
traditional methods, the topsoil had turned nice and soft and nutrient-rich.
Not at all like the hard clay my grandparents' farm and the owners of the
garden were more than happy with the results.

Working with horses was slow, hard and laborious work but it was a lot of fun!
Much more fun than doing the same with tractors (which I also think is quite
fun).

Unfortunately, going back to horses or oxen never going to be viable in a
large scale. The recent trends in agriculture have been making machines larger
and larger to reduce the amount of labor required, causing the soil to be
packed even harder, requiring more tilling for the next crop.

Maybe autonomous farm equipment could reverse the trend, as machines could be
made smaller without increasing the amount of human labor.

~~~
roel_v
"The tractors had turned the soil into hard, clumpy clay which yielded bad
crops and required more and more fertilizers every year."

Mechanization is of course the main driver of soil compaction, but here too
there are advances in technology that mitigate issues without having to revert
back to horses (or needing revolutions like swarms of small autonomous bots).
For example, soil compaction can be reduced to the point where it doesn't
affect plant growth significantly any more by using the correct tire pressure
on tractors; i.e. (much) lower pressure when the tractor is on the field. But
those pressures are not suitable for riding on roads or longer distances, so
many farmers (actually, generally the contractor doing the work, although this
varies by region/country) don't deflate their tires because it takes so much
time to adjust them every time.

So, modern tractors have automatic inflate/deflate installations, making it
much easier to use the right pressure for every task and on every soil type.
Of course this costs extra, so you still need to convince people of the need
for it, and enforce the habit on those actually doing the work.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's not practical to deflate a liquid filled tire. Most tractors run liquid
filled tires for weight/traction.

~~~
roel_v
Not sure if you're saying I'm just making things up - here are some of the
first links off a quick google:

\- [http://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/tractor-tyres-make-sure-
your-...](http://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/tractor-tyres-make-sure-your-
pressures-are-right.htm)

\- [https://www.agribrink.com/](https://www.agribrink.com/)

\-
[http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/field/news/croptal...](http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/field/news/croptalk/2013/ct-1113a1.htm)

Now I'm not a soil scientist, but I am a programmer who's for the last year or
so been programming models for assessing soil threat risks, including soil
compaction (one of the biggest soil threats in agriculture); and work with
some of the world's foremost expert scientists in this field, as well as with
representatives of e.g. machine manufacturers. They all say that compaction is
mostly due to increases in weight of machinery, and that proper tire pressure
is the most important mitigation measure we have available. Liquid-filled
tires are never mentioned in this context, it's a rarity.

You claim that 'most' tractors run liquid filled tires - I'm not sure what
you're basing that on, or what locality you're talking about, but while I do
not have any numbers at hand, I have never heard of this being something other
than an incidental thing. For example, the Michelin site
([http://agricultural.michelinman.com/us/Properly-use-your-
tir...](http://agricultural.michelinman.com/us/Properly-use-your-
tires/Ballasting-tyres-for-better-use)) mentions it as a possibility, but not
as something that 'most' tractors would have.

------
AFNobody
Well the obvious answer is "Yes" but I am honestly uncertain whether it can be
done while maintaining current profit margins which is was always the _real
issue_.

A well-educated farmer, focused on a plot of land that is meant to be kept for
generations without a profit focus can certainly do it. I suspect if you try
to scale this process up, the issue is its more expensive if you were a
corporation who has to pay a better educated class of labor to maintain soil
quality.

Till, fertilize, water is alot simpler than trying to build an ecosystem that
spans a 4000 acre plot of land.

I think until society values externalities more accurately, it is unlikely to
catch on like so many other things that cost even a tenth of a percent of the
overall corporate profit margin.

~~~
QAPereo
This is also a society that happily wastes a vast amount of food which is
produced based on conformity issues, and other nonsense designed to maximize
profits in supermarkets. At every level, we’re deeply complicit, and our
revealed preferences are clear.

~~~
AFNobody
I think the majority's preferences as a society is clear.

I also believe there is a substantial minority that would prefer a more
sustainable approach to many things in the interest of long term
sustainability.

The reality is our level of infrastructure spending, to the way we produce
power, to the condition of the majority of the arable land is fundamentally
unsustainable for more than another 50 years without substantial technological
change. This does not even get into climate change related impacts on
agriculture.

~~~
WalterBright
We've historically often engaged in unsustainable practices, like:

1\. hunting whales for lamp oil

2\. cutting down trees for fuel to make glass and build ships

3\. using natural rubber

4\. no sanitation in the cities

5\. using horses for transportation

6\. using well water in cities

As these became unsustainable, alternatives were discovered and developed.

~~~
jacobolus
Or in some cases they weren’t, and civilizations collapsed.

~~~
pdfernhout
To support your point:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse#Theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse#Theories)

------
jfarlow
Check out Trace Genomics [1] for a new company at QB3 that is taking a stab at
quantifying what organisms are part of a particular farm's microbiome. They
sequence the DNA of everything in a given soil sample, then figure out who's
DNA is who's - providing a snapshot of what life is living in that soil. And
with enough snapshots, a farmer can actually start to develop a quantitative
picture of the web of inhabitants in a given parcel of land. And then act on
that information.

[1] [https://www.tracegenomics.com](https://www.tracegenomics.com)

------
Twirrim
What's somewhat amusing is this is essentially talking about a variation on
the four course crop rotation, a farming practice that dates back to the 17th
century, and at one stage dominated the farming practices of Europe.

from [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Norfolk-four-course-
system](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Norfolk-four-course-system)

> In the Norfolk four-course system, wheat was grown in the first year,
> turnips in the second, followed by barley, with clover and ryegrass
> undersown, in the third. The clover and ryegrass were grazed or cut for feed
> in the fourth year. The turnips were used for feeding cattle and sheep in
> the winter. This new system was cumulative in effect, for the fodder crops
> eaten by the livestock produced large supplies of previously scarce animal
> manure, which in turn was richer because the animals were better fed. When
> the sheep grazed the fields, their waste fertilized the soil, promoting
> heavier cereal yields in following years.

~~~
stinos
> dates back to the 17th century

Note that crop rotation itself (2 course/3 course) is much, much older. And
Wikipedia claims it was first done in the 16th century in what now is Belgium.

Actually, there are a bunch of things presented as 'new' in the article while
I read nothing which I never read before, and many of the solutions bascialy
come down to 'do it as our ancestors did it' so it's not all that new either.
The vast scale of it though is new. And the rigid economic system attached to
it.

~~~
Twirrim
2 course / 3 course used to rely on fallow periods, IIRC, though it's been
more than 20 years since I covered this in school :)

What's so significant about all this stuff is that this agrarian revolution
lead to greater food productivity, increasing populations, and started to
increase the labour pool available for other tasks. This stuff basically kick
started the eventual industrial revolution. That's part of why it's so strange
to see it coming around again

------
seiferteric
What about the fact that our agriculture system is (mostly) open loop? Every
time you harvest food and consume it, where do the waste products end up? I
think we need to also work on closing this loop.

~~~
abhinavkulkarni
@seiferteric: Can you please explain this more? I don't quite understand what
you mean by 'open loop'. Thanks.

~~~
mikekchar
Not the OP, but essentially you take vegetables out of a field. You eat the
vegetables. You poop. Your poop ends up in a sewage treatment plant. Nothing
ends up back in the field. Instead we add fertilisers that we have mined out
of the earth for the macro nutrients.

It's not just sewage either. Every time you till the earth, you expose it to
the air. This oxidises the minerals and often makes them unavailable for the
plants. Because the fertiliser we add is very water soluble it drains through
the water table and ends up in the rivers and eventually washes out to sea (or
just clogs the rivers with algae).

Tilling and pesticides also kill the organisms that are responsible for moving
nutrients around under the earth. Additionally, we tend to plant mono-culture
crops with short root structures. This stops a variety of plants from breaking
down nutrients in the soil and moving them to the top layer of humus. So
either we till deeper (exacerbating the problem) or we essentially lock all of
the nutrients below the level that the plants can access.

In the end, you basically are slowly extracting all of the bioavailable
nutrients out of the soil, and depositing them in the sewage treatment fields.
At the same time you are oxidising what's left and washing everything else out
to the sea. Any fertility that remains is below the access of the plant roots
(and probably not in a form that can be utilised right away).

"Closing the loop" means looking at the places where we are losing fertility
and making sure that it is looping back. So, if you take nutrients out in the
form of food, we return it in the form of sewage. You avoid tilling and you
plant a variety of crop varieties that circulate the nutrients in the soil
layer. You avoid adding highly water soluble salts that simply leach out of
the soil and into the water table.

It sounds simple-ish, but it's actually quite a bit challenge. We don't really
do a lot of research in this area (as far as I can tell). Most agricultural
research is geared toward increasing yields and reducing costs as opposed to
sustainability.

~~~
oldandtired
It is not just a bit of a challenge, it is a huge challenge that requires so
many things to change in the infrastructure. There are many who have
researched this problem and have published their results. But it requires some
expense which many of the farmers cannot afford and certainly the corporations
that control the various associated industries don't want to put funds into as
it would drastically reduce their control and profits.

------
wavefunction
I am doing my part in my backyard as I'm fortunate to live in an extra-
judicial territory of my municipality so the regulations are sparse at the
moment.

Mulch, sun and water. I also dug a large bio-char pit I've been using to
reduce wood-stuff into carbon and potash. I am eventually going to ammoniate
these products and redistribute throughout the plot.

I also underestimated the biochar hell-pit and buried and hosed-down a hot-
burning pyre and one week later woke up to a tendril of smoke curling up from
the pit which later turned back into a fire with additional fuel.

I found it alarming and remarkable so be sure to be safe with pyrolysis,
folks!

~~~
Sophistifunk
I would like to know more about this "bio-char pit" could you point me to a
URL or three?

~~~
debacle
A good video series on the topic:

[http://skillcult.com/biochar-and-charcoal/](http://skillcult.com/biochar-and-
charcoal/)

~~~
Sophistifunk
Thanks!

------
kwhitefoot
> Promoting soil health comes down to three basic practices: Make sure the
> soil is covered with plants at all times, diversify what it grows and don’t
> disrupt it. What this means in practice is rotating crops, so fields aren’t
> trying to support the same plant year after year. And it means using
> techniques like “cover-cropping”–planting a secondary plant like grasses,
> legumes or vegetables–between rows of crops or on other exposed soil instead
> of leaving it bare.

This is hardly news. How come Norfolk crop rotation has been 'forgotten'? See
this Britannica article: [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Norfolk-four-
course-system](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Norfolk-four-course-system)

------
bostik
Regenerating soil is nothing new, really. The Amazonian tribes learned how to
cultivate a rich black soil[0] long time ago. There is ongoing research on how
to make that work again on an industrial scale - and with sufficiently short
timespans.

The article mentions that even common composting helps, but the problem tends
to be how to prevent it from running off. No wonder. As anything in biology,
soil regeneration takes time. Having your fresh biomass flow elsewhere runs
counter to the purpose.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta)

~~~
sigmaprimus
I agree this is nothing new, and although I tend to believe that no till is an
essential part of healing the soil it will not work alone if nothing is done
to break up the agricultural economic complex controlled by the multinational
companies only interested in profit.

A good book published in 1975 written by Masanobu Fukuoka called "One Straw
Revolution" is very informative on this subject easy reading and obtainable
for free by searching it's title followed by .pdf in your favorite S.E.

------
pdfernhout
It's long been known how to fix soil; see for example from 1987: "Towards
Holistic Agriculture: A Scientific Approach" by R.W. Widdowson:
[https://www.elsevier.com/books/towards-holistic-
agriculture/...](https://www.elsevier.com/books/towards-holistic-
agriculture/widdowson/978-0-08-034211-5)

Or from 1911:
[https://permaculturenews.org/files/farmers_of_forty_centurie...](https://permaculturenews.org/files/farmers_of_forty_centuries.pdf)

More: [http://soilandhealth.org/](http://soilandhealth.org/)

Adding rock dust works wonders too:
[https://remineralize.org/](https://remineralize.org/)

My wife and I wrote a FOSS garden simulator in the 1990s (a six+ person-year
labor of love) to help people understand some of this: [http://www.kurtz-
fernhout.com/summary_gwi.html](http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/summary_gwi.html)

I got the idea while working as the Program Administrator on summer for the
NOFA-NJ Organic Farm Certification Program in the later 1980s, but it took
many years (including more education in grad school in biology) to make the
software.

See especially from the help system of that software on how conventional
agriculture destroys the soil:
[http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/help100/00000385.htm](http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/help100/00000385.htm)
"In the soil, tiny charged particles called micelles usually have many areas
of negative charge (called sites) on their surfaces. Positively charged ions
(cations) are drawn to these negative charge sites and stick to the clay
particles (are adsorbed). In most soils, 99% of soil cations can be found
attached to micelles (clay particles and organic matter) and 1% can be found
in solution. Mineral cations in the soil (mainly Ca2+, Mg2+, K+ and Na+)
maintain an equilibrium between adsorption to the negative sites and solution
in the soil water. This equilibrium produces exchanges -- when one cation
detaches from a site (leaving it free), another cation attaches to it.
Therefore the negatively charged sites are called cation exchange sites. The
number of these sites per unit weight of dry soil is called the cation
exchange capacity, or the capacity of the soil to hold cations. Because any
cations loose in the soil solution are vulnerable to leaching as water flows
out of the soil, a high cation exchange capacity is always desirable. Cation
exchange sites act as a sort of mineral buffer for the soil, storing minerals
important to plant and animal growth for long periods of time. The attraction
of cations to cation exchange sites is strongest for H+ ions (which make the
soil acidic) and for polyvalent ions such as Ca2+ and Al3+. The weakest
attraction is for monovalent ions such as K+. When ammonium nitrate
fertilizers are added to the soil, the ammonium ions (NH4+) are strongly
attracted to cation exchange sites because of their high valence (4). The
ammonium ions displace many other cations which are then leached out of the
soil and lost to plants. Some of the ammonium ions are converted to nitrate
during nitrification (by aerobic soil bacteria); the process produces excess
H+ ions which acidify the soil (causing earthworms and other soil organisms to
die or desert the area). (For an excellent description of cation exchange
capacity, see Widdowson's Towards Holistic Agriculture: A Scientific
Approach.)"

That's a big reason why organic agriculture which focuses on building up
organic matter in the soil (which increases cation exchange capacity) is
better for soil health (and human health too, as the plants are better fed).
That's reflected in the article when it describes two lumps of soil put on
wire mesh that behave differently -- one falling apart as dust (from lack of
organic matter and so not much CEC) and one clumped together (more organic
matter and CEC).

Wish I had time to bring that Delphi app to the web as a JavaScript app... And
improve it further.

I don't know the exact numbers to completely quantify this, but I suspect poor
farming practices on the US prairies that have reduced (in some places) six
feet of topsoil to six inches of top soil have released a vast amount of
carbon from lost organic matter into the air and contributed to climate
change.

~~~
roel_v
Does your model support root nodule nitrogen fixation? I've been looking for
simulation software to estimate optimal levels of nitrogen fixers, but I
didn't find any comprehensive models that included this. I didn't look at your
model for it though; although I _did_ come across it several years earlier
when I was looking for plant growth simulations for another reason. In what
way(s) does it diverge from EPIC? EPIC & APEX are (widely) applied for policy
evaluation purposes (how much sense that makes is another matter, but let's
just accept reality for now); is your model robust enough for such things, I
mean comparable to EPIC? And does it still run on Windows 10? I tried to
install it but got some error that it failed writing to a registry key, and
then I didn't look any further.

~~~
pdfernhout
Most of the model source code is derived from EPIC (and a bit from SPUR which
was about rangelands, weather, and plant competition). The EPIC conversion
involved a person-year of painstaking work going through EPIC and creating
sensible names for the cryptic FORTRAN variables (which were also sometimes
reused multiple times with different meanings) and short function names as the
code was rewritten into C++ and then later Delphi. My wife -- who I met via
the PhD program in Ecology and Evolution I went to to try to learn enough to
write the simulator -- did most of that translation.

It's been twenty years, so I could not answer detailed questions about it of
the top of my head without digging into the code (and maybe not even then).
But the core parts of the soil percolation model should be very close to
EPIC's code and data. The source code for the soil models references the EPIC
equations and the related scientific literature.

The simulator was written under earlier versions of windows (Win 3.1 and 95),
and from around WinXP and later it seems the code that updates the registry
causes an error. Not sure how to easily work around that.

You can download the source here: [http://www.kurtz-
fernhout.com/GardenSimulatorSourceCirca1997...](http://www.kurtz-
fernhout.com/GardenSimulatorSourceCirca1997InDelphi.zip)

Or, I just put it up on GitHub right now for you: :-)
[https://github.com/pdfernhout/GardenSimulatorSourceCirca1997...](https://github.com/pdfernhout/GardenSimulatorSourceCirca1997InDelphi)

Here is the file you would want to focus on first, and it does mention
nitrogen fixation and nodules, but you'd have to make your own decision about
how useful that was to you as a reference:
[https://github.com/pdfernhout/GardenSimulatorSourceCirca1997...](https://github.com/pdfernhout/GardenSimulatorSourceCirca1997InDelphi/blob/master/ueq.pas)

Here are the lines to look first inside that file:
[https://github.com/pdfernhout/GardenSimulatorSourceCirca1997...](https://github.com/pdfernhout/GardenSimulatorSourceCirca1997InDelphi/blob/master/ueq.pas#L4741-L4764)

Remember that a lot of EPIC is empirically derived functions and values from
US soils in certain climates -- so it may not be totally applicable elsewhere,
even if it is a place to start.

And here is a 100 page programmer's manual: [http://www.kurtz-
fernhout.com/progmanlong.htm](http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/progmanlong.htm)

I put our PlantStudio and StoryHarp code up on GitHub (which share some common
code with the garden simulator) and have been meaning to someday put the
garden simulator code there.

I spent a couple of months about a decade ago porting part of the code base to
Java and also Python which involved writing a Delphi parser and translation
tool, but the result is not a finished work. But the converted code for the
garden simulator is not on GitHub (yet). You can see some of the converted
plant drawing code here though:
[https://github.com/pdfernhout/PlantStudio](https://github.com/pdfernhout/PlantStudio)

I had wanted to help develop self-replicating space habitats and helping
people grow their own food better seemed like a good first step towards that
which both had short-term on-Earth benefits plus long-term benefits for space
settlement. We did this all on our own money from consulting and also credit
cards. When they were maxed out (~US$100K) we took unrelated programming jobs
at IBM Research and elsewhere to pay it all back on-time with interest -- it
took many years to get back to zero -- and we never got a chance to do that
much more with the simulator...

Our (at first shareware) PlantStudio software was a spinoff for breeding
virtual plants which got substantial interest from 3D modellers -- but even
there, we did not have time to keep improving it since we were both working
full-time the at IBM. PlantStudio was mainly my wife's project in response to
user feedback from the Garden Simulator that people liked playing with the
plant design part of it. We eventually made that free and then open source.
[http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/userssay.htm](http://www.kurtz-
fernhout.com/PlantStudio/userssay.htm)

And then we had a kid: :-) [http://www.kurtz-
fernhout.com/historyandfuture.html](http://www.kurtz-
fernhout.com/historyandfuture.html)

After that effort on our own, I'd get a bit annoyed I got when I'd watch NASA
and other places give big grants to people who then made proprietary software
with it. That motivated me to write essays like this back around 2001:
[http://pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-
works.html](http://pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html) "As a
software developer and content creator, I find it continually frustrating to
visit web sites of projects funded directly or indirectly by government
agencies or foundations, only to discover I can't easily improve on those
projects because of licensing restrictions both on redistribution and on
making derived works of their content and software. ..."

But I can give kudos at the USDA ARS BRC and the EPIC team for developing
their code in-house and putting it in the public domain. The EPIC developers
(but not administrators) were annoyed a bit themselves at our own plan
originally to make proprietary software from their models, which was another
factor in our making that garden simulator effort FOSS.

Our hope had been to keep improving those models and getting more people
involved in that process online with a 2.0 version of the software as a shared
modelling environment. But our few small efforts to find funding to continue
in that direction were not productive. I guess we were just better software
developers than sales people. :-) Plus we have learned a lot since then about
a more incremental development style.
[http://gardenwithinsight.com/nsfprop.htm](http://gardenwithinsight.com/nsfprop.htm)

Anyway, I can hope that using that Garden Simulator software as an initial
reference point can help a next generation of soil scientists and free
software developers create even better software for research, education, and
applications from bringing soil anywhere back to life. :-)

~~~
roel_v
Thank you, very interesting. I feel your pain wrt converting Fortran models;
I've spend quite some time doing it for models similar to EPIC. In fact, about
7-8 years ago in a fit of hubris, we submitted a proposal as part of which I
would integrate EPIC into some other models, as a part of which I would have
to convert it to C++; IIRC I estimated about 6 months for it. TBH I do have
large libraries of simulation framework, so it would mostly be understanding
equations and converting them. Still, I'm happy we didn't win that proposal :)

------
beautifulfreak
Paul Stamets has studied the soil restorative effects of mycellium mushroom
and published a number of videos. In this Ted Talk at the 10 minute mark,
there's a demonstration of just how rapidly a patch of ground can be
transformed compared to other commonly used methods, even land polluted with
diesel fuel, which the mycellium rapidly breaks down into harmless compounds.
All the videos are fascinating.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_c...](https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world/transcript#t-452343)

------
kwhitefoot
The problem is not going to be really solved until we get rid of the idea that
a corporation can own land. The big agribusinesses don't value the land as
much as society needs them too so of course they don't look after it.

Land is a common resource and no one business should have unfettered control
of it.

~~~
bluGill
That is false. Big business cares about land more than the small farmers

It is the big farmers that care the most for the land. They are big enough
that they have collected the data and seen that investments in the land pay
off. When you have one field it is really hard to test for yourself how
different practices pay off. The university will tell you "go no till, after 7
years your yields will be bigger than if you till the land every year", but
small farmers generally think "yeah right, it works for your soils over there,
but here we have different soils and so that won't work". By contrast the
large farmers have enough fields that they are willing to try every new
practice in a couple places to see if it really works for them. The largest
farms are now able to scientifically show that they are building soil every
year.

Second, in Iowa corporations are banned form owning farms. There are
exceptions for seed companies and equipment manufactures, but those are
specific loopholes with limits to what can be done. I work for John Deere (but
of course do not speak for them), and we have to be very careful that the
places where we test our prototypes does not count as farms. (generally the
crop is destroyed before harvest - I don't know how the harvester division
does their testing though)

~~~
kwhitefoot
I was not contrasting big and small farmers. I was contrasting big business
behaviour with what society needs.

~~~
bluGill
True, but big business behavior is often closer aligned with what society
needs than small farmers.

------
sampl
Here's a great book on the subject, "New Roots for Agriculture" by Wes Jackson
(forward by Wendell Berry)

[https://www.amazon.com/New-Roots-Agriculture-Farming-
Ranchin...](https://www.amazon.com/New-Roots-Agriculture-Farming-
Ranching/dp/0803275625)

------
mmagin
As has been hinted at by other commenters, I think the big thing that's wrong
with modern industrial agriculture (including some "organic" agriculture) is
that it typically does not add carbon to the soil (via composted plant matter,
manure, etc) and it also unnecessarily disturbs the soil structure, allowing
the organic carbon compounds in the soil to become excessively exposed to the
atmosphere where they'll break down or be eroded.

(No, I don't have specific sources for this, it's mostly a combination of what
I've read from the Permaculture folks and personal observation in my own
garden over the past 5 years.)

------
vram22
As a teenager, I had read this book called The Forest and The Sea, by Marston
Bates, which explains many of the fundamental principles of ecology that
underlie these issues.

[https://www.google.co.in/search?q=book+the+forest+and+the+se...](https://www.google.co.in/search?q=book+the+forest+and+the+sea&)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Bates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Bates)

I thought it was a pretty good and informative book.

------
MisterBastahrd
We could probably simply compost the produce and meat that gets thrown away
from grocery stores and fix that problem. A moderate sized grocery store in a
small town is going to throw away a ton or two of compostable material a
month. This all goes into a landfill. Most of these stores are very good about
recycling dry paper waste... but do nothing about the rest of their waste sans
cooking oil.

------
Overtonwindow
Not likely, unless we turn away from corn and abusive practices. Farming has
become such a money-losing venture that the only way to survive is to increase
yield, and try to squeeze more out of the same acre of land. This, imo, leads
to abuse.

~~~
devmunchies
People consume too much meat and dairy, which requires lots of corn and soy
for feed. Thats one reason why corn and soy is so heavily subsidized.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Why does that make the production heavily subsidized? Surely the state doesn't
need to subsidize what is already very popular?

~~~
bluGill
The state has a different concern: making sure you have enough to eat. One
crop failure and people starve to death. We as a society have chosen to solve
this problem by subsidizing farming ensuring that there are more crops grown
every year than is strictly needed. As such farmers plant more crops than
people will eat. This ensures that in bad years there is still enough food.

You can argue that there is a better solution to the problem, but don't argue
against subsidizes without a different solution.

------
madshiva
Can half of America be given back to native American?

------
martin_a
Has anybody already tried to put Brawndo on the fields? I think it got
electrolytes, that should help!

------
alexnewman
Not until we figure out what's killing it

~~~
reefoctopus
> the main change from one year to the next was intensively planting more and
> more acres of corn and soy, churning up the soil and using ever more
> chemical fertilizers and herbicides to try and turn a profit.

