The reason chemical fertilizers work is because they provide minerals that a plant might normally trade sugars to fungi to get. So those sugars stay in the plant making larger fruits, nuts, or legumes.
But the problem is you also get water and early/late season sugars exchanged between plants (Simard et al).
So within a generation the soil structure has collapsed, you’re at the whim of every microdrought, and you’re dealing with the Red Queen problem. But like drugs, at first it feels amazing.
> dirt
Dirt isn’t much better than hydroponics. Soil is. Conventional farming has been described by some as “hydroponics in dirt”. That’s why it’s so fertilizer dependent, just like hydro.
There are a few places in the world where there is insufficient phosphorous in the native rock to grow plants without fertilizer. But everywhere else, healthy soil fungi could mine it out of the sand in the soils. If they were left to grow instead of burned to death with herbicides and fertilizers.
But the problem is you also get water and early/late season sugars exchanged between plants (Simard et al).
So within a generation the soil structure has collapsed, you’re at the whim of every microdrought, and you’re dealing with the Red Queen problem. But like drugs, at first it feels amazing.
> dirt
Dirt isn’t much better than hydroponics. Soil is. Conventional farming has been described by some as “hydroponics in dirt”. That’s why it’s so fertilizer dependent, just like hydro.
There are a few places in the world where there is insufficient phosphorous in the native rock to grow plants without fertilizer. But everywhere else, healthy soil fungi could mine it out of the sand in the soils. If they were left to grow instead of burned to death with herbicides and fertilizers.