get yr starve on
Please sir, can I have some more? No? Well, piss off then, ya bloody stupid cahnt!
There's a broad-ranging piece on Grist right now covering the ag-related impacts of the Mississippi flooding, and what might happen in the marketplace. As they say on the big blogs, go read.
Aside from the prospect of having to pay that much more for what little I buy at the Oats with money I still don't have this summer, this little bit though, is what caught my attention:
With the recent deluge, a bad situation has turned worse. The rains have not only damaged crops, they've also washed away untold tons of fertilizer, which leach into groundwater and eventually flow through the Mississippi clear down to the Gulf of Mexico. There, the fertilizer won't feed crops; instead, in a double blow to food production, it will nourish a vast algae bloom blotting out sea life that would otherwise have contributed to a once-bountiful fishery.
By my count, this is the second major hit this region of the States has taken in the last five years; I have to guess we'll start actually seeing some effects of these pollution wash-offs (rather than merely hearing about them, which unfortunately can only be described to us - no melting glaciers here) sooner than later.
It seems like this summer, this year, really, we've begun to pay down the heavy-duty borrowing we've done on the biosphere. Over-exposing our soils to chemical fertilizers - which also render them unable to process carbon and other greenhouse gases, activating yet another positive feedback loop in the cycle of planetary warming - is one of these big fat loans we've taken out, maybe the most awful thing we've done to the health of our ecosystems as we've pushed them intoindustrialization. There's still time to change, though. This summer also represents a great opportunity for us, so there's still time. Well, a little bit, anyway.
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