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A comment on Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms. Parent comment

Re:Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms by pygy_ on Sunday July 14, 2019 @02:43PM (#20435069)
> do everything possible to keep the life in the soil alive: do not use pesticides, funghicides or herbicides since the toxins are not specific and kill all soil life.

It should be noted that glyphosate has antimicrobial and fungicidal properties.

Also, plants can turn the bedrock into dirt, either directly, or through their mycorrhyzal and rhyzosphere bacteria. Trees are especially useful to extract nutrient from rocks.

That being said, I think that Merril has a point. we're accelerating the extraction process (by dumping our waste products in rivers, rather than peeing/pooping where plants grow), and I have no idea how long we'll get away with these practices.

Human effluvia is full of drugs, and thus unfit for agriculture anyways...

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Re:Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms by pstuart on Sunday July 14, 2019 @04:38PM (#20435842)
> Human effluvia is full of drugs, and thus unfit for agriculture anyways...

For direct application, yes. But it could feed a pipeline where, say, the 3 generation of those nutrients could be harvested and applied to food crops.

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Re:Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms by vram11 on Sunday July 14, 2019 @05:10PM (#20436057)
What sort of pipeline? Biological?
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Re:Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms by pstuart on Sunday July 14, 2019 @05:50PM (#20436349)
Yeah, basically using it to fertilize a crop to grow a "green manure" crop for a couple of rounds and then cycling back to food crops.
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Re:Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms by pjc50 on Monday July 15, 2019 @05:22AM (#20439220)
Sewage is heavily treated in most places these days - usually by a biological process. The suitably sterilized solid waste can indeed be used as fertilizer.
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Re:Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms by notfromhere on Monday July 15, 2019 @09:17AM (#20440475)
sewage treatment plants can't remove drug contaminants
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Re:Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms by jsilence on Monday July 15, 2019 @12:01PM (#20442054)
I don't see any reasonable argument why they should not be able to remove at least sizeable parts of drug residues. There is metabolism in the human body and the is bacterial metabolism. Organic matter will be broken down at least partly.
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Re:Soil Erosion: Why soil is disappearing from farms by notfromhere on Monday July 15, 2019 @12:33PM (#20442427)
https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/drugs-in-t...

some but not all

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