Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it seems like increasing yields and inadequate fertilization focusing on macronutrients would also explain the drop. If I grow crops that preferentially absorb certain minerals and then take away most of the vegetable matter from the plot, the soil content of the absorbed minerals is going to drop without something to replenish it. Now, I'm not saying soil bacteria and mychorrhizal networks can't pull minerals from the underlying bedrock and transport it to the top layer, but even assuming they did, I would think high-yield farming would tax their ability to keep up with mineral outflows.

Both parent and grandparent are saying something important here. Mineral availability from the microbiome via root interactions is critical. But throw nitrogen at a plant and it will rapidly grow utilizing CO2, O2 and water, leaving a mineral deficient plant. And that is true in any soil. Also, modern plants have been selected to be large and tender, which tends to be inversely coorelated to mineral density. So it's been a perfect storm against.

That's right! They throw on Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, but they do not add the other 14 elements, which yes, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen come from CO2 and H2O. But they also need iron, cobalt, selenium and others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition

Are nutritional supplements a sufficient solution for the full 17(?) in the meantime?

I've heard many people say they get their nutrients from eating enough vegetables where the don't need any pills or vitamins. I'm curious how true this is as the internet doesn't offer much clarity.

Not to mention the always vague scientific literature about multivitamins and other supplementations. Or the extremes like Ray Kurizwel who take hundreds of supplements "just in case".

If agriculture doesn't provide us with any realistic solutions in the near term this may still be a worthy area for future innovation to deliver legitimately useful supplementation, minus the snake oil. But I fear that is too optimistic of a goal vs the current state of things, where there's already an over supply of people offering 'solutions' merely exploiting the never ending pool of shame hyped up over mass consumption, not only in western culture but even more so in the new eastern entrants to middle classdom.

The funny thing is that current advice is that nutrition supplements aren’t necessary. I finally got around to taking a “one a day” pill every day, but stopped when I read in the “American College of Sports Medicine’s Complete Guide to Fitness and Health (2nd Ed)”:

“If you are thinking about taking a multivitamin–mineral supplement, you should analyze your diet first to assess if a supplement is required. The best way to obtain nutrients is through whole foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables, whole grains; foods that are not processed). ... If you do decide to take a multivitamin–mineral supplement, consider taking it every other day to enhance your ability to digest and absorb it and to save money” (chapter 3).

They aren’t the only group with that kind of advice either: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/do-you-need-a... .

Maybe I should rethink that.

The supplements-aren't-necessary-advice is often the lawerly "you don't need supplements if you're not malnourished" or "if you're getting a balanced diet."

Left unsaid is my takeaway: modern agriculture has damaged our food supply to the point where a nourishing and balanced diet isn't readily available in the produce section of your local supermarket. If you're eating stunted frankenfood, you need to supplement, because you're malnourished from eating an unbalanced diet.

Costco multivitamins cost 2 cents per pill. I don't think saving money is a good reason to try to get all your minerals from whole foods.

I did a blind trial on myself by getting liquid multivitamin (bargain large European superstore brand, powdered), and creating a sequence of vitamin or placebo based on a pseudorandom hash function to take every day with breakfast in drink. The sequence is prepared a month ahead so I don't know on any specific day what I'm getting.

I also record my mood and excercise at some time most days with a survey.

After 2 years, I saw a significant decrease in general happiness on days I took the multivitamin, and a lesser (not p<0.01) effect the following day. I was less likely to leave the house, and less likely to plan a social activity on those days.

I've now stopped taking the multivitamin for that reason.

I'd still like to know if I have stumbled on a p<0.01 fluke, or if I'm unique somehow, if the multivitamins have a negative short term but positive long term effect, if these particular multivitamins are harming me somehow, or if all multivitamins have this issue.

Life isn't long enough for me to find out, but if anyone else is happy to take on a bigger trial, results could be interesting.

I am also worried they put toxic doses of vitamins and minerals. My hair supplement used to contain 10000 micrograms of biotin and caused acne. Other supplements put 100 micrograms. Melatonin doses also vary too wildly, like 4x. They seem to be concerned about bragging rights at our expense.

Agreed the standard dose is probably 300mcg, but there’s a reason it doesn’t get sold at that amount. There’s communities that track what the right amount is for them and take that, see https://trackmystack.com

my own experience is that I have to eat a sickening amount of meat to get enough minerals so I started to get some supplements. apparently vegs that I can buy are little more than starch and sugar.

You get what you incentivize. Produce is typically sold by weight.

produce rich in nutrients are typically also tastier. However, modern groceries (such as massive chain stores) require huge logistics and scale, and thus expect farmers to produce a steady, homogenous and sturdy crop that also happen to lack nutrients. It's unfortunate that for the produce to be cheap, it has to be done the way it is today.

Not everybody can afford to have "organically grown" heirloom tomatoes, because it's too expensive, and labour intensive. May be genetically modifying foods to also take in minerals properly is the answer...

heirloom crops are not as productive. I grew many different varieties and some of the plants engineered for greenhouses would produce 5x as many tomatoes per plant than heirlooms in the same greenhouse, getting the same amount of water and fertilizer -- and they still tasted good. Much better than typical grocery store tomatoes. More modern varieties are also more resilient to disease and pests.

What's been incentivized in most countries farming-wise has had the scales significantly tipped in certain directions where it's not simply the most valuable plants/animals at the maximum weights.

Produce is sold by weight, and bought by appearance but neither nutritional content nor taste.

And, higher CO2 levels.

There may be some unintended consequences with that approach...

The "perfect storm" includes the fact that CO2 levels are higher today than in 1914.

Glomalin was only discovered in 1996 and it contains up to 30% of soil carbon! Fungal cell walls degrade into a sticky product that makes the soil more loamy. Glomalin levels are strongly correlated with soil fertility.

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

I think artificial supplementation can be greatly improved, as you suggest. However, it increasingly looking like the soil biome is directly responsible for plant productivity, rather than only indirectly assisting in nutrient transport.

Not even focusing on macronutrients. We’re just focussing in mass.

I’m not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.

The worst is strawberries. The huge strawberries you can buy in the store have the same flavor content as the tiny ones you can grow in your yard, but it's completely diluted with water. They're disgusting.

Where I live, I can buy tiny fruits and vegetables from local farmers, or I can buy imported ones that are 3x as large and get twice as much for half the price.

The difference in fruit flavor is unbelievable. Tiny strawberries grown on a couple acres of land versus mega farm strawberries aren’t even in the same flavor category. The tiny ones taste almost identical to strawberry candies, but large ones that draw people in with the wow factor are like firm lumps of sour water.

> but large ones that draw people in with the wow factor are like firm lumps of sour water.

Sounds like they were grown hydroponically. I can't stand hydroponically grown tomatoes for the same reason. Just bags of water.

sreet protesters like them.

:)

Same thing with carrots. Or tomatoes. It's amazing how vegetables can taste good when they haven't been bred into giant lumps of blandness.

Is it just because they are giant? I’ve had relatively big strawberries that are sweet and flavorful in China. But in the US, they taste like cucumber plus citrus, no sweetness, no aroma, just incredibly sour and watery.

I don't know what Chinese strawberries are like, but I always figured that American strawberries are watery and sour because they're not only big, but they're also grown too quickly for flavor to develop. I think they're engineered to artificially mature early and are basically still unripe.

It's really weird to me that people are generalizing this by nationality. Sure, a lot of supermarket strawberries are terrible. They also frequently (but not always) come from outside the US. Some are ok, and some people get flavorful ones somehow, because I've had excellent quality ones with dessert in a restaurant. Also, there are farmer's markets and stands, even though I'm not in the habit of going to them.

I have had amazing and bland Strawberries from Safeway in the US. Not sure how to pick the good ones. Time of year?

Yes, local in season fruit is always tastier. I suspect because out of season fruit has to come from further away, meaning it has to be picked before it normally would be if it didn’t have to travel so far.

I too have had this experience. Now I always sample one from a pack before I buy. I used to feel guilty doing that, but the quality varies so much and I got sick of wasting fruit purchases when they turn out to be sour or gross. Same with grapes and blueberries from Costco.

I noticed the striking difference between strawberries grown in Thailand (yes, it's true, during the cool season in the mountainous regions) which are small, non-uniform in shape and intensely flavored, compared to the huge, beautiful and watery tasteless hothouse grown strawberries imported from Korea.

To be fair to the cucumber, actual homegrown ones do have a taste.

There were people arguing how great increased crop yield was in the last few weeks. [0] Some comments were made about how the exponential factor of crop yields outweighed the loss of output nutrients. Glad to see the counterargument on the table.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20667031

Tomatoes can particuralry well so for the out of season times I've come to preffer using canned and avoiding the unripe tomatoes, which are often ripened (turned red) by truckloads using nitrogen. America's Test Kitchen has lot's of reviews on canned tomatoes[0].

https://www.americastestkitchen.com/taste_tests/231-canned-w...

Store-bought tomatoes are just a pale reminder of what a real tomato tastes like. It's no wonder that people who never ate a ripe tomato fresh from the garden don't like tomatoes; there is nothing good about them but the memory of something incomparably better.

Maybe my gardens faulty, but within the same variety, superstore and my-personal-garden tomatoes are near indistinguishable.

The only difference I see is my garden tomatoes seem to have a thin layer of city dirt on the skin that's hard to wipe off... (That black dusting of tyre rubber and brake dust that makes a tissue dirty if you wipe it over the surface)

When you want to " pull minerals from the underlying bedrock and transport it to the top layer", trees do that. Composting with tree leaves would seem to be beneficial, although perhaps a rather slow process. And of course you need lots of trees around. Incompatible with large scale monoculture farming.

Healthier soil may also capture carbon. There are many reasons to look at optimization of farming and food production for a whole range of concerns beyond profits. The question is how to broadly incentivize and fund those concerns - reinvigorating agricultural dept programs with a wider focus at a federal and state level is one way to do that; others would likely come up under a Green New Deal type framework too.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/soil_as_carbon_storehouse_new...

Aside from a few farmers that are motivated by ideology, profit is the only motivation that will change practices.

I have recently been researching biochar(biologically charged charcoal). Use of biochar is a form of carbon sequestration that reduces nutrient leaching and provides immense surface area for bacterial and fungal life to thrive in soil.

I met a potato farmer whose primary crop is for a large chain supermarket. He produces almost double his required yield, doesn't use fertilizer nor pesticides... and has been so for a decade. To use his words: he's a potato farmer, but spends most of his time preparing the soil for the next year. He's right into cover crops (ie not leaving the soil exposed), and several 'rotational' crops that assist in root and nutrient management, as well as pesticide control (yes, plants to control pests). These rotational crops are generally 'terminated' early by finely mulching them back into the earth while simultaneously seeding the next preparatory crop. His biggest expense, fuel, is reduced with a smaller tractor, which also assists in minimising soil compaction.

Yeah biochar is very interesting. We definitely shouldn't massively start using it in the short term though - its effects are not so well understood. Most "knowledge" is based on terra preta, Amazonian dark soil which is hundreds of years old and man-made with charcoal, pottery shards, bones and other organic matter. There have been field trials but many of them by biochar organizations/companies who might not be completely objective and once we put it in the soil we can't really take it out anymore.

I think the evidence suggests that turning waste into biochar and applying it to fields at a local scale has a lot of potential. Growing trees for the purpose of biochar might be a different story (this has many of the downsides of biofuel production).

the free carbon soil test is used by many farmers to evaluate the amount of microbial life in their soils. Several I have spoken to have expressed interest for a more reliable field test for microbial health in their soils. One side effect is that microbes in soil tend to help soils hold more water.

OP is right, though. Net mass lost is still a major problem.

> The benefits of treating the soil as a living organism include increased fertility

This is a pretty interesting (and correct) point, and there's a lot to say about it from a few different perspectives.

You get much higher all-inclusive yields from a unit of land by growing several different crops in the same space. They (can) complement each other, using different resources from the ground and providing resources to each other.

American agriculture is not set up to do this. Instead of optimizing yield as a function of land input, we optimize yield as a function of labor input, because we have tons and tons of fertile land relative to our small-for-the-size-of-the-country population. If you have one person growing food on a thousand acres of land (remember, one acre is originally "the amount of land one man can plow in a day"), it makes more sense to give that one person just one thing to do. There's no way they're going to be able to care for 5 different crops simultaneously, or even adjust their practices to better suit the specifics of individual fields. We prefer to get a lot of land under low-labor cultivation, even though the cultivation isn't very effective, because our tiny population doesn't require high agricultural yields per unit land.

A more traditional model involves starving peasants intensively cultivating scarce land. With cheap and abundant labor inputs, you can get much more from one unit of land. But most of that increase goes to feeding the peasants who provide the labor. This is similar to how models of the effect of immigration on American GDP tend to show large increases in GDP -- the benefits of which, if you account for them, mostly accrue to the new immigrants.

I don't think there's an easy way to combine the ideas of "infinite cheap peasant labor gives us higher agricultural yields" and "a middle-class lifestyle should be in reach for everybody". Americans are rich, from a historical and current-rest-of-the-world perspective, specifically because we use so few people to grow food. One guy with enough food to feed three million people is a huge benefit to the rest of the country, and he's personally stinking rich. Five million peasants in huts who collectively produce enough food to feed 5,100,000 people are all dirt poor, and they produce only a minor benefit to the rest of the country.

It's pretty bizzare to me to say we can't. Perhaps the statement is better that we can't under inflexible solution points of our current technology. However, with impending sensor & robotization of agriculture other models are foreseeable.

That's quite the argument to extremes. Surely there are points in between the single rich farmer and the five million poor farmers.

Could the balance be shifted somewhat to slightly more labor intensive farming practices without causing us all to become starving peasants? I suspect so.

The increase in productivity would have to compensate the laborers for their time. This was traditionally accomplished by using laborers whose time was of very little value. The richer society is, the more difficult this is to do.

Robots?

They can be your peasants.

Exactly.

Rock dust, nitrogen etc...

I work in cannabis tech, and there is a really interesting farm i work with.

They have been using / revitalizing the same soil for a decade.

Here is what is really interesting, they grow their cannabis on top of an 18” thick mycelium fungus bed. They mulch out their detritus and then keep growing their cannabis in that same soil - and their quality levels are top fucking notch.

Big ag is like FB of agra: trying way to hard to scale and quality is near zero.

> Soil fertility can be returned to historical levels by changing farming practices to make living soil.

Seems easier to just add the missing minerals/chemicals to the soil.

Isn't that kind of thinking what got us here in the first place?

We may not even know the full range of micro-nutrients that the soil has been depleted of.

> We may not even know the full range of micro-nutrients that the soil has been depleted of.

You may not know the full range of micro-organisms needed or how to care for them to achieve this 'living soil'. Taking agriculture backward a hundred years isn't a path forward.

There is also evidence due to higher concentrations of CO2.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6104417/

Essentially there's around the same mineral content it's just the vegetables are also on average larger in size and mass - yet yield the same mineral content.

To learn more about soil health, watch Dr. Elaine Ingham's talks available on YouTube. Also see: https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

I think it also happens because of synthetic fertilizers (and possibly modern genetics).

It's a race to grow as big a product in as short of time as possible which causes the mineral ratios to be different.

A tomato which takes months to grow and ripens on the vine has more time to assimilate minerals than a tomato that is "pushed" with synthetic fertilizers, then snatched off the vine unripened and ripened with ethylene gas in transport.

Must be one hell of a tomato if it takes multiple months to grow. I’ve only grown ones that take a few weeks.

(pasted from the webz)

Standard-sized tomatoes take 20 to 30 days from blossom set to reach full size–commonly called “mature green”; they take another 20 to 30 days to ripen, that is begin to change color.

Thanks for sharing, Tastyfreeze.

+1 on Living Web Farms. They have a lot of great videos about sustainable farming practices. I've learned a lot from the whole gang there - but especially from Mr. Pat Battle. If you have any interest in learning how to grow some of your own food, you should check them out.