Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

Re:Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention? by Aperocky on Monday February 10, 2020 @05:43PM (#22294220)

> over half of them would work in farming

Why would throwing more people at the problem solve or mitigate lack of fertilizer?

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Re:Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention? by AngryData on Monday February 10, 2020 @06:22PM (#22294493)

Yeah I think he is wrong there. More people would work in farming than now but only like 1% of the population are farmers right now. 2% farmers covering atleast if not more than double the land area is not crazy.

Not to mention relying on natural processes and top soil health and would be extremely sustainable long term and be a huge carbon sink.

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Re:Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention? by ajuc on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @01:43PM (#22311460)

https://blog.resourcewatch.org/2019/05/30/map-of-the-month-h...

> The chart below shows data from the World Bank on employment in agriculture over time. Globally, about 1 billion people* work in the agricultural sector, about 28% of the population employed in 2018. This is down from 44% in 1991.

Currently 1/7th of the global population works in agriculture, and 28% of the employed population.

If that doubles it would be over 50%.

World isn't just USA.

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Re:Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention? by derefr on Monday February 10, 2020 @05:53PM (#22294294)

More land would necessarily be farmland (i.e. there'd be less land "free" to dedicate to other things); so there'd probably need to be more farmers to work the additional land. Even in the modern world where a farm is mostly robots, one person can only manage so much land and so many robots (essentially the amount of land they can easily traverse in a few hours to check up on.)

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Re:Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention? by 80386 on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @10:33AM (#22299226)

And large-scale automated farming is less productive per acre than small-scale labor-intensive farming.

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Re:Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention? by rizzom5000 on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @12:08AM (#22296237)

I think the point is that fertilizer makes it possible for big agriculture to operate at a certain scale.

If we didn't have fertilizer, farmers would be tending to smaller plots and using locally available fertilizers, such as locally available compost and mulch.

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