[CarlosFerreira]

No problem. As you study this subject, you will probably get the impression the world is plunging into the abyss, riding a wheelbarrow. That might not be the case, but the odds are the ride is going to get bumpy. Take the time to learn, you never know what might come handy.

Courtesy of another thread.

[CarlosFerreira]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cabrone', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jean_de_Bruxelles', 'T')hanks for the answers. There's a lot in wikipedia indeed.

Traditionaly in Belgium we were short in organic fertilizers, especially the horse manure. Going back to organic culture won't be easy because we all have cars now, nearly no more horses. And maybe all those chemicals allow us to be less accurate with the moon position or the combination of differents plants...

It seems a huge challenge, but I haven't read all the links yet. Thanks.

[CarlosFerreira]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cabrone', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jean_de_Bruxelles', 'T')hanks for the answers. There's a lot in wikipedia indeed.

Traditionaly in Belgium we were short in organic fertilizers, especially the horse manure. Going back to organic culture won't be easy because we all have cars now, nearly no more horses. And maybe all those chemicals allow us to be less accurate with the moon position or the combination of differents plants...

It seems a huge challenge, but I haven't read all the links yet. Thanks.

[lorenzo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jean_de_Bruxelles', 'H')ello,

I'm a complete newbie in chemical products. I just know that my shampoo and plastics are made with oil. And I was wondering :

Are we gonna miss the chemical fertilizers in agriculture in the long-term future (if no apocalypse occurs) ? How are they made indeed ?

Actually I'm quite against chemicals as a principle, but I've learned from my garden.

Composting is not that easy, it is slow and then I got to burry it instead of just adding a liquid in water... A lot of work and a poor result in my case. So I bought those chemical fertilizers. My ground is poor, the buildings around are eating the sun (I live in Brussels), but since I use chemical fertilizers, most of my plants produce flowers and fruits

So I was wondering how will the agriculture evolve regarding the peak oil ? Not just the use of engines will be modified but I am too ignorant to foresee it. Thanks for answering.

[CarlosFerreira]

What we are going to miss is the cheap energy. Post-peak, energy will be more expensive, and hydrogen in "produced" using energy - essentially separating it from oxygen in water. We won't miss the stuff, it's the cheap and abundant fertilizers we enjoy today that we will eventually miss.

[lorenzo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', 'W')hat we are going to miss is the cheap energy. Post-peak, energy will be more expensive, and hydrogen in "produced" using energy - essentially separating it from oxygen in water. We won't miss the stuff, it's the cheap and abundant fertilizers we enjoy today that we will eventually miss.

[larry00]

I heard from a chemical supplier that the Chinese will have to stop exporting chemical fertilizers that are nessessary to raise enough food to feed the worlds populations.
We would have starved twenty five years ago without the chemicals and hybrid grains and new farming methods.

We may have peaked on food production and that amount might not be sustainable since we are using our available clean water faster than we are using our oil.
Some say we are pumping water that fell during the cretaceous period hundreds of thousands of years ago.
A water table can only fall so far till the top soil has to be watered so much more to compensate.
Oh and we hardly produce any liquid fertilizer anymore because of homeland security concerns and and it's dangerious nature along with the fact that some of the ammonia's are used to make drugs and are strictly watched as well as they have to be guarded against theft.

[CarlosFerreira]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', 'W')hat we are going to miss is the cheap energy. Post-peak, energy will be more expensive, and hydrogen in "produced" using energy - essentially separating it from oxygen in water. We won't miss the stuff, it's the cheap and abundant fertilizers we enjoy today that we will eventually miss.

[isgota]

I'm agree with lorenzo, you can make nitrogen fertilizers with just water, air and electricity as raw materials (another way is using biomass gasification). Actually, the first synthetic nitrogen fertilizer produced was using this scheme more than a century ago, just ask the Norwegians.

And also many people tend to think that without oil won't be plastics and other similar products. I have to disagree, plastics (polimers) are made by repetition of simple chemical units called monomers, but these monomers aren't found in crude oil mainly, they're produced from longer hydrocabon chains (until now from crude oil fractions as raw material).

Is it any way to make long hydrocarbon chains artificially? Yes it is.

Now it's a matter of economics to begin the change, not technology.

Best.

[CarlosFerreira]

Yes, it's a matter of economics. But it's also a matter of available energy. The "current", fossil fuel ways of producing nitrogen fertilizers are the most cost-effective right now. If we get to a time and place when we have shortages of power, "just electricity" might be quite expensive, making fertilizers (and, eventually, food itself) more expensive.

[allenwrench]

To make fish fertilizer for storage of a year or more do you have to cook it or ferment it raw?

[greenworm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')nce caught and brought back to shore, they are dumped onto a long conveyer belt, which takes the fish through an oven, where the fish is cooked at 210 degrees F. Then the fish go into a screw press, where the liquids and oils are pressed out. The solids go on to be processed into fish meal, animal feed, and other industrial products.

The liquid is more valuable than petroleum, with pure fish oil selling for more than twice the price of crude oil. The liquid, called stickwater, is placed in a centrifuge, where the oil is skimmed off, and the heavier components, the fish solubles, are boiled down to a thicker, gummier solution that is sold as fish emulsion. A small amount- less than 0.1% by weight- of phosphoric acid is added to drop the pH of the solubles to 4.5 or below. Without this phosphoric acid, the enzymes in the fish would cause it to decay, create gases, and begin to smell horrid- and, all the states realize this, and within certain guidelines, it is still considered 100% Natural Organic

[allenwrench]

Thanks for the details!

[Loki]

You could probably just bury fish offal or "trash" fish. Some say the Indians used to bury fish before they planted, but apparently there's little evidence to support that (might actually have been an imported European practice). But some folks have tried it and it seems to work.

[frankthetank]

I bury fish guts, mostly in the spring. The do just fine, just make sure you bury them a few inches down, so then they don't stink/bring in the wild animals. You could also grind the guts up in a blender and pour around the plants. Could be stinky.

[SpringCreekFarm]

I wondered about making my own fish emulsion fertilizer so thanks for starting this thread.

My thoughts were that if I started fishing again, I'd keep the majority of the garbage fish ie suckers, sunfish, carp etc and then blend them up into a liquid mess.

I wondered about different methods of cooking / preserving the slurry until I could use it. I had thought about cooking it in a pressure cooker but so far haven't tried it.

Is phosphoric acid something we can get? Is it dangerous to handle?

[Ferretlover]

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=112195&catid=339

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')orking in an industrial park in Berthoud, Roy developed an efficient process to turn dead trees into nutrient-rich fertilizer. "There's no added chemicals," Roy said. "It's just 100 percent natural." Roy's patent-pending process is now being called revolutionary by forestry and plant specialists at CSU. "This is the real deal," James Self, director of CSU's Soil, Water and Plant Testing Laboratory, said.

[Subjectivist]

Some people keep harping on the idea that we are at peak phosphorus but judging by the price and the way many suburbanites and farmers sprinkle it everywhere I find that hard to accept.