In healthy soil phosphorous is released by fungi and bacteria from the sand, silt, and clay. Nobody fertilizes forests or native prairies and they are doing just fine on phosphorous.

agreed nature gets along just fine on its own, but if we're talking about human prosperity I don't think we can sustain ourselves on the bounty of the forest.

Foraging from the forest isn't what I meant at all. The way we farm the majority of the crop land kills every last spec of fungi and bacteria in the soil that would help improve the soil and reduce the need for inputs. The minerals are there already. We need to allow the biology to do its thing and make them available to plants.

sorry i didnt mean to misrepresent your point. i wanted to emphasize (and i think we agree here) that the land is single use.

allowing biology to "do its thing" usually means we can't also use it to grow crops.

maybe some sustainable hybrid strategies exist, but i doubt the yields are anywhere near the mass food production we have today.

The land use isn't singular on a regeneratively managed farm. Agroforestry and intense rotational grazing are two examples of ecosystems planned for maximum profitable output from land. An agroforestry farm may provide mushrooms, berries, nuts, wood, meat, dairy, eggs, grains, and fruit from the same plot of land that may provide 201,000 bushels of wheat (~5000 acres). The difference is management. Regenerative practices aim to work with nature.

I understand being skeptical of a new way(really the old way) to farm. We have all grown up in a time dominated by artificial inputs to farms. We don't know anything else. I have been following the regenerative space for years now and have adopted many of the practices on my tiny piece of land. This is the future of farming. Outputs are higher quality and more plentiful with more variety. Inputs are minimal which increases the profit margin.

TIL this seems very promising, thanks for sharing!

> Fertilizer depends on phosphorous which cannot be renewed or substituted once its gone.

Can you elaborate? It's not like phosphorous in fertilizer are leaving Earth after being used as fertilizer.

It doesn’t leave earth, but commercial farming practices lets all those nutrients run-off to pollute the water systems instead of being retained in the soil. Where they end up is difficult to recover.

Furthermore, soil needs to be alive, and commercial farming practices kills it every year. So instead of building up soil fertility year after year, external inputs is added year after year in a self-destructive cycle.

See my other comment about CO2, with enough energy all things are possible.

There is something called the "phosphorous cycle" but its a lot like oil and does not replenish anywhere near the rate we consume it.

Short of a nuclear reaction it isn't "gone" and some organisms are known to concentrate it when it's scattered.

For example, sargassum seaweed, which floats freely in the ocean, is rich in both phosphorus and ammonium.

There are already efforts in the Caribbean to turn sargassum into compost, because there's so much of it washing ashore that it's become a nuisance.

Medieval Irish farmers relied on seaweed fertilizer to turn much of the island into rich farmland.

Sure there is some level of recovery, likewise we can pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and stick it back in the ground.

A lot of problems go away if we "solve" energy, but that's also challenged by the same "peak" resource scenarios.