Toxic Fertilizers: Playing devil's advocate

So I've seen a fair bit of stuff coming out recently about how synthetic fertilizer is bad for the environment and we should switch to "organic" farming methods or ban them all together (organic in quotes because the term is a nebulous buzzword).
And sure, we should be doing everything that we can to preserve our environment - If our farming methods are destroying the world then we need to find better ways to do things.

I get that.

[quick aside: if you don't like the arguments I present, please read the section underneath them for context before reacting - this will be denotated by a similar bracketed line]
_{[I also want to repeat myself: This is playing devil's advocate - an argument against simply banning/reducing synthetic fertilizer use on the whole. Not supposed to be robust massive essay covering all the minutia - there are plenty of people who have done that far better than I ever could - and there's a point to this aside from simply arguing the topic.]}

I'd like to bring up a couple of counter-points against the banning of synthetic fertilizer.

• Synthetic fertilizer is the main reason why we have the population levels that we do.
• There isn't any acceptable organic alternative that can still meet the needs of our current population levels using the farmland that we have available.
• Rather than saying "this bad, get rid of it" let's say "this was good, let's make it better"

In fact, it is TRIVIAL to come up with an argument that it would be beneficial to use MORE fertilizer in poorer, less developed countries.
Their people are already starving

We shouldn't be reducing food supply to places that already do not have enough food.

Unless your goal is for more people to starve to death, then we should definitely reduce synthetic fertilizer usage in those places.

^{Impoverished settlement in Syria, where there are over 10 million people who don't have a secure supply of food. There are many places where they don't have a secure supply of food.
Contemporary farming technique alleviates this.}

What we've got is problems with misuse of fertilizers, especially in certain parts of the world where there's lot of availability and little oversight.

Synthetic fertilizer is not an enemy:
it's a tool
It can be used for good or for bad.
It can be changed to be better or worse.

A lot of the environmental damage comes from overapplication of synthetic fertilizer. The excess simply can't be absorbed into the soil and runs off into the rest of the environment. We can see that this is a problem. Let me ask though: if given the same availability of non-synthetic fertilizers would this problem still exist?

I would wager that if they had the same cost and availability, farmers would still overapply fertilizer. The reason why it doesn't happen is (in my opinion) likely due to scarcity.
If we're arguing that no fertilizers be used, then people are simply going to starve - especially in places where food scarcity already exists.

We should be able to produce a better, more innovative alternative that wouldn't require mass death on a global scale.
I mean, if you want less people on the planet - I guess that's fine. How do you reduce the population ethically though?
Sounds pretty sinister to me.

There are a lot of things on the cusp of being ready for market in the Agricultural industry. Biological ways to repair the soil, ways to fix the problem with overapplication of fertilizer, ways to send the nutrients directly into the plants instead of raining them on a field.
Let the brilliant humans who are experts on these things solve the problems that only they can solve.

The politicians, newsman, you (speaking generally), and I are clearly not experts on this field.
Your average person hasn't the first clue about how food is produced, let alone how synthetic fertilizer interacts with the environment.
The public should not be setting policy on these things - This is why we need experts whom we can trust working on solutions and setting policy based on good science.

I've been following this topic for a while out of passing interest with some of the fertilizer bans and energy bans happening around the world. A trend that I've noticed is that a lot of the people who are very passionately telling us that we need to stop doing these things so that we can save the world aren't really offering anything in the way of solutions to even just maintain our contemporary lifestyle.

Apparently we should all just go back to the 1800s or something.

_{Or Amish...}

[Going more to the subject of the usefulness of this debate]
^{[This is the cue that I'm not arguing against the banning of synthetic fertilizers anymore]}

Look, I'm not against your philosophy in general. We should be trying to fix the issues with pollution and poisoning the environment with fertilizers, etc.
That takes work though. And someone has got to do the work. You can shout and scream from a soapbox all day, but if that's how you spend your time then you're not the one doing the work to offer a viable alternative.

I'm not going to be the one doing the work on this subject either. That's pretty much a lifelong career decision. That's really the only way to expend your energy usefully toward that goal though. We could debate this back and forth all day long and all we would have done is create conflict. If we did, we would have spent an entire day doing absolutely nothing on either of our parts to move the needle - to push humanity towards a better future.

I kind of think that's the point that people are missing when they shout at people online about topics like this. It's essentially useless, especially since we seem to have forgotten how to debate people (as a society). I see posts online and I hear people talking all the time about how we need to stop climate change and how we're poisoning the planet with synthetic chemicals, etc., but it's really just equivalent to futilely shouting into the wind to make yourself feel better.

You're generally going to get one of two reactions: people agree with you and it produces an hollow, pointless echo chamber OR people disagree with you and exchange insubstantial arguments with you until communication breaks down out of frustration. ESPECIALLY on social media.

Just... nothing comes of it. It's not that the debate is completely useless, but it would be far more useful to dedicate yourself to getting educated on how to solve the issues that you care about. I mean, if you're really that passionate about saving the environment, your energy would be a lot better spent learning about and developing real solutions to those problems.

To really convince people, you need to give them a reason to listen to you. If you don't have the authority to speak on a subject, the chances of them changing their mind are pretty negligible.

Which is why I'm not here trying to convince you to change your mind on the subject of fertilizers
If anything, I hope that you'll change your mind on how you interact with people or judge your expertise on a given subject.
I mean, you're certainly entitled to your opinion and the right to share it. Just as I am certainly entitled to my opinion and the right to share it.

It'd be nice if we were to have productive discussions instead of destructive ones though.
It'd also be nice if we handled things in a little bit less of an emotionally charged way as well.

Anyways, try not to take anything I've said in this article TOO seriously.
I am certainly not educated in this field so there may or may not be quite a few things I got wrong or misunderstand about the subject.

That's part of my point though. If you are going to criticize what I've said without having the expertise in the fields of agricultural sciences you might want to be open to the possibility of being wrong about some things. You probably don't understand everything that you're talking about. Let your ego go and be open minded.

I certainly don't understand everything to do with this subject. I'm lacking about a decades worth of work towards being an expert.
I just don't need to be told how I need to change my way of living to save the world by (for example) an art school graduate afflicted with a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Anyways, on a more positive note. It does seem that we've got some pretty good innovations being worked on to solve these issues. I think that disrupting our global food supply by simply banning or reducing the use of fertilizers would be an act of temerity. I know we live in an age of instant gratification, but we should really have the patience to develop and implement better solutions than what we have available today.

• Guurg

_{I tried to avoid super specific claims here, but here's a few other articles I referenced indirectly.
(Those containing direct references to research studies:)
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/synthetic-fertilizer-infographic
https://ourworldindata.org/reducing-fertilizer-use
(those NOT containing any direct references:)
https://thefern.org/ag_insider/report-fertilizer-responsible-for-more-than-20-percent-of-total-agricultural-emissions/
https://www.wfp.org/countries/syrian-arab-republic}

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