Year: 2022

CLOSE CALL ON BLANKET SPRAYING. "After World War II, the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principal ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America's forests with the surplus chemical, to help the timber industry."" " http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/whats-eating-america-121229356/ View in LinkedIn

WWiI MUNITIONS PLANTS. "When World War II started, the government constructed 10 new plants to produce ammonia for munitions. All were located in the interior of the country. Several of the plants were built alongside natural gas pipelines so they could use the gas as raw material for their production. By the end of the war, these new plants and the old ones were producing 730,000 tons of ammonia each year, and had the capacity of producing 1.6 million tons." After the war they were used to make fertilizer." " http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/crops_04.html View in LinkedIn

WW II: AG TURNING POINT (I). "The delocalization of the American food system began with the industrialization of American agriculture following World War II. The wartime munitions and chemical warfare industries were quickly converted to produce the nitrogen fertilizers and chemical pesticides that allowed American farms to specialize, mechanize, and grow larger in scale."" " http://lnkd.in/d3dHPvX View in LinkedIn

POST WWII, BIG CHANGES IN FOOD SYSTEM (II). "Geographic specialization of the food system followed improvements in U.S. highways, particularly with the interstate highway system. Rail shipments of perishable foodstuffs had been slow, costly, and inconvenient for most food retailers. With better highways, California and Florida quickly became major centers of agricultural production and Americans no longer needed to eat in season, or even to preserve foods for off-season use." " " http://lnkd.in/d3dHPvX View in LinkedIn

POST WWII, BIG CHANGES IN FOOD SYSTEM (II). "Geographic specialization of the food system followed improvements in U.S. highways, particularly with the interstate highway system. Rail shipments of perishable foodstuffs had been slow, costly, and inconvenient for most food retailers. With better highways, California and Florida quickly became major centers of agricultural production and Americans no longer needed to eat in season, or even to preserve foods for off-season use." " " http://lnkd.in/d3dHPvX View in LinkedIn

DELOCALIZATION OF FOOD (III). "By the 1960s, regional supermarket chains – Kroger, Safeway, A & P – had replaced most local “mom and pop” grocery stores and by the 1970s fast food franchises – McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken – were “freeing housewives from their kitchens.” Today’s industrial food system in not only non-local, it’s global, with the average food item sold in America traveling something like 1500 miles." http://lnkd.in/d3dHPvX View in LinkedIn

INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE (IV). "The transition from local to industrial mostly took place during the fifty-year span of the last half of the last century... an oppositional food movement emerged almost as soon as the industrial food movement began. Today, the fastest growing segment of the food market in not fast foods, convenience foods, or inexpensive industrial foods but instead is “natural foods.” The local foods movement is but the latest phase of the natural foods movement." http://lnkd.in/d3dHPvX View in LinkedIn

CROP ROTATION DROPED AFTER WWII. "Today, Midwest farms often rotate between just corn and soybeans. But decades ago, oats, clover and alfalfa were a big part of the mix—and more farms also had livestock. The combination allowed for replenishment of nitrogen in the soil, both through the spreading of manure and by varying what types of crops went into the land. But after World War II, nitrogen fertilizer became widely available, and that made rotations and livestock less necessary." http://lnkd.in/dzg56Bq View in LinkedIn

FERTILIZERS LED TO MONOCULTURES, killed crop rotation and encouraged monoculture practices on a massive scale, changing agriculture enormously. Monoculture is generally thought to be inferior, for many reasons, to a diverse plant system. http://lnkd.in/dJaXi3B View in LinkedIn

LACK OF CROP ROTATION HURTS SOIL. Case study. "Soy takes more out of the soil than farmers can afford to put back by way of fertilizers. Only 37 percent is restored, meaning that 63 percent of each season's loss remains lost, according to government data."" " http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKBRE99M0ZX20131023?irpc=93 View in LinkedIn