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>> No. 1708 Anonymous
1st May 2011
Sunday 2:18 pm
1708 British Agriculture
A friend of mine told me that the British soil lack the minerals needed to grow vegetables and hence England has trouble growing a variety of vegetables. Is that true?

I searched online and did not find an answer to my question.

BTW, I am not English (nor have I spent much time in England), so I do not know anything about your agriculture and which vegetables you grow. I am still interested :D
Expand all images.
>> No. 1709 Anonymous
2nd May 2011
Monday 1:59 pm
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You can grow most things here, so long as you take into account the weather. It is rather fertile.

We can grow even more with our own greenhouse efforts. There has been a few proposals to build some giant ones for these all-year-round crops or exotic items.
>> No. 1710 Anonymous
2nd May 2011
Monday 2:32 pm
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>>1709

All lies OP! Don't listen to him, the only thing we can grow is brussel sprouts. The English diet consists entirely of meat and sprouts and anyone who tells you otherwise is a government shill.
>> No. 1711 Anonymous
2nd May 2011
Monday 3:03 pm
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>>1710

I saw a vicious wild potato the other day. Horrible things. I avoid them whenever I can.
>> No. 1712 Anonymous
2nd May 2011
Monday 3:26 pm
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>>1711
They can take a good hunk out of your leg if you're not careful. Once they bare their teeth you need to run like hell.
>> No. 1713 Anonymous
2nd May 2011
Monday 5:09 pm
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>>1710

I know you are being sarcastic, but there is a chance that you might be telling a fact rather than joking. I am a foreigner, guys, and I sometimes do not understand your humor :D

So the British soil is fertile and you do grow different vegetables when the weather permits, am I right?
>> No. 1714 Anonymous
2nd May 2011
Monday 10:02 pm
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>>1713
Yes, mostly. Of course, in some areas the soil is poor (Wales, Scotland, The South West, up North) and so they just keep sheep and cows, but everywhere else the soil's great.
>> No. 1715 Anonymous
2nd May 2011
Monday 10:14 pm
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>>1714

Highland landscapes and suitability are completely different to lowlands when it comes to these various regions. Don't lump them all together.
>> No. 1726 Anonymous
7th May 2011
Saturday 5:16 pm
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>>1708
i imagine mineral content is largely irrelevant nowadays. if we can buy everything a plant needs as a hydroponic concentrate then surely we can just add stuff to soil until whatever plant we want grows.

in britain, stuff grows like mad from march to september, and doesn't do an awful lot of anything over the colder months. it's all about the sunlight.
>> No. 1727 Anonymous
7th May 2011
Saturday 9:18 pm
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>>1708
Bit basic but the latter part has what you want, and it was the first good hit from a quick google:
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/farming.html
>> No. 1728 Anonymous
7th May 2011
Saturday 10:17 pm
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>>1726
You've got to consider how exposed an area is too, although walled enclosures can keep the worst of the wind off, and also the gradient of some areas.
>> No. 1731 Anonymous
11th May 2011
Wednesday 5:44 pm
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Britain has a brilliant temperate climate for growing most things, and the soil is excellent. Whats left of it anyhow. I still get mad about heathrow. Some of the best farming land in western europe, and we fucking tarmacked it and then spent the ensuing decades poisoning the rest with aviation fuel , and yet they still talk about expanding it, covering more farmland and ruining it forever because of a relatively short lived transport fad. The planes will almost all be gone by the half century, but people will still need to eat and all that'll be left is a useless expanse of concrete and unfarmable land.
>> No. 1732 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 2:49 pm
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>>1731

Agreed very much.
>> No. 1733 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 3:01 pm
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England used to be covered almost entirely in forest, and that sort of land isn't ideal for agriculture. Land suited to forests tends to stagnate if farmed and takes a long time to renew naturally.

Ideal land for agriculture is on plains around large rivers, even without floods, the high and fast moving water table keeps the mineral level high.

It doesn't matter much now thanks to fertilisers and better selections of crop varieties.
>> No. 1734 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 3:47 pm
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>>1733
Though useful fertilisers will be in very short supply once >>1506 happens...
>> No. 1736 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 4:09 pm
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>>1734

But when that happens half of us will all die anyway and those who don't will be able to survive on sustainable farming methods.

With proper collection and processing of waste, almost everything you take out of the soil goes back in. You would need artificial fertiliser if the ground was poor initially, but with proper management you can keep the ground fertile almost indefinitely.

With current farming methods almost everything that plants take from the soil ends up in the sea or in landfill. We only need such intensive use of fertiliser because we break the natural cycle.
>> No. 1737 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 4:22 pm
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>>1736

Indeed. This is how many areas have managed to sustain farming for centuries without modern artificial fertilisers. Night soil, slurry and other natural sources were enough.
>> No. 1738 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 5:15 pm
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Sustainable agriculture in this country depends on livestock. Without animals being farmed for meat, we'd have to rely too heavily on synthetic fertilisers. This is an uncomfortable truth and presents wider problems when it comes to atmospheric pollution.
>> No. 1740 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 5:44 pm
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>>1738

And what do the animals eat?

Sure, some of the countries livestock grazes naturally, but a lot of it is fed on grain.
And in the end we still end up eating the livestock, which breaks the cycle.


True sustainable agriculture means collected human waste. Thanks to modern hygiene standards, everything in our waste either goes into the sea or is removed as solids and dumped in landfills. All of it was once in the soil that plants were grown in, and it all needs to be put back somehow.
>> No. 1741 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 6:40 pm
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>>1740
> Sure, some of the countries livestock grazes naturally, but a lot of it is fed on grain.
This is partially because we eat far too much meat and aren't prepared to pay the price properly pastured meat commands, though.
>> No. 1742 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 6:56 pm
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>>1741

No, it is because grain is massively subsidised in the West so many don't even bother feeding them the many alternative feeds.
>> No. 1743 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 7:56 pm
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>>1742

The only true alternative is grass. And the land could be used to grow plants which feed a lot more people than the livestock would.
The only sustainable way to keep livestock is to raise them on land unsuitable for agriculture or to feed them on foods deemed unfit for human consumption.
>> No. 1744 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 8:01 pm
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>>1743

But their poop is needed quite urgently for agriculture. They need their silage over winter.
>> No. 1745 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 8:29 pm
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I see the vegetarian fanatics are out for their evening troll today.
>> No. 1746 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 8:39 pm
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>>1744
But where does their fucking poop come from? It comes from the plants they eat.
If a cow eats one ton of grain, it makes enough poop to grow one ton of grain, and so on.
Silage isn't a magic source of fertiliser, you only get as much out of one end as you put in the other.

>>1745
I love meat, I eat much more meat than I probably should, I am making an unbiased and rational argument.
Don't turn this thread into an ad hominem shit fest.
>> No. 1747 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 9:03 pm
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>>1746

If a cow eats one ton of grain, it does not make enough poop to grow one ton of grain. The process is extremely complicated - apart from the fact the cow is complicated, not all soil needs more poop. Some of it needs the opposite of poop, so we're restricted as to how much poop we put down each month.

Very few cows in this country are fed grain. They're nearly all fed grass in summer, silage in winter. Their poop is collected and spread on the fields at certain stages of the arable process, restricted by da law. Look up "nitrate vulnerable zones" if you're interested in how much poop can be spread on which fields in which areas and during which month.

Silage isn't a fertiliser. It's food for animals. It comes from cut grass which is made all squishy for feeding the animals in winter.
>> No. 1748 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 9:18 pm
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>>1747

I know it's complicated, but in terms of absolute quantities of chemicals and minerals in poop, you can't use it to grow more plants than went in initially without an additional source of the chemicals and minerals the plants need.

In short, livestocks efficacy at producing fertiliser is at best a very inefficient method of composting grass. At worst it is a net consumer of fertiliser rather than producer.

>Silage isn't a fertiliser.
Sorry, I always get that word confused with sewage.
>> No. 1749 Anonymous
12th May 2011
Thursday 9:41 pm
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And also, nitrate vulnerable zones are a problem caused by farmers using fertilisers aggressively to get yields high as possible.
It means more fertiliser is added to the soil than the plants utilise, all the excess is wasted.
>> No. 1750 Anonymous
13th May 2011
Friday 12:04 am
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>>1743
> And the land could be used to grow plants which feed a lot more people than the livestock would.
Not quite. Livestock maintains an area while the soil recovers between crops. There are plants which are fairly good at sequestering nutrients into the ground (e.g. clover) which also make excellent grazing for sheep and cattle, so the ground produces food (in the form of meat) while recovering for a new season of planting crops. With a well planned rotation no patch of land ever lies completely fallow while still keeping all lands sustainably farmable.

Feeding grain to cattle really is madness. It's because they can eat plants which are useful but nutritionally worthless to humans that they become desirable.

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