Date: Nov. 18, 2010
Date Published: Feb. 11, 2010
Summary:In southern China, citizens have been using too much nitrogen fertilizer. This is causing the soil to be completely unusable for agriculture. The pH levels are at 3 and 4 in some areas! This will not just last few days, it is a long term effect. Since most plants grow best in more neutral soil, like from 6-8, less varieties of plants will be able to grow. Soil acidification happens naturally, but in China's case, this is from the overuse of nitrogen fertilizer and the intense working of the soil. In 2007, China was producing 32.6 tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer and has been increasing since 1981. Soil surveys showed that the soil became more acidic after the country started to use nitrogen, or ammonium and bicarbonate and urea, fertilizers. Over all, the pH level in China has gone down 0.5 of a unit, which is significant. Lime can reverse this bad case of soil acidification, but it would be expensive. Other options for China are to reduce the amount of fertilizer they they use or to insert straw or crop residuals back into the soil to decrease its acidity.
Opinion:
I think out of the three choices China should save up the money over time and the government should reverse the soil acidification with lime. I would also want the government of China to set a limit to the amount of nitrogen fertilizers China is allowed to use. This would keep the acidity level down. If the reversed the acidity, but then kept using the fertilizers so much, the soil would just go back to its original, acidic state.
3 Questions:
1. Out of the three choices which would you do if you were the Chinese government? Would you reverse soil acidification with lime, reduce fertilizer use, or insert straw and residuals back into the soil?
2. If you were part of the Chinese population, what would you do to decrease the amount of nitrogen fertilizer use?
3. Why do you think the Chinese farmers are using so much fertilizer?
Link: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/TOE61805G.htm
I think this is really bad for the agriculture in china, i can't believe that they do not understand that what they are doing right now, may have a great impact on our future life's in the next couple years. If humanity would have less areas to crop and yield, food may become very expensive and lots of people which are poor would have to die while the richer people will get all the goods.
ReplyDeleteUsing Nitrogen in fields really hurt the fields and make them less usable in the future.
About Question number 3.
3. I think that the chinase farmers use so much fertilizers because they do not want any germ to get close to the plant and die before they will have the chance of eating it, but by doing so they also hurt the ground and the soil and make it much less usable in the future and that might hurt us all.
Personally I think that this problems should have been brought to people's attention long before this. It shouldn't take the soil being very acidic to make this problem that signifigant and I feel that if it HAD beem brought to attention earlier, they might have been able to decrease the levels in the most effective way without worrying too much about economic issues.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1.:
Peronsally I think that China should use a variety of these methods. I feel like if you use a little of each, it would be least expensive and very effective. Choosing when to use lime, when to insert things back into the soil, and just overall using less fertilzers, then China would be able to quickly increase the pH levels without having too much of an economic issue.
I can't believe people are just starting to notice this. The pH being 3 is so awful. This could really hurt the people of China and maybe even other countires. And this being a long term effect, they should decide what to do now so it maybe becomes a shorter effect.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 2;
I would stop using a lot of fertilizers myself and get other eople to stop as well. It won't make a big difference if one person justr stops nut it is a start.