The illogical leftist mind contradicts its own ideas without a care for their destructive nature.  On the one hand, the greenies want everyone to eat a plant-based diet because meat and milk from animals are evil.  On the other hand, they want to eliminate commercial fertilizers and return completely to "organic" agriculture.  See any problems with these two disparate goals?

Fertilizer shortages are making news these days, and not just here in the USA.  Of course, the shortage is being blamed on our catch-all, ubiquitous "supply chain" issues and Putin, especially since many of these products are made of components from overseas.

The U.S. is the second or third top importer for each of the three major components of fertilizer. Top producers of the major components of fertilizer include China, Russia, Canada and Morocco, with Belarus also providing a significant share of potash.

Samantha Power says she's happy about it, as she told George Stephanopoulos, because the shortage will help us move toward "natural" agriculture.

In Sri Lanka, in April, the national government decreed that the country would return to 100% organic agriculture.  It banned fertilizer imports, but then reality set in.  Sri Lanka has now partially rescinded its decree because dire results were predicted — a 43% diminution in crop yields.  Sri Lanka's economy is agrarian, reliant on producing staple food crops like rice and maize to feed its population.  It had to pivot because human needs bumped up hard against fervent idealism.

The move to organic farming holds great merit, but it must be carefully accomplished.  It's not a quick fix, and, certainly, it's not cheap.  I have seen what careful soil-building gardening can do and happily witnessed how one family took a rocky, clay-strata hillside and carefully nurtured it to become a magical, productive kitchen garden.  It took years of patience and care, including a generous annual application of carefully aged manure.

Yes, manure.  You know, the stuff cows, sheep, goats, and chickens produce naturally.  The same cows, goats, and sheep we milk and eat.

I'm not a farmer; in fact, I'm not even a good gardener.  But I do understand that there are multiple issues in commercial farming that can be improved upon.  Some of the problems can be attributed to an over-reliance on fertilizers, a partial cause of crops' diminishing nutritive value.  But you must concurrently look at other aspects of the growing cycle.  Using a piece of land year after year for the same crop (like soybeans or wheat) can strip nutrients from the soil.  Modern agriculture, like many things, has adopted practices that yield a great crop right now but may, over time, cause a diminution of the minerals needed for soil fertility.

Image: Vegetable garden by freepik.

I buy many of my vegetables and fruits at the farmer's market.  I can afford to and want to support small family farmers who husband the soil and produce great-tasting produce.  The economic reality, however, is that when you have a whole lot of people to feed, you can't just wave a magic wand and say "organic" and keep everyone fed.  Lower crop yields would create shortages; higher prices; and, yeah, possibly enough of a crop failure to starve the poorer among us.

The other side of the equation, adopting a vegan diet, is heavily trending, using fake meat made from a variety of manipulated vegetable proteins and ersatz dairy made from nuts; oats; and the ultra-GMO crop of them all, soy.  The push is to make things that look and taste like the "real thing" in a laboratory.  If our local vegan barbecue joint's lines indicate anything, it's that you can fool people, at least for a while, especially when they think they're doing the superior thing.  Until they start having health issues caused by overconsumption of soy and lack of the amino acids provided by natural foods.  Then, maybe, they'll connect their health issues to poor nutrition.

Here's a handy list of ersatz brands and meat products.  People who have, until now, valued dining on fresh foods are buying this stuff, and whole "meat" cases in the store are devoted to these products.  While some manufacturer websites show pictures of beets, potatoes, and peas, most of the stuff relies heavily on soy, and there is a great deal of denaturing, processing, and "texturizing," to get fake meat to look and act at all like the real thing.  Here's the whole process in a short video.

As an aside, we have one more problem with our food that isn't getting a lot of national press.  That is, there has been an alarmingly frequent incidence of food processing plants of all sorts burning down.  All over the country.  Nobody seems to be able to figure out why or how.  Maybe it's extra-terrestrials or something.  I'd like to think it's just circumstance, but the alarming number of such facilities that have been destroyed makes me think there has to be intentionality.  I wonder what it is.