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Complex Systems & Fragility [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-23
We live in a complex world which is interdependent on many things working well together and being balanced.
Food production depends on many inputs, and contrary to the fantasies of “the smartest guys in the room” our interdependence crosses borders.
A looming case in pointy is Potash for potassium.
This element, critical, will impact everyone’s food costs is something most, even rural farmers pay no attention to or its origins; Canada!
Fertilizer has always been a critical input that the need for exploded in the early 1800’s and has never stopped since then, in fact entire islands (of bird guano) were removed for the critical elements of nitrogen and phosphorus.
Well also wrote laws too steal these islands.
americanhistory.si.edu/.…
Well now our illustrious Stable Genius (who never mucked out a stall in his pathetic life) is on track to explode the cost of the needed agriculture input, potassium.
grist.org/…
On Tuesday, March 4, President Donald Trump levied a 25 percent tariff on all goods imported from Canada and Mexico, as well as a 10 percent tariff on goods from China
He later lowered it to 10%, yet who knows what tomorrow will bring and 10% tax is still a 10% tax/cost of food increase. This is a “exempt” import material, potash, and I suspect somebody somehow convinced “Dear Leader” that it didn’t come from Canada or had his face on the shipments or just got him to sign it without reading the exemption……I suspect tRump is now if not always functionally illiterate.
Although the move was meant to be conciliatory, farmers, agricultural researchers, and economists say that taxing fertilizer at any rate will not only increase costs for U.S. growers, but also could lead to a decline in U.S. soil health.
Seems that our potash comes from Canada and we need it, I mean really need it, to maintain crop yields…..complex yet fragile systems indeed.
The issue is that the “stable” hands are ignorant of complexity, interdependence of systems or @#$^^& how anything in the real world works…..it is all a game of one upmanship, assholery, power moves and digital bits and bytes.
You know nothing pResident Muskrat and Company, your knowledge of these complex systems is dangerous to all of us.
In the U.S., corn uses more than 2 million tons of potash a year, according to data from the Economic Resource Service
Maybe those hardcore Midwest corn growers need to start voting for people who appreciate interdependence and work to understand complex systems rather than voting for the guy who makes them feel important even as he destroys thier lives.
Next we should talk about Aluminum, Bauxite it comes from, and where it is mined and now it is how trucks can get above 10 MPG.
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