Lawns are one of United State's most intensively irrigated, fertilized and carpet-bombed-with-chemicals crop.
How many people could be fed if the United States stopped fertilizing grass?
That is a tough question because fertilizer recommendations for turf vary wildly.
The recommendation for professionally managed turf where the clippings are left in place is for half that amount. Examples include sports fields, school yards, parks and grassy areas around shopping malls.
Additionally, large areas of lawn are not professionally managed and might never see fertilizer for periods spanning years. "Why fertilize it? It just means I will have to mow it more often"
An educated guess is that on average, turf gets 50 pounds of Nitrogen fertilizer per year. That is 1/4 the maximum and half the "otherwise recommended" amount.
At 40 million acres of turf, 50 pounds of Nitrogen per acre and an incremental corn yield of 1 bushel-per-pound of N, that equates to an opportunity cost of 2,000,000,000 bushels of corn. Seven bushels of corn can supply 2000 Calories a day for a year.
That means that the fertilizer lavished on lawns in the United States could be directed to farmer's fields and produce enough food to keep 280 million additional people alive.
I know including all of the numbers in the essay makes your eyes roll back in your heads but the final number is mind-boggling and I want to leave enough bread-crumbs on the ground for the mathematically-inclined to double-check my work.
Down the road a little piece from me is my neighbor Jims house . Jims yard is like Gawds golf course . He puts a 12 pack , a gallon of Round-up and multiple bags of fertilizer on it daily in good weather and sometimes bad . Although most folk find it amusing my buddy Jim did not when my baby piglets discovered the grubs under that beautiful green carpet . Had to take the pigs to the auction to keep the peace . I would not be surprised to drive by and see Jim down on his knees worshiping his green god .
ReplyDeleteManicured lawns are a huge expense and will become more so in a time of tight resources.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget that in many areas of the country, they are watered also.
It's a way of flaunting ostentatious wealth and the free time of being supremely important.
DeleteTexas Fred
When lawns are replaced with vegetable gardens, the fertilizer shortage will continue.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the Darwinian lawn maintenance camp, because mowing the yard is an enormous cost in time and money.
Starve the yard, hack it short and whatever survives will be called lawn.
During all my lifetime living on tony Lawn Guyland, the yearly ritual known as Lawn Wars was deadly serious business, as neighbors went to the mat with one another over their tiny postage stamps of exquisitely manicured grass. I witnessed grown men down on their hands and knees with toenail scissors trimming their miniscule 0.05 acre front lawns, and defending those miserable little plots with AKs from the neighborhood kids, lest they trample so much as a blade of precious Kentucky Blue.
ReplyDeleteThe best advice I ever got was from a coworker, a lifelong renter, who advised me to "Blacktop the bitch!" when I told him of my difficulties in keeping up with the Jones' prize-winning lawn next door. "Don't water it! You'll only encourage it!"
Phucking lawns, man. I live in South Texas now, and my "lawn" consists of browned-out, matted St. Augustine grass, limestone chips and coral snakes.
TBC
There's a LOT of luxuries we could all do without relatively painlessly that would make a difference. But the majority of people are simply too stupid, too selfish and too shortsighted to be bothered.
ReplyDeleteEFJ, I am conflicted about lawns. I get everything that you say (the late Gene Logsdon had many righteous and entertaining rants about the modern lawn). At the same time, I have very lovely memory of the grass my father had (which, I will add, was not very well cared for. We just got lucky).
ReplyDeleteCurrently I just mow and water (some) and hope for the best. When we move to The Ranch, my compromise will be a very small part just to the side of the front door which is contained and where my father ran a few lines for the trees. Not more than 50 square feet. On that, I will lavish my care, get my soft lawn - and mow everything else down around me.
My neighbor asked why my yard was so green and what was I putting on it to grow so well. I told him that's where the horse manure goes when I strip stalls. My mixed grass is much hardier that his monoculture lawn. I don't begrudge the skunks for digging out the grubs either.
ReplyDeleteI allow to grow in the "yard" that which wishes to. I do kill off thistles and other seriously obnoxious weeds. It gets mowed when it's tall enough and when we're going to get rain. I don't water or fertilize it. Too cheap to do that.
ReplyDeleteWhat this has done is to create a "lawn" in a place with soil that is only slightly more fertile than the average asphalt parking lot. It's not "pretty", but it keeps the dirt in one place as all the plants that are willing to live there break up the hardpan with their taproots and ones like clover fix nutrients.
Someday, someone might even be able to get something "prettier" than field grass to grow there. It won't be me. Grass seed is expensive, just like fertilizer and water.
See!?!? This is yet another article I will show my darling wife as another good reason to put in a fake front lawn, with fake bushes, and maybe even fake flowers just to church it up a bit!
ReplyDeleteLawns are wasted grazing space
ReplyDeleteA 1954 soil survey calls my dirt red clay silt. The red clover I seeded barely grew until a threw some 13-13-13 on it. I guess it needed priming. I will baby the front 30 feet (pie shaped lot off cul-de-sac) to keep the Jones' happy but the rest is undergoing a conversion to sward. I call it the alpine look.
ReplyDelete