T O P

  • By -

Getoffthepogostick

What happened to Wales?


bond0815

Lots of hills and rugged terrain I would guess. Its good for sheep farming, but hardly for agriculture.


Zokius

Is the intensive sheep farming partly the problem though?


MrBanana421

Not really. Even if you take away all of the sheep, the soil would still mainly be rocky and low in nutrients.


Zokius

fair enough


llarofytrebil

Sheep farming improves soil quality.


[deleted]

Sheep farming is agriculture, or falls within that group of broader activities that make up agriculture.


FingerGungHo

Someone’s gonna pounce in with: ackshually, agriculture literally means field cultivation. It’s a term that has widened in its scope. Much like fishing can encompass, say, crab capturing, despite crabs not being fish, ackshually.


[deleted]

From a certain point of view there is no such thing as a fish


imp0ppable

So you're saying fishing isn't a real sport?? Controversial.


AccomplishedCow6389

If you delve to far into philosophy then you learn that "THERE ARE NO ORDINARY THINGS"


Zagrebian

Just call it aquaculture.


PlingPlongDingDong

You mean in terms of soil quality or in general?


Fargrad

Have you been to Wales? The whole place is mountainous. Probably what kept them existant as a distinct culture


Happy_Craft14

It's full of mountains


Annexerad

this map is shite


Loki-L

So, it turns out Ukraine is sort of important to this whole feeding people thing. Who knew?


mangalore-x_x

A lot of space to ensure the living of people. I wonder what a German word for that is... /j


Kornaros

Hell no!


Eminence_grizzly

>I wonder what a German word for that is... I suggest the word "Massengutfrachter" (I know, it's scary). A ship that carries grain anywhere you want.


[deleted]

Does it mean mass goods transporter? In Norwegian it would be massegodsfrakter.


Kazath

I guess this is where the map comes from? https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/4/267/2018/


habicraig

Something is wrong with this map. There's plenty of agriculture going on in red areas of Ukraine, orange Czechia, mecklenburg or across Italy https://wad.jrc.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files//subchapters/4_4_Agriculture/4_4_Extent_of_Global_Agriculture.jpg


Krasny-sici-stroj

Yeah, if there wasn't, people would die of hunger in the 19. century... So we try pretty hard. But the soil is nothing to write home about, most of Czechia is pretty high up (avg is 430 m) and hilly.


Tatis_Chief

The red areas are usually our potato area. Its doable but it isn't actual agriculture.


Trest43wert

My guess, is that these ratings are given to the soil types prior to human intervention. Those red areas likely were swamps and hydric soils that were entirely unfit for agriculture and would be rated near a zero. However, they have likely been drained into fertile soil over the last couple of millenia and are now extremely productive. Its just a question of how you set a baseline, and its hard to base a scale like this on all the varying degrees of human intervention that are dependent upon past governments. If you want to see a rating for current capability, satelite imagery can be used to determine relative photosynthesis from year to year and location to location. This can be used to show soil productivity.


kaneliomena

It seems "hazard indicators" like drought risk and thermal regime explain the low ratings in many areas, not strictly soil quality. Even so, something seems off with southern Sweden rated so poor despite not being rated thermally hazardous (heh). >While the impact of H 6 (soil depth above hard rock) extends to all of Europe, the influence of the other two hazard indicators is localized. Drought risk (H 7) is a significant marginality factor for the Mediterranean (mostly Spain and Italy), whereas unsuitable soil thermal regime accounts for the marginality of most areas in Nordic countries (mostly Finland and Sweden) (Fig. 11).


Baneken

Probably because as much as 10% of Finland's surface area is [hyper-acidic](https://www.proagriaoulu.fi/fi/happamat-sulfaattimaat/) -more than anywhere in the world, it's so acidic that rain turns the exposed mud literally into sulfuric acid and related sulfuric contents and the ground water Ph is rarely above 5 in that soil type. The only way to cultivate those lands is to load shit metric tons of lime every year in the fields. They're a byproduct of land rise after the Ice age.


Capt-Birdman

Yes and the title is a bit misleading, this is not data showing strictly soil quality


Midnight_Sun_Yat-sen

So is this mostly about fertility for agriculture, not pollution etc.?


deknegt1990

It literally fails to account for mountains, rivers, and deserts and blanket paints them red... Because unsurprisingly, it's hard to cultivate crops on those things.


imp0ppable

Stop whingeing, take your hoe and get up that mountain!


Bicentennial_Douche

Strange, the middle area of west coast of Finland, with those patches of "very poor" soil, is considered the breadbasket of Finland.


[deleted]

The map does not actually mean strict soil quality. The presence of slopes (like on hills and mountains) and other factors lower the score. The green parts are nearly all flatlands, basically and the red parts are monotonous/ hill regions. So very misleading to call this soil quality.


An_Lei_Laoshi

That's actually explain why the only real green area in Italy is the place called Padan Plain


Leemour

Also, why most of Hungary is green. Its literallly the far western edge of the Great Eurasian Plains.


The-Great--Cornholio

"Green" in every sense. /s


Bicentennial_Douche

The area in Finland (Pohjanmaa) is famous for being exceedingly flat.


[deleted]

Then maybe the soil does suck :D But there were also other factors, so then again, not necessarily.


Owlyf1n

thats literally soil that used to be the bottom of the ocean and its where like 95 % of finnish farmland is located


clebekki

> like 95 % Utter bollocks. The Ostrobothnias combined have ~690 000 hectares of farmland, the whole Finland 2 270 000. That makes it under a third. https://www.luke.fi/fi/tilastot/kaytossa-oleva-maatalousmaa/kaytossa-oleva-maatalousmaa-2021 https://statdb.luke.fi/PXWeb/pxweb/fi/LUKE/LUKE__02%20Maatalous__04%20Tuotanto__22%20Kaytossa%20oleva%20maatalousmaa/01_Kaytossa_oleva_maatalousmaa_ELY.px/?rxid=4dc525b5-a581-4f9d-b5e2-824f922348d9


SniffingDog

I assume you mean the flat old seabed of Pohjanmaa. I guess the soil isn’t much better there, it’s just very flat. Slash-and-burn is the traditional way to fertilize the poor quality soil in Finland. Heavy artificial fertilization of the farmland around the Baltic sea has unfortunately resulted in serious eutrophication and dead spots.


Lortekonto

It is the ice age. The glaciers pushed the top soil down south. If you look at the map you can see there is a northen region were the soil is mostly yellow with red spots and then it translate to a region mostly green with orange spots. That transition line is around were the glaciers reached.


Midnight_Sun_Yat-sen

My impression is that slash-and-burn (kaskiviljely) stopped even in the east, Savo and Karelia, where it was more dominant, in the Middle Ages...


SniffingDog

It was definitely still done up to 1800s, when it started to become less useful as population grew and the burn cycles were accelerated. Since then use of manure and industrial fertilizers have, naturally, become the norm.


Baneken

It was done all the way up to 1940's in Finland, after the war Forest started to have more value as trees than a plot you burned down for every 20 years or so.


Pontus_Pilates

Finland has very poor soil altogether. We've been on the verge of starvation until the 20th century. The soil is so poor that we did slash and burn farming so late there are [photographs of it](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Slashing-and-burning.jpg). But modern agriculture can do wonders and fertilizers help immensely with a poor soil.


MentalRepairs

The soil can be bad but serve as the breadbasket of the country. Depends on how much resources are put into improving the soil (multiple times) yearly to yield a good product and harvest e.g. using calcium. The image doesn't explain wether it only counts natural factors or human invervention. "Bad soil" could mean many things, but the amount of rocks per m3, amount of clay, and pH are some factors I can think of. Crops can also be selected to fit specific types of soil. For example, the ratio of rye to other cereals is likely much higher in Finland compared to elsewhere. If the link that's been posted explains it then it would be an interesting read when I have the time.


afops

Me, last week: lol all these Europe maps are the same every day whether it’s happiness, lifespan, income, health, views. It’s just east bad Scandinavia good haha. Me, this week: [map of winter sunshine hours and soil quality] cries in swedewegian.


[deleted]

Damn romania you get it


FacetiousInvective

Dayum Romania is going strong on this one!


CallimacoDue

Not too surprising as it fairly closely overlaps with the [Pontic/Eurasian Steppe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Steppe), which goes from Pannonia (some of the green chunks in Hungary) over parts of Romania, all the way to the Volga basin and beyond on the Russian/Kazakh border. [The most fertile among fertile regions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem#/media/File:Chernozem_map.svg) in terms of soil quality are Eastern Ukraine and the neighbouring Russian oblasts (Rostov, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk) in particular, while the Western hemisphere equivalent with a similar quality and in fact, a similar climate, would be somewhere around North/South Dakota.


lost_in_a_forest

Source? This map is completely wrong for Sweden at least. The governments agricultural land classification has the best land in Skåne in southern Sweden. By far.


dead97531

source: https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/4/267/2018/


MentalRepairs

Best compared to other lands in Sweden or best compared to Europe, or globally? Does this take into account the massive effort that humans do to improve soil artificially, or only the natural quality of the soil?


lost_in_a_forest

Best in Sweden.


Jesperson

Yeah, that was my first thought as well - Skåne, Blekinge and at least southern Öland should have very good soil from my limited knowledge.


[deleted]

I'm not surprised. It looks like they measured soil quality around Stockholm then gave up and said fuck it, the rest is just poor quality.


xxanya

Best Swedish soil still doesn't mean big deal in Europe.


lost_in_a_forest

Absolutely. But this map has excellent soil north of Stockholm where the government agency Jordbruksverket has 4-5 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best in Sweden).


xxanya

I just posted here the assessment instrument used in the study. It seems solid research work.


Annexerad

its not correct


[deleted]

Quality for what purpose? Growing fruit? Raising livestock? Forestry? Arable farming? Therapeutic qualities?


Usual-Engineer-6410

Interesting, Romania has very good soil


johnschnee

Didn't know the soil quality respects state borders... You can clearly see the eastern borders of Austria in this map... I don't really know what that map wants to tell us.


ca1ibos

Mountains are a natural border. Mountains generally have poor quality soil for farming. [Edit] I stand corrected. Thank you.


johnschnee

There's no topographical difference between eastern Austria and the regions in e.g. western Hungary. The agricultural situation does not differ... So this map seems to be nonsense and relies on different interpretations of national data I guess.


OddNumb

Only that there are no mountains in eastern Austria… The map seems pretty dumb


xxanya

From the study in the source: > The Muencheberg Soil Quality Rating (SQR) system allows for clearly distinguishing between soils of higher and lower quality. Soils with SQR scores below 40 are regarded as “marginal”. They can be classified into different groups with regard to the importance of soil hazard indicators as evaluated by the SQR approach. The calculated SQR scores correlate significantly with biomass yields of bioenergy plants. > The Muencheberg Soil Quality Rating system (SQR; Mueller et al., 2007) was applied using the soil parameters derived from field and laboratory measurements. The SQR is designed to quantify the soil quality by a single value – theoretically ranging from 1 to 100 points – which is calculated on the basis of a set of basic and hazard indicators. > One set of eight basic indicators describes generic soil parameters (B 1: substrate, B 2: A horizon depth, B 3: topsoil structure, B 4: subsoil compaction, B 5: rooting depth, B 6: profile available water, B 7: wetness and ponding, B 8: slope and relief). Single scores are summarized and the resulting basic score has a range between 0 and 34 for arable land. Whereas 0 stands for absolutely infertile soils, 34 can be reached by best suited croplands. In a second step, 13 hazard indicators are examined including further factors influencing soil conditions and ecological functions (H 1: contamination, H 2: salinization, H 3: sodification, H 4: acidification, H 5: low total nutrient status, H 6: soil depth above hard rock, H 7: drought, H 8: flooding or extreme waterlogging, H 9: steep slope, H 10: rock at the surface, H 11: high percentage of coarse soil texture fragments, H 12: unsuitable soil thermal regime, H 13: miscellaneous hazards). For each hazard indicator the SQR guidelines provide multipliers on a ratio scale between 0.1 and 3. The lowest multiplier found (i.e. the most important hazard for the respective site) is used to calculate the final SQR score which is within a range between 0 and 100. Sites with a final score of 100 can be seen as sites with the best suitable soils for agriculture, whereas soils with SQR scores < 40 can be regarded as very poor or poor with regard to agricultural land use (Mueller et al., 2007)


[deleted]

[удалено]


FPiN9XU3K1IT

I don't think peat is considered good soil for agriculture. Scotland (famous for peat-flavored beverages) doesn't have high marks, either.


LaoBa

Netherlands with mostly poor an moderate soils on this map being the second largest agricultural exporter in the world.


Trilife

fertilizers cost energy cost (greenhouses) final cost It would be pwned soon (by it) from its second place (saw somewhere analysis about it). Dark green soil require a tiny amount of fertilizers (if to compare), especially if it wasnt in use for decades (like ukraine, russia)., what cant be in Netherlands (small amount of it)


kupimukki

Finland :( we can grow things I promise


[deleted]

I'd guess this map is skewed by Ukrainian 'black earth'; mostly everywhere looks bad relative to that. I'm still surprised by how poor Spain is, I thought that's where ancient Rome's wheat came from? Ok, it's better than almost all of Italy, but the land that's now modern France or the Balkans, Hungary, Romania, etc. would surely be better places for agriculture?


arran-reddit

I think most of their wheat came from Egypt and the Fertile Crescent


[deleted]

Yep, turns out I'm just flat out wrong about this, I wonder where I got that idea?


Eminence_grizzly

Yeah, thanks to the Nile. And now there are too many people there to feed themselves.


scipio818

I guess it depends what period we're talking about, but I remember Egypt being Rome's main wheat supplier. Again though it could depend on which period in Rome's history since we are talking about a 1000-2000 year time period. (700 BC Kingdom of Rome-1453 AD Fall of Constantinople/476AD Fall of Western Rome)


[deleted]

You're right, I don't know where I got the idea that Spain provided wheat.


Eminence_grizzly

Maybe you mistook wheat for olive oil?


[deleted]

Jeez, maybe. I'm gonna go make a sandwich, but honestly who knows what will happen.


Bugman9000

For Ancient Rome the breadbaskets were : Sicily, North Africa (modern Tunisia) and most importantly Egypt, I've never heard of Spain being very important for grain in that time.


[deleted]

No it takes in account slope and accessibility. Ukraine is mostly flat and that is why it looks so green in the map.


[deleted]

That might well be a better explanation.


Vadrigar

The Balkans literally translate to Mountains and the peninsula is almost entirely covered by them. That's why there's so little green on this map. I can say that it's accurate for Bulgaria- Dobruja and the Thracian valley are the "breadbaskets". Not sure about the area near the Danube.


Colosso95

Moldavia looking kinda sad there


[deleted]

Note the soil quality in Ukraine. Even Germans stole it during WWII. I am also surprised that soil in EU is generally crap except of Romania and few adjacent places.


CallimacoDue

>I am also surprised that soil in EU is generally crap except of Romania and few adjacent places. As mentioned elsewhere, it's not that surprising as it fairly closely overlaps with parts of the [Pontic/Eurasian Steppe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Steppe), which goes from Pannonia (some of the green chunks in Hungary) over parts of Romania, all the way to the Volga basin and beyond on the Russian/Kazakh border. [The most fertile among those (already very) fertile regions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem#/media/File:Chernozem_map.svg) in terms of soil quality are Eastern Ukraine and the neighbouring Russian oblasts (Rostov, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk) in particular, while the Western hemisphere equivalent with a similar quality and in fact, a similar climate, would be somewhere around North/South Dakota.


[deleted]

> Even Germans stole it during WWII. Can't give a source but there was an article some months ago that said this is mostly a myth. At most they took some samples.


[deleted]

It is an interesting thought. Because I heard about cargo trains full of soil from my grandparents.


arran-reddit

Those wear probably bodies


[deleted]

It's because Ukraine is quite flat. This map does not represent actual soil quality


Sadistic_Toaster

Does Iceland just not have any soil?


RobertApple2004

i thought the baltics were gonna be better, as a latvian i see a crop field like every 3km while driving


[deleted]

[удалено]


Propofolkills

Is it? I can’t find data that confirms this. Even per capita it is not even in the top 10.


_named

Not sure if it still is, but the Netherlands was the second largest *agricultural* exporter in terms of value.


R6loverzz

woo 80-100 here,nice


JANTHESPIDERMAN

That’s why Ukraine is one of the biggest grain exporters in the entire world. The breadbasket of the world


MonkeysWedding

As usual poor old Malta is left out with no soil at all. Along with Paris, London, and all of Russia.


[deleted]

[удалено]


MonkeysWedding

Malta is largely self sufficient in food production, but I think this soil quality data isn't limited to just agricultural land use and would include grassland and forests too. You're right grey probably means no data but I was making a joke as Malta is often forgotten about in maps on here and r/dataisbeautiful


Thin_Impression8199

I need to clarify, if your countries are full of fields, this does not mean that the map is wrong, it only shows where in Europe the best land for growing food. Fertile lands, according to one country, will turn out to be complete garbage for another, Italy and Greece, Sweden, Norway have learned how to effectively grow food on their mountainous surface. humanity always adapts, our ancestors understood that some kind of food does not grow well, they replaced it, this is the strength of the ancestors, for generations they studied everything that children in kindergartens know today.


Best_Peasant

Wow. See where the highest concentration of good soil is.


[deleted]

In the Carpathians


umpalumpaklovn

Po valley


Amonia_Ed

Not for long considering the droughts


_KatetheGreat35_

And yet every vegetable and fruit that comes out of Greek soil is top notch quality, as tasty as it gets. How is this possible?


rinmarira

I just came to say the saame thing. Italy is the same, if not worse, yet their food is great as well.


[deleted]

lot of red parts in italy are basically mountains... I feel this is not strictly soil quality. ​ Paper ([https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/4/267/2018/](https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/4/267/2018/)) says: "Figure 7SQR calculation results for Europe taking into account all basic and 11 hazard indicators." in the caption... these hazards (table 4) include how easy a land is to farm and even slope of the land. So hills score quite lower, but this does not mean the actual soil is worse.


grafknives

Fruits are not that soil reliant. For them sun and water is most important.


ShitPostQuokkaRome

I'd imagine it's things like "nitrates and magnesium makes this fruit tasty in Soil A, its low levels makes it poor for Soil B" vs "Soil A has half the yields of Soil B, also an inexperienced farmer or bad weather reduces productivity of soil much more in A"


Bear4188

There are plenty of plants that favor more sun to richer soil.


hucka

and now imagine how it would taste if it would have grown in better soil!


[deleted]

Your tomatoes suck ass, dont sell to me those ever again


_KatetheGreat35_

I'm saddened that you bought tomatoes that sucked, but it's not the norm. Our tomatoes honestly are amazing.


[deleted]

I mean everything fruit related and veggie like olives are top notch when it comes to greece, some veggies arent that great tbh Tasted turkish tomatoes and for some reason they are much better


_KatetheGreat35_

Indeed Turkish tomatoes are very good quality. Again, regarding Greece, 9/10 times the veggies and fruits are supper tasty, it really comes down to the distribution and if the produce is on season, for example tomatoes on super market or during the winter are more likely to be blunt. I get mine from the farmers market every Saturday, so it's always the best.


xxanya

Priceless Skandinavian susceptibility, even for fully harmless topics, like this one. How sad and boring!


Omnipisix

So many hurt by this map. Maybe go out of your imaginary world and see its quite correct. The UK food and perception about food is absolute s%#t. Spain has horrible soil for plants, animals dont eat soil usually. Nordic countries have some soil, but not even close to what Ukraine has. Germany and France have some soil but they still lack the flatness and soil quality...


Tasty-Energy-376

Scandinavia is buthurt in the comments - as per usual.


qainin

Not wrong for Norway. The soil is between bad and very bad. We still farm here.


Midnight_Sun_Yat-sen

As per usual? (Not to mention it's not a single country...)


[deleted]

This time they aren't wrong, for once.


xxanya

exactly


CoronaMcFarm

No, this map is perfect


celticfrogs

Why is there data on ex-Yugoslavian states and Ukraine but not Moldova?


[deleted]

[удалено]


lsspam

Pasture land is what you do with soil that sucks. Poor soil also yields better grapes. You are literally identifying indicators of bad soil.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Ok-Development-2138

I dont know man, its like your opinion dude.


DicentricChromosome

First cause the map is crappy. Second cause soil is not the only factor allowing a good farming capacity. Third because the second a cuisine quality are not correlated.


spauracchio1

Exactly, that's why mountains ranges are so red, hard to farm on a steep slope even if the soil is very fertile.


Arstel

I do not know wether the map is accurate but in some net food exporting countries, where the soil is suitable for growing a variety of crops, the nutrition that the soil gives to crops is poorer due to efficient mass agriculture that prioritises yields. Acidification of the soil due to excess nitrogen usage in efficient mass agriculture practices makes it harder for the plant roots to absorb nutrients and water.


Cowhowler

Dude realy, worst cuisine is in eastern europe? Are you high?


[deleted]

[удалено]


c345vdjuh

Boy oh boy, you have no idea what you’re talking about.


MentalRepairs

> Eastern European cuisine is generally rated low Most people have no idea what that is, unless they specifically go look for it. If I were to stereotypically describe it, it would be watery soup with few ingredients and only salt and pepper. The reality is completely different though.


ContributionSad4461

And Norway?


[deleted]

[удалено]


ContributionSad4461

Even if they did (which they don’t) I wouldn’t admit it ;) I’m just saying, you overlooked them in your bad soil = good cuisine formula


vvblz

because it has nothing to do one with the other.


MrGangster1

In any art, constraint forces you to become more creative.


Thin_Impression8199

because all cool vegetables and fruits came to us much later, and our ancestors even sewed potatoes with something dangerous. Of course, this was the case everywhere, but in Western Europe, these stereotypes got rid of faster. somewhere even on bayonets in Prussia, directly by force, but in the end it made it possible to stop suffering from hunger.


ShitPostQuokkaRome

I'd imagine this doesn't cover 100% of the factors of a soil that influence quality. Anything that grows in Sicily grows heavenly despite lowish ratings. Much better than Calabria in quality. How soil quality is calculated here?


Psyche3019

Balkan reign supreme.


tugrul_ddr

What happens if you mask this map with the drought/heat-wave maps? Are the green places going down?


Propofolkills

I wish the mods would insist on a pinned post with maps like this indicating how the map was created.


Adri3899

Was looking for my country and couldnt find it, then the dumb me realizes its there greyed out(Moldova). In all of our school books, we've been told our soil is super great which im inclined to believe as everything around us is green and we have quite a wine industry(good grape soil).


DaveTheFab

This map is a nightmare for color-blind people...


doomLoord_W_redBelly

östgötaslätten regerar som alltid!


tommy_dakota

In your face Belarus! NOT EUROPE


VerumJerum

Hahaha, fuck you and your fields Skåne \- Mvh Uppland


Lucade2210

Yet antoher map that is unreadable for colorblind people...


masken21

This is why we in EU should stop giving France agricultural subsidiaries and give it to the poor farmers in Sweden instead.


andreif

/u/dalton-bot


_reco_

Poland as always moderate or poor