Tom Philpott: Are we heading toward peak fertilizer?

[Winehole23]

You've heard of peak oil—the idea that the globe's easy-to-get-to petroleum reserves are largely cashed, and most of what's left is the hard stuff, buried in deep-sea deposits or tar sands. But what about peak phosphorus and potassium? These elements form two-thirds of the holy agricultural triumvirate of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (also known as NPK, from their respective markers in the periodic table). These nutrients, which are essential for plants to grow, are extracted from soil every time we harvest crops, and have to be replaced if farmland is to remain productive.


For most of agricultural history, successful farming has been about figuring out how to recycle these elements (although no one had identified them until the 19th century). That meant returning food waste, animal waste, and in some cases, human waste (http://www.agroecology.org/Case%20Studies/nightsoil.html) to the soil. Early in the 20th century, we learned to mass produce N, P, and K—giving rise to the modern concept of fertilizer, and what's now known as industrial agriculture.


The N in NPK, nitrogen, can literally be synthesized from thin air, through a process developed in the early 20th century by the German chemist Fritz Haber. Our reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (as its known) carries its own vast array of problems—not least of which that making it requires an enormous amount of fossil energy. (I examined the dilemmas of synthetic N in a 2011 series at Grist.) (http://grist.org/series/the-n2-dilemma-is-america-fertilizing-disaster/) But phosphorus and potassium cannot be synthesized—they're found in significant amounts only in a few large deposits scattered across the planet, in the form, respectively, of phosphate rock and potash. After less than a century of industrial ag, we're starting to burn through them. In a column (http://www.nature.com/news/be-persuasive-be-brave-be-arrested-if-necessary-1.11796) in the November 14 Nature, the legendary investor Jeremy Grantham lays out why that's a problem:
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These two elements cannot be made, cannot be substituted, are necessary to grow all life forms, and are mined and depleted. It’s a scary set of statements. Former Soviet states and Canada have more than 70% of the potash. Morocco has 85% of all high-grade phosphates. It is the most important quasi-monopoly in economic history.


What happens when these fertilizers run out is a question I can’t get satisfactorily answered and, believe me, I have tried. There seems to be only one conclusion: their use must be drastically reduced in the next 20-40 years or we will begin to starve.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/11/are-we-heading-toward-peak-fertilizer

[Winehole23]

not related, but interesting: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/11/industrial-scale-hog-farming-screws-small-towns

[boutons_deux]

"their use must be drastically reduced in the next 20-40 years or we will begin to starve."

What's the problem?

Corps, their investors, and the politicians they own they see only the next quarter's profits and dividends, at furthest, see only the next election's funding needs.

We're in good hands.

[TeyshaBlue]

I don't understand. We've been able to make phosphorus for the last 500 years or so. Hell, I could make a beaker of it in a week without even trying.:huh

[boutons_deux]

Good News For Animal Lovers: Factory Farming's Days May Be Numbered


http://www.alternet.org/food/good-news-animal-lovers-factory-farmings-days-may-be-numbered

wishful thinking, their days really aren't numbered.

[boutons_deux]

not related, but interesting: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/11/industrial-scale-hog-farming-screws-small-towns

"The report finds that when hog prices rise, the pork packers tend to pass on the increase to consumers "completely and immediately"; but when they fall, as they have for much of the past 25 years, the companies tend to pocket much of the difference as profit, passing only some on to consumers."

... just like the oilcos.

[Winehole23]

I don't understand. We've been able to make phosphorus for the last 500 years or so. Hell, I could make a beaker of it in a week without even trying.:huhauthor is mistaken? if so, that's a gigantic boner.

[TeyshaBlue]

author is mistaken? if so, that's a gigantic boner.

Boiling urine. srsly.

http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele015.html

[boutons_deux]

THE answer!

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/growfoodnotlawns.jpg


http://www.alternet.org/activism/progressive-photo-day-chickens-living-old-bug

And anybody who has used chicken shit for fert knows how wonderfully HOT it is.

[CosmicCowboy]

South Texas is perfectly situated to become a huge nitrogen producer.

[Homeland Security]

I don't understand. We've been able to make phosphorus for the last 500 years or so. Hell, I could make a beaker of it in a week without even trying.:huh
boutons alone is sufficiently full of shit to fertilize the global for 200 years.

[boutons_deux]

Boiling urine. srsly.

http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele015.html

there's plenty of great nutrition in excretions

[Wild Cobra]

Phosphorous is more abundant than zinc.

[MannyIsGod]

Just saw a presentation about this recently. We're going to have to start (as TB pointed out) looking at sources like urine.

[Latarian Milton]

people's appetite need to be reduced more than anything else imho. some people (especially those living down south) would stuff everything into their mouths and become fatasses, and finally they'll become a huge burden to both agriculture n healthcare

[SpursIndonesia]

people's appetite need to be reduced more than anything else imho. some people (especially those living down south) would stuff everything into their mouths and become fatasses, and finally they'll become a huge burden to both agriculture n healthcare

Truth, people has to start eating to fulfill enough energy to continue living and being a productive human being, not necessarily to satisfy their unlimited appetite and gluttony.

[Winehole23]

topically related, from the same:

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/12/big-macs-or-clean-water-choose-one

[boutons_deux]

Cornstalks Everywhere But Nothing Else, Not Even A Bee
http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/11/29/liittschwager_071116_06420_custom-a5a2c6c2d54830b8a041ebfdbc69c4a3f694913e-s4.jpg

Getting Back To The Corn

Which brings me back to Iowa, where my NPR colleague, commentator and science writer Craig Childs, decided to have a little adventure. As he tells it in his new book (http://www.npr.org/books/titles/163963688/apocalyptic-planet-field-guide-to-the-everending-earth), he recruited a friend, Angus, and together they agreed to spend two nights and three days ("We'll call it a long weekend") smack in the middle of a 600-acre farm in Grundy County. Their plan was to settle in amongst the stalks (there are an "estimated three trillion" of them in Iowa) to see what's living there, other than corn. In other words, a Liittschwager-like census.


Cornfields, however, are not like national parks or virgin forests. Corn farmers champion corn. Anything that might eat corn, hurt corn, bother corn, is killed. Their corn is bred to fight pests. The ground is sprayed. The stalks are sprayed again. So, like David, Craig wondered, "What will I find?"

The answer amazed me. He found almost nothing. "I listened and heard nothing, no bird, no click of insect."

There were no bees. The air, the ground, seemed vacant. He found one ant "so small you couldn't pin it to a specimen board." A little later, crawling to a different row, he found one mushroom, "the size of an apple seed." (A relative of the one pictured below.) Then, later, a cobweb spider eating a crane fly (only one). A single red mite "the size of a dust mote hurrying across the barren earth," some grasshoppers, and that's it. Though he crawled and crawled, he found nothing else.

"It felt like another planet entirely," he said, a world denuded.

Yet, 100 years ago, these same fields, these prairies, were home to 300 species of plants, 60 mammals, 300 birds, hundreds and hundreds of insects. This soil was the richest, the loamiest in the state. And now, in these patches, there is almost literally nothing but one kind of living thing. We've erased everything else.

We need to feed our planet, of course. But we also need the teeny creatures that drive all life on earth. There's something strange about a farm that intentionally creates a biological desert to produce food for one species: us. It's efficient, yes. But it's so efficient that the ants are missing, the bees are missing, and even the birds stay away. Something's not right here. Our cornfields are too quiet.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/11/29/166156242/cornstalks-everywhere-but-nothing-else-not-even-a-bee?sc=17&f=1007

unsustainable, unstoppable, fucked and unfuckable.

and govt does nothing, not even talk it, while their priority is enriching themselves.

[RandomGuy]

I don't understand. We've been able to make phosphorus for the last 500 years or so. Hell, I could make a beaker of it in a week without even trying.:huh

Cost per million metric tons?

I don't doubt you are right about being able to get it from other sources, but how much it costs per ton becomes fairly relevant to the discussion, if you are talking about feeding the fertilizer industry, whose requirements go into the tens of millions of tons per year.

[RandomGuy]

Just saw a presentation about this recently. We're going to have to start (as TB pointed out) looking at sources like urine.

... and recycling.

Hydroponics will likely become more and more commercially viable.

You can recycle everything, completely control everything, and produce good-tasting stuff at any time of the year.

Of course, this takes energy...

Seems like these kinds of discussions always loop back to that little detail.

[boutons_deux]

"urine."

Useful stuff!

Cells Harvested From Human Urine Used to Make Stem Cells
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/urine-stem-cells/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top +Stories%29

[RandomGuy]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125504307 <<--"Window Farming: A Do-It-Yourself Veggie Venture"


http://www.netnebraska.org/article/news/drought-and-heat-some-farmers-try-hydroponics

“We probably use, I don’t know, 2 or 3 percent of the water that a corn crop would use covering the same acreage,” Fritz said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming

Solutions to water scarcity, fertilizer, etc, and all sorts of things are possible, albeit capital intensive to start.

It will make food a bit more expensive overall, to get over the hump, but with any new tech, as the learning curve progresses costs will go down.

[TeyshaBlue]

Cost per million metric tons?

I don't doubt you are right about being able to get it from other sources, but how much it costs per ton becomes fairly relevant to the discussion, if you are talking about feeding the fertilizer industry, whose requirements go into the tens of millions of tons per year.

I have no clue. There's some infrastructure symbiosis I would think with reclamation and treatment plants perhaps. But, I'm basically clueless.
Need is a compelling driver for innovation.

[RandomGuy]

I have no clue. There's some infrastructure symbiosis I would think with reclamation and treatment plants perhaps. But, I'm basically clueless.
Need is a compelling driver for innovation.

Eyup. Something Lumpy seems to have a hard time wrapping his head around. :D

Tell your average municipal water treatment plant that they can sell some of the stuff they pull out of the sewage for $1,000 /ton, and see if that doesn't yield you a good amount of potassium.

Get the price high enough, and all sorts of alternatives and new sources become economical. Capital + Humans = cool stuff.

[boutons_deux]

search "sludge fertilizer"

very old idea. LOTS of questions and dangers.

[Wild Cobra]

Eyup. Something Lumpy seems to have a hard time wrapping his head around. :D
Yes, he thinks he is so much smarter than everyone else, but he doesn't grasp so many things.

Tell your average municipal water treatment plant that they can sell some of the stuff they pull out of the sewage for $1,000 /ton, and see if that doesn't yield you a good amount of potassium.
There are too many products in the sewer systems that would make it impractical for them to use the waste. Too costly to separate the harmful chemicals and elements, unless we wish to increase the pollution standards of what we put in the soil.

Get the price high enough, and all sorts of alternatives and new sources become economical. Capital + Humans = cool stuff.
Welcome to Utopia, right?