Fertilizers and soil impoverishment

 In the Swedish magazine Research and Progress an article about our need phosphorus to agricultural crops to be able to give us a proper food was published. It pointed out that the availability of elemental phosphorus (which can not be substituted by anything else) is essential to the ability of the planet to feed humanity.

 Today, the fertilizer (consisting of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) are used to fertilize our fields so that we can get big harvests.

 What will happen when we reach "peak phosphorus"?

 Without enough phosphorus in our food our bodies can not produce DNA, which would mean that the amount of severe deformities and genetic defects in the population would increase.

 Another question: Where does the phosphorus we consume end up?

 Answer: The phosphorus is excreted with our urine and then winds up in the sea, where we can not recover it. A clear violation of theidea of recycling.

 One thing overlooked by the article is that our soils are also depleted of minerals as we eat the products of agriculture. Then these minerals are rinsed out with our stool (which should be used as fertilizer on the fields, so that we get the recycling going).

 What humanity should do as soon as possible is therefore to rebuild our entire sewer system, so that both urine (phosphorus) and stool (with precious minerals) could be returned to our fields - The idea of recycling needs to be realized.

 Read the full article (in Swedish) at:

http://fof.se/tidning/2010/4/nar-fosforn-sinar-blir-det-svalt

Todde

 Or read my free translation here:

Peak phosphorus will result in starvation

Already around the year 2033 the world's production of phosphorus will peak. Then it will decrease, according to Swedish researchers. Lack of phosphorus fertilizers will make food more expensive and less nourishing. It will result in Western Sahara becoming a ingredient in world politics.

 Author: Per Snaprud - Published: 2010-05-04

 The world has become dependent on cheap phosphate ore. This dependence could end in tragedy, according to Jan-Olof Drangert, associate professor of water and sanitation at Linköping University.

 We have to change our habits. If we sit with folded arms, we will suffer famines. It's that simple, he says.

 Phosphorus from mines are included in all types of fertilizers. Since World War II cheap phosphorus fueled the greatest agricultural expansion ever. During the same period, the world population has almost tripled. The mining of phosphate ore has so far been our salvation, says Jan-Olof Drangert.

 In addition to phosphorous the most common type of fertilizer also contain nitrogen and potassium. The nitrogen is produced from the air. With the large amounts of energy fertilizer plants can transform nitrogen into nitrogen compounds that plants can easily assimilate. Phosphorus and potassium come from mines. The world's supply of potassium will last for hundreds of years. The availability of phosphorus is more limited. In some places the deposits are already completely depleted.

 The small Republic of Nauru in the Pacific thrived on the export of phosphate ore during the last century. For a short period, the country's GDP per capita was the second highest in the world. Nouveau riche Islanders imported sports cars, including a yellow Lamborghini - despite the fact that the road around the island is only twelve miles long.

 In recent years, exports have plummeted. The easily accessible ore is gone, and the country is in deep crisis. Similar scenarios are conceivable for the world at large. But opinions differ about when phosphate ore will become scarce.

 The reserves will last for more than a hundred years, there is no doubt about that, says Michel Prud'homme of the fertilizer industry's international trade association IFA Paris.

 He points out that the increased demand for phosphate will lead to new investment in mining, which in turn leads to increased production. This will cause falling prices of phosphate in 2015, according to Michel Prud'homme, who is responsible for questions of production and international trade at the IFA.

 Jan-Olof Drangert and his colleagues paint a darker picture. They have calculated that the total world production of phosphate ore will peak in the year 2033. Thereafter decreases in ore production will start. Some deposits lie deep under the sea. Others are phosphate poor or mixed with high concentrations of toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and uranium.

 These gloomy forecasts were based on data collected by the US Geological Survey, USGS, which estimates world reserves of extractable phosphate ore to 16 billion tons. The real figure is probably much higher, says Michel Prud'homme.

 He has started a project to deliver a new estimate of world reserves before the summer. One difficulty is that many mines owned by fertilizer companies, for business reasons may be reluctant to tell you how much ore that they have left.

  The phosphorus issue has many similarities with the discussion of peak oil - forecast that oil production will reach a peak and then decline. Newly discovered reserves of oil have repeatedly pushed the year of peak oil into the future, and critics say the pessimists underestimate the market's capacity to promote innovations and alternative energy sources. But an important point is different with phosphorus compared to oil.

 The element phosphorus is essential to life. It forms the backbone of the DNA. Chemical compounds containing phosphorus operates energy-consuming processes in all living cells and fill a wide range of vital functions. It is absolutely impossible to replace phosphorus with something else, says Dana Cordell.

 She is researcher on both the theme of water at Linköping University and the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Recently, she presented a thesis about what the lack of phosphorus means for the world's food supply.

 Dana Cordell admits that the exact prognosis of when the production of phosphorus decays may be wrong. Other researchers have previously said that the decline would have started already in 1989. But there seems to have been a temporary slowdown that mainly depended on the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then the production of phosphate ore has continued to increase.

 Peak phosphor will happen in about ten or twenty five years and the underlying problems are the same. We need a dramatic change in the way we handle phosphorus, says Dana Cordell.

 Historically, manure and other organic materials accounted for the largest increment of phosphorus in the fields. In the 1840s came a supplement in the form of guano - droppings from sea birds or cave live bats. The manure was discovered on the islands off Peru. Merchant guano shipped to the Europe assets ran until the late 1800s.

 Then phosphate ore sailed up as a seemingly inexhaustible source. Since then, the ore gradually have become increasingly important. Today, farmers spread over six times more phosphate from mines than from the barns on their fields. The mining companies' sales of phosphate have been estimated at tens of billions of dollars per year, and 90 percent goes to the production of food.

 In Europe and North America more than half a century of intensive fertilization has saturated many soils with nutrients. Therefore, small doses sufficient to replace phosphorus are lost with every harvest.

 Elsewhere, the urge for phosphorus will increase. In 2050 the world will have over two billion more mouths to feed, and large parts of Africa have phosphate poor soils. But the biggest changes will occur in Asia, according to the UN agency for food and agriculture, FAO. This is mainly due to China's and India's growing population eating more and more meat. Meanwhile, large-scale cultivation of energy crops is growing throughout the world. All this leads to the same conclusion: the need for fertilizers containing phosphorus and other nutrients will increase significantly in the future. Sulfur may also be in short supply, according to some analysts.

 Two years ago, the price of phosphorus rose sharply from a relatively stable level. Several factors combined. High oil prices and concerns about climate sparked the cultivation of energy crops. China - the world's largest producer of phosphate ore - imposed high export taxes to protect their access to fertilizer. In addition, the fertilizer industry for several years invested too little in their facilities. Phosphate ore prices have increased by more than 800 per cent in 18 months. Then prices started to fall back.

 The bubble resulted in a few articles on phosphorus in the mass media and scientific journals. Arno Rose Marin, a researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, believes that the issue deserves far more attention than that. He has long sought to stimulate debate about a looming shortage of phosphorus. It seems as if the United Nations has not understood the problem. This is at least as important as the climate, says Arno Rose Marin.

 Already there are international conflicts on phosphate ore. The known deposits are extremely unevenly distributed. More than three quarters of reserves are located in four countries: Morocco (including Western Sahara), China, Jordan and South Africa. Some of the world's largest deposits are in Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony which Morocco has occupied since 1975. This occupation has been very profitable for Morocco, says Erik Hagen, who for many years has been covering the Western Sahara on behalf of the Norwegian organization Norwatch.

 He expects that Morocco will export phosphate ore from Western Sahara to a value of over one billion crowns this year. That is more than ten times what the EU pays Morocco to fish off the northwest coast of Africa. Sweden was the only member state that voted against the fisheries agreement. The Swedish government supports the right to self-determination of the saharians. The Moroccans are abusing and torturing suspected Sahrawi activists, and they end up in prison after unfair trials.

 Nevertheless, Morocco continue to export phosphate ore from Western Sahara on the world market. The largest customer is the United States. The political significance of phosphorus in this conflict will increase in pace with rising prices for phosphate ore, says Erik Hagen.

 Today's handling of phosphorus also creates serious problems for the environment. Each ton phosphate produced from phosphate rock produces approximately five tons of gypsum as byproduct. The gypsum is difficult to use because it contains radioactive substances from the ore, principally uranium and thorium. Therefore harbors enormous amounts of gypsum in landfills, which in the worst case can contaminate groundwater.

 The phosphorus that ends up in fields can cause a different type of problem: eutrophication. For several decades it was considered that emission of nitrogen was the main cause of runaway algae blooms and dead zones in the Baltic Sea. But since a few years the focus has fallen on phosphorus. The largest single source is leaking from fertilized fields.

 The food we eat contains only a fifth of the mined phosphorus. The rest is lost on the long road from the mine to the fork. It should therefore be possible to economize better. One way is to eat less meat. Carnivores consume more than twice as much phosphorus as vegetarians, says Dana Cordell, who is a vegetarian. In her house she has a urine-separating toilet and collect the urine in a tank outdoors for later use as fertilizer. She also fertilize with compost from their dry toilet. This type of management is hardly an option for the population in the major cities. This eliminates large amounts of phosphorus and other nutrients from the cycle.

 One of the environmental goal of the Swedish parlament is that at least 60 percent of the total phosphorus in wastewater will be recycled to productive land by 2015. One easy way to recycle phosphorus is to fertilize the fields with sludge from sewage treatment plants. The problem is that the sludge also contains drug residues, flame retardants, heavy metals and other toxins from both households and industries.

 The industry organization Swedish waters has led efforts to develop a list of requirements, the sludge to be spread on fields. The goal is that certified sludge should be acceptable from environmental and health viewpoints. But opponents argue that the certification lull both farmers and consumers into a false belief that the sludge is clean and safe.

 There are alternative ways to capture nutrients from wastewater. In sewage treatment, problems sometimes arise when yellowish deposits of the mineral struvite clogs pipes and pumps. The mineral contains nitrogen and phosphorus bound to magnesium and is excellent as a fertilizer. Several treatment plants in the world are now testing to precipitate struvite by pouring magnesium oxide in wastewater. It works surprisingly well, says David Heldt who a few years ago technology tested at Sjöstadsverket in Stockholm as part of their thesis at the Royal Institute of Technology.

 The advantage is that the precipitated mineral is almost completely free from other contaminants found in water. The disadvantage is that the method is pricey.

 Rising prices of phosphate ore will favor new ways to recycle nutrients and conserve phosphate ore. Dana Cordell stresses that many different measures will be needed to save the world from future phosphorus deficiency. The chances of success increase if we realize that we are indeed facing a serious problem, she says.

 Fashion Cordells research was supported by the Australian Department of Education and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.