MESSAGE
| DATE | 2023-03-28 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] ferilizer
|
Famine Risk as Supplies of Vital Fertilizer Dwindle, Scientists Warn
The national security threat of a dearth of phosphorus may not be as
obvious as others, but it’s just as real.
Danny Wood via AP
Phosphorus is vital for modern agriculture and supplies are dwindling.
Danny Wood via AP
DEAN KARAYANIS
DEAN KARAYANIS
Monday, March 27, 202306:14:02 am
Scientists are warning that we’re running out of phosphate, a key
fertilizer for the crops that feed earth’s eight billion people. This
raises the danger of famine unless agriculture innovates new ways of
prompting exhausted soil to bring forth its bounty.
“We have reached a critical turning point,” a professor of Soil and
Water Science at the U.K.’s Lancaster University, Philip Haygarth, tells
the Guardian. “We might be able to turn back but we have really got to
pull ourselves together and be an awful lot smarter in the way we use
phosphorus.”
Fail, Mr. Haygarth warns, and “we face a calamity that we have termed
‘phosphogeddon.’” The warning echoes those of the visionary writer,
Isaac Asimov. “Life can multiply until all the phosphorus is gone,” he
said, “and then there is an inexorable halt which nothing can prevent.”
“No farmers, no food,” reads a popular bumper sticker in America’s
breadbasket, pushing back against the perception that produce and meat
spring by spontaneous generation on supermarket shelves. Lost in the
messaging is the role of phosphorus, sometimes called “the oil of our time.”
“In a few years,” a senior research scientist at Rothamsted Research,
Dr. Martin Blackwell, said back in 2019, “it could be a political issue
with some countries effectively controlling the production of food by
having control of rock phosphate supplies.”
Low prices have led to using it as if there’s no end in sight, causing
problems such as runoff leading to algae blooms and poisoning
reservoirs, a subject at the UN’s first water conference in 42 years
held last week.
Hennig Brand is credited with identifying phosphorus in 1669, and
humanity has spent the ensuing centuries studying how to harness its
many properties, with 13 scientists earning Nobel Prizes for their work
in the field.
Industrial mining of phosphorus-rich guano, or bird excrement, began in
the mid-1800s, and the resource became so precious that in his 1850
State of the Union message, President Fillmore pledged “Nothing will be
omitted on my part” to secure America’s supply.
“Peruvian guano has become so desirable an article to the agricultural
interest of the United States,” Fillmore said, “that it is the duty of
the government to employ all the means properly in its power for the
purpose of causing that article to be imported into the country at a
reasonable price.”
Today, America “mines and consumes about 23 million tons of phosphate
rock per year,” according to the EPA, whittling known domestic reserves
down by 99 percent. “At current rates of use,” Dr. Blackwell said, “a
lot of countries are set to run out of their domestic supply in the next
generation.”
Those countries at risk include America, Communist China, and India.
Together, Morocco, Communist China, Algeria, and Syria, sit on over 80
percent of rock phosphate. The national security threat of this may not
be as obvious as others, but it’s just as real.
In his new book, “The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of
Balance,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Daniel Egan, “explores the alarming
reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food
system worldwide — which risks rising conflict and even war.”
Two centuries ago, the Guano Wars raged in South America. Spain and Peru
fought over deposits in 1864, while Bolivia, Chile, and Peru spilled
blood over bird droppings in 1879. So insatiable is humanity’s appetite
that even the taboo of grave robbing proved no obstacle.
The director of the Center for Battlefield Archaeology at the University
of Glasgow, Tony Pollard, cites reports of bones from the Battle of
Waterloo being ground into fertilizer.
“The benefits of implementing measures to improve phosphorus
sustainability will be observed mostly at local to national scales,”
says a report by the Our Phosphorus Future project. Citing input by over
100 scientists, they warn “any delay will only accrue further impacts
and societal costs.”
America may soon face a day when an updated agriculture slogan emerges,
one reading, “No phosphate, no farmers, no food,” but with dead soil and
Dust Bowl-style famine facing millions, we won’t need a bumper sticker
to tell us that phosphogeddon has arrived.
DEAN KARAYANIS
DEAN KARAYANIS
Mr. Karayanis worked for the king of talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, for over
25 years with stints in TV news, on campaigns, and ghost/speechwriting
for a variety of newsmakers. He is the creator/host of the History
Author Show on iHeart Radio, producer of its documentary-style video
specials, and a contributor of political and social commentary for
various news organizations. He is a producer for the Clay Travis & Buck
Sexton Show.
The New York Sun
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