Phosphate, The coming Crisis.

[SlicerDicer-]

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5irUxQGLpKTsf3zFDuWWI-8yyFU2g
http://www.imphos.org/aboutimphos/mainactivities.html
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/tpr_e/tp23_e.htm
http://www.ustr.gov/Trade_Agreements/Bilateral/Morocco_FTA/Section_Index.html

It should be fairly obvious why the USA has a serious interest in Morocco... Its the Phosphate Deposit equal to Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.. Ok well bigger than Ghawar, It holds such a large amount of phosphate there that it would make your head spin on the $$ value at given prices.

Fun Fun!

Not that I can fault the USA for wanting to secure phosphate as it is crucial for getting plants to grow right and have higher yields. Quite astounding stuff really :)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. The Everglades loves phosphates.... bring it on!! I jest. n/t

[SlicerDicer-]

3. I never said Chemical fertilizers were good for enviroment

However if we wish to sustain the population that we have we must continue to use Chemical Fertilizers. They cause all kinds of damage to the environment we can either turn this ship around or continue down the same path to a major dieoff due to starvation. Its one or the other sadly.

[Kolesar]

2. I came upon an article called "Is the world phosphate-limited?"

...while researching something else. I had no idea about these considerations. I buy rock phosphate for my garden. What is your opinion about "phosphate limited"?

[SlicerDicer-]

5. I am not sure exactly what you are talking about here.

If you are speaking that the world is running out of phosphate? I cannot quantify this with my own research, However if you are talking that soil is phosphate limited I would tend to agree however this is due to non sustainable land practices. Not completing the nitrogen cycle and not allowing bacteria to work as it had for eons.

Consider that in the great plains for instance here.. Buffalo roamed and ate and did not degrade the land too much. Wolves kept population in check however there is one minor difference. Buffalo and Wolf's crapped and pissed all over the place replenishing the soil of the nutrients brought out. This was in effect completing the nitrogen cycle. Is this what you are asking? As in modern Agriculture it seems quite nice to flood the fields with water and allow that to run off and drain into the ocean without a care and thus promotes deadzones and flushes what was once good fertilizers out into the sea never to be recovered.

I hope this helps some.

[Kolesar]

7. Yes, question (A) Is the world running out of phosphate?

Your description of grasslands reads like other articles I have read.

I believe that gardeners or farmers can make the mistake of "overwatering" and washing the nutrients down into the water table. Dead zones or not, they are still losing the soil nutrient(s). My soil is sandy, and the best advice I have seen is to turn in a lot of compost to make organic content to hold water and nutrients. What do you advise?

[TheMadMonk]

9. Charcoal. AKA Terra Preata. nt

[Kolesar]

15. I don't know what that term means

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/5/19/15043/2010

[SlicerDicer-]

11. No way is the world running out of phosphate as far as I can see

However yes washing the soil is bad. Mulch Mulch Mulch! Water retention not water water water!

[texastoast]

4. You and I don't have to buy it

We can get our best fertilizers other ways from Mother Nature. And it's really not that hard.

[SlicerDicer-]

6. If we wish to sustain the current global population we must.

There are several well known scientists who say without the modern agriculture the way it is we could not support what? 7 billion people we have? More to the point without it we would be around say 2 billion or less. Can you imagine that?

[texastoast]

8. Yes

Sad, but we little bunnies need to wake up and smell the overpopulation. Humans are a primitive species. We are slow to acknowledge reality under the force of the selfish gene.

[SlicerDicer-]

12. Indeed I prefer sheeple

[bhikkhu]

14. It was a part of the "Green Revolution"

Which eventually doubled the agricultural yields of the seventies and has served to double our population.

Wikipedia has a good article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution.

It used high-yielding crop varieties in combination with irrigation, petro-chemical nitrogen fertilizer and phosphates and mechanization to double gross yields. I am far from being a doomer, but every one of these inputs into food production is failing, and we need to see a draw-down of population. Natural attrition is always best (replacement numbers becoming lower than natural losses) and perfectly attainable, but nature has more painful means where sense is not applied...

[NNadir]

10. I wrote a little vignette on this issue last year.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/9/22291/9097">Another Happy Story About Agricultural Resource Depletion: Phosphate, Nauru, and Your Toilet.

One of the major means of cycling phosphate back out of the oceans is birds. Many phosphate mines, like the nation of Nauru that was stripped completely to bear rock, are in fact, huge piles of bird shit. Sea bird shit is a particularly great form of phosphate.

It's not that phosphate can't cycle, it's that the rate of cycle is insufficient to support 7 billion people.

[SlicerDicer-]

13. Chaching Swoosh and Thats the Game!

Indeed you are correct and right on the ball there!