Peak Phosphorus May Be More Alarming Than Climate Change
Phosphorus is essential to life and the world is running out of it
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Roger Sylvester-Bradley is on a mission. He’s a crop scientist for ADAS, “the UK’s largest independent provider of agricultural and environmental consultancy.” He’s growing barley and other crops using “legacy phosphorus” from previous harvests instead of industrial fertilizers rich with mined phosphate. He hopes to develop farming techniques that can meet increasing global demand for food while reducing the use of phosphorus reserves. So far, he’s met with promising results; he continues to raise healthy crops in defiance of expectations without adding a single new particle of phosphorus to his soil.
Unfortunately, however, Sylvester-Bradley’s experiments have not stopped business as usual on American industrial farms or their counterparts around the world. Phosphorous is a nutrient that is key to life, but the world has a finite supply, and that supply is running perilously short. Some studies estimate that global phosphorus reserves will run out within 50–100 years. And, as early as 2030, world phosphorus production will likely reach its peak. When that happens, food prices will steadily climb in conjunction with rising fertilizer costs. When the supply runs out, crops will fail and the food web will collapse. Phosphorus depletion is, therefore, an extinction level emergency more pressing than even global warming.
Geopolitical Concerns
Seven nations control 90% of the world’s phosphorous supply. Morocco alone controls 75%, while the U.S., China, and a handful of other nations each have considerable reserves. The price of phosphorous has increased dramatically in the last sixty years, rising from $80 per ton in 1961 to over $700 per ton in 2015. Given the uneven distribution of phosphorous throughout the world, wealthy nations will likely starve last, though political strife and wars for food could imperil even the most insulated countries. PRIO (Peace Research Institute Olso) rates hunger as one of the most “reliable predictors of civil war.” If that is true, then even relatively stable nations, like the U.S., can expect their citizens to one day fight for their food.
The recent civil war in Sudan is a prime example of what can happen in a starving nation; cattle raids, systematic food theft, and farm sabotage were all consequences of vastly overpriced food in Sudan. Syria and Yemen have also recently grappled with epidemic hunger; according to the U.N.’s World Food Programme, the brutal conflicts over food in those nations “starkly demonstrate the unequivocal link between hunger and conflict.” Since phosphorus shortages will affect every nation on earth, no one will be exempt from hunger or the bloodshed it motivates.
Resistance to Change
Corn is big business in America. According to Norman J. Vig and Michael E. Kraft (Environmental Policy 2019), the United States produces enough corn to supply all 7.4 billion people on Earth with over two bushels per year. Only 20% of the yield goes to human consumption, however; 40% is used in animal feed, while the remaining 40% is used to produce ethanol. And all 94 million acres of American corn crops are fertilized with phosphorus.
Furthermore, each crop is reared through “insurance based farming” — the practice of “heaping on” phosphorus at a rate 9 times greater than what we consume in food. The left over phosphorus, rather than finding its way to innovative phosphorus capture systems in American sewage processing facilities, remains in the soil, washes to the sea, and pollutes rivers, lakes, and streams.
While corn is a staple food for both humans and livestock, federal mandates for ethanol in gasoline are political expediencies designed to win favor in the corn belt. Fermenting corn into ethanol requires massive amounts of energy and water — more energy than ethanol yields — and the process that produces it emits greenhouse gases on par with combustion engines. Ethanol, therefore, is not a solution to global warming. Furthermore, because corn is its source, ethanol production is a leading cause of phosphorus depletion. Paradoxically, the more corn we grow now, the less food we’ll have in the future.
Nevertheless, the corn belt wields considerable influence in Washington and is adamantly opposed to any proposed curbs to ethanol production. America is, therefore, wasting precious phosphorus reserves for a cause that benefits a handful of industrial farmers whose produce is burned almost as often as it is eaten.
Why No One is Sounding the Alarm
While the science of climate change is settled, estimates for phosphorus demand in the coming decades are widely debated and projections for fresh discoveries of phosphorus ore frequently override concerns that our known supply is running short.
Particularly worrisome is the USGS’s (United States Geological Survey) affirmation of the International Fertilizer Development Center’s assessment that phosphorus reserves are bountiful enough to meet human needs for another 260 years. The IFDC represents a vast financial stake in inorganic fertilizers and is, therefore, not a credible source for phosphorus studies. A 2014 review of the IFDC report, conducted by The University of Amsterdam, concluded that the IFDC estimate of global phosphorus stocks “presents an inflated picture of global reserves, in particular those of Morocco, where largely hypothetical and inferred resources have simply been relabeled ‘reserves.’”
Still, phosphorus depletion has no visibility in American culture and no traction as an issue on Capitol Hill. Despite The University of Amsterdam’s findings, the USGS stands behind the IFDC’s assessment that phosphorus will remain readily available for centuries to come. Since the USGS is the United States government’s most trusted advisor on environmental matters, its apathy toward peak phosphorus is reflected in official policy and in American life.
All We Can Do Is Raise Awareness
While personal boycotts of industrial farm produce might help us sleep at night, they will have little effect on phosphorus consumption. We must write about peak phosphorus, talk about it with our friends, neighbors, and coworkers, and raise the issue with our representatives in government and climate advocacy groups around the world. Researchers like Roger Sylvester-Bradley are scrambling for solutions, but collective effort is required to meet the challenge of phosphorus depletion and ensure the survival of life on Earth for centuries to come.
