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Page added on April 1, 2014
Peak phosphorus will be a shortage we can’t stomach
Here’s the good news. We probably don’t have to worry about peak oil just yet, as it isn’t going to run out anytime soon. The bad news is, as the IPCC has recently reported, we can’t afford the costs of what liberating all that carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere would do to the climate. So we will have to leave it in the ground and come up with alternatives fast.
The really bad news is that we may not even have to worry about peak oil or dangerous climate change – instead we can fret over peak phosphorous. Unlike moving from our current dependence on fossil fuels, there is no alternative to phosphorus and if it runs out our global food production system would grind to a halt.
Phosphorus is present in all cells in all forms of life because it makes up part of the backbone of DNA – you can’t make DNA without phosphorus. We get our phosphorus by eating plants that have drawn up phosphorus through their roots, or by eating animals that ate the plants (or from expensive tablets).
Many plants do just fine by consuming the natural levels of phosphorus in the soil, but modern intensive farming methods quickly suck up phosphorus, which needs to be continually replaced. If you keep growing high yield crops on land that is irrigated with water and doused with pesticides, then you are going to come up against phosphorus limitation. And if you don’t plug that hole with fertilisers yields will dramatically decline.
Did farmers have this problem in the past? Yes, but they solved it in different ways. They fertilised their fields with phosphorus and nitrogen from animal waste. Manure – from horses, cows, pigs, or chickens – has the nitrogen, phosphorus and other goodies that plants need.
Farmers would also change the types of crops grown on a particular field and leave it fallow for a season to recover. This system, crop rotation, has been used successfully since ancient times, and improved from two to three and four-field rotations during the middle ages. There are many good things about it, but in the quest for ever greater short term crop yields, the modern system of intensive monoculture (growing the same crop all the time) farming wins.
But it wins because we make up for the inefficiencies of the crop-rotation system (different crops, different planting times, unproductive fallow years) by providing all the benefits it brings to the fields in the form of added fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation. All these elements of the agricultural Green Revolution requires large amounts of energy.
Imagine how much energy it takes to dig up phosphorus-bearing minerals, grind, and physically and chemically process it. Then transport it many miles, load it onto a spreader and tow it behind a tractor so that it finally gets onto a field. Digging up and burning stored solar energy (in the form of fossil fuels) allows us to extract phosphorus and put that onto fields in order to increase the amount of solar energy-using organisms (plants) we can grow and then eat.
The chemical crunch
If, or rather when, easily accessible phosphorus runs out we will either have to eat less, or decrease the amount lost from the system by increasing the quantity of phosphorus that is recycled. Recycling phosphorus from human and animal waste – back to manure again – or reducing the amount washed off from farmland in runoff will also take energy, probably a lot of energy due to the need for significant new infrastructure. We have the energy sources for this now, but will we when phosphorus scarcity really starts to bite? And when will that be?
Unsurprisingly it depends on who you ask. Upper estimates of mineral phosphorus resources (known concentrations in the ground) are about 300 years. Lower estimates for reserves (known concentrations in the ground that are technically and economically feasible to extract) are a few decades. The only thing certain is that limitations in phosphorus supply will increase the cost of phosphorus fertilisers and so the cost of food.
And here’s the double whammy: some estimates give a date of peak phosphorus around the middle of this century which is when the global population will reach its possible maximum of nine billion. This is also when Sir John Beddington, a previous UK Chief Scientific Officer argues that humanity will need to generate approximately 50% more power, gain access to 30% more fresh water and grow 50% more food. All while significantly reducing our total carbon emissions.
Just when we have the greatest number of mouths to feed in all of human history, our reserves of easy to obtain, low cost phosphorus may start to run out. The worse case scenario is that many people will starve. Avoiding that outcome will require more recycling and more efficient farming practices. Getting up and running on that will require energy. Where will that low carbon energy come from in the middle of the century?
Will we starve or will we cook the climate? OK, that’s a false dichotomy. We could instead look at the current situation in which one billion people go hungry while another billion overeat and consider alternative scenarios in which we all get access to healthy and nutritious food. That wouldn’t require breakthroughs in fusion power or or wonder GM crops but something seemingly much more challenging: our ability to share the Earth’s resources more equitably.
18 Comments on "Peak phosphorus will be a shortage we can’t stomach"
kervennic on Tue, 1st Apr 2014 9:15 pm
The only reason we lack phosphorus, is that we stopped recycling our dejection as people used to do.
This is thus not a fundamental problem per se, even if we are more people. We use too much phosphorous and have killed large fish nureseries.So this is rather a great news if it becomes expensive: more down to earth job, less dumb stressing industrial farming and many more fish + drinking water.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 1st Apr 2014 9:19 pm
I am not discounting Peak Phosphorous but we are going to have other issues hammer the conventional AG system long before phosphorus is the issues. It is going to be another one of those issues of a critical input becoming more expensive. Resource locations are shrinking putting at risk the above ground issues we are all familiar with in the oil world. What happens in say Morocco if there is civil unrest and their sources don’t reach the market for example? It is the same old story of if we solved our energy issues Peak something else would hit.
Dave Thompson on Tue, 1st Apr 2014 9:25 pm
“Will we starve or will we cook the climate?” We are cooked, already.
Shaved Monkey on Tue, 1st Apr 2014 9:34 pm
Lots of it in Urine
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/01/31/3415550.htm
Jimmy on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 1:05 am
I wonder how much phos extraction we’re getting out of those mines for a boe
As goes oil so goes the power to mine as we do.
Makati1 on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 1:20 am
Jimmy, the picture tells a lot about the techie cornucopians doesn’t it? This is just one mineral/metal mine out of thousands that keep our lifestyle going. You could say the same things about the rare earths so many of the ‘renewables’ need to exist. Or the simple iron, cooper, manganese, chromium, etc.
The steel used in those mining machines and crushers, is manganese steel. It is a form of steel that gets harder as it is pounded, but it does wear out. Manganese is Found in many Asian countries and Brazil, but not in Europe or North America. It is common in soil, air and sea water, but is not concentrated enough for steel making except in ores. The element is a required trace mineral for all known living organisms.
That is only one of many things that will be less available soon.
andya on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 1:45 am
Just another way we are fracked. In game theory he who abdicates first abdicates best. Have fun growing food without phosphate fertiliser.
surf on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 2:58 am
All the phosphorus we mine and apply to farm fields eventually works its way into the ocean. there plants (seaweed) and animals (fish) use it. The amount of phosphorus on earth has been constant for 5 billion years. It isn’t like oil where you use it and then it is permanently gone. Phosphorus can recycled indefinitely.
seaweed is easy to grow and harvest. It can be spread across farm fields like the Romans did a long time ago. You can also feed it to cattle. Or we could ferment it to make methane and then spread and the leftover minerals (phosphorus, potassium, iron and others) over the farm fields.
andya on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 3:33 am
Surf we could just stop pumping it out to sea in the first place? I propose that you set up a seaweed farm, and start selling fertiliser and methane, you will be rich in no time and a global hero.
meld on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 12:35 pm
“We probably don’t have to worry about peak oil just yet, as it isn’t going to run out anytime soon”
Stopped reading.
rollin on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 4:03 pm
Humans need less than a gram of phosphorus per day. 7 billion humans need less than 7 billion grams of phosphorus per day. They need about 260,000 metric tons in their diet per year. We mine about 24 million metric tons of phosphorus every year.
A bit of an inefficient system there considering there are also natural sources of phosphorus in the diet too.
rollin on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 4:06 pm
Make that 2.6 million metric tons per year in the human diet. So we have about a 10% efficiency of transfer (actually less). Can this be improved?
J-Gav on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 8:24 pm
Let’s start peeing our way to sanity now, whadya say?
Davey on Wed, 2nd Apr 2014 9:31 pm
Now Gav, I am transplanting tomatoes today. Are you saying just pee on them and pray. What about the smell? They are under grow lights in my cabin. Can’t put in the garden for around 3 weeks with this cool ass spring.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 3rd Apr 2014 3:33 pm
Davy — Did you read this? Finance and Food Insecurity by Nicole Foss.
Very long but in-depth article on the destructive role that finance plays in food production, and how financial involvement in food production causes food price increases and shortages of food — all kinds of destructive end-results, in fact. But hey, at least they’re making a buck off of other peoples’ suffering, so what the heck.
www dot theautomaticearth dot com/nicole-foss-finance-and-food-insecurity/
Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 3rd Apr 2014 3:48 pm
I have and some other talks she has given. She is a great sources of doomer reinforcement. Noo, you checked her out at all lately?
NR, when the SHTF soon in regards to food we will see how long these multinational food corporations can justify profits when people are dying including in the ole US OF A.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 3rd Apr 2014 4:35 pm
So, you’re a step ahead of me aren’t you Davy. Me — I have to squeeze some periods of quality programming work in between the visits to all my “doomer-related” bookmarks. You, just gotta transplant tomatoes and water the potatoes on your own damn timeframe. Good thing I actually enjoy my work, or you’d be making me very jealous right about now.
Being more in-tune to the financial world that me, I figured you would find that article interesting and informative. It educated me — opened my eyes to exactly how rapacious finance can be in terms of food prices and food production — and probably everything else. Given the current state of affairs, we are SO screwed…
Kenz300 on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 4:50 pm
Quote — ” The bad news is, as the IPCC has recently reported, we can’t afford the costs of what liberating all that carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere would do to the climate. So we will have to leave it in the ground and come up with alternatives fast.”
—————————-
Wind and solar power are growing in use all around the world.
As the price of fossil fuels keeps rising they are becoming less competitive with alternatives like wind and solar which are dropping in price.
Time to fertilize the fields the old fashion way with compost and manure.