In case you don’t have anything to keep you up at night worrying, world market watchers are beginning to mutter about something called ‘peak phosphate’. While nitrogen is the number one crop input for corn growers, phosphate will soon garner a great deal of attention as world supplies of this finite resource dwindle in the face of increased demand for food and fertilizers.
Phosphate rock is dug out of the ground in several countries, but China, the United States and Morocco lead in phosphate production. Phosphorous is one of the three main components in any NPK regimen and is necessary to provide energy storage/transfer and increased root growth. It takes 3.5 tonnes of phosphate rock and 3 tonnes of sulfuric acid to produce a single tonne of phosphoric acid -- a building block of DAP/MAP.
This is a big issue and if the planet runs out of phosphorus resources -- peak phosphate -- crop producers will be forced to find alternative sources of P. But the implications of this tangled tale quickly have us wading into deep socioeconomic waters, and as this resource rounds the bend from threatened to scarce, one day demand will outpace supply. Some experts believe we may see phosphate resources dangerously low as soon as 2030.
I will take a closer look at the implications of peak phosphorous both globally and on the farm in tomorrow’s blog ‘Peak Phosphate -- In Case You Are Sleeping Too Well’. Visit your Inputs Monitor to read the whole story on Friday.
