Phosphates
We hear about problems with our supply of oil, natural gas and other resources. But our growing consumption is also using up resources you need but have never heard of; for example, phosphate.
Phosphate exists in all plants and animals, and life would hardly exist without it, but it is especially vital to mass agriculture. But according to a new study by scientists Patrick Déry and Bart Anderson, our farms may run into a shortage of phosphate in the near future.
In nature, phosphate’s normal small quantities are continually recycled, as it is sucked out of the soil by plants, eaten by animals, and then decayed back into the soil again. For most of human history, farming did not disrupt this cycle — we farmed small plots, left some fields fallow and fertilized our fields with compost or manure. Since we were putting just as much phosphate into the soil as we got out, there was no problem.
But phosphate’s small natural quantities are not enough for the million-acre factory farms of the American Midwest and other breadbaskets, so landowners must continually spread more phosphates as fertilizer. Phosphates are mined from rare concentrations on Pacific Islands and shipped around the world — a limited resource that will eventually run out. Cropland doesn’t hold soil or chemicals as well as natural woodland, so rain and erosion take much of the phosphate out to sea.
Dery and Anderson’s study maintained that there is only so much rock phosphate in the world, and that we will see the rising demand outpace the dwindling supply in the coming decades. We may be seeing that already, with the recent rise in fertilizer prices. Without that massive chemical infusion, we would have to return to being old-fashioned, “organic” farmers, even without an end to fossil fuels.
Such a shortage does not mean the end of the world, any more than an oil shortage or economic crunch – it means a transition from one type of growing to another. We can grow more of our own food in our own gardens, and cook what we grow. Or, we can buy our food from organic farmers, as near to our homes as possible. That kind of farming – or gardening – does not depend on the constant addition of outside chemicals, and even if there is a phosphate shortage, organic farms and gardens would keep right on going.
Of course, we cannot grow bananas or avocados in Ireland, but those are not the bulk of most people’s diets. Most of us do not have the ability to produce our own wheat, oil and sugar either, but these staples are extremely cheap, and even if a global farming crisis made them ten times more expensive, they would still be quite affordable for us in the West. We have become so used to frozen dinners and fast food that we often forget how cheap most of our food is, and how easy and satisfying it is to grow and cook for yourself.
