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But they might be pushing the actual cost of growing that food into the future.
by gvd 9y ago
But they might be pushing the actual cost of growing that food into the future.
- manicdee 9y agoAbout 300 years of rock phosphate left at current rates of comsumption. We need to start farming phophates in the sea, where all our water soluble nutrients eventually end up.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 9y agoI think gvd was referring to herbicide resistance rather than fertilizer stocks.
- gambiting 9y agoWhere does the phosphate go after it's used? Surely it doesn't disappear from the environment?
- cucuuc 9y agoThat's his point: It ends up at the sea. We'll have to spend muchblarger amounts of energy to recover a diluted resource.
- Spooky23 9y agoIn the US, much of it washes down into the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico, where it kills the gulf and feeds algae.
- ajross 9y agoPhosphates are water-soluble, they enter the hydrology wherever it goes, which means that long term they end up in the ocean. But this isn't quite the big deal that it's made out to be. Mineral phosphorous mining is cheaper than other sources, but phosphate isn't rare or going away. It's literally present in all biomass by definition: phosphate groups are the bonds that tie the links together in RNA and DNA, and it can be extracted from biomass trivially (i.e. composting, or even incineration), albeit at somewhat higher cost. Given that agricultural output is currently almost free, that's hardly going to break society.