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Recently I learned how much we depend on phosphate mining to provide nutrients for farming, and I found it unsettling how uncommon phosphate deposits are. Here
by PopeDotNinja 7y ago
Recently I learned how much we depend on phosphate mining to provide nutrients for farming, and I found it unsettling how uncommon phosphate deposits are. Here's an entertaining sub-4 minute watch on the topic of how a majority of phosphate deposits are located in Morocco -- https://youtu.be/O0BooiAxQyY https://youtu.be/O0BooiAxQyY.
I just looked up how much different countries produce, and had assumed most phosphates would be coming out of Morocco. My guess was incorrect. It appears that Morocco produces ~13% of the world supply, but has ~72% of deposits. For constrast, the USA produces ~12% annually with ~2% of world deposits, and China produces ~45% annually with ~5% of all deposits. If I were the leader of a country with lots o' people, I'd be cozing up to Morocco a whole bunch. [1]
Knowing nothing about mining anything darn thing, I now wonder how interesting the work is in finding & mining new sources sources of phosphates.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate#Occurrence_and_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate#Occurrence_and_minin...
- devoply 7y agoI am sure they are due for a regime change for oppressing their people at some point in the future.
- emj 7y agoIt's a bit worrying that they talk about burning human shit to get phosphate when you can just compost it.
- seunosewa 7y agoI guess it's because composting doesn't guarantee the destruction of pathogens.
- Nasrudith 7y agoYeah human waste fertilizer sounds like a very good way to get outbreaks.
- robocat 7y agoThe issue is probably all the contaminants in human poo, especially medical: anti-bacterials, hormones, radioactive tracers. Maybe it isn't so much purifying the phosphate that matters, but removing components that would be bad to recirculate into our food chain.
- emj 7y agoHigh temperature composting deal with the most common problems anyways, and you preserve the nutrients rather than burn them up. The biggest problem is how bad water waste management systems are at producing fertiziler, the wide spread idea that it's ok to pollute our waste water with what ever, making it unusable for composte is not healthy. I do not think burning it can solve more than a tiny part of that problem.
- johnrgrace 7y agoMilorganite is a fertilizer here in the midwest which is kiln dried microbrobes from milwaukee water treatment system, https://www.milorganite.com/using-milorganite/what-is-milorganite https://www.milorganite.com/using-milorganite/what-is-milorg...
- Retric 7y agoThe Earth's crust contains 0.1% phosphorus by mass. It’s not going to run out, at worst it’s going to cost more to extract. Granted paying more than $425/ton might have an impact on food prices, but it’s currently a very low fraction of food prices. About 20% of overall fertilizer costs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus, https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2017/07/fertilizer-costs-in-2017-and-2018.html https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2017/07/fertilizer-costs-i...
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoWe will run out of phosphate soon enough. In the American mid west, the corn and hogs take turns to get the phosphorus cycle going. When we run out of P, mining asteroids is always an option. How much of a viable realistic option...I don’t know. I think there are two other viable solutions: 1. Synthesize food in labs using fermentation techniques to feed the world population. 2. Genetically modify Homo sapiens to synthesis food and tinker with metabolism. Both the above seem more practical and likely feasible than destroying the planet with Ag for marginal benefits.
- Retric 7y agoPhosphorus comprises about 0.1% by mass of the average rock you find walking around, the only thing that’s running out is the extremely high concentrations you find in specific areas. What we are mining is essentially areas of ocean floor lifted up to the surface. We could also either mine other areas still on the ocean floor that also have high concentrations, or almost anywhere else at lower though still significant concentrations.
- jsilence 7y agoOn the other hand phospor deficiency is easy to come by with smallish amounts of phosporous. Only at hard deficiency the yield will suffer strongly. The nutrient supply-yield curve is very steep in the lower end of supply and shallow in the range of optimal supply. Check Sonneveld et.al. What I am trying to say is that we sure would like to give optimal supply to out plants, but slight undersupply will still give reasonable yields. Profitability issue? Yes! Problem with feeding the world? Rather not.