PowerSwitch

The authoritative US Geological Survey (USGS) puts it bluntly: there are no substitutes for phosphorus in agriculture.

Hmmm... The thing is... I've never added phosphorus to my veg yet they all grow just fine. Best not tell them.

This article is written from a business perspective and postulates a looming phosphate shortage as a business opportunity. However, in doing so it never questions why phosphates are needed nor, heaven forbid, whether mined phosphates are needed at all.

Phosphates are needed in intensive grain farming because the phosphorus cycle, like with those of the other nutrients, is completely ripped apart. The land is used like a production line with inputs (seeds, fertilisers, growth enhancers, pesticides) in and outputs (food) out. Ignored are other outputs such as disease resistance, nutrient run-off and soil erosion, and other inputs such as the massive fossil fuel requirements for mineral extraction, transport, processing, equipment manufacture and equipment use, which have their effects elsewhere on the planet. And all taking place in an increasingly barren environment as organic material - that part of the soil that can bind and hold onto the added nutrients - are depleted as the soil is repeatedly churned.


Here a picture (taken from by that article) that illustrates,
no doubt unintentionally, this agrarian desert.

It all rather seems like another case of Red Queen's race

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

No doubt there is money to be made from investing in the sorry state of modern agriculture, and no amount of preaching will be able to counteract the persuasive power of the seed-agrochem-mining-equipment-oil industry consortium that drives this global movement to intensive grain farming, but I think a return to a quieter, gentler and much more local pasture-based mixed farming would far better feed both humanity's body and soul. Maybe we will just have to wait until economic ruin and resource depletion force a return to traditional farming methods.

Great post foodimista.

Foodmista is spot on again, the soil in the fields opposite my house has all the life and texture of pottery-class clay. It's smooth, stone free, evenly red/brown colour. It looks like unfired bricks, not soil, it's just a growing medium to hold the seeds still whilst they absorb the fertilizer.

Catweazle wrote:Foodmista is spot on again, the soil in the fields opposite my house has all the life and texture of pottery-class clay. It's smooth, stone free, evenly red/brown colour. It looks like unfired bricks, not soil, it's just a growing medium to hold the seeds still whilst they absorb the fertilizer.

When I walked on the North Downs as a boy, I noticed that the wheat field by one of my favourite places (Thurnham Castle) was basically powdery chalk mixed with bigger lumps of chalk. There was very little soil. The wheat grew fine, no doubt thanks to all the fertilizer.

Someone I met at a do mentioned Phosphates as a byproduct of metal smelting/recycling. I have no idea what they were talking about and my recollection of what they said is, erm, not 100% (it was a good do!). Anyone shed any light?

Basic slag has a significant phosphate content:
http://www.npk.ltd.uk/superslag2.htm

biffvernon wrote:Basic slag has a significant phosphate content

No shortage of that round these parts.

Andy Hunt wrote:

biffvernon wrote:Basic slag has a significant phosphate content

No shortage of that round these parts.

Don't tell the USGS or we'll be invaded.

Andy Hunt wrote:

biffvernon wrote:Basic slag has a significant phosphate content

No shortage of that round these parts.

Finally, we've found a use for chavs!

Anyhoo, back on topic....

I was up visiting my folks last week (they live on the east Durham coast) and my dad and I were talking about this very subject. He made a very interesting and rather telling, observation: "The farmland is sterile and getting worse. You used to see huge flocks of crows and gulls following the ploughs. You don't any more and that says to me, there's nothing living in the soil, it's all been killed off."

Meanwhile, outside: The owner of a small beef heard, was out fertilizing his grazing the old way prior to getting the bullocks in- muck spreading. The next farm over, which is now mainly a livery stables, was putting on a top dressing of urea crystals with Eastern European contractors. The farm manager doesn't use muck as he's lost his dairy heard thanks to the wholesale price of milk.

We really need to get back to mixed farming and proper crop rotation.

Coast, eh?... Seaweed!!!

The slag contents look delightful but hasn't it also got some no-nos in like Pb, Hg and...F??

Really. I know where there's phosphates a-plenty. Anywhere disposing of bones or the local sewage plant.

Maybe, it's a bit like carbon capture. Only a technological solution is acceptable, despite common sense and thousands of years of experience telling us otherwise.

I'm not sure that dead soil and phosphates are linked in any particular way. One is down to the lack of organic matter in the soil, the other is down to a broken natural cycle. Sure, the same solution will fix both problems, but they're not intricately tied as problems.

RenewableCandy wrote:Coast, eh?... Seaweed!!!

The EU stopped the sale of Cornish Calcified Seaweed because it was destroying a marine habitat. Apparently it is a habitat that regenerates continuously so it only required to be controlled. But the EU couldn't see that.

Bloody morons! Why don't they stop the Spanish over fishing UK fishing grounds or any fishing ground, come to that.

A powerful push for phosphorus capture and recovery:
http://www.edie.net/library/view_article.asp?id=5875

With global phosphorous stocks dwindling, recovery of this agricultural necessity from sewage is becoming increasingly viable.

Without phosphorus we cannot produce food - but at current consumption rates, reserves could be depleted in the next 50 to 100 years. Projections suggest that global phosphorus demand could grow at 2.3% annually just to feed the growing world population, an estimate that was made before the growth of biofuels. The very concept of biofuels as a viable "renewable" source of energy might not hold if one of the fundamental elements is growing more scarce.

Within a few decades, a "peak phosphorus" crunch could seriously threaten agriculture as global reserves of high-quality phosphate rock decline. At present extraction rates (around 40 million t/a P2O5), reserves are unlikely to last much more than 100 years.

In large parts of the developing world, phosphate supply is insufficient, both in terms of total application and imbalance in the N to P to K ratio. If many of the areas being farmed today were to receive sufficient phosphate to prevent mining of soil reserves, this in itself would substantially increase world demand. On the other hand, in some regions of Europe and the USA, there is an oversupply of phosphate to agriculture due to the large combined input of phosphate in the form of fertilisers and organic manures.

Continues.....