Scientists warn phosphorus supplies could run out, leading to famine and war
By Cory Nealon, cnealon@dailypress.com
24 March 2012 AURORA, N.C. – The sun was about to set when Robert L. Shirley drove his beige pickup onto the Pamlico River ferry. He was joined by fellow Potash Corp. employees who had just finished the day shift mining what scientists say could be the “gravest natural resource shortage you’ve never heard of.” Often overlooked, phosphorus is one of three elements needed to make fertilizer. The others, nitrogen and potash, are readily available with no shortages projected. But phosphate rock — the primary source of phosphorus in fertilizer — isn’t as plentiful. Scientists have estimated that minable supplies may not be sufficient to meet worldwide demand within decades. The situation could lead to higher food prices, famine and worse. […] The element, which is found in every body cell, is most concentrated in human bones and teeth. It is essential to life and, at the present time, irreplaceable. […] Reliance on the element is an “underappreciated aspect” that helped the world population grow by 4.2 billion people since 1950, according to a 2009 Foreign Policy magazine article. In 2009, a pair of Australian scientists published studies suggesting that demand for the element could exceed supplies as early as 2035. Using the term “peak phosphorus,” an analogy to peak oil, they relied partly on a Geological Survey estimate that the world had 16 billion tons of minable phosphate rock. The agency revised its estimate in 2010 to 71 billion tons after a massive deposit was proven in Morocco and the western Sahara. The region has the most reserves followed by Iraq, China, and Algeria. With 1.4 billion tons, the U.S. is thought to have the world’s eighth-largest reserves. Jim Elser, who co-wrote the Foreign Policy article, said the new African reserves, if mined, would stave off peak phosphorus for decades. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t prevent the world from reassessing how it uses phosphorus. “Look at it like this,” he wrote in an email to the Daily Press, “You’re in a hotel and the fire alarm goes off. You get moving to exit your room when the phone rings. It’s the front desk telling you that the fire isn’t on your floor, it’s actually five or six floors below you and won’t reach you for another hour or so. “Do you go back to bed to try to catch some more rest? Of course you don’t.” The fertilizer industry did its own analysis and found there to be 300 years worth of phosphate rock worldwide, said Kathy Mathers, a spokeswoman for The Fertilizer Institute, which represents U.S. fertilizer businesses. […]
"It is essential to life and, at the present time, irreplaceable."
wonder what kind of time frame they're thinking of for it to be replaceable