FERTILIZERS WORLD SHORTAGES FOOD SECURITY CRISIS COST OF LIVING INCREASES EMERGENCY NITROGEN PHOSPHATES POTASSIUM

F E R T I L I Z E R S

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The global population increase is directly linked to demand for food. This puts pressure on land area that is a finite resource in competition with housing and factories. Any way you look at it we are heading for a food shortage that could lead to grain wars as when the Romans invaded Ancient Egypt.

The Russia Ukraine situation has focused us up on fertilizers, now with a world shortage, and price hikes that will further increase the cost of a crust of bread.

Officials at the United Nations and beyond are stepping up warnings about the mounting crisis for fertilizers — an essential substance to boost soil fertility — as vulnerable countries in areas such as Africa grapple with prices that have soared by 300 percent since Russia's war in Ukraine began.

In 2021, Russia was the world’s top exporter of nitrogen fertilizers and the second-largest supplier of both potassic and phosphorous fertilizers, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

To give you an idea of how big the demand is for manure fertilizer today, Iowa usually uses 14 billion gallons of manure a year. This year it may spray 15 billion gallons on fields. That would be enough to cover 108,000 golf courses or fill 280 million bathtubs. It’s a lot of manure.

Combined, Russia and Belarus had provided about 40% of the world’s exports of potash. Russia also exported 11% of the world’s urea, and 48% of the ammonium nitrate. Russia and Ukraine together export 28% of fertilizers made from nitrogen and phosphorous, as well as potassium according to Morgan Stanley.

Some fertilizers have more than doubled in price. For instance, potash traded in Vancouver was priced at about $210 per metric tons at the beginning of 2021, and as of April 2022 it’s now valued at $565. Urea for delivery to the Middle East was trading at $268 per metric ton on the Chicago Board of Trade in early 2021 and was valued at $887.50 on Tuesday 5th April.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that in coming decades, cropland will continue to be lost to industrial and urban development, along with reclamation of wetlands, and conversion of forest to cultivation, resulting in the loss of biodiversity and increased soil erosion. Many tools will be called upon to offset these projections. In Europe, one such tool is a geo-spatial data system called SoilConsWeb which is being developed to inform soil conservation minded decision making within agricultural sectors and other areas of land management.

We need harvesters like this in the ocean, to reap seaweed for food and fertilizers.

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/06/a-fertilizer-shortage-worsened-by-war-in-ukraine-is-driving-up-global-food-prices-and-scarcity.html
https://www.politico.eu/article/fertilizer-soil-ukraine-war-the-next-global-food-crisis/
https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2022/world-food-supply-threatened-global-fertilizer-shortage/

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SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE IS SOMETHING TO WORK TOWARD