Sources: Peak phosphorus curve indicating a peak in production by 2033, derived from US Geological Survey and industry data. Cordell, D.; Drangert, J.-O.; White, S. The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought. Glob. Environ. Change 2009, 19, 292-305

Preface: Phosphate is essential for plants and animals, in us it the backbone of DNA and RNA, holding in meaningful order the letters of genetic information that would otherwise collapse into alphabet soup. Next to calcium, phosphorus is the most abundant mineral in the body to build strong bones and teeth.

The phosphorus-oxygen bond is central to why biology works. The body stores and burns energy by perpetually making and breaking the phosphate bonds found in the cell’s little cash machines, its adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules. This phosphate recycling operation is so relentless, you turn over your body weight in ATP every day.

Phosphorus is also essential for growing crops.  You can have all the sun, water, nitrogen, and so on that a plant needs, without without phosphorus, a plant (or animal) can’t use them.  Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that phosphorus is the most important limiting nutrient.

Phosphate colludes with lipid molecules to encase every cell in an ever vigilant membrane that dictates what gets in and what must be kept out. Proteins send messages to one another by exchanging phosphate parcels.

Behind phosphate’s spectacular, jack-of-all-trades utility is a negative charge that prevents unwanted leakage. You can put energy in and only take it out when needed, and won’t leach into the environment.

Phosphates are born through the erosion of rocks, the breakdown of living organisms, or waste products like urine or guano.

No other element can substitute for phosphorus, nor can it be synthesized. Very little of it is recycled.

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

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2022-9-15 Approaching peak phosphorus. Nature Plants 8: 979
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-022-01247-2

Geophysicist Marion King Hubbert formulated the concept of peak oil in 1956, reminding us that the planet’s resources are not infinite. Decades later, and attracting much less attention, a similar idea was established for phosphorus, and it was predicted that its peak could be reached globally as soon as 2033 (Cordell et al 2009).

Regardless of when peak production may occur, other factors may limit productiondue to supply chain shortages, wars, politics, and economics (i.e. depression). For example, Morocco, with 70% of reserves, is only the second largest producer due to the high cost of mining and tensions in the Western Sahara.

Less than 20% of the phosphorus applied in agriculture contributes to the food that we consume (Dawson et al 2011), with 80% running off from cultivated land, entering aqueous ecosystems and contributing to eutrophication.

Some of it ends up in our sewage system. Germany is one of the few nations trying to recover phosphorus from human urine, but only a small fraction can be recovered at a reasonable cost.

Researchers are trying to genetically engineer plants that use phosphorus more efficiently. But that takes time, more needs to be learned about which genes to alter. And even when advances are made, it takes time to transfer this knowledge to farmers and governments.

Carrington, D. 2019. Phosphate fertiliser ‘crisis’ threatens world food supply Use of essential rock phosphate has soared, but scientists fear it could run out within a few decades. The guardian.

Phosphorus is essential to agriculture, increasing yields up to 50%, with 80% of phosphorus used in fertilizers to grow crops, and much of the rest in animal feed.  At current rates of use, a lot of countries are set to run out of their domestic supply in the next generation, including the US, China and India. Morocco and the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara host by far the largest reserve, with China, Algeria and Syria the next biggest, together representing more than 80% of global rock phosphate.

Phosphate use has quadrupled in the last 50 years as the global population has grown and the date when it is estimated to run out gets closer with each new analysis of demand, with some scientists projecting that moment could come as soon as a few decades’ time.

A new study, published in the journal Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering, states: “The continued supply of phosphate fertilisers that underpin global food production is an imminent crisis.”  It notes that an estimate of the remaining years of rock phosphate supply fell from 300 to 259 in just the last three years, as demand rose. “If the estimated remaining number of years supply continues to decline at this rate, it could be argued that all supplies will be exhausted by 2040,” the scientists wrote.

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How much phosphorus is left and what other risks are there?

Recent estimates of peak phosphorus are 2027 (Mohr) and 2033 (Craswell), but you can find dozens of estimates, The most optimistic estimates lead to phosphorus running out within 200 years (Cordell).

Morocco has 85% of the remaining reserves (mainly in the Western Sahara). Morocco is potentially unstable, as are these five nations with another five percent of reserves: China, Algeria, Syria, Jordan, and South Africa.

Also vulnerable are the nations that need to import nearly all of their phosphorus, such as Europe, Brazil, and India. The United States has about 25 years of phosphate reserves left.

Dary, Patrick, Phosphorus: is a paradigm shift required (Bardi 2014).

We can’t live without phosphorus: agriculture depends on it to enrich their soils. Phosphorus is second only to nitrogen as the most limiting element for plant growth.  Crop yields on 40% of the world’s arable land is limited by phosphorus availability (30). Nitrogen can be extracted from the air, but phosphorus can’t, it only exists in Earth’s crust, mainly phosphate rock converted to a soluble form for fertilizer, after which much of it is lost, 20% absorbed by plants the first years, some of it disappears in runoff, or locked in the soil in chemical forms plants can’t access.  Much of it is exported within food crops.

Production in the U.S. has been declining 4 to 5% a year since about 1980.

And like all minerals, if phosphorus ever gets very expensive, rising prices will cause a reduction in demand, and that eventually stops rising production.  Industry won’t extract resources so expensive they’re impossible to sell.  Consequently, there’s a limit to the low-grade resources the industry can exploit. Economists assume that technology will always come to the rescue, lower costs of extraction and restoring both demand and industry profits. But this is a leap of faith: technology has monetary and energy costs so there are limits to what it can do. So the phosphate rock production won’t end due to a lack of rock.  But since it depends on the energy derived from oil to extract, transform, and transport, when oil declines, it will too.

References

Bardi, Ugo. 2014. Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Cho, Renee. 2013. Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?

Cordell D et al (2009) The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought. Global Environmental Change 19: 292-305.

Cordell, D. et al. 2013. Phosphorus vulnerability: A qualitative framework for assessing the vulnerability of national and regional food systems to the multi-dimensional stressors of phosphorus scarcity. Global Environmental Change,  DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.11.005

Craswell, E.T. et al. 2010. Peak phosphorus—Implications for soil productivity and global food security. Paper read at the 19th World Congress of Soil Science, Soil Solutions for a Changing World, August 1-6, Brisbane, Australia.

Dawson CJ, Hilton J (2011) Fertiliser availability in a resource-limited world: Production and recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus. Food Policy.

Deffeyes, K.S. 2005. Beyond Oil, the view from Hubbert’s Peak. Hill & Wang.

Huva, A. 2013.  Much Ado about Phosphorus. ReadTheScience.com

Blodget, H. 4 Dec 2012. Henry Blodget. A Genius Investor Thinks Billions Of People Are Going To Starve To Death — Here’s Why. Business Insider.

Elser, J. 20 2010.  Peak Phosphorus. It’s an essential, if underappreciated component of our daily lives, and a key link in the global food chain. And it’s running out. Foreign Policy.

Faludi, J. 25 Dec 2007.  Your Stuff: If It Isn’t Grown, It Must Be Mined. WorldChanging

Mohr, S, et al. 2013. Projections of Future Phosphorus Production. Philica.

Vaccari, D. A. June 2009. Phosphorus: A Looming Crisis. This underappreciated resource–a key part of fertilizers–is still decades from running out. But we must act now to conserve it, or future agriculture will collapse. Scientific American.

Walan, P. et al. 2014. Phosphate rock production and depletion: Regional disaggregated modeling and global implications. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 93: 178-187.

Watson, A. J. December 23, 2016. Oceans on the edge of anoxia. Environmental crises can tip the ocean into O2 depletion. Science.

Woods, H. 3 Apr 2008. World’s phosphorus situation scares some scientists. The Coloradan.