Peak Phosphate: Circle or Straight Line?
In September, 2020, Farm Journal published the article "Have We Reached Peak Phosphate?" This article was just one of several articles relating to phosphorous (P) that have appeared recently in various agricultural publications. These articles are alerting farmers to the importance of the element P in plant growth and to the problems that are associated with using P for fertilization.
The one problem with P fertilization that has received significant exposure is the loss of P to the environment through the use of fertilizer. As one publication stated: "The addition of chemical fertilizers in a guess to boost yields, however, has resulted in wide spread pollution of land, water, and air." (October, 2019 https://cid-inc.com) The loss of P fertilizer has been blamed for harmful algae blooms (HAB) in large bodies of fresh water. This problem has caused North American agriculture to receive a lot of poor press. The environmental problem of P movement was discussed by North Dakota State University instructor Jay Goos in the Farm Journal article. He states that P in today's world moves in a straight line and this needs to change to the movement of a circle. By this he means that P rock is mined, turned into fertilizer, and then is added to soil where it is inefficiently used by either going directly into water systems or indirectly into water systems after being fed to animals whose by-products are used inefficiently. To prevent this straight line movement, efficiency practices need to be used to keep P in a form that does not escape directly from the system. In most cases the circle approach to using P includes microbiological improvements in the soil system by changing the way the original source is formulated and used in the system. By this we mean the P needs to have most of the toxins removed from its content and then the P can be placed close to the plant through in-furrow technology and/or foliar spraying.
The loss of P to the system which results in the most visible problems (HAB) has drawn some attention to the second problem of P fertilization which is the finite volume of P present in the earth's crust. The Farm Journal article points out that P deposits are more geopolitically concentrated than oil, with 5 countries (China, Morocco, United States, Russia, and Jordan) controlling 88% of the world's P deposits. The politics of P became evident in the summer of 2020 as P prices in the United States increased with Mosaic's petition of the United States government requesting the initiation of countervailing duty investigations into the import of P fertilizers from Morocco and Russia. According to Goos, P efficiency might become a very important characteristic in the next 25 years. He believes farmers need to start focusing on P conservation because nitrogen (N) gets all the notice today, whereas in the future, farmers will be discussing the importance of P in their farming operations.
This is an excerpt from the Spring Growers Solution (2021) written by Jim Halbeisen, Director of Research & Education.
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