Like all of you , I have n’t read the Republican platform and wo n’t translate the popular one , either , but some journalists DO , and one newsprint helpfully number what they believe the10 curious items in the Republican Platform . And darned if routine 4 is n’t aright on matter for us gardener :
End our dependance on strange … fertilizer?“Our dependence on foreign import of fertiliser could threaten our food supply , and we support the development of domesticated yield of fertilizer . ”
Phosphate Mine
Phosphate Mine
The story run on to offer a link to , this analysisof “ America ’s possible fertilizer woes , ” which is title “ Forget Oil , Worry about Phosphorus . ” Seems that “ the world ’s agriculture look on a mineral that is declining in production and is see to it by a trust of companies . ”
Indeed there are lot of alarming reports about“peak atomic number 15 ” but at least we grease one’s palms it primarily from domestic sources , and the U.S. actually exports about half its phosphorus product – for now . Our domestic reserves are expected to be gone in 15 to 30 years , after which we ’ll have to get it from places like Morocco and China , which together have 60 pct of the man ’s reserves .
But wait ; the problem is n’t just phosphorus ; the other major nutrient are also of concern . The U.S. import more than half its nitrogen ( mainly from Trinidad , Tobago , Canada and Russia ) and 86 % of its atomic number 19 ( mainly from Canada and Russia ) . And according toGrist , the actual problem IS nitrogen , for which we ’re increasingly dependent on other nations .
So , find more domesticated source of these nutrient is a priority , but another tacking is to apply less of them andwasteless of them , particularly the ones that tend off into our waterways and contaminate them .
Stepping back , expert outside the fertiliser industry pointedness to the broadly speaking unsustainable nature of our industrial intellectual nourishment product system that relies so heavy on these diminishing supply of fossil fuel and mined fertilizer . Well , yeah .
deplorably , it did n’t take much googling for me to see this is all far too complex for me , a psych major turned gardenblogger , but I was still curious about the politics of this . Reading the response of theFertilizer Instituteraised more motion than answers because they say domesticated production is on the upswing ; not to care .
But apopular political blogoffers some context for inclusion of fertilizer in a major company program , and it makes sense – in that unhinged fashion that thing make sense only in politics .
So what ’s really behind this ? Nitrogen based plant food is made from ammonia which is made from lifelike accelerator . From the late 90 ’s until a duet of age ago the rise terms of natural gasolene made it cheesy to spell nitrogen fertilizer from places with little or no environmental regulation than to produce it domestically and much of the US based yield shut down . Trinidad is the liberal manufacturer of import fertilizer and has very little environmental rule . produce fertilizer is a very marked-up and polluting enterprise . Since natural gas Leontyne Price have fallen in the US , some shuttered domestic plants are slated for reactivation and the owners do n’t want the EPA influence their unsportsmanlike business enterprise . One of the big plant food producer isKoch Fertilizer , which also own yield capacity in Trinidad .
But reader , what do YOU think ? Anyone want to utter up for good old compost ?
Photo credit : Greater Yellowstone Coalition
