Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
By KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW MARTIN
Published: April 30, 2008Population growth, shrinking world grain stocks and a growing appetite for meat, particularly in the developing world, has collided with a shortage of fertilizer.
…a shortage of fertilizer?! Now the global food markets are telling us there’s not enough shit floating around to nourish the crops?! Oh, sorry. I guess this applies to the type of nitrogen fertilizers they use in agro-industries. Yeah, the kind that produces a toxic run-off for our delta ecosystems to enjoy. Rather than asking ourselves “Why are Nitrogen Fertilizer prices so high?” we should be asking “Why are we using substances that pollute our lakes and rivers to nourish our food?” ….
This parallels my feelings towards on the soaring cost of water that is also contributing to rise in food prices. If a farmer were to have any sustainable forethought, s/he would build their facility’s infrastructure around the ability to harvest one’s own water from a source that doesn’t charge much: the sky…
So hopefully, you can see why I find this to be a silly predicament about the fertilizer. Think about the vast amount of resources that are poured into processed fertilizers. Cannot these big business farmers conceptualize the fact that they could very easily harvest their own fertilizer using their community’s tonnes of food waste? Maybe someone out there with the right connections should get us started with a large-scale composting infrastructure that can guarantee an output of fertilizer to control the food prices. That’s a great idea for a green business, but now I just wish I were Bloomberg or somebody so I could put my money there.
The only thing I can do within my power is just point fingers at over-commodification and highlight its legacy of inefficiency and unreliability. Gah, there is SO MUCH work to do.
