Posted on 07/10/2022 4:12:43 PM PDT by Libloather
Add one more critical shortage to the world's swollen list. Countries for months have been hoarding fertilizer - and now they are weaponizing it, making sales in return for geopolitical favors.
Last July, China's National Development and Reform Commission stopped major companies from exporting fertilizer. In September, Beijing imposed a prohibition on exports of phosphates, a primary fertilizer ingredient, until at least the middle of this year. In October, Chinese officials added inspection requirements to aid enforcement of the bans. The moves were a reaction to rising prices in China and elsewhere.
China's fertilizer bans created shortages. The country's traditional customers had to search the world for alternate supply, eventually depleting other sources. "The ripple effect is that the entire world trade balance goes down, and there's just not enough out there to go around," said Josh Linville, director of fertilizer for StoneX, to Progressive Farmer.
India, for its part, blocked exports of urea - also fertilizer.
Export bans, unless short-lived, generally violate World Trade Organization rules. Beijing gets around the prohibition on export prohibitions by calling its measures "temporary."
China then figured out that it could dole out fertilizer in return for favors. It has, despite its export bans, been selling small amounts to the Philippines, which Beijing hopes to wean away from the U.S. Chinese officials are now holding out the prospect of bigger sales to Manila.
India is now wielding urea like a dagger against its Chinese foe. In the middle of last month, New Delhi confirmed it would sell Sri Lanka 65,000 metric tons of the fertilizer.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Jeez Gordon, this was openly discussed last year
I’m just guessing but it could be US taxes, environmental laws, regulations, corporate hostility, cheap overseas labor and stuff
Bingo! Natural gas is the preferred feed stock for making ammonia, though just about any fossil fuel will work in a pinch. Oh, Biden has cut back production of fossil fuels. Tennessee and Florida both have tremendous reserves of phosphorous, but the EPA will not let it be mined. Well Ammonium nitrate can be used,but, it too is made from fossil fuel (see ammonia). Urea can be used in a pinch, but, you need ammonia and carbon dioxide. But all hope is not lost, human urine contains urea so , like the Romans, we can collect urine and use it as fertilizer (and washing clothes). But, all new diesel trucks require urea to run air pollution control equipment mandated by the EPA. Makes one almost wonder if all this is is planned.
The author sounds like a deranged neo-liberal.
Re-open the closed Potash mines at Carlsbad NM!
” ̶W̶e̶’̶r̶e̶ YOU are going to have a self-inflicted famine.”
FIFY. Not that you in particular will be a part of that demographic. It is an oblique way of saying that I am a part of a huge and growing group who have simply walked away from the institutionalized “food industry.” Instead, we have moved out of cities, bought or rented rural land, and are simply raising most, if not all of our own food. We do NOT rely on fertilizer (at least mostly... I have not used anything other than compost tea for 4 years and have amazing bumper crops). We home school our kids (we LIKE lots of kids), and discourage university education other than specific job prep degrees (we use classical education curriculum which gives a better liberal arts intro than any school other than a Grove City or Hillsdale would provide. Our social lives revolve around church, fellow homesteading, ham radio, 2nd amendment, freedom loving people “like us.” Frankly we have given up on “reaching” the zombie crowd and have given up on changing the society. We are waiting on it to burn.
It is a total rejection of the mainstream lifestyle of urban America. We have our own pantheon of YouTube heroes, from Patera to Justin Rhodes to Roots and Refuge Farms to a million other little people who are ..... (wait for it)... INDEPENDENT. We expect nothing from the failed institutions but more failure.
Starving people is sad. Stupid starving people are somehow less sad. I am sure this is a character deficiency in me.
Fifty years ago, we produced more crops that the rest of the world combined. Now we won’t be bothered to make fertilizer?
Biden’s policies are pushing the countries of BRICS closer together.
You folks do understand we spread human waste from treatment plants to fertilize our farm fields, right?
The stench over many miles is near unbearable.
The CPUSA rats and their pals will also fall victim to the new Holomodor and Turnip Winter.
Haven’t you heard?????
Carbon is BAAADDD!!!!
Increase the US bat population.
It’s dried waste mostly these days. We recycle water here in TX.
Some places still use wet/sludge.
Indeed, we have a shi*load of it here.
2020 was a tough year for many industries, but phosphate rock largely escaped the wrath of the pandemic, thanks to its crucial role in agriculture. According to the US Geological Survey’s most recent data, the top ten phosphate rock-producing countries for 2020 were as follows, with estimated production for the year listed for each.
1.China, 90 million metric tons
2.Morocco & Western Sahara, 37 million metric tons
3.United States, 24 million metric tons
4.Russia, 13 million metric tons
5.Jordan, 9.2 million metric tons
6.Saudi Arabia, 6.5 million metric tons
7.Brazil, 5.5 million metric tons
8.Egypt, 5 million metric tons
9.Vietnam, 4.7 million metric tons
10.Peru and Tunisia are tied for 10th place, each with an estimated 4 million metric tons of production for the year.
Numerous other countries also made a contribution of more than 1 million tons each to global production, including, in descending order of estimated production, Senegal, Israel, Australia, South Africa, Kazakhstan, India, Algeria, and Finland.
https://feeco.com/2020-world-phosphate-rock-production-overview/
Although 2020 knocked the proverbial wind out of many industry sails, it left the potash market largely unscathed, due to the critical nature of the nutrient’s role in agriculture. In fact, production is estimated to have risen in 2020 compared to 2019.
According to the US Geological Survey’s most recent data, the top ten potash-producing countries are as follows, with estimated production for the year listed for each. Not surprisingly, Canada continues to account for the largest share, with a lead almost double that of the next in line, Russia. This year, Russia moved into second place, knocking Belarus down one spot with a slight lead in tonnage.
Canada, 14 million metric tons
Russia, 7.6 million metric tons
Belarus, 7.3 million metric tons
China, 5 million metric tons
Germany, 3 million metric tons
Israel, 2 million metric tons
Jordan, 1.5 million metric tons
Chile, 900 thousand metric tons
Spain, 470 thousand metric tons
Laos didn’t make the top ten with just 400 thousand metric tons of production. Remaining countries contributed an additional 550 thousand metric tons of production.
In total, the world produced an estimated 43,000 million tons of potash in 2020.
https://feeco.com/a-look-at-world-potash-production-for-2020/
I am shocked how many of you fools continue to believe there’s going to be a famine in North America. There is nowhere on the planet where more excess food, over and above that necessary for domestic consumption, is produced for export. It may be true that the idiots in California will continue to screw things up for their farmers within California but that is but a fraction of food output in all of North America.
Furthermore, North America is naturally endowed with an obscene abundance of easily obtainable mineable minerals for the production of fertilizer. Potash being the largest one. But even if we never touched this resource, we have so much land and space devoted to cattle, we have a never ending supply of manure for use as fertilizer.
And in addition to cow manure we have treated sludge coming out of our sewage treatment plants that is excellent fertilizer and is being utilized as such. I believe it is illegal to use this to fertilize crops intended for human consumption but there’s no restrictions on using for livestock feed crops. This is also a never ending supply.
Additionally, anhydrous is manufactured directly from natural gas. North America (Canada + USA) has so much natural gas resources we can never run out. On top of that Canada is gifted with abundant fissionable nuclear fuel. If for some reason we really wanted to limit the natgas production we could stop using natgas for fuel and use it purely for anhydrous production if we really needed to. We have plentiful nuclear material available in Canada.
Then there’s crop rotation. More aggressive planting of nitrogen fixing legumes can easily be implemented to reduce reliance on anhydrous. Yes this will cut back some on the yield per acre per year because more acres will be in the other rotation…which brings me to the land bank. We have a lot of acres let fallow in the land bank program. This can easily be reversed if yields drop.
And finally, we have all this ethanol production going on right now that could easily be stopped if push comes to shove. Let’s say the yield per acre of feed corn goes down due to some fertilizer supply snafu. Hello? Ethanol? Are you fools able to think at all? Divert all that ethanol corn to the cows. Problem solved. Not that this extreme measure will ever be necessary. It’s just something available to illustrate the absurdity of this famine fear mongering.
There’s no famine coming to North America. You dam fools.
An abundance of resources doesn’t matter if those in power refuse to allow them to be used.
Absolutely. Argentina and Iran are joining BRICS. It’s the globalism that America and the EU are pushing that’s driving many into this new bloc. Again, energy, food and individual culture are the targets of the US led globalists. Quite honestly, I’d probably be more comfortable in BRICS. I liked the culture we used to have. It was nice to shop grocery stores with packed shelves. I once heard a tale about American world dominance in an over supplied energy market.
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