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Phosphorus supply is increasingly disrupted – we are sleepwalking into a global food crisis
The global food system is extremely vulnerable to shortages of a key fertiliser component caused by geopolitical turbulence, warn JULIA MARTIN-ORTEGA, BRENT JACOBS and DANA CORDELL
A farmer spreads fertiliser on a field
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WITHOUT phosphorus food cannot be produced, since all plants and animals need it to grow. Put simply: if there is no phosphorus, there is no life. As such, phosphorus-based fertilisers — it is the “P” in “NPK” fertiliser — have become critical to the global food system.
Most phosphorus comes from non-renewable phosphate rock and it cannot be synthesised artificially. All farmers therefore need access to it, but 85 per cent of the world’s remaining high-grade phosphate rock is concentrated in just five countries (some of which are “geopolitically complex”): Morocco, China, Egypt, Algeria and South Africa.
Seventy per cent is found in Morocco alone. This makes the global food system extremely vulnerable to disruptions in the phosphorus supply that can lead to sudden price spikes. For example, in 2008 the price of phosphate fertilisers rocketed 800 per cent.
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