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Posted Wed Jul 13 2011: from
Yale360:
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Peak Phosphate: Critical Resource Beginning to Run Low http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1310562254
Not many people would call phosphate a critical issue or one with serious environmental consequences. But even leaving aside the resource politics of the Sahara, it is an absolutely vital resource for feeding the world. It is also a resource that could start running low within a couple of decades -- and one we grossly misuse, pouring it across the planet and recycling virtually none of it....
It takes one ton of phosphate to produce every 130 tons of grain, which is why the world mines about 170 million tons of phosphate rock every year to ship around the world and keep soils fertile....
The world is not about to run out of phosphate. But demand is rising, most of the best reserves are gone, and those that remain are in just a handful of countries. Dana Cordell of Linkoping University in Sweden, who runs an academic group called the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative, says we could hit "peak phosphorus" production by around 2030.
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'Doc Jim says:
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I'm aphraid that pholks will pheel this only when phood becomes unaphphordable.
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