Phosphorus is a plant nutrient with an essential role in helping farmers keep up with the world’s growing food demand. A recent reassessment of rock phosphate reserves calmed worries that the global resource was running low. However, it remains in the spotlight because the nutrient, from farm fertilizer, livestock manure and municipal sewage, washes into lakes and oceans, creating dead zones depleted of oxygen and aquatic life.
The Western Producer’s Robert Arnason reports on how an apparent phosphorus shortage turned into a comfortable supply and how researchers are finding ways to capture and recycle the nutrient so it does not pollute water.
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American scientist Marion King Hubbert developed a theory 55 years ago that is now commonly known as peak oil.
Hubbert believed the production of oil, minerals and other resources resembled a bell curve, where the amount produced increases, reaches a peak and then slowly dwindles to nothing.
Thousands of articles, editorials and blogs have since been written about peak oil, peak coal and most recently, peak phosphorus.
But according to geologist Stephen Van Kauwenbergh of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), the peak phosphorus concept is severely flawed.
The IFDC, a U.S. organization focused on improving food security and agricultural production, released an estimate last September of global phosphate rock reserves and resources.
The IFDC numbers were substantially higher than widely cited estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The USGS had pegged world phosphate rock reserves last year at 16 billion tonnes, but Van Kauwenbergh’s estimates are nearly four times higher at 60 billion tonnes.
Early this year, the USGS revised its figures in response to the IFDC report, announcing world reserves of 65 billion tonnes.
“I think (it) was really an effort to calm down the concern about this question (of phosphorus shortage),” said Johanna Nesseth Tuttle, vice-president of senior planning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Overall, there’s a lot of the resource (and) it’s in places where it’s accessible.”
The biggest change in the IFDC report was the estimate for Morocco.
Van Kauwenbergh increased the Morocco reserves from 5.7 billion tonnes to 51 billion tonnes, based on reports from the 1980s.
“This is not new stuff. It was just never integrated into the literature and it was never analyzed,” said Van Kauwenbergh, who spent months reviewing industry data and reports from mining association meetings.
“The Moroccans have been very quiet about it. They just don’t like attracting attention.”
Revised estimates of phosphate reserves isn’t the sort of thing that captivates the public or leads the evening news, but the IFDC estimates threw a large wrench into the peak phosphorus theory.
Before Van Kauwenbergh’s report, several experts had predicted that phosphorus production would peak a couple of decades from now, most likely between 2030 and 2040.
But the peak theory was flawed before the report came out.
“You can go on the internet and check around and find out a lot of people don’t even buy it for oil,” Van Kauwenbergh said.
“The depletion of (phosphate rock) has nothing to do with any kind of Hubbert curve depleting half the resource.”
Instead, said the word “dynamic” should replace “peak” when it comes to resource extraction.
Put another way, a once uneconomic deposit becomes financially viable when the price of a mineral like phosphate rock increases.
Alberta’s oilsands are an example.
Oilsands are a resource when oil is $40 a barrel but a reserve when the price reaches $80.
Van Kauwenbergh said it’s good that there are ample supplies of a key component of fertilizer needed for crops to feed growing global demand, but that doesn’t mean prices will be stable.
“The cost of phosphate rock is going to increase as lower cost phosphate rock deposits are mined out,” he wrote in his report.
David Asbridge, president of NPK Fertilizer Advisory Service in St. Louis, Missouri, agreed. He said a higher price range for all fertilizers will likely be a long-term reality.
The price of crops and related demand for phosphorus determines the price of phosphate rock and processed fertilizer, he added.
“The demand for the finished product, that pulls the phosphate rock price…. It’s more of a demand pull market.”
Higher crop prices have pulled up the phosphate market over the last year. Monoammonium phosphate (MAP) was less than $500 per tonne in the United States last March, but has crept close to $625 per tonne this month.
Despite the demand pull nature of the market, phosphorus prices may drop this summer when a new phosphate plant in Saudi Arabia comes on stream, Asbridge said.
The plant is expected to produce three million tons of DAP, or 10 percent of global consumption.
Production facts
In 2008, mines around the world produced 161 million tonnes of phosphate rock concentrate (processed ore). That year, China led the world, producing 50 million tonnes of rock concentrate, followed by the U.S. at 30 million tonnes and Morocco at 25 million tonnes.
A 1979 report by two geologists, DeVoto and Stevens, estimated that Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Montana have 180,000 million tonnes of recoverable phosphate rock. However, much of that resource cannot be mined due to federal land classifications and environmental reasons.
Sources: IFDC World Phosphate Rock Reserves and Resources. University of Minnesota Extension service
