Simple nutrients support all life on Earth. From microbe to plant to human being, every living organism relies on the molecule ATP (adenosine triphosphate) as the essential energy carrier in its cells. This makes the element phosphorus indispensable to all living things. Fertilizers made from essential nutrients such as phosphorus have powered the farming miracle that has tripled world food production in the past half century.
Their use on high- yielding crops developed in the Green Revolution prevented starvation in countries such as China and India and doubled harvests in many countries. Just as oil has been the fuel of the transportation revolution, fertilizers are the fuel of the global food miracle.
Yet humanity today hemorrhages nutrients at every link in the chain. They bleed from the farm itself in soil, water, and wind. They are lost when food perishes in transit or storage. They are sacrificed when grains, fruits, or livestock are pro cessed into food and inedible “waste” is discarded. They are squandered all along the food chain from factory to supermarket to home.
They are lost in cooking. They go in our garbage bins. And when we dispose of our sewage, the nutrients it contains often go out to sea, to fertilize the deep oceans or to pollute rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters, causing choking blooms of algae, which in turn smother, starve, or poison fish and edible sea life along our fertile continental shelves
Agricultural Approaches and the Future of Food Security
