Reply #6: It's not always about "sources." [View All]

[hunter]

In many soils the phosphorous is there. but you have to cultivate the bacteria, fungi, etc., that are able to grab it and make it available to plants. Generally these organisms get the energy to do this by the addition of organic materials to the soil. It is also possible to utilize bulky otherwise unusable and locally available phosphate rock by adding it to compost.

Obviously we are not going to be shipping these bulky additives all over the world like we do concentrated synthetic fertilizers.

I'm an organic gardener. In our household there are plenty of things we can throw into the compost heap. I have no idea how I'd scale those gardening skills up to plant hundreds of acres -- maybe giant compost heaps? Anyone know how to turn great stinking piles of manure into sweet smelling compost usable near residential areas?

I'm pretty sure there is no general solution. As prices for fertilizers increase, people will adapt their farming methods to use locally available resources, pay the increased price, or starve. Whatever solutions to the problem we find will tend be local, especially if they involve the transport of very bulky materials.