That’s probably overselling the importance of fertilizer a little. A huge proportion of the food we grow is completely wasted, rots without anyone eating it, or doesn’t “look nice” so gets fed to animals who could just as easily eat other food sources. Another gigantic portion of the is grown inefficiently and stupidly for political and cultural and other asinine reasons, grown in inefficient places, or are inefficient crops to begin with. Sometimes it’s all of the above, and sometimes it’s not even grown for food at all, it’s grown for oil. We burn it, because that’s environmentally friendly, somehow. Famine is not a global agricultural problem, it’s an economic problem, sometimes an intellectual property problem and almost always a political problem, it has nothing to do with lack of fertilizer, it never has been, and it almost certainly never will be. The whole system is rigged top to bottom, and fertilizer isn’t going to make or break it.
Where do you think that proportion wasted is wasted? What happens when energy costs spike and plastics become more expensive? When logistics, transport and storage costs go up, waste doesn’t vashish, it grows exponentionally.
Estimates of the global population reliant on synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers, produced via the Haber-Bosch process for food production. Best estimates project that just over half of the global population could be sustained without reactive nitrogen fertilizer derived from the Haber-Bosch process.
Ferts can be made without natural gas, just bit more bothersome. Instead of cracking methane for hydrogen, we’ll have to split water.
Im sure it will be great comfort to the billions who starve in a global famine while we spend decades building out the infrastructure for that.
That’s probably overselling the importance of fertilizer a little. A huge proportion of the food we grow is completely wasted, rots without anyone eating it, or doesn’t “look nice” so gets fed to animals who could just as easily eat other food sources. Another gigantic portion of the is grown inefficiently and stupidly for political and cultural and other asinine reasons, grown in inefficient places, or are inefficient crops to begin with. Sometimes it’s all of the above, and sometimes it’s not even grown for food at all, it’s grown for oil. We burn it, because that’s environmentally friendly, somehow. Famine is not a global agricultural problem, it’s an economic problem, sometimes an intellectual property problem and almost always a political problem, it has nothing to do with lack of fertilizer, it never has been, and it almost certainly never will be. The whole system is rigged top to bottom, and fertilizer isn’t going to make or break it.
Where do you think that proportion wasted is wasted? What happens when energy costs spike and plastics become more expensive? When logistics, transport and storage costs go up, waste doesn’t vashish, it grows exponentionally.
Expand graph
Estimates of the global population reliant on synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers, produced via the Haber-Bosch process for food production. Best estimates project that just over half of the global population could be sustained without reactive nitrogen fertilizer derived from the Haber-Bosch process.
Source: OurWorldInData
We’re already building it out because morons think hydrogen is the future of energy.