- apparently the people at this Oakland Institute can't be bothered to look at USDA website or the futures markets.
Grain is sitting in silos unsold. Prices and sales figures are falling off the table. The "food crisis" was manufactured by a futures bubble.
And can we stop recycling the same nonsense about nitrogen fertilizer?
Ammonia (NH3) fertilizer is only made from natural gas because it's a convenient source of hydrogen gas and the released carbon dioxide can be combined with the ammonia to make urea, which is easier to spread. But, as Wikipedia reminds us:
"Hydrogen required for ammonia synthesis could in principle be obtained from other sources, but these alternatives - apart from the electrolysis of water into oxygen + hydrogen - are presently impractical. At one time, most of Europe's ammonia was produced from the Hydro plant at Vemork, via the electrolysis route. Various renewable energy electricity sources are also potentially applicable."
In other words, there is nothing about nitrogen fertilizer that intrinsically requires fossil fuels as the formula NH3 should suggest. And its' not as though organic farmers don't use phosphate fertilizer. Phosphorous is a limiting nutrient in almost all ecological systems. Without added phosphate, you cannot get good yields because phosphorous is what nearly all living organisms require to produce or utilize chemical energy - ATP anyone?
This stuff is just tired.