Thus, the price will likely rise, making it harder for growers to afford fertilizer and for people to afford food. Geologists know of other deposits, but they are harder to access and contain less phosphorus. By some estimates, those could run out in as little as 50 to 100 years. Nearly all of the phosphorus that farmers use today-and that we consume in the food we eat-is mined from a few sources of phosphate rock, mainly in the United States, China, and Morocco. Second, we don’t have phosphorus to waste. The reasons are twofold: First, phosphorus runoff from farms contributes to widespread water pollution. For centuries, farmers have added extra to their fields to boost harvests, but Sylvester-Bradley and his colleagues are studying ways to produce food using less of it. Phosphorus occurs naturally in soil and is a critical nutrient for plant growth. That’s something of a surprise to Sylvester-Bradley, a crop scientist at ADAS, an agricultural consulting company in Cambridge, England. Turning them in his hands, he says, “when you see a plant that’s deficient in phosphorus, it doesn’t look like this.” He stoops to pluck an ankle-high seedling from the ground and examines its healthy mop of fine white roots. On an overcast day, Roger Sylvester-Bradley walks along a hawthorn hedge, collecting a thick rind of mud on his leather boots, before stepping into a gently sloping field of barley.
0 kommentar(er)
