Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Peak soil: it’s like peak oil, only worse
http://peakgeneration.blogspot.com/2010/05/peak-soil-its-like-peak-oil-only-worse.html
Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Resource collapse is bigger than peak oil, and bigger even than the projected 
depletion of natural gas, coal and uranium – it encompasses each and every 
natural resource extracted, exploited or otherwise processed on an industrial 
scale.

This is not to deny peak oil, or the subsequent decline of all the other 
hydrocarbons that are essential to our lives and economies; the point is that 
even if we switched to renewable energy tomorrow, we would still not be out 
of the mess that we’re in. We’re experiencing problems with our living 
environment – climate, soil and water – that are more than just energy issues.

Once again, Hubbert’s model can be applied to any finite resource we extract 
from the Earth. If it’s tragic that we are burning through all available 
resources with no thought for future consequences, it’s worse still to think 
that the payback will likely happen all together. We will probably find 
ourselves dealing with a widespread hydrocarbons collapse right when we have 
to face a greatly reduced global capacity to grow crops and find people 
enough water to drink.

The peak debate, although on the surface about energy security, comes back to 
food supply. So here I’m going to look at peak soil, peak water and peak 
phosphorous.

Peak soil

The world is losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it. At 
the same time, population is growing exponentially – 9.3 billion by 2050, 
according to UN projections.

Areas of the world – particularly northern China, sub-Saharan Africa, and 
parts of Australia are already losing large tracts of arable land. Soil 
management is about more than heaping on chemical fertilizers. A 2008 New 
York Times article, Scientists focus on making better soil to help with food 
concerns, that examined the complex nature of simple dirt found that:

    Soil does not arise quickly. In nature it starts with a layer of glacial 
grit,
    or windblown sand, or cooled lava, or alluvial silt, or some other 
crumbled
    mineral matter. A few pioneer plants put down shallow roots, and living
    things begin to make their homes in and on the surface, enriching it with
    their excrement, and enriching it further when they die and rot.

    The resulting organic matter feeds a whole underground ecology that 
aerates the
    soil, fixes nutrients, and makes it more hospitable for plant life, and 
over
    time the process feeds back on itself. If the soil does not wash away or 
get
    parched by drought, it very gradually thickens. It takes tens of thousands
    of years to make 15 centimeters of topsoil, about 6 inches' worth.

The UN’s Global Environment outlook, published 2007, states: “Deficiency of 
plant nutrients in the soil is the most significant biophysical factor 
limiting crop production across very large areas in the tropics.”

Peak water

The term peak water comes from the fact that much of the world’s drinking 
water lies in underground aquifers and in lakes, which behaves like a finite 
resource by being depleted. According to the UN’s Global Environment Outlook:

    By 2025, about 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions 
with
    absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be
    under conditions of water stress – the threshold for meeting the water
    requirements for agriculture, industry, domestic purposes, energy and the
    environment (UN Water 2007). This will have major impacts on activities 
such
    as farming. . .

As things stand right now, every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related 
disease. Water is an urgent issue. Especially as, due to climate change, many 
parts of the world are becoming drier.

Himalayan glaciers that are the principal dry-season water sources of Asia's 
biggest rivers - Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and 
Yellow - could disappear. An international conferrence in Kathmandu recently 
heard a UN report that, if temperatures continue to rise "there will be no 
snow and ice in the Himalayas in 50 years." Under the headline Vanishing 
Himalayan Glaciers Threaten a Billion, we read of the unimaginably vast scope 
of climate change:

    Thousands of glaciers in the Himalayas are the source of water for nine 
major
    Asian rivers whose basins are home to 1.3 billion people from Pakistan to
    Myanmar, including parts of India and China. . .

Peak phosphorus

Phosphorus is essential for plant life. It is removed from the soil by 
plants, and, in the case of agriculture, returned through fertilizers – along 
with nitrogen and potassium. Most of the world’s agricultural land does not 
have enough phosphate, so this is vital if an increasing global population is 
to be fed.

Phosphate rocks are mined to produce the fertilizer; when their output drops, 
so does that of our agriculture. The paper Peak phosphorus, by Patrick Déry 
and Bart Anderson, states:

    In the literature, estimates before we "run out" of phosphorus range from 
50 to
    130 years. This date is conveniently far enough in the future so that 
immediate
    action does not seem necessary. However, as we know from peak oil 
analysis,
    trouble begins not when we "run out" of a resource, but when production 
peaks.
    From that point onward, the resource becomes more difficult to extract 
and more
    expensive.

An April 2010 Foreign Policy article by James Elser and Stuart White, again 
titled Peak phosphorus, is essential reading because it shows just how 
insidious the current phosphorus issue is:

    Increased demand for fertilizer and the decreased supply of phosphorus 
exports
    will result in higher prices, significantly affecting millions of farmers 
in the
    developing world who live on the brink of bankruptcy and starvation. 
Rising
    fertilizer prices could tip this balance.

    Already, signs are emerging that our current practices cannot continue 
for long. Between 2003 and 2008, phosphate fertilizer prices rose 
approximately 350 percent. In 2008, rising food prices sparked riots in more 
than 40 countries. Although the spike in fertilizer prices was only partially 
responsible for the higher food prices, the riots illustrate the social 
upheaval caused by disruptions to the world's food supply. The 2008 food 
riots were only stopped by government promises of food subsidies -- a viable 
strategy only as long as governments can afford the ever-increasing costs of 
food support.

Phosphorous is not destroyed when it’s used and so could be recovered and 
recycled. It’s more productive to work harder to prevent soil erosion, and 
come up with more precise ways to apply fertilizer. The Foreign Policy 
article continues that if we fail to use the limited phosphorous that remains 
in a sustainable way, millions will starve:

    If we fail to meet this challenge, humanity faces a Malthusian trap of
    widespread famine on a scale that we have not yet experienced. The 
geopolitical
    impacts of such disruptions will be severe, as an increasing number of 
states
    fail to provide their citizens with a sufficient food supply.

A decline in phosphorous output has the potential to cause more death, 
especially in developing countries, than that of oil.

Conclusions

It’s wrong to assume these issues will only apply to the poorest of the poor 
in the developing nations – it’s just that they, like the proverbial canary 
in the coalmine, will be hit first to die. When post-peak oil prices cause 
the already weakened Western economies to slump into terminal 
recession/depression, we too will find ourselves living marginal lives. Then 
it may well be our turn.

Just as we will face a global energy crisis, we will be forced to come to 
terms with some equally urgent issues. The global population is rising 
exponentially. Soil is becoming poorer throughout most of the world, and 
access to clean water more scarce. According to the UN, by the mid-2020s, 
two-thirds of the world’s population may struggle to find enough water to 
meet their needs. A decline in phosphorous by itself could pose a “Malthusian 
trap of widespread famine on a scale that we have not yet experienced.”

In addition, we are facing the very real prospect of global climate change. 
(Stepping around the political games, climate is changing. Parts of the world 
are becoming drier, and some more prone to flooding.)

So, the world is facing a hydrocarbons peak, right as we are beginning to 
struggle with soil, the nutrients required for large scale agriculture, 
environmental change and availability of water. When you put the disparate 
elements together, it begins to look like a perfect storm.