permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On 11/17/06 11:22 AM, "Jody Troupe" <jodyt2@mac.com> wrote:

>> Another angle: Rock phospate (and thus all those phosphorus products) is a
>> limited resource only found in a few places on earth (florida, morocco, 
>> ??).
> 
> Idaho, some islands off of Spain -

Florida and North Carolina account for 85% of US phosphate rock production.
This is pretty scary because I've seen open pit phosphate mines in Utah and
they are frickin' enormous, thousands of feet across. So I'd hate to see the
scale of the mines that do the real production.  Another good reason to try
to generate and recycle your own nutrients. Just because organic
certification okays the use of rock phosphate doesn't mean it isn't damaging
to the planet.

Toby