Peak Phosphorus: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

This EXCLUSIVE feature (with part 2 next time) deals with phosphorus availability to farming. While the primary thing that's going on in North Africa right now is a fight for democracy, in the context of this article, North Africa takes on a new significance...Especially Morocco .

Read on to see why....

(pic: phosphorus mining, from tree hugger)

Sometimes, it seems, its not that it rains but it pours. Just as the economy nosedives, a whole range of agri-food peaks seem to be emerging in tandem.

There's an impending peak in global oil availability. There is the peak of 350 parts per million in atmospheric carbon, which we have passed but hope to drop back to. Without doing so, we are over what scientists consider to be the safe limit and may trigger runaway climate change.

And now, there's peak phosphorus.

Of the farmers' Holy Trinity of N, P and K in the stalwart bag of 10-10-20, its the K that's most at risk.

While mined potassium will be available for centuries, and while nitrogen can be fixed from the air, mined phosphorus may only have decades left. What's more, a peak in supply may, according to a new report issued by the UK's Soil Association, come as soon as 2033.

This report, �A rock and a hard place: Peak phosphorus and the threat to our food security� points out that once we come close to and reach this peak, prices will inevitably start to rise.

Crucially, agriculture will have to adapt to this or face the possibility of failing to feed even more than the 8-900 million it currently fails to feed.

What has been called by the Scientific American �a geostrategic time bomb� colours the situation significantly: there are just three main global sources of phosphorus - the US, China and Morocco/Western Sahara.

According to the Soil Association report, �In 2009, 158 million metric tonnes of phosphate

rock was mined worldwide. 67% of this resource was mined in just three countries - China (35%), the USA (17%) and Morocco and Western Sahara (15%). China has now restricted, and the USA has stopped, exports of phosphate�.

So that basically leaves the rest of the world depending on Morocco.

The report claims that phosphate availability �is missing from the global policy agenda - we are completely unprepared to deal with the shortages in phosphorus inputs, the drop in production and the hike in food prices that will follow. Without fertilisation from phosphorus it has been estimated that wheat yields could more then halve in coming decades, falling from nine tonnes a hectare to four tonnes a hectare.�

Research released in 2008 by the pan-European QLIF (Quality Low Input Food) project reported found even more stark figures. It suggested that without phosphorus, non-organic wheat yields could fall from an average of eight to just 2.5 tonnes per hectare, while organic yields (of six tonnes per hectare) would also decline, though not as starkly. This is because organic farming encourages a wider number of sources of phosphate input.

According to Professor Carlo Leifert, one of the scientists at the University of Newcastle working on the project, �If you look at textbooks from 30 years ago, they estimate that we had about 500 years of phosphorus left. Now we are using about 125 million tonnes each year. Even optimists � and we are optimists � estimate that there is no more than about 60 years of phosphorus left now. And you can�t substitute one mineral fertiliser with another.�

The 2010 Soil Association report points out that �the current price of phosphate rock is approximately twice that of 2006. When demand for phosphate fertiliser outstripped supply in 2007/08, the price of rock phosphate rose 800%.�

It continues �A radical rethink of how we farm, what we eat and how we deal with human excreta, so that adequate phosphorus levels can be maintained without reliance on mined phosphate, is crucial for ensuring our future food supplies.�

UK FSA report on organic vs conventional food's nutrition: part 2

As revealed last posting on this, the recent UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) report, comparing the nutritional levels of organic and conventional foods from 1958 to February 2008, actually left out every publication from before 1990.

In total, 2/3 of all the relevant peer reviewed research was rejected.

The logic given in the report is that in the 66% of rejected work, various failings in the peer review process were uncovered. The biggest single fault found was that no certification body was listed or inferred for the organic produce analysed (p 15).

In many cases this was because certification was in its infancy.

This is a very big and very important decision to make. Many state bodies, such as our own Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (DAFF), does not actually have a certification body.

DAFF is what is called the competent authority: it delegates to private inspection and certification bodies. However, it does not have private certification bodies inspect its own research centres.

Thus, any research done by DAFF would not have been included in this report, irrespective of which scientific journal it appeared in.

It is reasonable to assume that the same could also hold for at least some other state institutions across the world, who inevitably delegate authority to private certification bodies.

Often, the state does not see the need or value in inspections on its own research by these private bodies: after all, it delegates power to these bodies.

This certification issue is especially significant because in this rejected 66%, the findings are far more positive for organic than in the 34% considered at the quality level.

Interestingly, the report itself does actually list nutritional findings taken from an analysis of all 162 publications.

It is just that the official findings and conclusions, which suggest that there are no significant differences between organic and conventional in nutritional terms, come from their analysis of just 55 publications: i.e. the smaller 1/3 or 34%. For example, they claim:

�Organically produced crops were found to have significantly higher levels of sugars, magnesium, zinc, dry matter, phenolic compounds and flavonoids than conventionally crops� (p 17).

These significant differences were found when taking all 162 peer reviewed published papers into account.

When taking the narrower quality criteria, and considering just a maximum of 55, or 1/3, only three differences were found: Conventional crops were found to have more nitrogen, and organic crops more phosphorus and titratable acidity.

Based on the latter three findings from the smaller set of publications, the authors claim that no significant differences were to be found between organic and conventional nutritionally.

The same holds for livestock products: 3 out of ten significant differences were found between organic and conventional. However with the narrower selection criteria, which leaves out 2/3 of all published research, just one was found. The other two were rejected due to insufficient data.

Out of a possible 162, just 25 in total dealt with all livestock products: i.e. all meat and dairy products.

Incredibly, within these 25, it seems that hardly any were considered to actually have met the quality criteria: according to appendix 13, p.3, no more than 6 publications were at the required level for the authors.

To say that more research is needed sometimes just sounds like an appeal for funding: in this case, it seems fairly clear that this handful of livestock product papers, supposedly spanning five decades, is fairly paltry.

Professor Carlo Leifert co-ordinated the major EU Quality Low Input Food (QLIF) initiative, which involved 31 research and university institutes.

Leifert's own research, suggesting organic milk's nutritional superiority, appeared in April 2008 - technically 2 months too late for inclusion in the study.

He said: "I'm worried about the conclusions. The ballpark figures they have come up with are similar to ours. I don't understand why the FSA are not going away and saying, 'Right, there's something you can do on a farm to improve food.' But they are so blocked by not wanting to say positive things about organic farming."

The new Northern situation: the challenge intensive organic food from Northern Ireland poses

On top of general recession-related worries, Irish organic farmers have another thing to contend with: technically organic but nonetheless intensive produce from Northern Ireland.

Northern Irish economies of scale and the sterling differential are continuing to put pressure on southern Irish organic producers.

In light of these effects, what were reported last week as strong signals for producer price reductions are reported to be continuing, whatever about the brave public face farmers and operators put on.

Organic farmers and operators fear and risk de-listing for putting their heads above the parapet and complaining. There are few processing and retailer options in Ireland.

Today I encountered an organic chicken in Tescos for E5.71. It weighted 1.118 kilos, and was E5.11 a kilo � down from E6.81 per kilo.

This chicken, from John Connolly in county Tyrone, was from Northern Ireland. Sourcing from the north seems to be an increasing trend for retailers.

The chicken was labelled UK2 - the Organic Farmers and Growers (OFG) certification code. There are nine UK certifiers, which includes the two Irish certifiers. This is mainly because Irish and UK certifiers can operate in Northern Ireland.

The Soil Association are the UK biggest organic certification body. They have been very critical of the OFG poultry standards.

While the Soil Association have a 500 recommended and 1000 birds maximum, OGF and others allow for 4800, with the option of going up to 9000 birds.

Southern Irish poultry farms tend to have up to 500 birds.

The natural flocking size of chickens is considered to be about 100. It is possible on smaller enterprises to allow for this, though some organic farmers stick rigidly to housing arrangements which encourage this.

Inevitably, this sort of flock size becomes more difficult when the numbers run into the thousands.

However the economy of scale of thousands of birds bring the price down for the consumer: hence half the price per kilo for Northern Irish as southern Irish organic chicken in supermarkets.

Competition from Northern Ireland is also effecting organic milk producers. Organic dairy farms in Northern Ireland are larger and more intensive. They rely more on concentrates than grass for feed. This increases the negative environmental effect, as feed production and transportation adds to global warming and the use of pesticides and herbicides more than grass growing does.

Organic dairy farms also have 2-3 times as many cows in Northern Ireland as their southern counterparts.

Up to half of the milk in Glenisk's pool comes from Northern Ireland. All of the organic milk in the discounter LIDI comes from Northern Ireland. This retails at E1.19 a litre, as does Tescos own brand organic milk. Glenisk' on the other hand, is usually about E1.65.

Inevitably, competition from the more industrialised Northern Irish farmers effects the price southern farmers can get.

There are also nutritional effects: organic milk regularly scores better than conventional when it comes to nutritional data, in particular the Omega 3 and 6 ratio. This has been found in studies across Europe.

Upon closer inspection of some of the more recent data, however, it appears that grass is at least as important as organic: milk from predominantly grass fed animals is nutritionally superior to milk from diary cows fed significant amounts of concentrates.

See for example the research of Professor Carlo Leifert from the Quality low Input Farming project in Newcastle University.

In southern Ireland, organic dairy cows are both predominantly grass fed and organic � a win win nutritionally.

However, for poultry and diary and the broader organic sector in general, scientific research specific to the Irish situation, followed by the marketing of the results, needs to be undertaken as a matter of urgency.

Otherwise people will see the word organic and think one product is the same as the next.

Consumers sometimes use the world organic as an anxiety appeaser: they see it and stop thinking, or worrying, about the broader ethics.

However, as even these two simple examples suggest, organic in one place is not necessarily the same as in another, even on an island as small as Ireland.