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Scientists warn of ‘phosphogeddon’ as critical fertiliser shortages loom

Our planet faces “phosphogeddon”, scientists have warned. They fear our misuse of phosphorus could lead to deadly shortages of fertilisers that would disrupt global food production. At the same time, phosphate fertiliser washed from fields – together with sewage inputs into rivers, lakes and seas – is giving rise to widespread algal blooms and creating aquatic dead zones that threaten fish stocks. In addition, overuse of the element is increasing releases of methane across the planet, adding to global heating and the climate crisis caused by carbon emissions, researchers have warned.

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  Humanity Is Flushing Away One of Life's Essential Elements

We broke phosphorus. Life as we know it is carbon based. But every organism requires other elements, too, including nitrogen and phosphorus. Nitrogen is the basis of all proteins, from enzymes to muscles, and the nucleic acids that encode our genes. Phosphorus forms the scaffolding of DNA, cell membranes, and our skeletons; it’s a key element in tooth and bone minerals.

  Phosphorus Saved Our Way of Life—and Now Threatens To End It

Fertilizers filled with the nutrient boosted our ability to feed the planet. Today, they’re creating vast and growing dead zones in our lakes and seas. Farmers can now purchase fertility as readily as they might buy seeds or plows. The result is a world awash in nutrients. This has created a new conundrum: How do we feed the planet without poisoning it?

 Life's Bottleneck: Sustaining the World's Phosphorus for a Food Secure Future

Phosphorus security is emerging as one of the twenty-first century's greatest global sustainability challenges. Phosphorus has no substitute in food production, and the use of phosphate fertilizers in the past 50 years has boosted crop yields and helped feed billions of people. However, these advantages have come at a serious cost. Mobilizing phosphate rock into the environment at rates vastly faster than the natural cycle has not only polluted many of the world's freshwater bodies and oceans, but has also created a human dependence on a single nonrenewable resource.

Articles of Interest

Farmers are facing a phosphorus crisis. The solution starts with soil.

Overuse of fertilizer has led to phosphorus shortages and water pollution. But farms might not need so much to grow healthy crops.

Phosphorus and nitrogen are already at the Earth's limits. We humans must act as members of the ecosystem

Professor Stephen Carpenter (USA), one of the two 2022 Blue Planet Prize winners, has been researching the problems of phosphorus and nitrogen cycles for more than 40 years, using lakes throughout Wisconsin for fieldwork. He points out that phosphorus and nitrogen cycles have already exceeded the Earth's limit and are broken, adversely affecting water resources around the world.

What is phosphorus and why are concerns mounting about its environmental impact?

Phosphorus and another nutrient, nitrogen, are key ingredients in synthetic fertilizers. They have become increasingly popular in recent decades but can have devastating effects when they enter lakes, rivers and the ocean.

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Our Phosphorus Future

The planetary boundary for biogeochemical flows of phosphorus is one of the furthest transgressed. In some areas of the world, phosphorus has been added to soils in excess, whereas, in others, soils remain phosphorus limited. In the former, losses of phosphorus through the food system to lakes, rivers, wetlands, and coastal ecosystems, can breach their natural assimilative capacity, for example, driving harmful algal blooms, biodiversity loss, and threatening drinking water supplies.