All crops need phosphorus for healthy growth. Phosphorus is a building block of plant protein. Working to reduce, reuse and recycle phosphorus will make a more sustainable food system.

When Hennig Brandt discovered the element phosphorus in 1669, it was a mistake. He was really looking for gold. But his mistake was a very important scientific discovery. What Brandt couldn’t have realized was the importance of phosphorus to the future of farming.

Phosphorus is one of the necessary ingredients for healthy crop growth and yields. When farms were smaller and self-sufficient, farmers harvested their crops, and nutrients rarely left the farm. The family or animals consumed the food, and the farmer could spread manure from their animals onto the soil to rebuild nutrients. This was a fairly closed-loop phosphorus cycle.

But, as the world’s population increased, so did food and nutrition needs. More of a farmer’s harvest, and therefore nutrients, was sold off the farm. Agriculture adapted by developing many new growing methods, as well as fertilizers. Most phosphorus fertilizers use the world’s supply of phosphate rock as a main ingredient. That main modern source is a finite resource and it’s running out. Phosphate rock is also hard to mine and process.

“There is an urgent need to increase phosphorus use efficiency in agroecosystems,” says Kimberley Schneider, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. “There are many chemical, physical and biological processes that affect the availability of phosphorus to crops.” This is why farmers place great importance in having enough phosphorus for their crops.

Continue reading at American Society of Agronomy

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