NARRATION

The story of phosphorus is the story of life itself.

Dr Dana Cordell

Basically without phosphorus, we can't produce food, it's as simple as that.

NARRATION

Phosphorus is the chemical backbone of DNA. Every cell, every plant, every living thing, needs phosphorus to survive and grow.

Mark Horstman

Each of us is full of it, so much so that phosphorus was first discovered back in 1669 when a German alchemist distilled it from 50 buckets of human urine.

More on urine a bit later, but for now, meet a chunk of pure phosphorus. It has to be kept underwater because it's so unstable.

Although one of the most abundant elements in the earth's crust, phosphorus is never found in this elemental form in nature, because it's so incredibly reactive.

Such is the energy it can release, that when I expose it to air, it reacts with oxygen and bursts into flame.

NARRATION

It's exactly this capacity to combine with what plants need that makes it such a useful fertiliser.

In the natural world, phosphorus is safely locked away in phosphate rocks. They build up as sediments on the seafloor from river run-off, or from bird droppings on islands like Nauru.

Chemical processing unlocks the power of phosphorus from these ancient rocks to make the superphosphate fertilisers that maintain global agriculture.

Mark Horstman

Phosphate deposits take millions of years to form, but after less than a century of mining them for fertiliser there's serious concern that the available resources are running out.

Luc Maene

We know that without the products that we manufacture we would not be able to feed the seven billion people we have now and the nine billion we will have in the future.

Dr Dana Cordell

We have at least three meals a day, and without phosphorus, you can't have those three meals a day.

NARRATION

Having lunch with sustainability researcher Dr Dana Cordell gives me plenty of food for thought.

Dr Dana Cordell

The phosphorus that's sitting here in our food today might have started its life in a phosphate mine in Western Sahara, and then shipped to the US for processing into fertilisers, and then shipped to Australia for application on Australian soils.

NARRATION

Discovering how much is embodied in food has led Dana to a vegetarian diet.

Dr Dana Cordell

Our research is telling us that to support a meat-based diet like you've got will probably take about two to three times more phosphorus than for a vegetarian-based diet.

NARRATION

Meat is more phosphorus intensive because of the crops grown to feed the livestock.

Dr Dana Cordell

While Australia has naturally phosphorous-deficient soils, we have at the same time invested in phosphorous intensive export commodities, like live sheep, beef, and wheat, which require a lot of phosphorous input, a lot of fertiliser input, for the output that we get.

NARRATION

All this leaves our economy vulnerable to future shocks of phosphorus scarcity.

Dr Dana Cordell

We've really reached the situation where Australia is completely addicted to phosphate, and about half of that comes from imported sources.

NARRATION

Like peak oil, she warns that the world is fast reaching the time when global production of available phosphate supplies peak, and then start to decline.

Dr Dana Cordell

If farmers can't access phosphorous world-wide, we'll see a decline in global crop yields.

Mark Horstman

When's the crunch point?

Dr Dana Cordell

Well, our analysis is showing that we're likely to see a peak phosphorous event within the next few decades, by 2035.

Luc Maene

Phosphorus is a finite resource, however the current analysis of peak phosphorus is somewhat flawed in the sense that it is based on data that are obsolete.

NARRATION

The data preferred by the fertiliser industry show there's enough phosphate rock to last another three or four hundred years.

Luc Maene

We will be able to provide phosphate for many, many decades to come.

NARRATION

But no matter the year, there will be a peak, and Dana believes we need to prepare for when it comes sooner rather than later.

Dr Dana Cordell

What we saw in 2008 could certainly be a glimpse of the future in terms of what a phosphorous-scarce future might look like, and it certainly wasn't a pretty one.

NARRATION

Across the developing world in 2008, hungry people rioted as food supplies ran low and the price of phosphate rock spiked by 800 percent.

Dr Dana Cordell

This showed us that we currently do not have any institutional structures that can cope with that kind of a shock. And no government, let alone the UN, is doing anything about it.

NARRATION

A good start would be to use more of what we mine and waste less.

Dr Dana Cordell

Eighty percent of the phosphorus we mine for food production actually gets lost throughout the food production and consumption chain.

NARRATION

Which brings me back to urine.

Because nearly all of the phosphorus eaten in food is excreted, urine is the single largest source of phosphorus coming from cities.

Mark Horstman

What's special about this toilet?

Dr Dana Cordell

Well, what we're doing here is we're trialling urine separation via a urine-diverting toilet, which means that urine has to get captured at the front.

NARRATION

We need to start mining our waste and use it for agriculture.

Dr Dana Cordell

If we were going to roll that out across Australia, we'd actually need to think about how we're going to logistically recover that phosphorous.

Mark Horstman

Plus men would have to sit down to pee, wouldn't they?

Dr Dana Cordell

Absolutely.

Dr Dr Dana Cordell

When we talk about food, we think about water and soil, carbon and climate change - now it's time to talk about phosphorus as well.