Peak Phosphorus: Clarifying the Key Issues of a Vigorous Debate about Long-Term Phosphorus Security

By D. Cordell, S. White. 2011

592 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper reviews the latest information and perspectives on global phosphorus scarcity. Phosphorus is essential for food production and modern agriculture currently sources phosphorus fertilizers from finite phosphate rock. The 2008 food and phosphate fertilizer price spikes triggered increased concerns regarding the depletion timeline of phosphate rock reserves. While estimates range from 30 to 300 years and are shrouded by lack of publicly available data and substantial uncertainty, there is a general consensus that the quality and accessibility of remaining reserves are decreasing and costs will increase. This paper clarifies common sources of misunderstandings about phosphorus scarcity and identifies areas of consensus. It then asks, despite some persistent uncertainty, what would it take to achieve global phosphorus security? What would a ‘hard-landing’ response look like and how could preferred ‘soft-landing’ responses be achieved?

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d5b28fcff571fcf923e38fba03230c5b454b830

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Environmental Chemistry

1. S. White
2. D. Cordell
3. T. Weis
4. James J. Elser
5. E. Bennett
6. S. Hall
7. M. Boersma
8. Jordi Sardans

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. D. Cordell
2. S. White
3. T. Weis
4. Huchang Liao
5. E. Bennett
6. Laura Saikku

Citations in the corpus

• Ten Years of Sustainability (2009 to 2018): A Bibliometric Overview (2018, background): “3 Peak phosphorus: clarifying the key issues of a vigorous debate about long-term phosphorus security [24] Cordell, D.”
• The meat of the global food crisis (2013, background): “Although there are considerable uncertainties about the absolute supply limits (and hence precise timelines), concern has been sometimes dubbed ‘peak phosphorous’ (Cordell et al. 2009, Cordell and White 2011). productivity and expand the arable land area.”
• Drivers for global agricultural land use change: The nexus of diet, population, yield and bioenergy (2015, background): “2 The increasing costs of fossil fuels for transportation, depletion of rock-phosphate 3 reserves and geopolitical issues affecting access to resources, could also affect yields 4 and production costs (Cordell and White, 2011).”
• Life's Bottleneck: Sustaining the World's Phosphorus for a Food Secure Future (2014, methodology): “The sharp decline in global fertilizer demand after 1989 was attributed both to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a previously significant phosphate consumer, and to persistent changes in fertilizer application in North America and Western Europe associated with increased awareness of overapplicatio”
• The role of diet in phosphorus demand (2012, background): “On the one hand, we face rising prices and potential scarcity of non-renewable P resources (Cordell and White 2011, Cooper et al 2011, Vaccari and Strigul 2011).”
• Transition towards Circular Economy in the Food System (2016, background): “, human and animal excreta and food and crop waste [20,21].”