Phosphorus and the Poop Problem

In the history of civilization, cities have never been as densely populated as they are now. The reason is twofold: 1) industrialized agriculture spares human labor from needing to be on the farm, and 2) modern sewers cause the rivers of human waste that would otherwise kill everyone in cholera epidemics and the like to be kept away. Food goes into the city, poop comes out of the city, everyone wins.

Except there's a coming resource shortage that may monkey-wrench the whole cycle: Phosphorous. It's what we use to make fertilizer; it's the element that allows farmland to be used again and again. It's the stuff that runs off and causes problems in the Chesapeake. We get it largely from phosphate rock, and our use of it is incredibly innefficient:

Worldwide, according to Cordell and White, five times more phosphorus is being mined than is being consumed. Stated another way, 15 million tons of phosphorus is mined yearly to grow food, but 80 percent never reaches the dinner table: It is lost to inefficiency and waste.

Farmers use too much fertilizer and it runs off the land, polluting streams, lakes and oceans. Industrial agriculture does not plow crop residues back into the soil after the harvest. In some countries, consumers throw away a third of their food, even when much of it is still edible.

The article blames the usual culprits, meat-eating and industry, so I can already see the angle that the enviro-Left is going to take with this. If the Right had guts, they would use this as the wedge against our repulsive, quasi-Soviet agricultural subsidy system, which drives our phosphate-heavy agribusiness practices. I'm not holding my breath.

The solution: poop. Lots and lots of poop. The whole system of waste management may indeed be a waste, and the time may come, and soon, for the ultimate in personal recycling.