Blog Why Not?!

Organic Fertilizers
A morally and economical sound investment?
Economics, 081212

The world population is increasing and the demand for food will increase. The rice shortage this year further highlights problems associated with staple food.

Take maize as an example: not only is maize considered a staple food (thus being one of the commodities that (violate the law of demand) but maize can successfully be turned into maize ethanol and used as biofuel, or be made into plastics, fabrics and other chemical products. Thus what we have here is an increasing demand for maize not only as staple food for other means as well. And still the population is increasing. I guess it is safe to guess that we will have to grow more maize in the future.

Reading about this matters I found this interesting article that tells the following: increased production due to use of pesticides and insecticides is of limited use as excessive application render crop unfit as food, high yielding genetically modified seeds are limited due to government restrictions. So what we are left with are fertilizers as means of keeping up with the demand.

Since there are sustainability issues with chemical fertilizers (minerals are mined and nitrogen is made using fossil fuels) it might be a morally sound thing to invest in organic fertilizers.

It was this article that first peaked my interests. I guess we will see some interesting development in agriculture and fertilizers. The production cost of chemical fertilizers is so dependent on the price of the raw materials and then there is the increase in demand and so forth...

Have a look at this interesting chart of Potash Corp.. The peak in June 2008 is radical.

- Aramis

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