The anti-energy left leading to less food production

 Robin Burk:

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that a shortage of fertilizer is causing farms in the developing world to fail, threatening food shortages and hunger. Ironically, the lead photo is of mounds of phosphate fertilizer in a Russian warehouse.

Modern synthetic fertilizers are typically made using natural gas or from phosphorous-bearing ores. The former provides the nitrogen that is critical to re-use of fields in commercial agriculture. They constitute more than half of all synthetic fertilizer production.

So what happens when oil and natural gas extraction are crippled in industrialized nations? One likely outcome is that the fertilizer manufacturing industry is also crippled, leaving both large commercial growers and smaller farms around the world starved of a key substance they need to grow food for hungry populations.

According to Wikipedia (yes, I know), that’s to be welcomed. After all,

[S]tarting in the 19th century, after innovations in plant nutrition, an agricultural industry developed around synthetically created fertilizers. This transition was important in transforming the global food system, allowing for larger-scale industrial agriculture with large crop yields. In particular nitrogen-fixing chemical processes . . . led to a boom in using nitrogen fertilizers. In the latter half of the 20th century, increased use of nitrogen fertilizers (800% increase between 1961 and 2019) has been a crucial component of the increased productivity of conventional food systems (more than 30% per capita) as part of the so-called ‘Green Revolution’.[2]

Synthetic fertilizer used in agriculture has wide-reaching environmental consequences. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land, production of these fertilizers and associated land use practices are key drivers of global warming.[2] The use of fertilizer has also led to a number of direct environmental consequences: agricultural runoff which leads to downstream effects like ocean dead zones and waterway contamination, soil microbiome degradation,[3] and accumulation of toxins in ecosystems. Indirect environmental impacts include: the environmental impacts of fracking for natural gas used in the Haber process, the agricultural boom is partially responsible for the rapid growth in human population . . .

So the IPCC says artificial fertilizer is a bad thing—and if you can’t trust the IPCC, who can you trust?

The real message is: “Pity about those people who’ll go hungry but there are just too many people living too well. They need our enlightened control as we ‘reset’ the world to make it a better place.”

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Modern agriculture requires not only fertilizer but power equipment to produce and harvest crops.  Big Green's goals will turn farming into a new dust bowl that will mean empty plates and bowls for humans and animals.  We much ignore Big Green and the anti-energy left to save the planet and humanity.