Might as well face it, you're addicted to phosphorus
According to new research published in the journal Global Environmental Change, we're , a crucial ingredient of the fertilisers that farmers currently lavish on their crops to keep them bursting with food.
can only be mined in a handful of countries such as the US, China and Morocco - and we may run out of it 50-100 years from now, according to a joint study by Linkoping University and the Institute for Sustainable Futures.
Great news for the climate, some would say. (Fertiliser production pumps 410m tonnes of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every year, according to Greenpeace's 2008 report, '', out-emitting farm machinery by a factor of two.)
Not such good news, however, for the two billion peckish new mouths that will need feeding by 2050, warns the study's chief author, Dana Cordell. 'Acquiring enough phosphorus to grow food will be a significant challenge for humanity in the future', she concludes.
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