如果您想真正弄乱世界的粮食生产，那么一个好的起点是Bou Craa，位于撒哈拉西部任何地方的沙漠里。它们在这里的生长不多，但是Bou Craa是一个矿山，其中包含世界上最大的磷酸盐岩石储量之一。我们大多数日子，我们大多数人都会吃一些在该矿山受精石施肥的田野上种植的食物。而且没有替代品。
西撒哈拉是一个被占领的领土。1976年，当西班牙殖民主义者离开时，其邻居摩洛哥入侵了，此后一直持有它。大多数观察家认为，巨大的磷酸盐沉积是摩洛哥引起兴趣的主要原因。不管事实如何，联合国将成为领土上合法代表的叛军运动，即叛军运动，都希望将其退回。
Not many people would call phosphate a critical issue or one with serious environmental consequences. But even leaving aside the resource politics of the Sahara, it is an absolutely vital resource for feeding the world. It is also a resource that could start running low within a couple of decades — and one we grossly misuse, pouring it across the planet and recycling virtually none of it.
The world’s food supplies are alarmingly dependent on the phosphate fertilizer that is hewn from the desert of the Western Sahara. The vast open-cast mine at Bou Craa delivers several million tons of phosphate rock every year down a 150-kilometer-long conveyor belt, the world’s longest, to the Atlantic port of El Ayoun. From there, it is distributed around the world and made into fertilizer.
摩洛哥的磷酸盐储量归Office Cherifien des Phosphates, a Moroccan state agency. Given the almost unlimited executive powers of the Moroccan monarch, it might reasonably be said that most of the world’s known reserves of phosphate are, in effect, owned by King Mohammed VI and his Alaouite dynasty, which has reigned in Morocco since the 17th century.
如果西撒哈拉人民曾经恢复过战争以使自己的国家恢复原状 - 或者阿拉伯之春蔓延开来，而摩洛哥则是利比亚的道路 - 那么我们可能会将磷酸盐肥料添加到有限资源的清单中，例如水和土地，例如水和土地，这比我们想象的要早日限制世界粮食供应。
磷是所有生命的基础之一。每个活细胞都需要它。植物需要磷在需要水中生长。许多土壤还没有足够的能力满足绿色革命的高产物农作物品种的磷。但是，我们可以通过开采磷酸盐岩石并将其变成肥料以在土地上蔓延。
每130吨谷物生产每年的磷酸盐需要一吨磷酸盐，这就是为什么每年每年大约1.7亿吨磷酸盐岩石在世界各地运送并保持土壤肥沃的原因。
世界上大多数最好的磷酸盐储量都消失了，而剩下的磷酸盐储量仅为少数国家。
Currently, only about 15 percent of that comes from mines in the Western Sahara and Morocco. But the only other large producers, the U. S. and China, mostly keep supplies for their own use. So Morocco is by far the biggest contributor to international trade, with more than half the total business. The people of India, the world’s largest importer, would be starving without Morocco’s phosphates. Brazil’s agricultural boom would never have happened otherwise.
Even more critically in the longer term, the U.S. Geological Survey says that of the 65 billion tons of the world’s known phosphate rock reserves — and the estimated 16 billion tons that might be economic to mine — almost 80 percent is in Western Sahara and Morocco. Add in China’s reserves, and the figure rises to almost 90 percent. The U.S., with 1.4 billion tons, is close to running out. You can see why agronomists are starting to get worried.
The world is not about to run out of phosphate. But demand is rising, most of the best reserves are gone, and those that remain are in just a handful of countries. Dana Cordell of Linkoping University in Sweden, who runs an academic group called the全球磷研究计划，说我们可以在2030年左右到达“峰值磷”。
As domestic production wanes, the U.S. is starting to join those countries — most of the world, in fact — that import phosphate from Morocco and the Western Sahara. American imports cross the Atlantic courtesy of Potash Corp, the Canada-based fertilizer company whose hostile takeover bid by the Australian mining giant BHP Billiton was blocked by the Canadian government last year. And phosphate mining in Florida, which is home to the world’s largest phosphate mine, is being challenged by environmentalists concerned about its impact on waterways and drinking water supplies.
就像其他曾经占主导地位的主要商品一样，磷酸盐的价格也开始令人震惊。2008年的价格飙升为800％。
一个世纪前，世界上许多国际贸易的磷酸盐都来自骨头（一次是英国的主要进口）和鸟粪，从太平洋岛屿发掘了鸟类，那里的鸟类已经将磷酸盐排便了数百万年。但是骨头不再被交易了很多，现在大多数鸟粪群岛都被开采了。例如，瑙鲁岛州瑙鲁（Nauru）几十年来开采它以施肥澳大利亚的谷物田而已。
另一个关键要素施肥现代高生产力农场土壤所需的是氮。我们知道如何从大气中“固定”氮。如果德国化学家弗里茨·哈伯（Fritz Haber）在1908年没有提出他的进程，那将不会发生绿色革命 - 今天地球上不会有70亿人。据估计，该过程产生的氮直接造成了30亿美元。
但是没有新的磷酸盐来源。我们继续开采岩石 - 或者我们饿了。
我们可以找到回收磷酸盐并将其保存在我们需要的食物链中的方法吗？
Phosphate strip mines are environment wreckers. They produce around 150 million tons of toxic spoil a year. Their massive draglines, huge slurry pipes, and mountainous spoil heaps dominate the landscape for tens of miles in key mining zones, whether in the North African desert or in Florida, a state that still provides three-quarters of American farmers’ phosphate needs.
世界上最大的矿山位于佛罗里达州中部的一个被称为Bone Valley的地区。四角矿山占地58,000英亩，面积是曼哈顿的五倍。它由Mosaic，一家公司最近从农业综合企业巨头嘉吉（Cargill）开发。隔壁是世界第二大矿山，南米德堡。但是南米德堡（South Fort Meade）居住在借来的时间上 - 其扩张计划受到当地团体的反对，除非它可以扩展，否则该矿将不得不关闭。
随着阻力矿在佛罗里达州向南移动，对环境影响的愤怒一直在增长。一百万吨的矿物废物，含有低落的放射性水平，已经在该州周围的垃圾场堆积了，争端正在越来越多。河流干燥，沉降池塘泄漏了。
去年，塞拉俱乐部的当地分会上法庭，阻止了马赛克（Mosaic）通过扩大其足迹来延长米德堡矿山寿命的计划。该组织担心和平河的命运，这是佛罗里达饮用水的重要来源。它说，美国陆军工程兵团批准了扩张，而没有首先进行全面的环境审核。该案尚未解决。
至于磷酸盐即将出现的短缺，技术进步和市场力量将解决问题吗？我们当然浪费了很多最有价值的资源。在全球范围内，我们每年允许约3700万吨的磷进入环境。它主要将下水道和农业排水管流入河流和湖泊，在那里供应有毒的蓝细菌的生长并消耗氧气，从而产生富营养化和“死区”。
尽管氮污染倾向于获得最高的计费作为富营养化的原因，但蓝细菌通常可以从空气中抽象出氮。埃德蒙顿艾伯塔大学的戴维·辛德勒（David Schindler），其他人则认为限制磷污染是消除富营养化的关键。
So how can we stop phosphate pollution, recycle it, and keep it in the food chain where we need it? Composting crop residues would be a good way of recycling this valued nutrient back into the soil, cutting the need for new applications of fertilizer — so would capturing some of the 3 million tons of phosphorus that cycles through human bodies annually, after being consumed in our food. Cordell says we should give top priority to recycling our urine, which contains more than half of all the phosphorus that we excrete.
But another conventional technical fix for a resource in short supply — finding a substitute — is not available. Presently, there simply are no substitutes for phosphorus.