The recent Midwestern floods have caused all manner of misery: Burst levies, lost homes, ruined crops, higher food prices, a gusher of agrichemicals and god know what else flowing into streams.
One way to soothe the sting is to own shares in giant fertilizer companies like Potash Corp. of Saskatewan and Mosaic. These companies have seen their share prices jump over the past week.
Investors may be bidding them up because the floods represent a sales opportunity. To maximize yield on what's left of the 2008 corn crop, farmers will be scrambling to reapply fertilizer to make up for what's run off and evaporated due to soggy conditions.
How much will they be laying on? I asked John Sawyer, an Iowa State University agronomist who works with farmers as an extension agent. He said it's too early to tell, because farmers are still assessing their fields to figure out what can be salvaged.
He added that in salvageable fields, farmers will likely be applying about 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre. Before planting, farmers typically 150 and 170 pounds per acre. So these reapplications will likely represent a significant income boost to the fertilizer giants -- and yet another source of nutrients to leach into streams, clear down to the Mississippi.
New book looks at economic devastation in an Iowa meat-packing town
Farm lobby: Shoot the climate bill, but keep the Peterson goodies
Comments
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amazingdrx Posted 1:40 pm
19 Jun 2008
Yep Tom
Good point! And that leaching will release huge amounts of GHG in the form of methane from the cellulose stored in wetlands where it ends up.
It will also cause huge weed overgrowth, temporarily soaking up some cO2, yes. But it will be rereleased (in a 21x worse GHG form) as that weed overgrowth kills the lakes and the weeds and fish die and turn into methane too.
I recently found out that human urine contains all the fertilizer needed to grow enough crops to feed that person's needs in the food chain. Then on the Green network they showed the simple 2 part process that separates the fertilizer in the urine so it can replace chemical fertilizer.
And of course the compounds dumped in the waterways from urine, like hormones and antibiotics are killing and mutating wildlife,
It strikes me that recycling the fertilizer from urine and replacinmg ever more expensive shipped and mined fertilizer would more than pay for breaking down the contaminants in the waste stream and keeping our aquifers safe and actually recycling waste water itself.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Wolverine Posted 6:03 pm
19 Jun 2008
We Can Only Hope ...
that all the chemical farmers go broke and their land is subdivided and taken over by small organic ones.
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bob2008 Posted 9:38 pm
09 Nov 2008
Money
This site gives us the good information and knowledge about the Money.
The content is very good.
===============Bob
MLS
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