Fertilizer, Energy and Liebig's Law of the Minimum

The loss of fertilizer shipments coming from the Persian Gulf as a result of the Iran war got me thinking about the chemist Justus von Liebig, a prominent 19th century proponent of the mineral theory of plant nutrition. Liebig is the popularizer of what is now known as Liebig's Law of the Minimum. The law states that the least available essential nutrient limits the growth of plants. This means once a grower runs out of one essential nutrient, adding extra of others will not make up for the lack of the one that is limited.

Liebig's eponymous law is about to assert itself in a big and distressing way in the coming growing season. That's because the Persian Gulf region supplies 36 percent of the world's urea (a form of nitrogen fertilizer), 29 percent of its anhydrous ammonia (another form of nitrogen fertilizer), 26 percent of diammonium phosphate and 13 percent of monoammonium phosphate.

Just to review a little high school biology, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are primary nutrients that cannot be obtained from the air or water and must come from the soil. (With regard to nitrogen, legumes such as soybeans are an exception in that they can fix nitrogen from the air for use in the plant.) Adding these primary nutrients to the soil improves the quality and quantity of plant growth. Huge of amounts of two of the three primary nutrients mentioned above are no longer flowing out of the Persian Gulf.

Chinese ag theft, pathogen research only point up dangers of GMO crops and monoculture

I'm shocked, shocked, to find out that the Chinese are stealing America's agricultural technology!

It can hardly come as a surprise that the Chinese government actively encourages and organizes the theft of intellectual property from other nations and their companies, in this case, agricultural technology in the United States. College students are some of the most active players in these thefts as between 250,000 and 300,000 routinely attend U.S. colleges and universities in any given year, most of them studying in scientific and engineering fields.

Not only is the theft of proprietary seeds an issue, but also research on and transportation of plant pathogens. No one has been accused of actively introducing pathogens into America's farm fields so far. But the combined problems of theft and possible biological attacks on crops merely lays bare the bankruptcy of the modern conventional agricultural system.

Will the U. S. curtail oil exports as fuel prices rise?

President Donald Trump may soon feel the need to "blockade" U. S. crude oil exports after those exports hit a record high recently, a trend which, if it continues, will increase the price U. S. consumers pay for gasoline, diesel and other petroleum-related products.

Nations around the world are scrambling to secure oil supplies that have been dramatically reduced by Iran's closing of the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers of "hostile" countries which include major oil exporters such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, the U. S. Navy has placed a blockade on ships from Iranian ports leaving the Strait of Hormuz, though the effectiveness of the blockade is in dispute.

In an April 1 televised address Trump said: "To those countries that can’t get fuel — many of which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves — I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America; we have plenty. We have so much."