Food will get expensive, inflation is coming! At least this is the major concern due to rising fertiliser and pesticides prices. Both in Europe and the US fertiliser costs make one third of total expenditures in agricultural produce (e.g. nitrogen costs are about 30 percent for grain production). And prices are still rising.
Compared to summer 2020 prices, ammonia (AHL) has increased over 300%, liquid nitrogen has increased almost 200%, urea is up 155%, and MAP has increased 125%, while DAP is up over 200% and potash has risen above 134%.While this is concerning from an economic point of view, it might as well be a chance.
Actually there are even two possibilities opening up. First of all higher food prices opens up economic possibilities for small farmers, especially when they do not use artificial fertilisers and pesticides to (More on this in this article later)
Second it is a chance to change conventional agriculture from a linear economy to a circular one – Cradle to Cradle! This is important for all agricultural inputs, but most important for phosphorus, a limited and important resource. The human body needs almost two grams of phosphorus a day, at the same time it is excreting almost two grams. Two grams that are currently wasted and do not find their way back in our agricultural soils.
Of course it is not easy to use human excrements. Not only are there health concerns, most important we use a lot of pharmaceutical products that might have some negative effects in the soil – not to speak of all the rest that goes down the toilet. But still, this is a resource we can not ignore on the long run. We have to stop mixing human excrements with whatever else comes to the sewage treating plant, so we can turn this into compost. By mixing it it with biochar, we might be able to absorb all the rest of the chemicals and pharmaceuticals that have not been metabolised in our body.
If we perceive human excrements as a resource, cities around the world are the biggest source for agricultural inputs. Therefore we have the chance to built up soils around each and every city. This can be very basis for horticultural food production and our health. Food production close to the consumers and close to the raw materials of agricultural inputs. This can be done on a small scale, with a lot of small farms specialising on different products. (Actually an idea on how to give these farmers easy market access and how the logistics can be done efficiently will be topic of another article or even a future venture).
Most importantly, a larger part of the population (bigger than 1-2 percent) producing food and building healthy gives people an income possibility and some work with purpose.
What can be more satisfying to produce food in a healthy sustainable way for the people around you?