Cricket tragic, You are right about the source of the energy used to make chemical fertilizer. If a renewable energy is used to produce it, and the rest of the process can be made sustainable, then it would be a sustainable fertilizer. It might even go a long way to becoming an organic approved fertilizer. As you say though it looks like it would be considerably more expensive with forseeable technology.
There is a considerable amount of land in this area, the north-west plains of Canada, that has been removed from grain production, the same is true in countries across the development spectrum. The cost/price squeeze forcing farmers to abandon their farms or change their income source. If the GM seed companies, fertilizer, pesticide, machinery, fuel, grain handling, transportation, banking etc. companies didn't see fit to gang up and take all of the bread, Murray Mcloughlin (sp?) there would be a lot more farmers in production today. There would be a lot more young farmers, and a lot more grain produced. Enough to feed the world, without hesitation.
In the event that a shortfall develops later as the population grows, there is the possibility of cutting back on livestock feeding of grains, as opposed to taking land out of forests, or starving.
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