Can the world keep up with exploding food demand?? The answer right now is: NO…. This week’s world summit convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations focused on the food shortage. …The UN put it on the table: the world needs to double food production in the next 30 years…. What’s to blame? Many blame weather, global warming, and the diverting of food to ethanol and other biofuels. But there’s another factor: the growing demand for meat.  And fertilizer is key. To grow what’s needed to feed the animals that some people eat, farmers need fertilizer, the consumption of which has gone up by one third in the last dozen years – in effect, the so called developing world is catching up with the rest of us. — Problem is, the spiraling cost….  In just a year, the cost of one key fertilizer has gone up almost three times.

Another doubled.  Without nitrogen-based fertilizer, a leading expert in Canada says that forty percent of the world’s people wouldn’t have enough to eat…  Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug says, “Without chemical fertilizers, forget it. The game is over.” — Big business has caught on.

One major private equity fund raised nearly half a billion dollars to invest in fertilizers. It’s become the go-to industry, with stocks and funds touting the profits to be made. Can we afford to let these prices keep on soaring? Can we let Wall Street profit targets set the agenda?

At the same time, how do we step up production of this absolutely vital resource?  Never has the need for decision making, for a planned approach to economy been greater. …The free-for-some economy is leading too many to starve.


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