Fossil gas is a feedstock for the Haber-Bosch process used to make fertiliser (but invented for making early 20th Century munitions).
Gas has been plentiful and cheap in the Persian Gulf and so it has made sense to build out decades of infrastructure to make fertiliser at point of source.
Consequently, about one third of the world’s fertiliser demand has been met by moving it through the Gulf and out into the wider world.
And now that’s not happening…
…For the northern hemisphere, fertiliser for next year’s growing season will be needed towards the end of this year.
We can expect food prices to rocket.
And in the UK, we have only a single fertiliser manufacturing plant left
On this week’s Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the how the US-Israel war on Iran will impact global food prices (3:07), and how data centres are the newest target in modern warfare (9:47).Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.Apply for Planet B’s Digital Content Lead job opportunity: https://planet-b-productions.homerun.co/digital-content-lead/enListen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media: https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station
…If it’s not already obvious, we need to be instituting a Dig For Victory style programme, except it won’t be about ‘victory’, it will be Grow Food To Live Better.
We need national communal regenerative farming started now. Which among other things, means compulsory land orders on wasteful tracts of privately-owned land.
But I guess we’ll wait until hunger ravages because we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power
…I’m a climate and biosphere collapse-concerned web designer. So aside from shit posting like an old fart, I tend to post about environment and tech.
Being a tech heavy community, Mastodon tends to prick its ears up a bit more when I post about tech. Posts about food systems like the above, not so much.
So by way of a lead in to where this thread is going shortly (and may subsequently continue), here following is a *tech* angle on the Straits of Hormuz being more or less closed…
…The following is taken from a transcript of something I’ll share a link to in a bit.
“The majority of crude oil that passes through the Straits of Hormuz is classified as sour crude with a high sulfur content, and when you refine sour crude, you produce elemental sulfur as a byproduct.
When we pull ~17 million barrels a day of sour crude off the market, we’re not just losing fuel, we also are potentially losing sulfur…
…“And sulfur’s the feedstock for sulfuric acid and sulfuric acid is what we use to leach copper and cobalt out of the ground in places like the DRC and Zambia. The two of those countries together supply over a sixth of global copper and more than 70% of global cobalt.
So the little oil snafu in the Straits of Hormuz could lead to no marginal copper or cobalt.
No transformers, no grid expansion. No grid expansion, no data centers, which means no EV charging infrastructure, no AI build out, etc…
Jonathan Schofield
Martin Vermeer FCD