The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[zipjet]

My current view is that fertilizer companies, by and large, are not premiere beneficiaries of The Global Demographic Tailwind despite the fact that the world has to produce more and more food to feed a larger and more affluent global population.

Why the seeming paradox? Because fertilizer is already in heavy use on a large proportion of crop acreage and crop yield cannot readily be increased by simply adding more. To the contrary, one of the aims of ag-biotech companies is to allow crops to produce the same yield with less fertilizer. (If you check the pipelines of such companies as MON, DD, and SYT, you will find several such projects in development.)

Perhaps I am missing something here. But I do not see how plants, no matter how they are improved can create soil nutrients or operate with less of them - given that they compose the substance of the "fruit". Nutrients in the soil are drawn from the soil to produce the grain or other fruit/vegetables. The plants can extract nitrogen from the air reducing or eliminating the need for that fertilizer, certainly an important fertilizer. But the other nutrients have to be added back to the soil as the plants deplete them to produce the "fruit".

Thus, excluding nitrogen, I would think that higher food output will require commensurately higher fertilizer inputs.

Admittedly this is NOT an area of any special knowledge for me.



Very respectfully,


Jim