After reading a news item from December 2022 entitled, Phosphorus supply is increasingly disrupted – we are sleepwalking into a global food crisis, I was interested to find out more [1]
Food Security
It seems the global food supply is extremely vulnerable to disruption in the phosphorus supply chain. Most of the Phosphorus is found in just a few countries, some of them affected by conflict and subject to increasingly uncertain economic and political conditions.
Some solutions to this problem are to not waste Phosphorus in the first place, or to recover it from waste. But there is another way to reduce the threat of a global food crisis: Take up a vegan diet.
This is because “meat consumption is the most important factor affecting Phosphorus footprints … dietary trends present an important challenge for sustainable Phosphorus management” [2]
Research in 2012 on U.S. diets found that meat based diets require over seven times more Phosphorus than plant-based diets, “The United States’ annual per capita consumption of phosphorus is between six and seven kilograms for a meat-based diet, and less than one kilogram for a plant-based diet” [3].
While UK diets may include less meat, it is clear that meat diets require significantly more Phosphorus than vegan diets.
Dead Zones
But food security is not the only problem with high phosphorus diets. Seas, lakes, rivers and streams are becoming overloaded with phosphorus and nitrogen based nutrients largely as a result of livestock farming and waste disposal. This is killing fish and creating devastating dead zones [4]
In the UK for example, high phosphate excrement from chicken farms is killing the River Wye [5]
Planetary Boundaries
A third issue concerns planetary boundaries which Johan Rockström has defined as nine boundaries which humanity must respect to keep the planet habitable. The phosphorus cycle is one of them, and the boundary has been crossed [6]
“Humanity is already existing outside the safe operating space for at least four of the nine boundaries: climate change, biodiversity, land-system change, and biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus imbalance)”
Take a look at those boundaries. What do they have in common? All of them have been crossed because of pressures from food and agricultural systems. In short, meat comsumption is driving ecocide, defined as “the destruction of the natural environment by deliberate or negligent human action”
Adopting a vegan diet is an immediate and effective action to tackle these problems. Life on this planet cannot continue as it is if we do not change our diets.
References
[1] https://theconversation.com/phosphorus-supply-is-increasingly-disrupted-we-are-sleepwalking-into-a-global-food-crisis-196538
[2] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044043
[3] https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D81R87HK/download
[4] https://veganpieces.org/planetary-boundaries/nitrogen-and-phosphorus
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/07/tesco-suppliers-river-wye-phosphate-pollution-chicken-farming
[6] https://news.mongabay.com/2021/03/the-nine-boundaries-humanity-must-respect-to-keep-the-planet-habitable
