Phosphorus' future insecurity, the horror of depletion, and sustainability measures

Phosphorus is the most critical element for crop production and a key component in phosphate-based fertilizers required to produce large quantities of food crops to feed the world's ever-increasing population. Fertilizer production relies heavily on phosphate rock, whose production was modelled to peak around 2033, and reserves depleted within 100 years. However, the prediction relied on insufficient single-source data, particularly from the United States Geological Survey, whose credibility, certainty, reliability, and comparability are questionable. Furthermore, the United States Geological Survey doesn't collect reserve information directly on the ground but rather from the commercially secretive mining and fertilizer industries, which are always hesitant to disclose their data for business reasons, and thus can be treated as second or third-hand data. Above all, the models ignored the impact of phosphate sustainability measures such as efficient use, recovery, and recycling on reserve life span and peak production. Likewise, estimating timeframes based on inadequate data, historical global reserves, and production data is somewhat misleading and draws undue attention. Therefore, for estimates to be meaningful, this study proposes that phosphate reserves and resources of each country are explored first and reserve lifetime and production peak be estimated on an individual country basis rather than on a global scale. This review intended to offer new perspectives on peak production and reserve depletion by offering in-depth information on the two concepts, leading to a better understanding of the nature of phosphorus production peak, reserve depletion, and potential future sustainability.