They are not rare lands, on the contrary, they are considered trivial elements. Yet they are not. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are almost invisible architects of human history, three elements that have “much more power over our life than we usually attribute to it” says Kerstin Hoppenhaus, a German biologist and journalist who dedicated the salt of the earth to them. A story of life in three elements (Italian Touring Club). Why just nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium? “They are fundamental for the production of food – explains Hoppenhaus – plants need it and therefore they are the essential components of the fertilizers, artificial and not. In practice, fertilizers exist only if these three elements exist, otherwise they do not fertilize”. According to Hoppenhaus, the accounts are quick: “Half of the world population would not have enough to eat without fertilizers, both organic and artificial: we could produce half of the food we produce now”.
The heart is the Haber-Bosch method, thanks to which “nitrogen can be extracted from the air anywhere in the world”. A chemistry magic that can also serve otherwise. “All the explosives of the First World War were based on nitrogen, which came like Salnitro from Chile; following the naval block, Germany had stocks only for six months, but chemists managed to apply the process for the production of nitrogen, allowing the country to continue the war”. As always, technology is not good or bad. But many fertilizers “pollute: they end up in the waters and seas and fertilize them, so plants and algae grow that steal oxygen from the other creatures. Then they go to the air and rains, arriving in areas not to be fertilized, like deserts”. And for these three elements we fight wars, perhaps silent like them: “They are more essential than rare lands, because they cannot be replaced. We could also live without gold, without technology, without oil, but without food …”. Among the major manufacturers of fertilizers are “Russia and Belarus: with the conflict in Ukraine, the prices have risen”. If the nitrogen is in the air, “potassium and phosphorus must be excavated and deposits are distributed unequally. The largest potassium manufacturer is Canada, followed by Russia, Belarus and Germany. With phosphorus it is even worse, because the deposits are not wide. Ten years ago there was talk of exhaustion of the stocks, but then a huge deposit was discovered in Morocco, even the one in the center of Morocco, claims.
In short: “Until we eat and we have a physical body, not silicon, we need these three elements – says Hoppenhaus – and we must find ways to manage them better, from an environmental and geopolitical point of view”.