In 2010, the world population was 6.9 billion. Today, it’s 7.5 billion. That’s an increase of 600 million people in seven years. The need for food continues to grow. More food from the same farmlands… Nitrogen-based fertilizer is going to continue to be the key to meet the world’s food demand. The time is right and we can see prices double or triple in the coming years . A Fertilizer Primer So what exactly is fertilizer and why is it such an exciting investment opportunity in the coming years?
Fertilizers are basic necessities of modern farming. UNESCO reports that fertilizers help feed about one-half of the world’s population.
They replace nutrients in the soil that are depleted as plants grow.
Corn, wheat, and rice are the largest and fastest-growing crops on which the world depends. They are also in that category of crops that depend heavily on nitrogen in the soil to thrive. As they grow, they require so much nitrogen that they deplete the naturally occurring nitrogen available in soil. To replace that nitrogen, ammonia-based nitrogen fertilizers are necessary. Without them, crop production would decline. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that if fertilizer usage were to stop, agricultural output would fall by 40%-50% in the short term in Western Europe and by around 30% in North America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia.
As we said, one of the key ingredients in fertilizer is ammonia. The following chart shows the world’s consumption of ammonia in 2016…
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