The War for Phosphorus?

Could the next country the United States declares war with be...Morocco? Seems unlikely until you do a little research on current Phosphorus levels. Phosphorus is the most limiting terrestrial element after Nitrogren. It also is the most common component of agricultural fertilizers in the tropics and second most common behind Nitrogen in the temperate world.

The scary part is that there is only 40-60 years left for Phosphorus in the United States. Phosphorus is used to create ADP and ATP and until there is another way to synthesize this, there are no substitutes for it either!

But there's no need to worry, there's always Morocco. Morocco has the largest known Phosphorus deposits in the world, but even if we invaded them and mined their Phosphorus, we're still looking at maybe 60 years.

It looks like the only feasible way to prevent this inevitable problem without going to war with Morocco is organic farming. Organic farming only accounts for 2% of U.S. Agriculture. Organic farming uses no industrial fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. It uses natural methods like sea kelp, which contains Phosphorus, as fertilizer. But critics are very skeptical that organic farming can produce the amount of food necessary for sustainability and to account for the growing global population. 50% of the U.S. soybean crop for instance, is genetically engineered. Invading Morocco will perhaps be the most viable option for our country in order to buy some time so that we can discover another way around this issue of scarcity. Also, the timing of this issue will become increasingly important as current estimates show oil and phosphorus reserves will be completely depleted within 5 years of each other.