h .HOME INTRODUCTION PHOSPHATE FORMATION HISTORY MINING CHEMICAL PROCESSING FERTILIZERS ENVIRONMENT WORLD PRODUCTION ISSUES & SOLUTION QUICK  FACTS FUTURE

Phosphorus is so important to life, that there is no substitute for it in agriculture. Without phosphate, world would go hungry. Population of the Earth is increasing so we need more food. People are building houses on farmland. We need efficient way to grow crops. Phosphate is a non-renewable resource. That means that once we use it up it will be gone forever. There are reserves of phosphate all over the world, but mailnly in United States, China, and Morrocco. There are many reserves that cannot be mined today because we don't have technology or the ore is not the grade that we need. Therefore it will be important for phosphate minig to develop new ways of mining phosphate and technology to get it from places we cannot mine today. One such place is the ocean floor. Ocean floor has huge reserves of phosphate.  The phosphorus deposits on the ocean floor may one day be recovered when a profitable method of deep ocean mining is developed.