Excellent in-depth article and it's 6 years old. If this gets solved it will be a very big deal. We found a way to turn urine into solid fertiliser – it could make farming more sustainable https://theconversation.com/we-found-a-way-to-turn-urine-int...
My first thought from this is that (if my napkin math is right) I'm apparently pissing away a penny a day.
Sooner rather than later we need to decarbonize fertilizer production. Maybe this will speed the process up a bit.
So a couple things:
1. if you’re a natgas producing country with lots of farms (hi USA and Canada) , your mega farm is probably injecting ammonia directly into soil as its nitrogen source, not urea. Pdf pg10, labelled pg5: https://www.ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/pub...
80-90% of US nitrogen fertilization is ammonia (because it’s almost entirely nitrogen and the rest are bonded to heavier molecules than hydrogen).
Ammonia prices always have big geographic variations because it’s a pain to ship a hazardous gas versus liquids or solids. https://businessanalytiq.com/procurementanalytics/index/ammo...
And much of it gets applied in the fall, not spring
2. Nitrogen fertilizer varies by crop. Beans crops (soy, kidney beans, chickpeas) fixate their own nitrogen and have zero/minimal applied. Corn and grains, particularly the higher protein varieties need among the most applied.
3. If you like to eat farmed land animals, you’re going to have a bad time from high fertilizer prices. Of traditional edibles: cattle is going to be the worst impacted. Chicken the least. Pork is in the middle. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/peril-and-promise/2022/03/feed-conv...
Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast did an episode on this today.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?...
One of the most interesting recurring themes in Neal Stephenson's _Baroque Cycle_ novels are the innovative uses of this stuff
Someone's taking the piss
Up 30% is not “nearly doubles”.
> For use in industry, urea is produced from synthetic ammonia and carbon dioxide. As large quantities of carbon dioxide are produced during the ammonia manufacturing process as a byproduct of burning hydrocarbons to generate heat (predominantly natural gas, and less often petroleum derivatives or coal), urea production plants are almost always located adjacent to the site where the ammonia is manufactured.
To be clear, the CO2 is captured from the fuel burned in producing the ammonia?
... how much of it?
Fortunes being made on piss futures. What a time to be alive.
Saw posters on /r/Truckers complaining that truck stops were taking advantage of situation to gouge for DEF too on top of diesel before someone pointed out that Iran is the second largest producer of urea, the primary component of DEF. They are not happy right now with $5.00 / gal fuel and higher DEF as well.
Worried the administration will use it as an excuse to rollback NOx emissions regulations that mandated DEF usage in diesel engines. They are already not enforcing "deletes" of the emissions systems which is a federal crime.
LNG -> urea (fertilizer) -> food
About half of all fertilizer is artificially created using fossil fuels.
There is no undoing of this price shock because the planting and growing season has already arrived in the Northern Hemisphere.
Expect grains to become more expensive and downstream food products like milk and cheese to increase a lot.
Incredible how Trump ran on a "no wars" and "lower prices" platform. And that people actually believed it.
What if we collectively pee in buckets (to not dilute it with water and other human by-products) and give them to refineries for purification? /s
Yes urea is used in fertilizer. Yes, the price is going up relative to May 13, 2024 (lowest in 5 years).
look at the chart in the article, then click 5Y on the bottom of the chart.
Click the + sign between the calendar and wrench icon
Type in "US Food inflation". It will overlay the "urea" price with the "US food inflation".
Yes, urea seems to be a leading indicator. It is nothing like in 2022, yet.