[onoway]

It is sobering to see just what sort of control a very few chemical companies now exert on all food production world wide.

https://www.msu.edu/...eedindustry.pdf

Lately many of these have also bought their way into the "organic" label. As a result of their financial clout and connections, a number of ingredients not formerly accepted as organic have now slid into the approved category as big ag trundles across the world.

I was startled to find Silk, Cascadian Farm and Horizon Organic all included in the list now associated with Monsanto.

Grow your own, or know your farmer, or you are out of luck knowing what in the world you are really eating.

Another sobering thought..Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for GM crops. Last year farmers in my area were saying the cost had risen over 100% from three years previously. It is manufactured using natural gas so it is not only nonrenewable resource based but competing directly with such things as home heating use. The price is unlikely to go down and what do you suppose that will mean for food prices?

Of course if subsidies of taxpayer money continues, those costs can be hidden for a while longer at least...

[FM75]

onoway, on 2013-February-25, 21:44, said:

Another sobering thought..Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for GM crops. Last year farmers in my area were saying the cost had risen over 100% from three years previously. It is manufactured using natural gas so it is not only nonrenewable resource based but competing directly with such things as home heating use. The price is unlikely to go down and what do you suppose that will mean for food prices?

Hmm. Probably not so much. Most ammonia is likely manufactured using the Haber process.

[Trinidad]

FM75, on 2013-February-26, 17:04, said:

Hmm. Probably not so much. Most ammonia is likely manufactured using the Haber process.

Indeed. And where do you think the H₂ is coming from?

Wikipedia hydrogen production

The main production routes are from:
- steam reforming of natural gas: CH₄+H₂O -> 3H₂ + CO
- Synthesis gas production from Coal: C + H₂O -> H₂ + CO

The produced CO (Carbon monoxide) can be converted to CO₂ with water in the watergas shift reaction:
CO + H₂O -> CO₂ + H₂

In other words, hydrogen is made from sources that lay people call "Energy sources". You can also make hydrogen with solar panels, wind turbines or nuclear power plants, but it will be very difficult to do that on the scale that is needed for the production of fertilizer.

To make things worse, though it would seem that it should be possible to make the nitrate (NO₃^-) part of the fertilizer from oxygen and nitrogen in air (which indeed happens during a thunder storm) the industrial process to make nitrate is based on the oxidation of... ammonia.

Rik