![]() ![]() Three-hundred and fifty years after Brand stared in wonder at white residue distilled from neighborhood discharge, phosphorus remains surrounded by questions. However, the din over phosphate abundance is likely to increase in volume with related questions over price, quality, regulation and conservation. Geological Survey (USGS) and multiple scientific organizations insist concerns over the rock phosphate supply are distorted. Over the past two decades, warnings and predictions regarding Peak Phosphorus and a purported dwindling supply of phosphate have alarmed the agriculture industry, but the U.S. Translation: phosphorus forever, phosphate finite. For several weeks in 1669, Brand boiled away the fetid urine brew, leaving behind a pasty, glow-in-the-dark prize-phosphorus.Īs the 11th most abundant mineral on the planet, phosphorus is a ubiquitous component of everything from DNA to teeth, but its agricultural fertilizer source, rock phosphate, is a limited resource. Brand was a German alchemist and hoped to make physical gold from his neighbors’ figurative gold. When Hennig Brand lugged a final, sloshing pail of yellow urine over the cobblestones of a Hamburg street and down to a basement where he’d patiently collected 1,500 gallons of his neighbors’ pee in pots and tubs, the putrid stockpile represented one of the greatest leap forwards in agricultural history-albeit propelled by accident.
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