Can a Renewable Fuel Rely on Mining a Finite Resource?
While scrolling through news accounts of the recent boom in the agrochemicals industry — yes, that’s how I spend my days — I came across an interesting take on biofuels and phosphate, a key element of soil fertility. The article, from Investors Business Daily, takes a standard rah-rah position on what it deems a “heyday in the heartland.” The journal wants to make sure its readers know there’s plenty of cash to be made investing in the companies catering to the great boom in industrial agriculture. With corn and soy prices both at or near record highs, the article tries to handicap which crop farmers will plant more of in the coming growing season. Impossible to tell, it concludes. Nevertheless: Fertilizer producers benefit either way. Corn demands more fertilizer than soy or wheat. But price competition among the grains, stoked largely by federal supports for ethanol production, has bled generously into fertilizer markets. That’s boilerplate. Anyone who’s checked out the stock chart
