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www.MidSouthFarmer.com ◆ April 2009
NewsWatch
TVA aided fertilizers
By CECIL H. YANCY JR.
Key Points
T
HE story of fertilizer is
one of development, innovation and demonstration, and the federal agency
behind three-fourths of all fertilizer technology used in the
world.
To trace the story to its beginning, travel back to World War I
and the building of Wilson Dam
on the Tennessee River in the
northwest corner of Alabama
at Muscle Shoals. Two plants
built at the time supplied the
nation’s war effort in World War
I. The plants sat empty after the
war until 1933, when Congress
created the Tennessee Valley
Authority.
In the midst of the Great
Depression, however, it was
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s
New Deal that created the economic engine that would bring
one of the nation’s regions out
of the Great Depression. TVA
was created in 1933.
TVA became well-known
for electrifying the South and
building dams on its namesake
river. Lesser known is the role
the agency played in the de-
■ Some 75% of world’s fertilizers
were developed by TVA.
■ Federal agency also developed
a system to test new products.
■ Leaders say new fertilizer
research is needed, however.
velopment of fertilizers used
worldwide. It was also charged
with developing munitions
during war time and fertilizers
during peace time.
Fertilizer development
From the 1950s until the 1980s,
scientists at TVA developed or
improved fertilizers now used,
says John Shields, a former TVA
official who currently serves as
interim director of research and
market development at IFDC,
an international center for soil
fertility and agricultural development based on the TVA reservation in Muscle Shoals, Ala.
For more than 30 years,
TVA scientists developed highanalysis fertilizers and more
efficient manufacturing processes. The development and
improvement of urea products,
nitric phosphates, ammoniated phosphates, triple superphosphate, ammonium nitrate,
sulfur-coated urea and liquid
fertilizers are some of the products that bear the marks of
TVA’s work.
TVA improved the manufacturing processes for ammonium
nitrate and other products. The
development of ammonium
granulation and bulk-blending
technologies improved the efficiency of many mixed fertilizer
grades. TVA is responsible for
most of the liquid fertilizer and
dry bulk-blending technology
now used in the U.S.
Along the way, TVA developed a first-of-its-kind test demonstration system with farmers,
industry and land-grant universities.
“The idea was to demonstrate the value of the products
that were being developed by
TVA,” Shields says.
“TVA set up demonstration farms all over the U.S. and
signed agreements with landgrant universities, using the
experiment stations and the
Extension Service to test the
materials. Every new product
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went through this process.”
In the early 1950s, TVA
signed agreements with the fertilizer industry to distribute the
new technology.
Much of the fertilizers now
used in the world were first developed at the TVA, tested in
pilot and demonstration plants,
proven effective and distributed
through this system, Shields
says.
Along the way, TVA took out
350 public patents and granted
more than 700 licenses to use
the fertilizer products it developed, Shields says.
“TVA technology fueled
the sweeping advances of U.S.
farmers in food and fiber production in the 1960s and 1980s,”
Shields says. “Today, fertilizers
are responsible for more than a
third of total U.S. crop production and about 50% of the increase in crop yields.
“The $57 billion return from a
$41 million investment included
about $49 billion from the use
of high-analysis fertilizers and
$8 billion from process development and improvement,”
Shields says. “That’s a benefitcost ratio of more than $20 to
$1.”
While U.S. scientists developed the fertilizers and technology that helped fuel the ag
yield revolution, research and
new product development have
ground to a halt since 1990,
drawing concern from prominent researchers such as 1970
Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug
and others.
GOOD RETURN: A public
investment of $41 million in TVA
research yielded $57 billion in
return for the world in terms of
fertilizer and related technology.
Fertilizer-price roller coaster
By CECIL H. YANCY JR.
I
T’S time to get back to
basics, but that may take
awhile, says an economist who
specializes in fertilizer at the
IFDC in northwest Alabama.
The price spikes of fertilizer
that began in 2007 tumbled
down in late 2008. “We’ve got
to get back to basics,” says Ian
Gregory, an agribusiness specialist at IFDC.
The road to regularity in the
fertilizer world is paved two
ways: One, working through
supplies in the short run; and,
two, building more fertilizer
plants in the long run.
Expect volatile move-
ments in the market for at least
two years, Gregory says, until
new production facilities open
and prices for nitrogen and
phosphate recover as matches
demand.
What happened in the twoyear period between 2007 and
2009 to send prices on a roller
coaster? The answer is a “confluence of several factors on the
demand side and supply side,”
Gregory says.
On one side, a continuing
and very large increase in nitrogen in China and Asia met
an added demand for biofuels
in Europe, Brazil and the U.S.
In addition, the release of
Conservation Reserve Program
land in the U.S. and a 10% setaside in Europe conspired with
other factors to “take nitrogen
demand up a notch,” Gregory
says.
Before those factors, N
demand had been on the down
slope in western Europe and
fairly static in North America.
On the supply side, the last
few years found a slowdown of
investment in the fertilizer industry. Part of the reason is the
price of building a fertilizer plant
has gone from $400 million to
$500 million to $1 billion plus.
In short, fertilizer demand
overwhelmed supply.
China’s high tariffs on fertilizer exports and the deprecia-
Developing
nitrogen with
a slow hand
C
OST of production hasn’t
slowed down to allow
slow-release fertilizers to
make their way into field
crops. Yet.
The technology was developed in the 1960s, but remains largely used only in the
turfgrass and vegetable sectors of the agricultural industry.
Now, scientists at the IFDC
are looking at ways to make
the production of slow-release
fertilizer economically comparable to urea while reducing
the volatilization and leaching
of nitrogen.
In his lab, Upendra Singh,
IFDC senior soil scientist, is
evaluating N products that
may reduce volatilization
and leaching. “The idea is to
see which products have the
highest N use.”
In the lab, Singh measures
the volatilization of N. In the
greenhouse, he’s testing products that one day may be used
in fields.
One of the products
added to the fertilizer is biosolid waste. “That product is
working with N and sulfur,”
Singh says. “The goal is to
reduce all losses, leaching
and volatilization.” It’s in the
second or third stage of research before heading to the
field for testing, he says.
The soil scientist is also
evaluating what effect the
product has on water stress
of plants. In tests where he
planted boxes with rye, he’s
finding promise.
The question is not one
of having the products available, but it’s a matter of cost of
production, Singh says. “The
question is, how do we make it
cost effective?”
tion of the U.S. dollar in 2007
and 2008 further worsened the
situation. Energy price hikes
caused an increase in the price
of natural gas, an essential element for N fertilizer production.
Phosphate experienced a
similar rise in prices that was tied
to the increase in demand and
price for sulfur, a vital element
used in the manufacture of the
popular diammonium phosphate
and other high-analysis phosphate fertilizers. Supply of phosphate rock also became tight.
This perfect storm caused
prices of fertilizer to rise. Once
the tide went out, the industry
experienced what Gregory calls
“demand destruction.” He says
with the high fertilizer prices,
“farmers were unable or unwilling to pay two or three times
the prices of early 2007.”
The collapse of the global