The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World out of Balance by Dan Egan
I grew up on a small dairy farm in the ’60s, and after college I purchased a 160-acre farm in the thumb of Michigan and farmed it organically for 45 years. I have come to believe that my grandchildren can have access to high-quality food if they so choose … but without high-quality water they could be “dead in the water,” so to speak.
In The Devil’s Element, author Dan Egan focuses exclusively on the element phosphorus (P) — number 15 on the periodic chart — and how vital it is in every living cell on earth. As farmers, we know about phosphate fertilizers and how to use them; as consumers, we have heard a lot about how phosphates are affecting our lakes and waterways. But Egan brings to light the history of phosphate, from its discovery in Hamburg in 1669 to how it was cycled in ancient times and how it is used today.
If you remember from high school chemistry class, phosphorus in its elemental form reacts differently than the phosphate compound that we use in farming. It was termed a “bringer of light” because it combusts at room temperature — the reason it was used in war as a flare or bomb, while also being used in rat poison, fertilizer or feed supplements on our farms.
Egan, who grew up in Wisconsin, was previously the author of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, in which he touches on the problem with phosphate in the Great Lakes region. In The Devil’s Element he covers the history of phosphorus around the world, from its sources to its many uses and how it has become a problem in many waterways — specifically in how it relates to the blue-green algae problem. This environmental issue has progressed to the point where in 2014 in Toledo, on Lake Erie, phosphorus-loving cyanobacteria from the lake made the water so toxic that the National Guard had to bring in bottled water.
Egan writes that in 2018, the U.S. and Canada agreed to a plan to reduce the phosphorus that pollutes Lake Erie by 40 percent by 2025. But this is a plan, not a law, and to be effective, it would have to confront agricultural use. Somehow, the Clean Water Act has an exemption for agriculture. This, in a time when the cost of toxic algae infections to lakes and rivers across the U.S. is more than $4 billion in damage to fisheries and to recreation and drinking water — from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi.
Egan describes how we need to deal with manure, fertilizer and sewage. There are some success stories — sewage used to flow into the Thames from London and fouled the air and water; today the phosphorus is recovered, and the sludge or bio-solids are spread on the land. More manure is being processed to remove phosphate in the U.S. than in decades past. Yet much more needs to be done. More proper recycling of sewage and manure could decrease the amount of needed phosphate fertilizers. Headway is being made, but Egan suggests that what is called “waste” needs to be called a resource if we are really going to solve the problem.
I learned a lot about phosphorus in this book, and I think it is a very important read for farmers and consumers alike. But I also feel that the work of Elaine Ingham and others needs to be more broadly understood as well — particularly that most of North American cropland is too bacterially dominated as a result of the overuse of nitrogen-based fertilizers. The lack of adequate levels of beneficial soil fungal organisms effects phosphate release. This is a big piece of the puzzle that we need to get a grasp of if our grandchildren are going to have access to healthy food and good water.
Joe Scrimger is a retired farmer and is the founder of Bio Systems II, based in Michigan.
