from Hacker News

Ask HN: Could the fertilizer shortage be caused by weapons manufacturing?

by lil_dispaches on 5/3/22, 12:58 PM with 9 comments

• by PaulHoule on 5/3/22, 1:40 PM

  Here's what I found:

    The global production of nitrogen fertilizer amounted to some 117.5 million
    metric tons in 2018. China was by far the country with the largest 
    production, with an output of 28.9 million metric tons of nutrient. It was
    followed by the United States and India, with 13.6 and 13.3 million 
    metric tons produced, respectively. 
  

  According to IBISWorld the fertilizer business in the US gets $19.3B in revenue a year, explosives are just $2.3B. I can't imagine that any of the top three countries (China, US and India) have diverted fertilizer production to explosives yet.

  I think so far both Russia and Ukraine have been fighting based on stocks that are already manufactured. For instance Russia has about 2,000 S-300 missile launchers and they probably have at least 10x that number of missiles. (Part of the untold story of the cold war is that the Soviets were driven crazy by the threat of the U-2, SR-71, B-52, B-1, B-2, ... and said "no way" and spent more money than they had on air defense.)

  Similarly they have been working through large stocks of artillery shells, rockets, etc.

• by h2odragon on 5/3/22, 1:35 PM

  There were "Nitrogen shortage" headlines last November: https://fortune.com/2021/11/04/energy-crisis-food-shortage-s...

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29129920

  At the time many felt that Russia and China had halted nitrate exports for completely peaceful reasons...

• by rapjr9 on 5/3/22, 8:40 PM

  If anything the situation is probably the reverse, that fertilizer/chemical shortages are causing shortages of explosives for making weapons. Building more Stinger's is currently projected to take a year or two because of difficulties in getting parts. One "part" is the high explosive, whose ingredients come from China, now being affected by lockdowns. If the West was at war with both Russia and China they would likely have to divert some fertilizer to weapons manufacture and agriculture would suffer both from the shortage of imported fertilizer and the extra demand due to weapons manufacture. Even so I'd expect the effect to be small, agriculture must use a lot more chemicals than explosives do.

• by eimrine on 5/3/22, 1:09 PM

  Ammonium Nitrate can make a big boom but I don't think that all boomable chemicals are being made from the same ingredients.