Fertilizer increase crop production up to 5 times per acre. To give you an idea of how important natural-gas (feedstock and energy to make it) fertilizer is, here are a few paragraphs from Yeonmi Park’s recent book “In order to live: A North Korean girl’s journey to freedom”:
“One of the big problems in North Korea was a fertilizer shortage. When the economy collapsed in the 1990s, the Soviet Union stopped sending fertilizer to us and our own factories stopped producing it. Whatever was donated from other countries couldn’t get to the farms because the transportation system had also broken down. this led to crop failures that made the famine even worse. So the government came up with a campaign to fill the fertilizer gap with a local and renewable source: human and animal waste. Every worker and schoolchild had a quota to fill. Every member of the household had a daily assignment, so when we got up in the morning, it was like a war. My aunts were the most competitive.
“Remember not to poop in school! Wait to do it here!” my aunt in Kowon told me every day.
Whenever my aunt in Songnam-ri traveled away from home and had to pop somewhere else, she loudly complained that she didn’t have a plastic bag with her to save it.
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