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China's export halt, Morocco's sulfur trap, sludge PFAS contamination — a structure that wipes out 90% of supply
Let me state the conclusion first.
Japan's phosphate fertilizer is supplied through three routes.
All three break down simultaneously. The biggest factor is China: since March 14, 2026, customs offices across the country have been tightening export controls.
| Procurement route | Actual peacetime dependence | 2027 securing rate | Effective contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product import (China) | 65% | 0% | 0% |
| Product import (Morocco, etc.) | 20% | 20% | 4% |
| Rock import / domestic processing | 13% | 50–90% | 7–12% |
| Domestic recovery (sludge, etc.) | 0.2% | 120% | 0.2% |
| Total | 100% | — | ~11–16% |
Just over 10% of peacetime supply. More than 80% of what Japan needs is lost.
The product-import route (~85% of the whole) is 76% dependent on China. If that stops, it is over.
China puts national food security first and strictly regulates phosphate fertilizer exports. In 2026 it effectively entered a full-scale export halt: customs offices stopped accepting export declarations for agricultural phosphate fertilizer.
More seriously, inside China the use of phosphate is rapidly shifting from agriculture to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for EVs. It is an economic inevitability that resources flow to high-margin industries, and the export capacity for low-cost agricultural ammonium phosphate is shrinking structurally and irreversibly.
From the remaining 20% supplier, Morocco, only 20% of peacetime volumes will arrive in 2027. The reason is the sulfur trap described below. The United States prioritizes domestic supply under the Defense Production Act (DPA); Russia prioritizes BRICS. Japan has no alternative sourcing left.
The only major supplier Japan has left is Morocco, but supply from there is projected to fall to 21% of peacetime levels in 2027, with no quick recovery in sight.
Here are the reasons in brief.
The sulfur trap: Morocco holds the world's largest phosphate rock reserves, but producing fertilizer requires sulfuric acid, and sulfur — the feedstock — is barely produced domestically. 52% of Morocco's sulfur supply has been imported from the Middle East.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz collapsed the global sulfur supply chain, but even more serious is the physical damage to Gulf production facilities. Iranian strikes damaged numerous oil-refining and gas-processing plants. Sulfur is obtained as a byproduct of those plants, so if the facilities stop, sulfur stops coming out. Even if Hormuz reopens, there is no sulfur to ship in the first place.
Rebuilding takes a long time. The core equipment for sulfur recovery is built-to-order with 40–50 week lead times. The specialized catalysts those units require are also in short supply as Western chemical majors — BASF, Dow, and others — restructure. The IEA forecasts "at least two years," but full recovery is likely to extend past 2030.
Competition with the semiconductor and EV industries: Sulfuric acid is also used as ultra-pure sulfuric acid for semiconductor fabrication and for nickel and cobalt refining in EV batteries. TSMC and HPAL projects will secure sulfuric acid at any premium. Low-margin agricultural fertilizer loses this tug-of-war structurally.
OCP's European pivot: Morocco's OCP is prioritizing its remaining production capacity for the high-margin EU market and the massive Indian and Brazilian markets. It is also lobbying the EU to relax cadmium regulations. Distant, lower-purchasing-power Japan falls to the back of the line.
Phosphorus recovery from sewage sludge is the government's last-resort option. But it has serious problems.
The viable recovery method from sewage sludge is the MAP process. The melting process locks phosphorus firmly inside silicate, rendering it useless as fertilizer.
The phosphorus contained in sewage sludge is called a "domestic resource," but in practice:
In other words, sewage-sludge phosphorus recovery looks "domestic" but requires a massive global energy and chemical supply chain behind it. When the Middle East crisis sends crude and LNG prices soaring and tightens naphtha-derived reagent supply, the entire system breaks down simultaneously.
There is no magical system that lets domestic phosphorus recycling operate independently in a crisis — none exists today.
This is decisive.
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are called "Forever Chemicals" because they barely decompose in nature. They do not break down during composting either; they simply remain.
Sewage sludge concentrates PFAS. Every processing step pushes PFAS from the water phase to the solid phase, building up to several-fold or several-tens-of-fold higher concentrations than the influent water.
And —
Applying sewage-sludge-derived compost to farmland means risking instant contamination of healthy soil that took decades to build. Once contaminated, soil cannot be cleaned up. Mycorrhizal fungi cannot break down PFAS. Neither can polyculture. Neither can no-till.
For details, see the following document prepared with Gemini:
Middle East Conflict and Japan's Phosphate Fertilizer Supply (PDF)
Stockpiles run out in autumn 2026. In 2027, phosphate fertilizer becomes unavailable. Reduced application, substitutes, and sludge recovery cannot bridge the gap. All three routes — product import, domestic processing, and domestic recovery — collapse simultaneously.
At the same time, Japan's conventional farmland has accumulated centuries' worth of phosphorus from decades of fertilizer history. In particular, Japan's Kuroboku (Andosol) volcanic soils have a high phosphate absorption coefficient, and through a history of over-fertilization, enormous amounts of phosphate have been fixed in hard-to-dissolve forms bound to aluminum and iron. The problem is not "quantity" but "bioavailability."
When the mycorrhizal network is working, plants can obtain up to 90% of soil N and P through microbial symbiosis. In Japan's hot, humid climate, no-weeding allows that network to regenerate relatively quickly.
What we need is not new fertilizer but letting the soil's innate regenerative capacity function.
Note: Even when fertilizer stops coming, agricultural products still come. The United States and others prioritize fertilizer domestically while exporting crops at a premium. Japan will not starve. That is precisely why we can bridge the short term with food imports while transitioning deliberately to natural farming. Rebuilding the mycorrhizal network takes time, but the grace period is there.
Continuing conventional agriculture on sheer willpower will lose money. Domestic fertilizer prices spike, but imported produce prices don't rise nearly as much. The US and others keep fertilizer at home, so their production costs are relatively stable. Domestic produce grown with expensive fertilizer loses on price to imports. The more you grow, the more you lose.
Natural farming is the only option left. This is not ideology — it is physical reality.
What we have written so far is about the short-term crisis. But even if Middle East infrastructure is eventually rebuilt and phosphate rock imports resume, in the long run phosphate rock itself is becoming unusable.
At the world's phosphate mines, the accessible, low-impurity "high-grade" ore has been mined out first, and what remains is increasingly poor-quality "low-grade" ore. This quality degradation is not merely a matter of lower nutrient content; it rebounds as three fatal walls.
1. The wall of cadmium and heavy metals. Low-grade phosphate rock contains large quantities of toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, uranium, and arsenic. Cadmium in particular is extremely harmful to humans (it is the cause of Itai-itai disease), and if fertilizer made from this ore is applied continuously, the soil becomes contaminated and crops become poisoned. The EU has begun setting strict standards for cadmium content in fertilizers, and Japanese regulations are likely to tighten in the years ahead.
2. The energy cost of "detoxification." Decadmiation — the technology to remove cadmium and similar contaminants — is technically difficult and consumes enormous electricity, heat energy, and chemicals. The more the ore's quality degrades, the more the cost of processing it into safe fertilizer climbs exponentially.
3. Radioactive waste (phosphogypsum). When low-grade rock is dissolved in sulfuric acid to extract phosphate, large amounts of "phosphogypsum" are generated as byproduct. Phosphogypsum often contains radioactive substances such as uranium and radium, and it is difficult to reuse. Mountains of contaminated material with nowhere to go are piling up around fertilizer plants worldwide.
Conclusion. Both in the short term and in the long term, phosphate fertilizer becomes globally difficult to obtain. In other words, the path of chemical-fertilizer agriculture is globally closing. In Japan, natural farming is the only option left — this is not a temporary response but a long-term necessity.
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