How Morocco Secretly Controls China, India, The United States, And the World

this is a farm in china this is a mcdonald's in new york this is an apartment complex in mumbai and this is a skyscraper in london what do all of these things have in common well as it turns out all of these places successes or failures economic booms or collapses and even population explosions or famines might soon be decided by the nation of morocco but probably not for the reasons that you might think in fact this future economic trajectory was likely decided by a tiny little creature just a couple centuries ago this is a bat in the modern world we view bats as things that both control insect populations as well as creatures that spread rare diseases but a few hundred years ago bats were discovered to do something else something miraculous that would shape our world forever without most people realizing it in 1802 the european explorer alexander von humboldt was traveling through the peruvian lands when he discovered something strange you see the peruvian lands did not seem like they were suitable for large-scale agriculture yet the peruvian fields were filled with lush and healthy looking crops and he soon discovered that the peruvian people had been collecting a substance called guano which is the excretion of bats and some seabirds and they were using this by spreading it along their crops for the previous several thousand years so alexander von humboldt ended up bringing this knowledge of guano significantly increasing food production back to europe where soon that knowledge would become a key point of interest to the western world because soon after the discovery of guano food production boomed in the united states and europe and all of a sudden these western nations went from having a small but significant shortage of food to having a massive surplus of food which was more than enough to feed all of its citizens and then some in fact guano's impact on boosting food production became so important that several wars were fought over guano such as the chincha islands war of 1864 and the war of the pacific in 1879 the united states actually became so enamored with guano that it passed the guano islands act which allowed any american citizen to claim and annex any island that had any substantial amount of guano on it and well they did lay claim to roughly 70 of these islands most of which were in the pacific ocean now you see guano became so important to the economic population and industrial growth of the western world that it arguably became the most vital resource in the entire world however in 1913 fritz haber would discover a way to synthesize an artificial version of guano that we today call fertilizer and it was this one event the discovery of a fertilizer that would go on to be known as the detonator for the population explosion of the world soon after starvation in nations that used fertilizer became rare the world's population grew from 1.6 billion to 7.7 billion over the next 100 years food production and crop yields immediately doubled in many areas that used fertilizer nations with typically unsuitable locations to grow food like northern european countries such as norway all of a sudden were able to sustainably grow crops in more areas and well eventually every single country's economic and population growth was indirectly caused by the food surplus created from fertilizer in fact it is estimated that roughly 50 of all nitrogen in your body is directly from fertilizer that farms use to grow food and well that brings us to today all of this seems great so far fertilizer has allowed many countries to grow and in some cases become superpowers of the world where nearly all of their citizens are well fed and have a very little food insecurity but in 2010 a few scientists begin to notice something a little bit worrying fertilizer the compound responsible for a ton of the growth that humanity has seen over the last two centuries might actually be running out that's because that our fertilizer that has been used to grow our entire civilization over the last couple hundred years needs three things one of which is a nitrogen-based compound the second of which is a phosphate and the third of which is a potassium-based compound and two of these are compounds that we cannot create from scratch and those compounds are phosphate and potassium or in its raw form potash you see potash is a non-renewable resource that is largely controlled by just four countries canada is by far the world's largest producer of potash with over one third of the world's potash coming from canada russia belarus and china produced between 10 and 20 percent of the world's potash each and every other nation in the world combined produces only about 19 of the world's potash and let's think about that for a second essentially four countries control one ingredient that will dictate who is or isn't allowed to produce fertilizer and because potash resources are being depleted in these countries potash will become a more valuable resource as the world's population continues to grow and the food requirements for the world also grow now the world isn't likely going to go through a potash shortage in the next hundred years or so in fact our potash reserves could last for several hundred years before we see any shortages however phosphate one of those three key ingredients is a completely different case you see since 2010 there's been a hotly contested debate about when not if the world will run out of rock phosphate the united states geological survey estimated that we currently have 260 years worth of phosphate left in the earth assuming that the population doesn't grow at all and assuming the population continues to grow at a similar rate at what it is today we have roughly just over 100 years of phosphate left in the earth however those are just estimates that number could be much lower or much higher but really we don't even need to know when the world will run out of phosphate because we are already seeing shortages and also we are seeing countries take drastic economic policies to protect their own phosphate for example phosphate prices have increased by roughly 80 percent since early 2020. in september of 2021 china banned exporting of any of its own phosphate in hopes of assuring that it had enough phosphate to produce enough fertilizer to grow its own food for the foreseeable future but there is one key aspect that i have left out until this point and that is this you see china has the second largest phosphate reserves in the world as it owns roughly five percent of the world's phosphate and keep in mind that is second on this list and it is already concerned about its phosphate supply syria has the third largest amount of phosphate at three percent algeria is next at just under three percent and the rest of the world has only two percent or less each per country in terms of the world's phosphate reserves but then at number one there is the country of morocco you see morocco owns a whopping 70 of the world's phosphate and let's think about that for a second one nation owns 70 of a resource that can dictate which other nations will be able to feed their populations in fact within the next several decades the world's food supply could become dependent upon whoever morocco chooses to trade with or who they choose not to trade with or maybe just simply morocco will just sell off the phosphate to the highest bidder there is also the potential for international conflict or cooperation as that has been seen throughout history with any valuable resource and this would be far from the first time that we have seen wars started or partnerships enacted that revolved around the acquisition of fertilizer in fact increasingly every single year large populous countries like india mexico and brazil are becoming even more reliant upon moroccan phosphate or their agricultural industries and other nations like the united states have been placing tariffs on moroccan phosphate and going in the other direction now it is worth mentioning that peak phosphorus as some are calling this predicament may not occur as soon as we think as mentioned earlier estimates range from seeing significant shortages relatively soon to seeing shortages that occur in several hundred years from now but this peak phosphorus mentality is actually quite similar to what people were saying about oil in the 1950s because back then many scientists assumed that oil production in reserves would peak around the year 1970. yet since then the world has discovered substantially more oil in places like venezuela saudi arabia norway iran and china there was also technological innovations for oil like fracking which allowed the extraction of oil and deposits that were previously seen as unextractable because of how difficult it was to well extract the oil all this means is that even though it is predicted that rock phosphates will become significantly depleted over the next several decades we can't really know for sure also scientists have begun genetically engineering plants to absorb significantly more phosphorus in natural soil to try and avoid the reliance on fertilizer and so far those experiments have been minor successes but at the end of the day the entire world might or its fertilizer something that has never been seen before in the history of the world all of those old superpowers that owned a large percentage of the world's resources like the united states had with oil over 100 years ago the british empire had with medals in the early 19th century the dutch east india company of the 1600s or the hudson's bay company in the late 1600s all of those monopolies could pale in comparison to morocco's monopoly on phosphate and the world's fertilizer it is also worth noting that part of morocco's phosphate reserves are currently in an occupation zone in the western sahara meaning that a lot of those deposits are already in a conflict zone which could be a sign of things to come now if you enjoyed this video you may also like my second youtube channel where i talk about a lot of similar topics but in a more fun way and my return to that channel will happen in about a week or so so just stay tuned for that and maybe just hit the notification bell on that channel and i'll be back there very very soon and also i just checked again over 92 percent of you that watch my videos are not subscribers so please hit that subscribe button and also just click on my documentaries playlist as i do have a bunch of other videos just like this on that playlist so make sure to click on that playlist and i'll see you guys in my next video in just a few seconds

Channel: Jack Chapple

Views: 4,787,764

Keywords: Jack, Chapple, morocco, morocco salt, morocco phosphate, morocco phosphorus, morocco sahara, morocco economy, india economy, united states economy, stock market, china economy, australia china, australia economy, fertilizer, morocco fertilizer, china fertilizer, china united states, stock market investing, economics 101, economics explained, india fertilizer, superpowers, economic superpowers, how to invest for beginners, history, video essay, guano, peru, peru economy, money, bats

Id: GztRh8isKKc

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Was it a sarcasm that I didn't get right

[u/Master_Duggal_Sahab]

I watched couple videos on this channel and I don't know what he smokes bit I would like to try that one day.

This guys goes form pont a to b and then goes to get suddenly.

[u/[deleted]]

Useless piece of duggal sahab, facts are half truth and half lie, Morocco doesn't qualify to be even superpower in Africa