Geo-Agriculture: Reviewing Opportunities through Which the Geosphere Can Help Address Emerging Crop Production Challenges

Abstract

<jats:p>The agricultural sector faces looming challenges including dwindling fertiliser reserves, environmental impacts of conventional soil inputs, and increasingly difficult growing conditions wrought by climate change. Naturally-occurring rocks and minerals may help address these challenges. In this case, we explore opportunities through which the geosphere could support viable agricultural systems, primarily via a literature review supplemented by data analysis and preliminary-scale experimentation. Our objective is to focus on opportunities specifically relating to emerging agricultural challenges. Our findings reveal that a spectrum of common geological materials can assist across four key agricultural challenges: 1. Providing environmentally-sustainable fertiliser deposits especially for the two key elements in food production, nitrogen (via use of slow release N-rich clays), and phosphorus (via recovery of the biomineral struvite) as well as through development of formulations to tap into mineral nutrient reserves underlying croplands. 2. Reducing contamination from farms—using clays, zeolites, and hydroxides to intercept, and potentially recycle nutrients discharged from paddocks. 3. Embedding drought resilience into agricultural landscapes by increasing soil moisture retention (using high surface area minerals including zeolite and smectite), boosting plant availability of drought protective elements (using basalts, smectites, and zeolites), and decreasing soil surface temperature (using reflective smectites, zeolites, and pumices), and 4. mitigating emissions of all three major greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (using fast-weathering basalts), methane (using iron oxides), and nitrous oxide (using nitrogen-sorbing clays). Drawbacks of increased geological inputs into agricultural systems include an increased mining footprint, potential increased loads of suspended sediments in high-rainfall catchments, changes to geo-ecological balances, and possible harmful health effects to practitioners extracting and land-applying the geological materials. Our review highlights potential for ‘geo-agriculture’ approaches to not only help meet several key emerging challenges that threaten sustainable food and fiber production, but also to contribute to achieving some of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals—‘Zero Hunger,’ ‘Life on Land,’ and ‘Climate Action.’</jats:p>

Properties and applications of natural zeolites

“…Other references on the topic of Agriculture are suggested: Abdelrahman et al 2023;Affendi et al 2023;Cataldo et al 2023Cataldo et al , 2021Haemmerle and Tschgg, 2023;Gholamhoseini et al 2023;Öz and Aral, 2023;Saint-Aimé et al 2023;Sharma et al 2023;Pavlak et al 2023;Cadar et al 2023;Al-Salihi et al 2023;Sotiriou et al 2023;Al Amir et al 2022;Jarosz et al 2022Jarosz et al , 2017Dinuccio et al 2022;Abdulathemand and Al-Rudainy, 2021;Khalifa et al 2021;Szatanik-Kloc et al 2021;Hazrati et al 2021;Noviello et al 2021;Rahimi et al 2021;Szerement et al 2021;Choo et al 2020;de Brujin et al 2020;Kalita et al 2020;Liza et al 2020;Nikolau et al 2020;Pratt et al 2020;Serati Nouri et al 2020;Abreu et al 2019;Dubey and Mailapalli, 2019;Eroglu et al 2019;Giannatou et al, 2018;Jakkula and Wani, 2018;Pasaglia and Prisa, 2018;Bilgin, 2017;Smedt et al 2017;Garzón Prado et al 2017;Tsynskaladze et al 2017;…”

Reactivity and Dissolution Characteristics of Naturally Altered Basalt in CO2-Rich Brine: Implications for CO2 Mineralization

“… 25 Meanwhile, the thin and flaky structure of clay minerals in altered basalt offers a large surface area for reactions. Clay minerals have up to 150 times the specific surface area (SSA) of pyroxene and olivine; 26 for instance, the SSA of smectite can reach 750 m 2 /g. 27 Basaltic rocks also undergo chemical changes during alteration, with a higher MgO and lower CaO content than fresh basaltic rocks.…”

Spectroscopic characterizations of silicate fertilizers prepared by chemical deashing of coals

“…Silicon has been well recognized as the beneficial plant prophylactic of broad spectrum, which can endow plants with the good tolerance to a wide range of biotic and abiotic stresses [ 1 ]. Therefore, many minerals and artificial sources have been tested for the silicon availability of plants, and the best could be the slags [ [2] , [3] , [4] ], which could also make nice contributions to the emission mitigations of greenhouse gases like CO 2 , CH 4 and N 2 O, and the stabilization of heavy metals in soils [ [5] , [6] , [7] ]. Steel slags have been directly crushed to <0.178 mm for use in the soil remediation trials [ 8 ], and the fine modifications of hot slags could be made with potassium feldspar or potassium carbonate as modifiers [ 3 ].…”