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With the precious cargo slung over his shoulder, Vikram Singh strides through his field spreading the white granular stuff where it matters most. “I can’t afford to waste any … I had to buy it on the black market,” says the 38-year-old farmer from Dostpur Mangroli village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
For the past two decades, Mr. Singh has toiled his field for wheat and rice to feed his family of six, using the white stuff to stimulate the crops and his livelihood in India’s once-fertile Gangetic Plain.
“I have to use more and more because the land is not as good as it once was … This is not only expensive, it’s very hard to get,” says Mr. Singh, who paid twice the retail amount of 1,200 rupees (about $23) for a bootleg 50-kilogram bag of the white stuff – potash-based fertilizer.
Like Mr. Singh, farmers around the world are demanding better access and prices to the indispensable and irreplaceable pink salt known as potash, which optimizes the delivery of nutrients to plants.
Pressure is also mounting on the governments of fast-emerging economies such as China and India, which view the daunting challenge of providing their booming populations with better quality food as a potential threat to national security.
A greater reliance on potash promises to virtually double the output of their agricultural sectors, as well as other similarly-challenged emerging economies. That’s because this strategic mineral can significantly improve crop yields while requiring less arable land and less water. Investment industry analysts agree that there will be heightened global demand for many years to come.
This reality has, for the past several years, spurred on a multi-billion dollar, highstakes race to acquire and control the world’s few remaining undeveloped potash deposits. Most of them can be found in Saskatchewan, where potash lies abundantly in the salts left behind by an ancient inland sea.
According to a January, 2012 report by Toronto-based bond ratings agency DBRS: “The anticipation of persistent demand growth for fertilizers and the rapid rise in potash prices has led to an explosion of expansion projects from existing producers and new entrants.”
Hence, China and India have high-priority national mandates to get a piece of the action before it is too late in what is now being dubbed as Saskatchewan’s Pink Gold Rush.
Saskatchewan’s Minister of the Economy, Bill Boyd, looks forward to a boom in the potash industry fertilizing the future of his province.
“We have established a global reputation as the world’s largest potash producer, with nearly half of the world’s proven potash reserves,” he said in a recent interview. “This means billions of dollars of potential new investments and thousands of jobs for Saskatchewan residents.”
Patricio Varas, the CEO of Western Potash, agrees. “There is no doubt that Saskatchewan is the Saudi Arabia of potash,” he says. His small company’s Milestone Project outside of Regina is being courted by China and India.
Both emerging superpowers are particularly anxious to lock in long-term potash supplies by partnering-up with any of the several smaller players in the Pink Gold Rush – ones that cannot afford to go forward alone, such as Western Potash.
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