Debates about the agronomic feasibility of feeding the world organically have often focused on potential nitrogen (N) limitations, overlooking the challenges raised by the availability of phosphorus (P) in soils. Here we address this missing piece by simulating, over a 100‐year time span, a 100% organic world, in which mineral fertilizers are banned. We show that, in the short term, soil available P would barely limit organic...

Because the capability of terrestrial ecosystems to fix carbon is constrained by nutrient availability, understanding how nutrients limit plant growth is a key contemporary question. However, what drives nutrient limitations at global scale remains to be clarified. Using global data on plant growth, plant nutritive status, and soil fertility, we investigated to which extent soil parent materials explain nutrient limitations. W...

Phosphorus (P) availability in soils limits crop yields in many regions of the World, while excess of soil P triggers aquatic eutrophication in other regions. Numerous processes drive the global spatial distribution of P in agricultural soils, but their relative roles remain unclear. Here, we combined several global data sets describing these drivers with a soil P dynamics model to simulate the distribution of P in agricultura...