As with whale oil, it is a natural resource we came closest to running out of.
And as with whale oil, substitutions save the day.
From JSTOR:
A history of civilization could be written in fertilizers. And the history of guano—bird poop—tells us a lot about slavery, imperialism, and U.S. expansion.....MUCH MORE
A history of civilization could be written in fertilizers. Since the advent of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago, the essential problem has been the same: How do we replace the nutrients extracted from soils by crops? Humans have added all sorts of things to soil in hopes of enriching it—manure, peat, bones, horseshoe crabs, blood meal, sewage sludge, even whale carcasses. Although the list of traditional fertilizers is long and bizarre, none has so strange a history as guano, which was once the agricultural equivalent of gold.
Guano is bird poop. There are other ways of saying this, but there is no way around this basic excremental fact. The substance is the end result (so to speak) of the tiny marine plants that feed the small fish that seabirds eat. Rich in nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, guano makes exceptionally good fertilizer. (A tall tale of the 1850s, for instance, has a boatload of the potent stuff supercharging a ship’s cockroaches, making them big enough to haul up the anchor. The wooden boat itself also goes through a growth spurt, sprouting new twigs, leaves, and even fruit.)
The best guano is Peruvian. In the arid conditions of that nation’s Chincha Islands, the plant-friendly nutrients aren’t washed out in the rain. Peru’s hot, dry climate also inhibits bacterial breakdown, such that guano stays viable for longer. An estimated 60 million seabirds—including guanay cormorants, piquero boobies, and Peruvian pelicans—build up 150-foot-high mounds of guano on the small islands and rocks that line the coast.
Peruvians knew guano made fantastic fertilizer from at least the 13th century. The Incans are supposed to have decreed death to anyone who harmed guano birds. (The word guano is the Spanish version of the indigenous Quechua word wanu.) European and American farmers have been aware of it since the 1820s, but Peru’s “celebrated guano dung” wasn’t transported north until the 1840s, when a “guano mania” took hold on distant farms.
In the American South, as historian Weymouth T. Jordan elaborates, the “guano gospel” held sway among enthusiasts. Guano increased agricultural output and popularized the use of commercial fertilizers better than anything else. (And “anything else” seems like a good description of the materials used before guano: coal tar, hair, rags, fish, bone, feathers, night soil, and malt dust.) Jordan notes that the terrible, slave-like conditions on the Chincha Islands were publicized in the South, but similar abolitionist reports on Southern slaves were not. Regardless, guano mining conditions were horrific: Chinese laborers—some kidnapped, others conned into thinking they were headed for California’s gold fields—killed themselves en masse rather than face the hell of digging through mounds of ancient ammonia in the blistering sun.
In the 1860s, Peruvians and others would make slave raids through Polynesia, decimating some of the smaller islands in their wake, in search of guano laborers. Meanwhile Peru, which had bankrupted itself in its war of independence against Spain in the 1820s, used its guano resources to secure loans in London. A boom resulted, running until the mid 1870s. This was Peru’s guano golden age (for all except for the unfortunate guano miners). As economist Catalina Vizcarra shows, guano made Peru a model debtor state: The country consistently pledged guano revenue to foreign creditors even as it lurched chaotically through 14 changes of government between 1850 and 1875.
Because London’s banks were the chief creditors, the English ended up controlling the guano monopoly. The resulting high prices inspired a rush for non-Peruvian sources of guano, as well as fakes, adulterated products, and other competing materials. In an extraordinary move, the U.S. responded to demand for cheaper guano among farmers by declaring that any American citizen could claim uninhabited islands, islets, cays, and rocks anywhere in the world for guano production....
For I too have experienced the siren call of the guano islands:
The Allure of Guano
New York Guano
"Guano Mania"
Today In Guano
We have an odd fascination with guano.
Let me rephrase that.
From Law 360:
Judge Kills Suit Seeking $213M On 140-Year-Old Guano Notes
