Our Role

For thousands of years, the world population was pretty steady. People got their food from the resources around them and the world's resources could keep up. Then, with the dawn of the industrial age, people quickly realized they could make a better living away from the farms. So, they did. They made more money, had more children and the world population exploded - and it hasn't slowed yet. There are about 6 billion people on this earth today - with an estimated 9 billion by the year 2040.

Pushed to the limit

The world's resources do an adequate job of feeding our ever-growing population, but there are limits:

Just 4 percent of the earth's surface is suitable for growing food and most of it is covered by water.

Over half of the land is uninhabited desert, mountain or polar areas.

Much of the inhabited area is unsuitable for producing crops or is covered by urban sprawl.

Without essential crop nutrition, scientists estimate that only 40 percent of today's world population could be fed.

Increasing yields

With an ever-expanding population and so little arable land, the only way to meet the increasing demand for food is by increasing crop yields - the amount of food each crop produces. And that's exactly what AOP does. Our crop nutrients - such as nitrogen, phosphate and potash - can actually double, triple or even quadruple a farmer's yield per acre.

But to feed our healthier- eating families, food production must increase more than 2 percent every year. AOP is committed to developing innovative new fertilizer products and services to help our customers meet that need.