Mosaic - fertile speculations - FT.com Malthus has not been proved right. The most dismal of economists is hard to prove wrong, however. Will the capacity to increase food production end before population growth does? As we wait to find out, pessimists snap up shares in fertiliser producers, betting that demand for their products is on a permanent upward trajectory that will end only in global catastrophe (at which point investments will no longer matter). Neo-Malthusians may have been annoyed when Mosaic, the third-largest global fertiliser producer by revenues, published underfed earnings on Tuesday. Sales and earnings were below expectations, sending the shares of the $24bn market cap company down by 4 per cent. Mosaic attributed the weakness to constrained production capacity in phosphate fertiliser and soft demand in India and China for potash fertiliser. Those thinking about Mosaic (and fertiliser) in terms of years not days should ignore this latest blip and focus on larger issues, though. First: will fertiliser prices catch up with agricultural commodity prices? Phosphate, for example, is up only modestly over the past two years while corn is up 40 per cent. The company argues that inventory destocking explains much of the difference, but oversupply is at least as important: capital expenditures at Mosaic and rival Potash more than doubled after the wild run-up in prices in 2008. Can the industry demonstrate some discipline? Second, Cargill, which once held a huge stake in Mosaic, is free to sell the last of its shares - about 10 per cent of Mosaic's total - early next year and Mosaic has the net cash on its balance sheet ($2.6bn) to buy them all in at the current price and have money left over. If the industry behaves rationally, and Mosaic forges ahead with shareholder-friendly capital allocation policies, investors will not go hungry.