text: The original agromineral is potash, it is how chemical fertilizers get it potassium and phosphorus nutrients in the present day. Due to such a high demand, the ore is running in low supply which has increased its market value. The biggest limiting factor is potassium, despite being the fourth most abundant element in the Earth's crust it has only one major source that being potash. One of the popular alternative ideas to get away from the use of chemical fertilizer is spreading rock powders in the field as a source of nutrients. One of the major research areas involve looking feldspars and feldspathoids and determining which would more efficient to use. In one of the studies it showed that the feldspathoid nepheline had a much higher dissolution rate making it more efficient source of potassium than other rocks that are much more potassium-rich like granitic rocks. 
  There is a push to move away from chemical fertilizers since it has been connected to groundwater pollution. There has been a shift into looking at grinding rocks into a powder that can be incorporated into the ground as a new way to add nutrients to the soil. The idea behind rock powder originated from the idea that rock weather and is how nutrients were originally put in the soil; the soil is weathered rock. With this concept it has been determined that the rock source is very important because the rock can have unwanted elements that can be toxic for both the plant and the humans ingesting it. Research has been done on rocks such as basalt and dacite; each rock had their pros and cons. The success of the rock powder can be affected by crop cycle. For example, basalt was effective when it came to long-cycle crops, but short-cycle crops it was not as effective as chemical fertilizers. With some rock powders it can take anywhere between 1-5 years to show results. The biggest contributions to rocks being an effective rock powder comes down to mineralogy and chemical composition. Once rock sources that have the proper elements and effectiveness is found, the limitation to rock powders then becomes how it is ground. Grinding a mineral, like olivine, to a particle size that would be effective in the ground (1μm), takes about 1.5 gigajoules per ton of rock. Research will be needed to find more efficient ways to crush rock for rock-powders to be a sustainable solution for replenishing plant nutrients.