Posted by DFM on July 21, 2026, 12:41 pm, in reply to "Where? In the Andes?"
Chilean nitrate deposits are the world's only natural reserves of sodium nitrate, located in the hyper-arid Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Formed from atmospheric and marine-leached compounds trapped in crude ore called caliche, they drove the global fertilizer and explosive markets until synthetic fixation replaced them.
- DFM July 20, 2026, 2:27 pm