Thanks for your detailed comment, Sam! 

Interesting to hear that you've been working on fertilizer management for such a long time. The points you're adding seem very useful for a better understanding of the topic – they certainly provided more nuance to my own thinking about fertilizers. I agree that "increasing returns from fertilizer" might indeed be a better framing and that working on the issue from multiple angles could be more productive. 

Regarding your point about fertilizers subsidy spending taking away money from other causes, I think this is not per se an argument against fertilizer subsidies – it would be if the causes from which spending is subtracted would be more cost-effective (but I have no idea if this is the case). I do wonder though why fertilizer subsidies are politicized in South Asian countries. Because of fertilizers' role in environmental pollution?

Lastly, just to make things clear, while I spent 12 hours on the research itself, I spent an equal amount of time writing up my findings.

Thanks for the book recommendation and your inputs on the concrete industry, interesting to see the parallels! 

Yeah, I also wonder about neglectedness. Just did a quick Google search and saw that both Oxfam and the Gates Foundation include agricultural development in their focus areas. I assume that if two prominent charities in the global development field are working on agricultural interventions, other organizations are likely to work on them as well. I don't know how effective their efforts are though. I could imagine that – as it's the case with global health interventions – some agricultural development interventions might be one or more orders of magnitude more effective than others. But I'm not aware of any resources or research comparing possible/existing interventions in this field.

Yes, I've actually read part of your energy descent series and it gave me useful input for my post, so thanks a lot for that! 

Thank you so much for this post, Luke! 

For the past few years or so, I've become increasingly surprised by how few people mention effective giving when I asked them about their current efforts or future plans to do good. I don't know if that is because it's actually the case that few people donate – or because almost all people do so it's not worth mentioning it. I'm sad that effective giving is appearing to have such a minor role in EA, particularly since I think effective giving is an excellent way to keep this community grounded.

Anyways, I really appreciate you lending your voice to effective giving and your great work at GWWC - keep it up!