When was the last time you thought
about nitrogen?
That’s what we thought. Yet with every
bite you take—of an apple, a chicken
leg, a leaf of spinach—you’re consuming
nitrogen. Because plants, including food
crops, can’t survive without a ready
supply of available nitrogen in the
soil.
It used to be that the amount of food a
farmer could grow was limited by his or
her ability to supplement soil nitrogen,
either by planting cover crops, applying
manure or moving on to a new, more
fertile field. But all that changed
about 100 years ago, when a technical
innovation that enabled us to produce a
cheap synthetic form of nitrogen ushered
in the age of industrial nitrogen
fertilizers.
For the last 50 years, farmers around
the world have used synthetic nitrogen
fertilizers to boost their crop yields
and drive the 20th century's rapid
agricultural intensification.
But in their fervor to increase
yields, farmers often dose their crops
with more nitrogen than the plants can
absorb. The excess is now causing
serious air and water pollution, and
threatening human health. Ironically,
all that fertilizer may even be ruining
the very soil it was meant to enrich.
Read the essay
Copyright © 2015 Organic Consumers Association · 6771 South Silver Hill Drive, Finland MN 55603