I never would have thought corn was this interesting! I was captivated from start to finish by the marvelous story of a “peculiar grass” from Central America that came to fill the bellies of billions in every corner of the globe.
The landmark moment for this little grass, corn, was when a huge ammunitions plant switched from making explosives to chemical fertilizer. With the closing of World war two, the United States government had a massive surplus of nitrogen they were planning on turning into bombs. With no war going on and peace for the foreseeable future, they decided to spray all of the nitrogen in the forest. Thankfully a genius in the department of Agriculture suggested it be sprayed on crops instead, as fertilizer. This led to a boom in the amount of food we could produce. Indian farm activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, “We’re still eating the leftovers of World War II.”
Micheal Pollan states: “All life depends on nitrogen; It is the building block from which nature assembles amino acids, proteins and nucleic acid; the genetic information that orders and perpetuates life is written in nitrogen ink.” But the supply of usable nitrogen on earth is limited. Although earth’s atmosphere is about eighty percent nitrogen, all those atoms are tightly paired, nonreactive, and therefore useless. The 19th-century chemist Justus von Liebig talked of atmospheric nitrogen’s “indifference to all other substances.” To be of any value to plants and animals these self-involved nitrogen atoms must be split and then joined to hydrogen. Now that we can manufacture nitrogen mechanically, the limits on the amount of food we can produce decreased. With industrial nitrogen, we can grow genetically modified crops that previously could not be grown due to the fact that bacteria could not fix nitrogen fast enough.
This miracle is a double-edged sword, as you stated. Though Haber’s process is feeding the world, it is also destroying it. With dead zones in the ocean the size of New Jersey, It is only a matter of time until all of us feel the repercussions. Algae is choking out and killing fish, weeds are overtaking fields and gardens. Pollan does not tell us the problem and leave, he gives a solution.
Every day, bacteria continue fixing nitrogen like they always have; organic farmers still are able to grow plenty. But, as a bonus, we do not destroy the environment when we grow organically. We instead help protect the planet and feed everyone. I would add this caveat though. This is not to say synthetic nitrogen doesn’t have a role in modern farming. It can be used to make non-arable soil fertile enough for production. The key here is respecting the tool we have been given.