Tom Philpott, Tracking U.S. farmers’ supply of nitrogen fertilizer

Tracking U.S. farmers’ supply of nitrogen fertilizer
Tom Philpott, Grist
We burn through more of it per capita than any other country; and our appetite for it can only be sated with massive imports. No, not oil--I'm talking about nitrogen fertilizer. With only 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. consumes nearly 12 percent of the globe's annual synthetic nitrogen fertilizer production. And we're producing less and less of it at home--meaning that, as with petroleum, we're increasingly dependent on other nations for this key crop nutrient.


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EB: The dark side of nitrogen
Stephanie Ogburn, Grist
Modern agriculture — and, consequently, present-day human society — depends on the widespread availability of cheap nitrogen fertilizer, the ingredient that makes our high-yielding food system possible. But the industrialization of this synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has come with costs.

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Comstock, Tilling our own soil

Published on 21 May 2007 by Energy Bulletin / Jefferson Public Radio. Archived on 21 May 2007.
Tilling our own soil: Preparing a surge capacity for food
by Craig K. Comstock

Sustainable System?The system of getting nearly all our food from industrial agriculture located elsewhere works as long as petrochemicals are cheap, as they have been (with brief interruptions) for many decades. Natural gas fuels some of the electricity used for refrigeration and it does serve an integral role in the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer, the process invented in 1908 by German chemist and Nobel Laureate Fritz Haber. Just a century ago, farmers depended mainly on nitrogen-fixing cover crops, manure, and bird guano for fertilizer. Crude oil serves as the feedstock for pesticides and herbicides, as well as for packaging, and as fuel for farm equipment and long-distance trucks. Without cheap petrochemicals, the system of industrial agriculture would falter.But why worry? Perhaps because U.S. oil production has been declining since around 1970, the main foreign sources are in politically volatile areas, and some suppliers claim dubious reserves. Matt Simmons, a veteran oil industry analyst, recently published a book on OPEC’s biggest single supplier under the title Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Wiley & Sons, 2005). After examining 200 technical papers, Simmons argues that the Saudis, like others, have exaggerated the size of their reserves.If the world soon reaches the “peak” of petroleum (and later of natural gas) production, the price of food would most certainly increase. We wouldn’t be out of petrochemicals, but we would be dependent on oil that is much harder to find and bring to the surface and thus more costly. With regard to food, the economic advantage would tip back toward harvesting from fields closer to consumers, and toward growing produce by organic methods, with as little dependence as possible on gas and oil.