100 years of artificial nitrogen – but how many left?

I recently was asked in an interview to name the one thing I would change in the world if I had the power to do so. Surprising even myself, I replied quickly “the Haber-Bosch (H-B) process for industrial nitrogen fixation. Imagine – a world without synthetic N! One can imagine the blank look I got when I pulled that one out of the blue.

My response came from a professional lifetime studying the good and bad of fertilizers, especially nitrogen. And it comes from much reading of the literature on food production and the ills of our advanced society. So, bear with me as I look into a reverse crystal ball for what-if, realizing all the while that there is no way of going back, but examining whether the reverse crystal ball could help us move forward.

carl_bosch

Carl Bosch

Much of my background material comes from Vaclav Smil’s book, Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and The Transformation of World Food Production (2001), sprinkled in with Smil’s Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century (2000) and L.T. Evans’s Feeding the Ten Billion: Plants and Population Growth (1998). There are many other books and papers I could cite, but most are repeating much of the same material.

So, what is the H-B process anyway, and how did it come about? A bit of history:

The world, especially Europe and China, had gained population in bursts, but around 1500 farming moved from subsistence to commercial. Farmers owned their land and developed cropping rotations centered on increasing carrying capacity for animals with fertility supplied through manures and nitrogen coming from clover. Soon, high-yielding cereals were introduced and population headed toward the first billion. Read More >

Struck by a Helicopter Toilet: Reflections on Human Waste

peepoo-bag

As I was jogging past the group of giggling teenagers on a stoop, something struck my shoulder.  Curious, I picked up the offending projectile: a plastic bag, tied and filled with a dark, crumbly material.  The kids on the stoop burst out laughing.

“So what’s in the bag?”  I asked, playing along.

After a pause, one of them blurted out,”it’s sh*t.”

“I see,” I replied.  “Is it yours?”

“Uh-huh.”  More laughter.

“Oh?  Well here – take it back!”  I flung the bag back in their direction.  It tore as I threw it, flinging the contents (which, for all I knew, could have been only dirt) in all directions.  Thanks in part to the mood-enhancing endorphins generated by my run, we all had a good laugh.

“That was a good one!”  One of the kids shouted as I waved and continued on my way.

This harmless practical joke was unusual for the Baltimore neighborhood where it took place, but plastic bags filled with human feces – flung out windows or onto the street – are not uncommon in urban slums of the developing world.  According to the World Health Organization (2006), an estimated 18% of the global population resorts to defecating in open spaces.  In areas that lack basic sanitation, these “helicopter toilets” are often the most pragmatic waste disposal method available.

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