God’s Fertilizer Factories

The last article mentioned the largest natural nitrogen factories in the world, working silently and efficiently right beneath your toes. These tiny bacteria and fungi “fix” nitrogen from the atmosphere—which is about 78% nitrogen—in a form that plants cannot use.

Now I would like if we could pull our eyes off the microscope and look out the window at a smaller, but more powerful-looking nitrogen factory.

Flash! Crack! Bang!

Did you see that? Yeah, that was God “fixing” nitrogen in that lightning strike!

With an average of 2000 thunderstorms circling the earth continuously, at any given moment about 100 lightning streaks are heating the surrounding air to about 50,000ºF, which creates enough heat to allow the nitrogen in the air to mix with oxygen. This falls to the earth as NO3, “oxygen nitrate”, which plants can then absorb.

I try to tell my 7-year-old son that those booms and cracks are just God making fertilizer. But I have yet to convince him that thunderstorms were meant to be enjoyed!

Roughly 10,000,000 tons of usable nitrogen is fixed annually by lightning. This is less than 10% of what microbial life fixes, but it is an important addition.

And for about 6,000 years, the earth survived beautifully with these two nitrogen-fixing factories.

Then, in 1909, the German chemist Fritz Haber developed a method to artificially fix nitrogen. Shortly afterward, another German, Carl Bosch, found a way to make the method commercially practical. Thus was born the Haber-Bosch process, which earned both men a Nobel prize in chemistry.

A century later finds us pumping millions of tons of artificially produced nitrogen into our soils. And...into our lakes and streams and oceans. The Mississippi River alone feeds a “dead zone” that varies in size from 3,000 to 8,000 square miles.

All those excess nitrates that the plants fail to capture leach quickly into the ground water or take a ride in run-off into streams and rivers—throwing the nitrogen balance out of whack, sometimes to the extent of making the water uninhabitable for the native species. Excess nitrate is also added to run-off by not promptly plowing in manure.

Yes, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

And since artificial nitrogen fertilizers are made with natural gas—roughly 70% to 90% of the production cost—the only outlook in price for them is upward.

Will we be able to keep on going—sustain—our present pace? What will be the cost a century form now? Will it be wars and quarrels over diminishing resources? Will it be “dead zones” of 50,000 square miles? Will it be a generation of farmers ignorant of how to encourage natural nitrogen fixing?

To live sustainably means to be able to hang in there for the long run. Are we willing to cut back on outside resources, and accept what a patch of ground produces naturally, using sustainable methods?

We might just find out that our grandchildren will appreciate our willingness to live within our means. The fish in the Mississippi River might appreciate it as well!