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Nitrogen Fertilizer and Its Impacts on Industrial Agriculture

Jun 27

4 min read

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Demands for food are growing without limit alongside our rapidly increasing population. Food is an essential part of our survival and as the world population increases steadily farms are required to produce more. Driven by this rising demand for higher yields farmers have turned to nitrogen fertilizer in order to insure maximum yields. At first it seems like a flawless solution yet it's more complicated than that. If we were to look at the larger picture of the role nitrogen fertilizer plays in food production we would come across some complex questions. Where does the fertilizer end up after use? Does using fertilizer disrupt the world's natural order? Is it even necessary to use fertilizers? These are all questions we must answer if we were to understand the impact that nitrogen fertilizer has on our planet.  The truth is farmers put far more than necessary amounts of nitrogen fertilizer on plants in order to assure perfect yields. Not only does this have tremendous negative impacts on the environment, and disrupt the natural cycle of things, it is wholly unnecessary. After looking deeper than the statistics of the increase of yields after utilizing fertilizer it is clear that the use of fertilizer should be restricted to a smaller amount, if not completely banned.


The excess use of Nitrogen Fertilizer harms the water sources of earth. Often, all the extra nitrogen fertilizer used by farmers is washed off into oceans.  It's these nutrient runoffs that cause the recurring “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. And as more crops are being grown, and more fertilizer is being used the amount of nutrient runoff is increasing rapidly, causing,”​​ persistent algal blooms, like red tides that produce toxins,” which,” have devastated coastal communities in Florida, staying long past their typical seasons and killing marine life en masse.” (NRDC)  These algal blooms consume all the oxygen in the water which throws marine ecosystems off balance. And it doesn’t only affect marine life. The water pollution is so bad that in 2014 at Lake Erie, “officials in Toledo, Ohio, warned roughly 500,000 customers not to drink or come in contact with the city’s tap water for three days.” (The Center for Public Integrity) On top of this nutrients runoff is a growing problem. Every year more and more fertilizer is being used on industrial crops. From 4.3 million tons of fertilizer on all crops in 1964 to 5.7 million tons of fertilizer on corn alone in 2006. The problem of nutrient runoff isn’t only important to marine ecosystems, but us as well, as we are both affected by nitrogen fertilizers in the waters that are essential to our lives.


Although nitrous oxide is not the biggest contributor to climate change, it is still part of the problem. According to a study conducted in the USA, in the year of 2019, agriculture is the biggest contributor to nitrous oxide emissions. 75% of all nitrous oxide emissions comes from agricultural soil management. (USEPA) Agricultural soil management refers to the usage of nitrogen fertilizer, which turns into nitrous oxide “when excess nitrogen makes its way into the atmosphere”. (NRDC) Although nitrous oxide is not a huge threat compared to carbon dioxide, cutting back on its emissions would still be a help. To achieve that all farmers would have to do is to cut back on the use of nitrogen fertilizer. Another example of the harmful outcomes of nitrous oxide in our air is ammonia. According to James Galloway, a scientist at the University of Virginia,”There’s a very tight link between growing food and ammonia-based small particles in the atmosphere.” Nitrous oxide can turn into ammonia emissions, which when concentrated can result in low air quality, capable of causing death. And all of this is caused because the excess nitrogen in fertilizer is turned into nitrous oxide. If industrial farms used just a bit less fertilizer when farming we could slow down the rates of climate change.


Although nitrogen fertilizer does terrible things to the environment it is still essential, at the moment. Without nitrogen fertilizer the quantity of the crops we grow would decrease at an alarming rate. According to Frontiers,”we are so dependent on nitrogen fertilization that we would only be able to produce enough food to feed ~50% of the world’s population without it.” Because of this, it seems like it would be impossible to stop relying on nitrogen fertilizers, however this is not the case. More than 40% of crops produced in America are wasted. (FoodPrint) That's around 160 billion pounds of food in the waste each year. We are wasting almost half of the crops we produce, and instead of trying to fix that we harm the earth by using fertilisers. So, even in the aspect that seems at first to demand the use of nitrogen fertiliser, it is in the end better in every way to not use fertiliser.


In essence nitrogen fertilizer is harmful to our health and the health of Earth. And although fertilizer does play a major role in the quantity of crops this problem can be gotten around by decreasing food waste. It follows that we should decrease the amount of fertilizer we use in farming. And when it comes to sustainability a change sooner will always be better than a change later.


Bibliography: 

Natural Resources Defense Council. 31 July 2019, www.nrdc.org/stories/

    industrial-agricultural-pollution-101. Accessed 24 Sept. 2021.

Wertz, Joe. "Farming's Growing Problem." The Center for Public 


Integrity, 22 Jan. 2020,   publicintegrity.org/environment/unintended-consequences-farming-fertilizer-climate-health-water-nitrogen/

Accessed 28 Sept. 2021.


Food Print. foodprint.org/issues/the-problem-of-food-waste/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2021.


United States Environmental Protection Agency. www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/

     overview-greenhouse-gases. Accessed 22 Oct. 2021.

Jun 27

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