The Nitrogen Challenge
October 12th, 2009 By Michael R. Dimock
Late last week mass media woke up to a core challenge of civilization: providing sufficient nitrogen to feed plants without exacerbating climate change and water degradation in a world going from 6 to 9 billion souls.
Writer Michael Pollan was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation last week with two farmers, Blake Hurst and Troy Roush, when this problem came up in the conversation. Then on Friday the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by Tim Groser, New Zealand’s minister of trade and associate minister for climate-change issues, calling for an international effort to seek solutions. In that op-ed he stated that “agricultural emissions are typically a waste of productive inputs. For example, nitrogen lost from fertilizer is no longer available to boost production, and carbon lost from the soil reduces the future production potential of the land.” Now nitrogen has become a topic of interest on Twitter, Facebook, and blogosphere. Read More