Nitrogen madness

The costs of unsustainable agriculture

Posted by Erik Hoffner (Guest Contributor) at 1:16 PM on 25 Jun 2008

Read more about: agriculture | industrial ag | sustainable ag | food | organic food

Here's a guest post from Rodale Institute CEO Tim LaSalle.

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Tom Philpott is right to highlight the tremendous ecological debt we've built up by depending on nitrogen fertilizer to run our crop production system. Depending on mined and fossil-fuel produced nitrogen for our food is no more sustainable than depending on peaking oil and mountain-top removed coal for our energy.

There's no more "cheap" food and fuel, because, really, there never was. The huge irony -- currently obscured by the psychological jolt of widespread shortages of food and fuel -- is that we were just learning of how not cheap industrial food has been:

1. The Pew Foundation report on industrial livestock production tells the U.S. public that environmental, human health, and livestock treatment short-cuts that made factory farming seem like such a sweet way to get cheap protein simply can't go on.

2. A global collection of analysts concluded earlier this year that "advanced" farming using high-production technologies has failed to account for the resulting human and environmental costs. Place-specific improvements must take into account traditional wisdom, social implications, and basic water and biodiversity impacts, said the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

3. Even after years of cajoling, state regulating, and badgering by environmentalists, the more than 40,000 Pennsylvania farms located within the Chesapeake Bay watershed discharge 46 percent of the nitrogen and 58 percent of the phosphorus in these waterways. They're facing stronger regulation, but no new paradigm of how to produce the crops and meat their buyers demand.

Regenerative organic farming does not use synthetic chemical fertilizer -- a product without residual benefit -- depending instead on a biologically vibrant soil ecosystem that makes timed-release nitrogen available to crops.

Important parts of this system are:

Legume crops that interact synergistically with specific soil bacteria to convert free nitrogen from the atmosphere into forms that crops can utilize;
Crop rotations to balance fertility needs from year to year;
Cover crops which are incorporated into field surface to increase soil organic matter;
Compost (made from crop residue, animal manures, and other organic matter) as a soil amendment to improve soil health and biological activity.

It's like Thomas Friedman said recently of the "big idea" to suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax this summer: "[This] proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious -- the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout."

We, as a country, have not yet begun to fight for a more sane way to grow the food we need to feed ourselves and to have our farms prosper. The crisis of nitrogen fertilizer supply and affordability is real, but the biggest part of the answer is not to haul or manufacture tons more to support our corn habit, but to simply ask:

What food and feed crops would do better on the fertility we can grow in ways that improve soil, don't pollute as much, and keep lots more carbon in the soil that non-organic methods?

For story: Nitrogen madness
31 Comments | Post a Comment

Ntirous emissions

Perhaps you should look into fertilizers as a growing emission source of nitrous (N2O), which is a potent greenhouse gas as well. -sam

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 2:24 PM on 25 Jun 2008

Nitrogen an easy fix compared to phosphorus

Good points, Tim.

What really worries me though is phosphorus - another essential nutrient - the "P" in N-P-K.

Unlike nitrogen (which can be obtained from the air or via N-fixing bacteria), the supplies of phosphorus are limited. Once the phosphate deposits have been mined out, that's the end of phosphorus fertilizers, the end of modern agriculture.

Estimates of phosphorus deposits are hazy - we might have 50, 100 or 200 years before phosphorus "runs out." The problems begin much sooner, however, since phosphorus will be getting harder and more expensive to mine. Just as with oil, we go after the easier deposits first. And just as we will have Peak Oil, so too with phosphorus. We published one analysis which concluded that we are at or near Peak Phosphorus.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) had an excellent interview on the subject.

Links and comments here:
http://energybulletin.net/node/45534

It would be a wonderful topic for writers/journalists in agricultural sustainability. Not much has been written about it.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 2:55 PM on 25 Jun 2008

Corn Ethanol and Nitrogen Fertilizer

There's a recent report in Science (two reports, really) on the role of nitrogen fertilizers in producing ocean releases of both CO2 and nitrous oxide. This is one more warning that calls into question the wisdom of subsidizing corn production -- for ethanol or anything else. Growing corn may actually be taking us the wrong direction on greenhouse gases and it is a chemical nightmare for our water resources. Lets get US agribusiness off the dole.

by davedenali at 5:45 PM on 25 Jun 2008

Nitrous oxide, methane

Nitrous oxide at 296x the GHG effect of CO2 and methane at 21 times the GHG effect of CO2 are the key to an ag/energy policy to offset our carbon footprint.

The nitrous oxide emitted from chemical fertilizer use equals the GHG effect of 2/3 of the CO2 absorbed by the crop fertilized.

If the methane produced from fertilizer and manure run off were turned into biogas fuel instead (in a biogas digestor), would offset 20 times the CO2 produced from burning it for energy.

And the organic fertilizer from biodigestion would replace chemical fertilizer, halting the nitrous oxide release.

So if 5% of our CO2 emitting energy use came from biogas produced from manure and biomass, then that would offset all of our CO2 emissions.

As solar and wind take over from fossil fuel and conservation reduces energy use, that 5% portion shrinks drastically, so it would become practical to offset the rest of unavoidable CO2 emissions, like fuel for plugin hybrids or aircraft.

A sufficient source of fertilizer exists in human urine alone to produce all thje food humans need. The soil ammendment of fertilizer and partially digested biomass would revive our soil as a natural carbon sink.

With energy and ag policy like this, GHG and high ebnergy prices would pass into history with very little climate effect. We have 10 to 20 years, lets get on this yesterday!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 8:14 PM on 25 Jun 2008

Peak Phosphorous

How much energy is used to move phosphorus from the mines to the fields?

Will phosphorus "run out" shortly after cheap oil disappears, regardless of whether there is still phosphorus to mine? And how might this affect the distribution of crops being grown?

We'll be in an awful postion, as a species, if our prime ag land is half a globe away from our prime phosphorus mines.

What should I be doing in my garden and future orchard right now to conserve phosphorous?

by wiscidea at 9:54 PM on 25 Jun 2008
[ Parent ]

What can we do?

wiscidea, you're right that the rising cost of oil makes fertilizers more expensive. For this and other reasons, the prices of fertilizers have gone up astronomically within the past year.

One of the biggest things that would help is cycling back into the soil the things we now dispose of as "wastes" -- food scraps, garden clippings, urine, feces (harder to do), etc.

The graduate student in the ABC interview I mentioned above is doing research in systems used by communities to collect urine for farmers. There are trials going on in Sweden and Switzerland, I think.

The fascinating book "Humanure" has a cult following, and I think it is downloadable online.

There are also techniques which minimize the waste of fertilizer applied by farmers onto fields.

The plus side of high fertilizer prices is that they make us do "the right things" - not waste so much and begin thinking of compost and manure as a source of nutrients.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 10:35 PM on 25 Jun 2008

Bucky Fuller's

Dymaxion toilet separated the urine for fertilizer extraction. I saw it done on the green netwirk, a fairly simple process. It yields a powdered fertlizer.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 10:42 PM on 25 Jun 2008

a sustainable source of P

Bonemeal.

Once we crush the republicans in november, there'll be plenty of phosphorus to go around.

Manures have a decent amount of P too, especially poultry manure. Not sure how sustainable manure is, though, unless it's coming from a sustainable farm.

NJD

by ndunne at 2:13 AM on 26 Jun 2008

So who dies?

Because without modern farming techniques, there's no way to feed 7 billion people.

Victory in Pattani

by MAD MAC at 2:57 AM on 26 Jun 2008

modern?

Mac: I don't think anyone here would advocate doing away with all modern practices, but it's pretty clear that we can't continue relying on chemicals to feed the world. Organic ag produces just as much food at a lesser cost for inputs, inputs that won't destroy the atmosphere or require mining of diminshing resources. see report:

"Regenerative farming practices, local knowledge and regionally appropriate technology favored over biotech and industrial agriculture" :

http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20080418/fp1

Erik

The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more

by Erik Hoffner at 6:26 AM on 26 Jun 2008
[ Parent ]

Erik, that makes no sense

If the farming industry could produce the same amount of food for lower cost, they would do it. They are in business to make money like the rest of us. So something's not adding up here. The farming industry is not made up of idiots.

Victory in Pattani

by MAD MAC at 9:47 AM on 26 Jun 2008
[ Parent ]

cost

Mac: I didn't say 'lower cost,' I said 'lower cost for inputs' ie make your own fertilizer instead of buying it.

A larger share of the cost of growing organically vs industrially is labor. But the world you describe of 7 billion people would be able to supply much labor, right?

Erik

The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more

by Erik Hoffner at 10:28 AM on 26 Jun 2008
[ Parent ]

Farmers of Forty Centuries

In 1911 D.F.H.King wrote a book called Farmers of Forty Centuries Or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan. King commented at the time that our Ag was unsustainable, whereas the Asian methods had demonstrated sustainability (as in the title). It was fascinating to read that people were paying for the right to clean out the toilets of cities to haul the stuff back to the farmers. The stuff was black gold to them.

by Earl Killian at 12:48 PM on 26 Jun 2008

So who dies?

Mad Mac said, "Because without modern farming techniques, there's no way to feed 7 billion people."

In 1910 the population of China was 410 million. That was 43 per km².

In 2007, the world was 45 persons per km². It might be feasible to feed the world with 1910 Chinese agriculture. However, you might not like it.

by Earl Killian at 1:02 PM on 26 Jun 2008

Recycling nutrients not enough to solve problem

It's true that recycling wastes would help a great deal with the fertilizer crisis, however they will never be enough.

It's all part of an ecological cycle. Since nutrients are lost at each step in the cycle, the end products (wastes) can never supply enough nutrients by themselves to keep the cycle going.

Consider the steps in the cycle:

Soil has nutrients (N, P, K in particular) that were formed by geological and other long-term processes. Rocks breaking down, for example. N-fixation by some plants.
Plants use nutrients to grow. After the plants die, most of the nutrients are returned to the soil as it decomposes.
Animals eat some of the plants. Their poop and carcasses return many nutrients to the soil.
We eat plants and animals. Unfortunately our modern civilization diverts many nutrients away from the soil. Most of our urine and feces - prized by earlier civilizations - goes to the ocean. Much food waste becomes garbage which is burned or buried in such a way that it will ever decompose. Biofuels cause nutrients to be burned - thus, by their very nature, biofuels are unsustainable on a large scale. Even our corpses, burnt or buried in non-decomposable containers, remove nutrients from the cycle.

Nutrient shortages were a big deal in the 19th century, with wars being fought over guano and old graveyards being dug up for the bones.

Cheap energy saved us in the 20th century. The Haber-Bosch process enabled us to create nitrogen synthetically (at great expenditure of energy). Cheap energy made it possible to mine and transport other minerals.

With the end of cheap energy, what do we do? Other posters describe the problems and possible solutions. The discussion is just beginning...

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 2:21 PM on 26 Jun 2008

Recycle 90% Bart

That will allow mined fertilizer to take up the 10% slack until we figure out how other alternatives, like harvesting and biodigesting algae that extracts NP anf K from ocean water for instance. Organisms act like filters.

Nitrogen is no problem because we can always grow nitrogen fixing green manure crops to add to our biodigestion process.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 3:36 PM on 26 Jun 2008

So Erik, are we going to have....

..... slave laborerers working collective farms? The US is NOT, NOT going to go back to small farms unless there's an economic collapse and world war. You can't go backwards.

Victory in Pattani

by MAD MAC at 2:12 AM on 27 Jun 2008
[ Parent ]

Organic = forward / industrial ag = BS

Why should going organic be going backward? We got vastly more knowledge than the old about soil chemistry/biology and the biosphere at large. We know much more about nutritional and medicinal values of plants. Organic gardening can be high science.

From a scientist's perspective, current industrial agriculture is the height of primitivity and stupidity. Heck, we can't even do sustainable ag in the Amazon forest: the farming there being degenerated to the most primitive form of prehistoric agriculture (slash and burn soil exploitation), which the pre-Columbian inhabitants' technique was vastly superior to (their 500y old terra preta soil still being fertile; being mined and sold to gardeners).

Jobless? Hungry? Grow your own! Bored and unhappy? Go play with plants and animals! Getting rid of biophobia can also cure other civilisation neuroses.

by 314159265 at 2:54 AM on 27 Jun 2008

Farming futures of America

314159265 - catchy name. I like it!

MAD MAC:

slave laborerers working collective farms? The US is NOT, NOT going to go back to small farms unless there's an economic collapse and world war. You can't go backwards.

We most definitely could go back. Return to a decentralized agrarian mode is common in history (e.g. fall of Rome).

You seem to believe that life on small farms is a terrible fate. That's only true if you're exploited. Otherwise, the life of the small farmer has been held to be honorable and rewarding.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 3:56 AM on 27 Jun 2008

Lower cost...

Mad Mac says that if the farming industry could do organic at lower cost, they would. If I told you that you could prevent breast/colon/prostate cancer or diabetes by not eating red meat, avoiding processed foods, and dairy products and that it would be a lot cheaper than chemo therapy, would you do it?

How is it that a $100K farm tractor, tons of sprayers and equipment, seed, fertilizer, and pesticides can cost less than the old way of doing things? It can't. The way the system is build up, however, farmers don't get paid for growing crops, they get paid subsidies. If conventional agriculture was indeed cheaper than organic, then they'd be doing it our way everywhere in the world.

Cheap oil enables this unsustainable form of agriculture. It will come to an end soon enough.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

by John former Marine at 5:07 AM on 27 Jun 2008

Industrial Farming

Mad Mac,

Industrial farming is probably "less expensive" because, like a lot of of our large industries, it externalizes huge costs by...

... depending on a tax payer supported military to ensure a steady supply of fossil fuel, dumping chemicals in the air and water and expecting the rest of us to pay for treatment for various illnesses caused by those chemicals, destroying soil and expecting federal and state angencies to find quick fixes to repair the damage, using the Mississippi and other rivers as open sewers while those dependent on clean rivers and clean oceans are forced to abandon their jobs... and, until very recently... they could move on to new land once the older land was exhausted.

Dumping your messes on other people is no longer a viable option. Exhausting the land and moving on to new territory is no longer possible. Soil is eroding, on average, about twice as fast as new soil forms. Industrial agriculture simply is not sustainable.

by wiscidea at 5:24 AM on 27 Jun 2008

Wisc...we're gonna have to disagree on this one...

I can't find anything in the Army Field Manual or the Bible that says that industrial agriculture is unsustainable.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

by John former Marine at 6:56 AM on 27 Jun 2008

I thought that permaculture...

...and biointensive farming build up the soil -- or do they also need phosphorus to be imported from time to time?

by Jon Rynn at 7:07 AM on 27 Jun 2008

Renewable electric

Powered agriculture with robots can replace oil based ag and intensive labor organic ag.

Recycling fertilizer provides clean biogas energy (to backup a renewable smart grid) as well as GHG offset that can halt comate disaster.

Curtailing methane and nirtous oxide release offsets CO2 emissions. It's just that simple.

Factories can produce agricultural robots instead of the farm machinery now in use.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 8:43 AM on 27 Jun 2008

Nutrients, nutrients, I need nutrients

Jon Rynn writes:

I thought that permaculture and biointensive farming build up the soil -- or do they also need phosphorus to be imported from time to time?

Interesting point that I've wondered about too.

Even with wonderful farming practices, soils will have problems with nutrient depletion. For one thing, crops take up nutrients which are then sold and eaten elsewhere. So there's a constant stream of nutrients leaving the farm.

Interestingly, this became a big issue in the 1800s with the growth of big cities. We had the twin problems of stinking sewage in the city, and nutrient depletion in the countryside. It's a little known fact, that Karl Marx was obsessed by this problem. (Liebig, Marx, and the depletion of soil fertility: relevance for today's agriculture).

Some of the solutions I've heard proposed:

Improve the soil. Good humus, soil structure and soil ecology (micro-organisms) keep nutrients bound up, so they aren't washed away (especially K and N; P is not very mobile).
Grow green manure. Raising crops with deep roots brings minerals up from down below. These crops are left in the field to decompose (or are taken to other fields).
Apply rock dust. Popular with many organic farmers.
Bring in compost and organic material from elsewhere. Return urine and humanure to the soils.
Apply some synthetic fertilizer when first changing from chemical to organic farming. Primes the pump, apparently. Suggested by several organic farmers I respect.

It was in reading an essay by the great Seattle food writer Angelo Pellegini that I first got a clue about the historic importance of nutrients. As a boy growing up in Italy in the early 20th century, Pellegrini earned money by following horses and picking up their horse droppings to sell to grateful gardeners.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 2:23 PM on 27 Jun 2008

Fertilizer

Years ago I did some work related to composting of sewage sludge and didn't find that to be a particularly appealing source of fertilizer for crops. But even assuming the use of human waste as fertilizer on a more appropriate scale, given recent information on endocrine disrupters reaching the environment through pharmaceuticals excreted in our waste, would we have to go "drug-free" suppliers to get a truly "organic" source of fertilizer?

by Hal 9000 at 3:32 PM on 27 Jun 2008

If you take close to 7 billion people

and empty the cities and dump them into small farms......... most of them will starve.

And it will be very bad for the environment as well.

Cities are good for the environment, because they compact a lot of people into a small space. Well, unless your organic methods are going to provide sufficient food for the peoples living int he cities, then it won't work.

We'll see how it shakes out. With the increasing cost of oil, that will be directly felt across the board, in food production, in clothing, etc.

But America will not become an agrarian society unless the global economy collapses. If that happens, expect massive war, massive violence (probably not good for the environment) and massive death across the planet. It won't be a gentle or willfull transition, nor can it be.

Victory in Pattani

by MAD MAC at 2:37 AM on 30 Jun 2008
[ Parent ]

naw

Mac: I don't think that a vision of a world of smaller ag means everyone has to either farm or starve.

Richard Heinberg has estimated that this country could feed itself with 400,000 new farmers tending smaller acreages. Not a very scary number. And like others have said above, it's a good life growing things. I managed 2 organic farms a decade ago, and it was a great experience.

Erik

The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more

by Erik Hoffner at 8:13 AM on 30 Jun 2008
[ Parent ]

400,000 organic farms

Now those are good jobs Erik. Excellent.

Many could be CSAs. There is a growing grassroots movement to include dairy, poultry, and meat production in CSAs.

Local cooperative non-governmental socialism is a good thing. Co-existing right alongside good old fashioned family farm/local business competitive capitalism.

All those farms and many existing ones could produce clean GHG free energy and fertilizer too. Energy/ag policy reform would allow these new farms to respond to real free market demand.

Subsidies for corporate ag and energy need to be redirected to level the market for consumers and producers. So they can decide if they want local organic food without below cost corporate food shutting local farms and businesses down with unfair competition.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 8:33 AM on 30 Jun 2008

If it's doable with 400,000 people

Then expect it to start happening pretty soon. The price of oil will continue to climb. Therefore, it will, in the not too distant future, make eminent economic sense to hire people to plant and harvest. It will be seasonal, low paying, work. But, for people who don't have work at all......... it will be a decent deal.

Victory in Pattani

by MAD MAC at 8:04 AM on 01 Jul 2008
[ Parent ]

400000

Another point pro small-organic-farm is that small farms are significantly more efficient (if efficiency is measured as production per area, not per worker). This is a long known "miracle".

by 314159265 at 8:44 AM on 01 Jul 2008

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