(NAS Colloquium) Plants and Population Is There Time? (1999) / Chapter Skim
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Nitrogen management and the future of food: Lessons from the management of energy and carbon
Nitrogen management and the future of food: Lessons from the management of energy and carbon
Pages 6001-6008
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From page 6001... ...
Nitrogen fertilizer is analogous to fossil fuel. Organic agriculture and agricultural biotechnology play roles analogous to renewable energy and nuclear power in political discourse.
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From page 6002... ...
, disaggregated into 10 geographical regions (International Fertilizer Industry Association, http.//www.fertilizer.org.~. The rate of global nitrogen fertilizer use crossed 20 Mt(N)
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From page 6003... ...
Nitrogen oxide production also results as the "fuel nitrogen" in fossil fuels is burned. Estimating the rate of nitrogen fixation caused by anthropogenic combustion requires taking into account both the amount of combustion and the amount of pollution control.
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From page 6004... ...
Two of the five regional effects have direct impacts on public health: air pollution and unhealthy nitrate concentrations in drinking water. The other three regional effects are mediated by ecological processes: acid deposition, eutrophication of bays and estuaries, and ecosystem disruption resulting from uneven responses to nitrogen fertilization across species.
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From page 6005... ...
will lead to the dominance of the species that can use that resource most efficiently." Rather than having a net positive effect, inadvertent fertilization alters ecosystem composition and diminishes ecosystem function (22-25~. Lessons from Carbon and Energy for Nitrogen and Food Efforts already underway to manage human impacts on the carbon cycle suggest five principles that could guide first steps to manage human impacts on the nitrogen cycle: (i)
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From page 6006... ...
over the past three decades, because the rates of growth of production of wheat, rice, and corn, each with its distinct nitrogen intensity, have been almost identical, about 2.5% per year (39~. There appears to be no trend analogous to the "decarbonization" of the energy economy, the continuous decrease in the average carbon content of fuel throughout the 20th century that resulted from coal losing market share to petroleum and then petroleum losing market share to natural gas.
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From page 6007... ...
The global increase in fixed nitrogen may be fertilizing the Earth, transferring significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere to the biosphere, and mitigating global warming. A modern biofuels industry someday may produce biofuels from crop residues or dedicated energy crops, reducing the rate of fossil
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From page 6008... ...
Among those who have tried to educate me about some of the themes of this paper are Braden Allenby, Allison Armour-Garb, Jesse Ausubel, Robert Ayres, Kenneth Cassman, James Galloway, Hiram Levy, William Keene, Ann Kinzig, Emily Matthews, Jeremiah Ostriker, Ted Parson, Jane Pitt, Vernon Ruttan, William Schlesinger, Vaclav Smil, Christopher Taylor, Valerie Thomas, David Tilman, Iddo Warnick, Bess Ward, and Robert Williams.
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