We should be careful with the hagiography here. The discovery of a process to produce nitrogen for fertilizer is undoubtedly one of the great achievements of the 20th century, and the link to explosives is a tasty bit of irony. But gunpowder and fertilizer came from dung in the early days, so the relationship is not really novel, only the productive capacity.
An unintended consequence of the nitrogen revolution may end up being barren soil. Nitrogen is only one of the elements needed for healthy organic growth, for food or not. Phosphorus, minerals and metals get depleted and are not replaced. Plants grow with lower and lower nutritive value. Soils become unable to support the worms and microorganisms that create balanced conditions for growth. We end up with an engineered world stripped of complexity so that it is managed and sterile.
There is a narrative where future generations look at the Nitrogen revolution as the beginning of the end, not a new beginning. It is worth at least reflecting on that.
This is an excellent point to reflect on. Thank you. Do you happen to have any good sources on the subject, or books you can recommend? I mentioned the declining nutritional value in food in a prior essay, but I hadn't considered that the soil itself may be a contributing factor: https://www.lianeon.org/p/the-paradox-of-processed-food
We continue to believe incorrectly that we can isolate single components or subsystems as proxies for complex systems. We see this in diet ("reduce fat" "Increase B12"), economy ("reduce taxes"), and now soil.
Had not known or recalled that relationship between Haber and explosives and fertilizer and WWI.
Thanks for that reminder or clarification. And something sobering to think about on July 4th, in plus - minus terms - concerning that earlier Revolutionary war.
But we must also remember that the German's expertise in chemistry was preceded by two plus centuries of "exploring nature", moving from alchemy to real chemistry, plus all of the related advances in metallurgy and machine making and machining that permitted these chemical processes to be learned about and then developed from lab to prototype to pilot to industrial scale production.
That opening image cracked me up. And the closing line of bombs or bananas reminds me of the Econ 101 talk about guns and butter. I'll take the butter and bananas please.
Social technologies did more to “defy Malthus” than technnological progress.
Fertility decline started out in southern France in the 18th century, long before artificial fertilisers and crop-growing innovations changed yields there.
In the 20th century Margaret Sanger arguably did more than Haber and Bosch and Norman Borlaug in this line.
This tendency to valorise or even worship technological progress while ignoring social change is pretty destructive in the long run.
We should be careful with the hagiography here. The discovery of a process to produce nitrogen for fertilizer is undoubtedly one of the great achievements of the 20th century, and the link to explosives is a tasty bit of irony. But gunpowder and fertilizer came from dung in the early days, so the relationship is not really novel, only the productive capacity.
An unintended consequence of the nitrogen revolution may end up being barren soil. Nitrogen is only one of the elements needed for healthy organic growth, for food or not. Phosphorus, minerals and metals get depleted and are not replaced. Plants grow with lower and lower nutritive value. Soils become unable to support the worms and microorganisms that create balanced conditions for growth. We end up with an engineered world stripped of complexity so that it is managed and sterile.
There is a narrative where future generations look at the Nitrogen revolution as the beginning of the end, not a new beginning. It is worth at least reflecting on that.
This is an excellent point to reflect on. Thank you. Do you happen to have any good sources on the subject, or books you can recommend? I mentioned the declining nutritional value in food in a prior essay, but I hadn't considered that the soil itself may be a contributing factor: https://www.lianeon.org/p/the-paradox-of-processed-food
https://www1.udel.edu/soilchem/pubs/Amundson2015Science.pdf
https://news.berkeley.edu/2015/05/07/soil-depletion-human-security/
We continue to believe incorrectly that we can isolate single components or subsystems as proxies for complex systems. We see this in diet ("reduce fat" "Increase B12"), economy ("reduce taxes"), and now soil.
We will continue to fail understanding the ecosystem until it's too late to do anything about it.
Please please please read "Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" by James C. Scott
Had not known or recalled that relationship between Haber and explosives and fertilizer and WWI.
Thanks for that reminder or clarification. And something sobering to think about on July 4th, in plus - minus terms - concerning that earlier Revolutionary war.
But we must also remember that the German's expertise in chemistry was preceded by two plus centuries of "exploring nature", moving from alchemy to real chemistry, plus all of the related advances in metallurgy and machine making and machining that permitted these chemical processes to be learned about and then developed from lab to prototype to pilot to industrial scale production.
This was indeed a very difficult problem to solve. It just so happens that it was solved at the right time too.
Great history lesson on how we continually adapt.
That opening image cracked me up. And the closing line of bombs or bananas reminds me of the Econ 101 talk about guns and butter. I'll take the butter and bananas please.
You have things backwards, to my way of thinking.
Social technologies did more to “defy Malthus” than technnological progress.
Fertility decline started out in southern France in the 18th century, long before artificial fertilisers and crop-growing innovations changed yields there.
In the 20th century Margaret Sanger arguably did more than Haber and Bosch and Norman Borlaug in this line.
This tendency to valorise or even worship technological progress while ignoring social change is pretty destructive in the long run.