Nitrogen: Too Much of a Good Thing

Nitrogen in Fertilizers Article

Review of the Article
The above article discusses the element nitrogen, a necessary component of fertilizers but one that has devastating environmental costs. Commercial fertilizer is made up of three elements: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Nitrogen is by far the most deadly. Most plants cannot process pure nitrogen from the air. Instead, they need nitrogen to be "fixed" so they can process it into energy. Exceptions to this are soybeans, peas and clover. Symbotic bacteria in thier roots allows these crops to take in atmospheric nitrogen (N2). The bactieria breaks N2 down into a chemically usable fertilizer. Fertilizers mainly use ions of N2 such as  ammonia (NH3) or the ammonium ion (NH4+).

Normally, nitrogen makes up roughly 78% of the air. However, excess nitrogen in fertilizers do more harm than good. Nitrogen can leak off from the farmland into bodies of water such as lakes, rivers, and eventually the ocean. This fertilizer triggers algae growth. When they die the algae falls to the bottom of the body of water. Bacteria break the algae down. In doing so, bacteria suck up oxygen from the water. If this occurs frequently in large numbers there is no more oxygen for the fish and marine life to breath. Nitrogen from fertilizers can also be converted into N2O which contributes to global warming.

Reflection

"Jerry Glover, an agroecologist at the Land Institute, and colleagues predict that it will be possible to grow perennial crops within the next 25–50 years."
This is an outrage. We cannot wait another half or quarter of a century to have better industrial crops. Actions must start today. What the article fails to contribute is why farmers overdose the crops with fertilizer. If we are only using 15 to 20% would it not make sense to simply lower the intake of nitrogen. Ideally, the government would limit the amount of fertilizer farmers are permitted to dump on the crops. That way, farmers would save money and save the environment at the same time.
According to Food Inc. (the documentary) corporate food industries hold farmers down by constantly putting them in debt. They tell them they need this new expensive technology or they will not buy their crops. This further puts the farmers into debt trying to get out of it by buying "necessary" technology. The same applies to fertilizers. We pay farmers to overproduce keeping the price of corn low and farmers suffer. Scientists try to come up with new ways to use this excess corn. In all ways this is a suicidal cycle.
Action needs to start now. Firstly, corporate giants and even the government need to stop paying growers to over produce and instead for organic farming. Farmers will be less likely to be motivated to use killer fertilizers and instead go natural. Secondly, we need to kick our addiction to corn. While it may seem natural that everything from batteries to coke has corn somewhere in it this is just destroying our world further. Thirdly, foreign and local sugar should become more avalible. A major product involving corn is high fructose corn syrup found in virtually every manufactured product.

This will all take time and effort. Not everyone may agree. But if we start today then we will definitely benefit tomorrow.