The way that humans have messed with the Earth’s carbon cycle rightly figures as planetary eco-problem No.1 in public debate, but the way we’ve messed with its nitrogen cycle probably ought to get more attention than it does. In the former case, farming often gets a bit too much of the blame in my view, whereas in the latter case there’s no doubt that it’s the key culprit. The consequences for nature loss, human health and climate change are serious. If humans somehow manage to get over their fatal attraction to the fossil fuels that drive our messing with the carbon cycle while retaining anything like present patterns of energy use, then our messing with the nitrogen cycle will loom all the larger as a problem of high-energy human civilization. According to the planetary boundary framework, human use of nitrogen (and phosphorus) is already a long way past levels compatible with the stability and resilience of earth systems.
The inimitable Gunnar Rundgren has been writing an excellent series of articles about farming and the nitrogen cycle. I’m not going to cover much of the same ground, but I’d recommend taking a look at his analysis. Instead, I focus more on arguments about … well, arguments about arguments about nitrogen. And an argument about how we might get by with using less of it.
But let me get into that by outlining what seems to me a problematic modern mythology around nitrogen in agriculture that goes something like this: prior to the invention of the Haber-Bosch method for ammonia synthesis, people were miserably yoked to the soil as servants of the natural nitrogen cycle. But once Messrs Haber and Bosch had worked out how to transcend this nature-imposed limit, a world of abundant cheap food opened up for humanity. This led to enormous twentieth-century population growth, and today about half the nitrogen cycling through people’s bodies worldwide can be traced to the Haber-Bosch process. Suggestions that we should radically cut synthetic ammonia and rely on more organic forms of nitrogen cycling in agriculture would therefore condemn half of humanity to poverty, starvation or death. True, agricultural nitrogen pollution is a problem, but the path forward lies in technical innovation and more efficient nitrogen usage.
I don’t buy most of that narrative, and I’d reframe it as follows: prior to the invention of the Haber-Bosch method for ammonia synthesis, some people were miserably yoked to the soil while others weren’t, the differences in their situations being mostly political. Governments around that time were competing in a race for economic ‘development’ that required labouring populations to be available for industrial work, and the Haber-Bosch process proved an important labour-saving innovation for agriculture in that context. The relationship between the global industrial food system that emerged from developments like the Haber-Bosch process and our populous modern, high-energy, urbanized world is complex but there’s no doubt that today there are a lot of people, a lot of cheap foodstuffs and a lot of hunger in the worlds that this system has built. Currently, about half the nitrogen cycling through people’s bodies worldwide can be traced to the Haber-Bosch process. It’s definitely true that if this synthetic ammonia disappeared overnight there would be a lot of hunger. It may be true that we couldn’t do without some synthetic ammonia even in the longer term. It’s definitely untrue that relying on more organic forms of nitrogen cycling in agriculture would necessarily condemn half of humanity to poverty, starvation or death. Whether we can overcome the problem of agricultural nitrogen pollution through new technical innovation is unclear.
I’d argue that for various reasons – food security and resilience looming large among them – it would be good to greatly cut our usage of and reliance upon synthetic ammonia via the Haber-Bosch process. I don’t argue that we should do away with all of it overnight. That really would be a recipe for human suffering. But I believe people who say that dramatic but considered longer-term cuts would lead to mass hunger are mistaken, and I question their motives in saying it.
There’s a form of ‘land-sparing’ and purportedly pro-poor environmentalist/ecomodernist narrative that extols the high yields and low food prices achieved by modern agricultural methods. This achievement rests among other things on rigorously cutting input costs by maximizing mechanization, regional crop specialization, field sizes and the use of agri-chemicals, notably nitrogenous fertilizer. This is in absolute contrast to what benefits wildlife – less mechanization, local multi-cropping, smaller field sizes, mosaic landscapes, and minimal amounts of fugitive nitrogenous compounds in soils and watercourses. Sometimes, the same people who extol the virtues of high yields and cheap food lament agricultural pollution and call for more punitive regulations against farmers. I don’t think you can have it both ways.
Recently, I’ve become aware of a little local nitrogen dispute in my neck of the woods involving accusations against a local farmworker for polluting a watercourse while spreading slurry, and threatening those who reported it. I don’t condone the pollution nor the associated behaviour in any way, but whatever the rights and wrongs of the specific incident, ultimately I believe this kind of thing is a structural problem caused by the impossible demands our societies place upon farmers to produce abundant cheap food, care for the landscape and stay afloat financially. Of course, not all farmers engage in illegal acts of pollution, nor of threatening behaviour. Not all farmers stay in business, either. The result of that is a global race to the bottom in farmer incomes and wellbeing, and increasing reliance on distant, non-resilient food commodity chains. As always, behaviour at the extreme end of the distribution tells you something about wider systemic dysfunction. If you love low food prices and low input costs in agriculture, then the sad truth is that aggressive polluting of watercourses is also bundled in with the package you’re endorsing.
I don’t think the solution will come from toughening up regulatory regimes while failing to address the pressures on farmers. I believe a better way to go is to start rebuilding localism – agrarian localism, economic localism, political localism, community localism – as against the kind of top-down statism that I criticised in my previous post.
Suppose we thought of food production, polluted watercourses and antisocial behaviour as mainly local questions, affecting local people and wildlife. Suppose we established a local, bottom-up farmer-to-farmer extension system involving peer support with public and scientific input more than punitive regulation, along with local mediation approaches that brought together those who were affected to try to find solutions. I think such initiatives would quickly lead to local conversations about the poor balance between food prices, the cost of living and conservation, and these in turn could prompt efforts to create a local virtuous circle: less fertilizer use, less pollution, better rewards for farmers producing more nature-friendly local food, better and cheaper access to good housing for local residents.
No doubt that all sounds quite idealistic. I certainly don’t think it would be easy to pull off. But it may be easier in the long run than present arrangements involving legalistic regulation, low food prices, a questionable drive to high inputs and high yields, farmer immiseration, corporate profit-maximization and the creation of vast economic inequalities, all of which centralized states purport somehow to be able to resolve for the best. In the area where I live, some of the rudiments for local non-state alternatives are already in place in formal and informal organisations, and such approaches have deep roots in many historic societies outside the political orthodoxy of the modernist nation-state.
N-wrecking – another world is possible!
PS: for several reasons, not least poor ongoing internet access, my contribution and response to comments on the site currently isn’t quite what I’d like it to be. I hope normal service will resume soon!
