Manufactured Nitrogen

[matto]

Over the last fifty years much of our farming has become dependent on manufactured nitrogen fertiliser for fertility. However, too much nitrogen harms the environment and the economy, according to the 2011 European Nitrogen Assessment, which reported a study by 200 scientists investigating the unprecedented changes humans have made to the global nitrogen cycle over the last century.

The use of manufactured nitrogen is not allowed in organic systems, so inputs of nitrogen come from nitrogen fixed by legumes, often clover leys, as part of a crop rotation that also controls pest and diseases. New evidence suggests that systems using this type of nitrogen behave differently in terms of nitrogen retention and loss, and a move away from manufactured nitrogen would also help mitigate the climate change impact of farming and guard against the increasing cost of artificial nitrogen.

Through industrial processes, burning fossil fuels and growing crops, the supply of reactive nitrogen into the environment has doubled in the last 100 years. The biggest source of this reactive nitrogen is from the industrial manufacture of fertiliser for farming. This energy intensive process produces high levels of nitrous oxide and uses natural gas, a non-renewable fossil fuel, which will get more expensive as supplies get scarce. This will put an upward pressure on fertiliser and food prices and poses a long-term threat to our food security.

Our report – Just say N2O: From manufactured fertiliser to biologically-fixed nitrogen – reviews the extent to which organic systems can meet the double challenge of reducing nitrogen losses and building stores of soil organic nitrogen in order to reduce dependency on manufactured nitrogen. Scientific evidence shows that the lower nitrogen inputs in organic farming can lead to lower N2O emissions compared to non-organic farms although more research is needed in a number of key areas. We are calling on the Government to look at the issue of reducing our dependency on manufactured nitrogen, and increasing efficiency of nitrogen use, as a matter of urgency.

Find out more


http://www.soilassociation.org/LinkC...%3d&tabid=1862

[purplepear]

nice one matto. If I remember right - holding nitrogen in the soil relies on anions rather than cations and while cations are held in paramagnetic soils so anions are held in humus. This for me means more organic matter to build humus in conjunction with legumes.

Comments encouraged.

[matto]

Geez mate, bit late to be hitting the search buttopn. But thanks for the lesson !!!

Indeed, these little anion guys are the nutrients held in humus. Nitrogen, carbon, sulphur and phosphorus... and their cation buddies, metallic mineral elements of calcium, magnesium and potassium come from recycling of organic matter (although water soluble) or mineral applications.

I agree, humus will be your long term bank of nitrogen im guessing much like the different pools of carbon in the soil.

[bazman]

Organic poultry pellets could be classed as manufactured nitrogen (sort of)

A lot of the research work I have been doing around Biochar shows great nitrogen holding capacity. Reduced nitrogen inputs with the same yeilds is something which is often discussed.

[matto]

Organic poultry pellets could be classed as manufactured nitrogen (sort of)

A lot of the research work I have been doing around Biochar shows great nitrogen holding capacity. Reduced nitrogen inputs with the same yeilds is something which is often discussed.

G'day Barry,
Would you think this is because of both nitrogen and carbon being an negativly charged anion? Perhaps working similarly to a humus partilcle?

[Pakanohida]

nice one matto. If I remember right - holding nitrogen in the soil relies on anions rather than cations and while cations are held in paramagnetic soils so anions are held in humus. This for me means more organic matter to build humus in conjunction with legumes.

Comments encouraged.

Does the humus layer grow in size in your estimation over several seasons?

[adiantum]

I think soil nitrogen can exist either as ammonium (a cation) or nitrate (an anion) and that both can be held by organic matter or clay particles. Soil bacteria can convert one into the other, and can also liberate nitrogen gas again. Plants can take up either, though some have a preference for one or the other. Some plants can take up nitrate to such excess, if there is an excess in the soil, as to become toxic.
Chemical nitrogen fertilizer has an interesting history. The discovery that nitrogen could be "fixed"...that the N-N bond in gaseous nitrogen could be broken under intense heat and pressure, and the resulting atoms of nitrogen combined with other elements, was originally used for munitions...to make TNT and it's derivatives. Before WW1, bird and bat guano were imported into Europe to make this. During the war, Britain blockaded Germany from any sea trade, and so the Germans pursued this industrial nitrogen fixation, and so were able to keep manufacturing munitions. By the time the next war came around, everyone on all sides was doing it. Then after the war, there were all these munitions factories sitting idle, and that's when the product started to be used on the farms big time. As we all know, you can still make a dandy bomb out of ammonium nitrate! (and of course there is the motive to keep those factories active so as to be easily switched back to their original purpose at need!)
Being very often the first limiting nutrient for plant growth (after oxygen, CO2, and water, of course), the synthetic nitrogen industry has largely enabled the huge increases in agricultural yields, and consequent population explosions of both humans and their livestock worldwide. I read somewhere that about 40% of the total human biomass on the planet now can be credited to industrial fixed nitrogen. And of course there is a huge wastage that doesn't end up incorporated into our bodies but ends up in livestock manure lagoons, eroding off of fields into aquifers and watercourses, and eventually into the oceans. It fuels eutrophication in water, and encourages weeds and other invasives on land.
Part of me hopes the latest venture into mining asteroids and eventually colonizing space works out. This nitrogen situation (as well as a similarly limiting scenario involving phosphorus) indicates that even without regard to energy and climate, humanity is fast heading towards a "peak everything" moment. There are simply too many of us on the planet, and everyone wants to live better than they are now....

[Michaelangelica]

Interesting post adiantum ta
My tuppence worth
The role of biochar:-
https://www.crops.org/publications/j...cles/39/4/1218
http://www.istc.illinois.edu/researc...osium/1035.pdf
and variety:-
http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/...-bacteria.html