TheFertilizer
Well-Known Member
Well one of the things about nitrogen is that it's one of the few molecular nutrients we have that's very much influenced by the atmosphere. Nitrogen is a gas, so it doesn't last very long in the soil, and in a natural and organic environment, the supply of nitrogen in the soil relies on a type of biological system that requires a symbiotic relationship between many sets of organisms from micro-organisms to macro. The SOM has to come from somewhere. ...or something... or someone.
So the thing with synthetically available nitrogen is that if you bring plant to a inhospitable environment where the regular nitrogen fixation cycle can't happen, then you can feed the plant the synthetic form of nitrogen and grow it in places where you'd never dream of it being possible. On top of that, because of the immediate availability of the synthetic nutrient, the plants grow big and tall and yield a ton. If it wasn't for synthetically available nitrogen, a lot of farmland in the U.S. and around the globe, would be nothing but barren wasteland.
Frankly, there are realities we have to face, and documented failures of organics and synthetics, and if you want a case study, look at North Korea. For years the government supplied synthetic fertilizers for people to grow their food in land that was basically unsuitable for agriculture, and then when the government stopped supplying these fertilizers, that already inhospitable land was simply ravaged that much more. Now the North Koreans rely on "night soil" (human feces) because even their livestock are too sickly to properly maintain the symbiotic relationship of the land.
It's a situation that is very complex and goes beyond horticulture. What you have is a society that went beyond sustainability, and then when it lost that element ( in this case very literally, since we're talking synthetic nitrogen ) it crumbled upon itself. Once you create a system that relies on an unsustainable component, other components of that system that relied on those aforementioned components in a larger system gradually breakdown as well. So now the system doesn't work, the land is barren, they have no more synthetic fertilizers, but on top of that they've made the very ecosystem so inhospitable for life that it will take many years for it to recover. There has to be life to sustain life.
However, given that situation, can't there also be room for a "jump start" so to speak? When you've destroyed your ecosystem's ability to regulate itself, and must wait years for it to regenerate, that's when you have to rely on things like "night soil". There's no large mammals to make manure, or "soil organic matter", so where do you get it from? From people. And in that situation, there's not much time for composting; it goes into the soil as fresh as it is created, if you catch my drift. But without it, they would literally starve. You hear the horror stories about that defector living with parasites, eating unwashed/uncooked vegetables grown in it. The key to that sentence, is that he was alive, and eating. There are kids in Africa eating mudpies that aren't as well off.
When you get into the topic of world hunger, and world population, it becomes evident that the reason why synthetic fertilizers became so popular is because they work. They supplied the demand. However, it's also becoming equally evident that following such an unsustainable path only leaves a burgeoning world population in a precarious position. Think about it in terms of the Dust Bowl, and how nobody ever saw that coming. There may be ramifications we have never expected just waiting to bite us in the ass, and there's no shortage of instances to show us where our intervention has broken down or made the problem worse.
"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly in man"
-Blue Oyster Cult
So the thing with synthetically available nitrogen is that if you bring plant to a inhospitable environment where the regular nitrogen fixation cycle can't happen, then you can feed the plant the synthetic form of nitrogen and grow it in places where you'd never dream of it being possible. On top of that, because of the immediate availability of the synthetic nutrient, the plants grow big and tall and yield a ton. If it wasn't for synthetically available nitrogen, a lot of farmland in the U.S. and around the globe, would be nothing but barren wasteland.
Frankly, there are realities we have to face, and documented failures of organics and synthetics, and if you want a case study, look at North Korea. For years the government supplied synthetic fertilizers for people to grow their food in land that was basically unsuitable for agriculture, and then when the government stopped supplying these fertilizers, that already inhospitable land was simply ravaged that much more. Now the North Koreans rely on "night soil" (human feces) because even their livestock are too sickly to properly maintain the symbiotic relationship of the land.
It's a situation that is very complex and goes beyond horticulture. What you have is a society that went beyond sustainability, and then when it lost that element ( in this case very literally, since we're talking synthetic nitrogen ) it crumbled upon itself. Once you create a system that relies on an unsustainable component, other components of that system that relied on those aforementioned components in a larger system gradually breakdown as well. So now the system doesn't work, the land is barren, they have no more synthetic fertilizers, but on top of that they've made the very ecosystem so inhospitable for life that it will take many years for it to recover. There has to be life to sustain life.
However, given that situation, can't there also be room for a "jump start" so to speak? When you've destroyed your ecosystem's ability to regulate itself, and must wait years for it to regenerate, that's when you have to rely on things like "night soil". There's no large mammals to make manure, or "soil organic matter", so where do you get it from? From people. And in that situation, there's not much time for composting; it goes into the soil as fresh as it is created, if you catch my drift. But without it, they would literally starve. You hear the horror stories about that defector living with parasites, eating unwashed/uncooked vegetables grown in it. The key to that sentence, is that he was alive, and eating. There are kids in Africa eating mudpies that aren't as well off.
When you get into the topic of world hunger, and world population, it becomes evident that the reason why synthetic fertilizers became so popular is because they work. They supplied the demand. However, it's also becoming equally evident that following such an unsustainable path only leaves a burgeoning world population in a precarious position. Think about it in terms of the Dust Bowl, and how nobody ever saw that coming. There may be ramifications we have never expected just waiting to bite us in the ass, and there's no shortage of instances to show us where our intervention has broken down or made the problem worse.
"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly in man"
-Blue Oyster Cult
