Oil and the Food Chain

The chemical fertilizer industry began in 1947 when the government had a surplus of ammonium nitrate. Ammonium nitrate was used in munitions during World War II. It is an excellent source of nitrogen and government agronomists decided to spread it over farmland as fertilizer. Thus began the chemical fertilizer industry.

Fertilizer is added to soil to improve the growth and yield of plants. Fertilizers replace the chemical components that growing plants take from the soil and improve their growing potential. The three macronutrients needed for plants to grow and thrive are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and are the three elements found in most packaged fertilizers.

One nitrogen fertilizer component is ammonia which can be synthesized from cheap raw materials. A process was developed to produce ammonia from air which has lots of nitrogen. Natural gas and steam are pumped into a large vessel. Then, air is pumped into the system, and oxygen is removed by burning of natural gas and steam. This leaves primarily nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is removed and ammonia is produced by introducing an electric current into the system. Natural gas accounts for 70 to 90 percent of the cost of nitrogen fertilizer production. Companies like, Western Pipeline Corporation, supply the natural gas needed by the fertilizer industry.

Ammonia by itself is sometimes used as a fertilizer. However, it is often converted to other substances for ease of handling such as ammonium nitrate or nitric acid. This fertilizer is called synthetic nitrogen. Some people consider the discovery of synthetic nitrogen to be the most important invention of the twentieth century.

Synthetic nitrogen allowed the food chain to industrialize. Oil supplies the energy to produce the synthetic nitrogen which produces huge quantities of food. Hybrid corn is the largest beneficiary and uses over 50% of the synthetic nitrogen made today. It’s estimated that around fifty gallons of oil is used per acre to grow corn. Hybrid corn is bred to produce higher yields. It can be planted closer together tripling sometimes quadrupling the yield per acre of non-hybrid corn. Hybrid corn consumes more fertilizer than any other plant. The basis of soil fertility shifted from a reliance on the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel.

There are environmental concerns associated with the use of fertilizer. Nitrogen and phosphorus gets washed into our surface waters causing algae blooms and excess plant growth. This reduces the oxygen in the water which leads to fish kills and dead zones. The Mississippi River fertilizes a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that fluctuates in size from 3,000 to 8,000 square miles. Nitrates also leach into our drinking water Studies have also linked nitrates in drinking water to reproductive problems and bladder and ovarian cancer.