A New Era in Agriculture: The Fight Against Climate Change
With the press of a vibrant red button, a milky liquid sprayed onto a batch of corn seeds nestled within a warehouse in central Missouri. This event marked a significant shift in American agriculture, fueled by an urgent desire to address climate change while simultaneously ensuring food security for a growing global population.
This innovative liquid contained genetically modified bacteria designed to enhance the nutritional profile of the corn plants once they are planted in the ground. The potential impact of this technology is profound: it could substantially diminish the reliance on chemical fertilizers, which currently dominate agricultural practices and contribute heavily to environmental pollution and climate change.
As the realities of climate change become increasingly evident, researchers and entrepreneurs are actively pursuing methods to engineer natural systems that can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fertilizer industry, valued at a staggering $200 billion, is largely controlled by a handful of global corporations, such as Koch Industries. Traditional chemical fertilizers are produced by a complex process that involves extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere and combining it with hydrogen sourced from natural gas under high temperatures and pressures to synthesize ammonia. This ammonia is subsequently transformed into ammonium nitrate, which is then either injected into the soil or spread over vast fields of corn, wheat, and rice to promote growth.
While chemical fertilizers have played a pivotal role in enabling agricultural productivity, allowing the world population to surge from approximately 1.6 billion in 1900—when this process was first developed—to around 8 billion today, they also contribute significantly to the climate crisis in two main ways:
- Firstly, the production of fertilizers generates substantial amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.
- Secondly, when fertilizers are applied to the soil, a fraction of them is released into the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, which is a greenhouse gas that is many times more potent than carbon dioxide.
As we continue to innovate and explore alternatives, the future of agriculture may very well hinge on harnessing nature’s potential to sustain our planet.