Unlike Carbon and oxygen, Nitrogen must be 'fixed', that is converted into a bioavailable form, to enable plants to use it as a nutrient.
German chemist Fritz Haber is credited with developing the first practical process to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia, which plants can use. The process was subsequently purchased by BASF, where Carl Bosch developed it into a full scale industrial process. Haber and Bosch were awarded the Nobel prize in 1918 and 1931 for their work.
The industrialisation of the process was given a significant boost by the First World War, where it was crucial to the German war effort. Synthetic ammonia being used for the production of nitric acid, a precursor to munitions.
Although largely put to more peaceful purposes today it has, over the last century, had a profound impact on human civilisation and the planet. Not least by locking us into a fossil fuel economy that is a key driver in human induced climate change. The process currently produces some 500 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer per year. Accounts for 5% of natural gas consumption and around 2% of the world energy supply. It produces the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, which causes acid rain. While agricultural run-off creates dead zones in the worlds oceans.
It has also been described as the "detonator of the population explosion". In 1900 the global population stood at 1.6 billion, today it stands at 7 billion (Current projections suggest it will 9 billion by 2050, 11 billion by 2100). Approximately a third of the people alive today are sustained by Haber–Bosch derived fertilizers and 80% of the Nitrogen found in our bodies is said to originate from the process. Had crop yields stayed at their 1900 levels we would have needed to increase the amount of agricultural land four-fold to feed the current global population.
It just one of many technological fixes we've used to dodge the Malthusian bullet so far. Malthus believed unchecked population growth was exponential, while the growth of the food supply was arithmetical, which would ultimately result in a 'readjustment' of the human population back to sustainable levels.
Thus one of the many key challenges for the scientific community in the 21st century in building a sustainable global civilisation is replacing the Haber–Bosch process with a more environmentally friendly one. One that keeps the twin bogey men of anthropogenic climate change and Malthus off our backs. Now that has to be worth a Nobel Prize in anybody's book.
On a lighter note there won't be a blog next weekend as my eldest daughter is getting married and I still have the small matter of the father of the brides speech to attend to. Which incidentally will contain no references to the philosophic, scientific and environmental conundrum of the Haber-Bosch process, fascinating though it is.