Agriculture and Fertilizers

Nitrogen is one of the main components of plant growth. However, nitrogen supply in agricultural soil is not always at a level that leads to the most biomass production because of the process of denitrification. Also, unlike legumes, major human crops such as corn, rice, and wheat do not share symbiotic relationships with nitrogen-fixing organisms. 

The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years and can be argued that the discovery of agriculture and farming practices has been the cornerstone of the rise of human civilization. Ancient civilizations dating more than 8000 years ago saw farming as a way to ditch the old hunter-gatherer way of living and settle down to form complex civilizations and feed many more people. Today, a similar need for agricultural food is apparent with the growing human population that is nearing 7 billion people. From raising cattle for beef or growing wheat to make bread, our world depends on the food that farmers grow. This is where the role of fertilizer comes in.


Fertilizers are broadly divided into organic fertilizer (ex. cow manure) or inorganic fertilizer (synthetic chemicals). In inorganic fertilizers, chemical reactions are used to convert molecular nitrogen into ammonia which can then be diluted in water and mixed with phosphorous and potassium (other crucial nutrients to plants) to form a concentrated liquid fertilizer.


The invention and globalization of fertilizers is estimated to have increased the number of humans supported per hectare of arable land from 1.9 to 4.3 persons between 1908 and 2008. Also, about 40% of the world’s population depended on fertilizer inputs to produce food at the end of the 20th century. Overall, fertilizer is estimated to have supported approximately 27% of the world’s population over the past century, equivalent to around 4 billion people born since 1908. It is quite clear that without the use of fertilizers, the agricultural food produced would not have been able to support our massive global human population and we would be living in a much different world today.