Fertilizer

Fertilizer provides nitrogen & minerals to the soil for growing crops. Most fertilizer is produced synthetically via the Haber-Bosch process (for nitrogen).

Carbon emissions

Not very significant

• Fertilizer is responsible for just 1.4% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions but over 70% of the world's protein.
• Without synthetic fertilizers, the world would likely see lower crop yields → more land needed to produce the same amount of food → more deforestation.
  • Maybe we could partly offset this problem by reducing food waste. But we should do that in any case - and if we do, we wouldn't need as much fertilizer in the first place.
• Manure is not truly an alternative to fertilizer (in the big-picture sense):
  • Animals don't generate nitrogen or minerals; they can only poop out what was already in their food. Most manure comes from animals raised on grains that were grown with fertilizer. Without fertilizer, there would be far less manure available.
  • Similar situation is true for compost.
• Nitrogen-fixing crops (on their own) might not be able to provide enough soil nitrogen to feed the world. ^{[RESEARCH needed] [QUANTIFICATION needed]}
• In most of the countries with high hunger rates, [lack of fertilizer / low crop yields] is a major cause of the food shortages.
• If we can phase out fossil fuels for energy (the hard part, and most significant part of stopping climate change), then we can phase out fossil fuels for fertilizer (the smaller easier part).

Leaching into groundwater

^{[RESEARCH needed]}

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Long-term health of soil

Manageable

There are some cases of conventional agriculture causing soil degradation over time (low crop yields in the long run, despite high crop yields in the short run), but this probably has less to do with fertilizer, and more to do with monoculture and pesticides.

Research needed for this page:

• Explore polyculture styles that use fertilizer
• Soil micro-organisms: How to preserve them in the long run while maintaining high yields

Supply of non-nitrogen minerals

Plentiful

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