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Alex Greenspan, University of Colorado

Abstract

The production and distribution of chemical nitrogen for use as agricultural fertilizer comprises between 1-2 percent of global fossil fuel consumption. Though this direct contribution to energy use seems minimal,it is unnecessary and unsustainable. On average, American farmers apply 30-40 percent more chemical N than is needed for optimal crop yields, thereby wasting 30-40 percent of all chemical N consumed. Ex- cess nitrogen leaches into ground water causing further environmental damage.With fertilizer prices increasing, farmers are already looking for alternatives to chemical nitrogen. The USDA offers agricultural price sup- port primarily through commodity loans to farmers: these should beprovided conditionally, crediting organic soil nitrogen from manure and nitrogen fixing cover crops. The mechanisms of crediting organically fixed nitrogen must be tailored to individual regions; farmers in warmer climates should receive credit for soil nitrogen fixed from “green manure” legumes planted during the winter, whereas farmers in colder climates will benefit from subsidies to inoculate seeds with nitrogenfixing rhizobacteria. The USDA can incentivize these practices throughboth existing and novel policy mechanisms. These policies will not only reduce fossil fuel consumption and protect the environment, but help to stabilize crop prices.

Introduction

The term fertilizer refers to nutrients applied to soil to aid cropgrowth. The three most significant nutrients for agricultural cropyields are phosphorous, potassium, and nitrogen. Soil nitrogen is thelimiting factor of crop growth in most modern agricultural systems.

American farmers consumed almost 15 million metric tons of nitrogenfertilizer, nearly three times as much as other primary agriculturalnutrients.

Global crop yields increased drastically throughout the20th century following the advent of the Haber-Bosch process of fixinginert atmospheric nitrogen gas into the reduced forms that plants canutilize (ammonia and urea). However, this process of manufacturingchemical sources of nitrogen nutrients is extremely energy intensive,and chemical fertilizers are highly susceptible to groundwater leach-ing. Fortunately, organic alternatives to chemical fertilizer can almostentirely offset agriculture’s synthetic nitrogen requirements.Given the environmental impacts of chemical nitrogen fertilizer and itssteadily rising price, it is important to seek viable alternatives. Effec-tive and widespread use of organic fertilizers can substantially reducechemical fertilizer use without detrimentally effecting crop yields, and

can even serve to stabilize global crop prices. This paper discusses theenvironmental impacts of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer, organic alterna-tives to chemical fertilizer, and policy options for reducing chemicalfertilizer use and incentivizing its alternatives.

Environmental Impacts of Chemical Fertilizer Nitrogen

Watershed Contamination

Nitrogen fertilizer application constitutes the single greatest source of groundwater contamination in the United States.

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Because nitrogen isgenerally the limiting factor in crop growth, farmers apply nitrogen inexcess to ensure maximum yields. Nitrogen leaching refers to the run-off of excess nitrogen into ground and surface water. Leaching occurswhen precipitation exceeds evapotranspiration in an agricultural sys-tem, meaning that the input of water into system exceeds the amountof water that the crop uses.

The rate of evapotranspiration relative toprecipitation and the amount of nitrogen farmers apply to the soil varythroughout the growing season; nitrogen leaching varies accordingly.Leaching tends to be higher early in the season because farmers applysignificantly larger quantities of nitrogen than crops need in order toensure safe early growth. Because plants are less developed earlier inthe season, evapotranspiration is relatively low. Later in the croppingseason, leaching tends to decrease because maximum fertilization becomes less important and evapotranspiration rates increase as thecrops grow.

Nitrogen leaching has two major imminent environmental consequenc-es. The most obvious is nitrate contamination of groundwater, which isdangerous for humans and other organisms. More significantly, nitro-gen leaching in surface water also causes eutrophication, an increasein nutrients within an ecosystem that fuels rapid algal growth in sur-face waters. The algae quickly die and decompose, exhausting oxygenin the ecosystem, which in turn kills other organisms in a phenomenonknown as hypoxia

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. The largest incidence of hypoxia occurs in the Gulf of Mexico each summer. Nitrogen runoff from farms in the MississippiRiver Basin flows into the gulf creating a stretch of ocean thousands of kilometers wide, popularly referred to as a “dead zone,” in which littlemarine life can survive.

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Though organic alternative nitrogen sources combined with improvedagricultural practices can reduce nitrogen leaching, the dire situationposed by the Gulf of Mexico dead zone requires unique solutions.Booth and Campbell recommend expansion of federal conservationprograms by 2.71 million hectares in the areas of the basin with thehighest rates of nitrate runoff. Such a policy would require both set-ting aside land and subsidizing farmers to build environmental buffersto decrease watershed contamination by nitrate leaching.

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Campbelland Booth predict that such measures could reduce the dead zone byas much as 60 percent.

Energy Consumption

Production and distribution of nitrogen fertilizer causes 1-2 percentof global greenhouse gas emissions.

Gaseous atmospheric nitrogenis fixed into solid ammonia, or urea, through an industrial procedureknown as the Haber-Bosch process. Fixing one kilogram of ammonia,the most common form of nitrogen fertilizer, requires 55 megajoulesof energy.

*Additionally, the Haber-Bosch process relies directly on fossil fuel con-sumption. In the process, atmospheric nitrogen gas reacts with hydro-gen gas to form solid ammonia. Hydrogen gas must be evolved fromnatural gas (methane) by reacting methane with steam. In addition tohydrogen gas, carbon dioxide is produced and then released into theatmosphere. Approximately 80 percent of the energy used globally inthe Haber-Bosch process derives from natural gas, and most of the re-mainder comes from coal.

Sixty percent of the natural gas consumedgoes towards the hydrogen gas feedstock, while 37 percent of the en-ergy generated by natural gas or coal consumption contributes to the1200 °C temperatures and 100 to 300 atmosphere pressures required by the Haber-Bosch process.Due to the specific energy and feedstock requirements of the Haber-Bosch process, currently viable renewable energy sources, such aswind, could not effectively replace fossil fuels for the production of nitrogen fertilizer. The most likely alternative to using natural gas togenerate hydrogen would be water electrolysis, which releases oxygengas instead of carbon dioxide. However, water electrolysis requiresmore energy than methane reformation; currently, most of that energycomes from coal. Therefore, water electrolysis is not, currently, cleaneror more cost efficient. Furthermore, because the fossil fuels burned inthe Haber-Bosch process contribute directly to the required heating,alternative sources of energy will not be as efficient as simply burningfossil fuels. Renewable energy sources could be developed to oper-ate the Haber-Bosch process in the future; however, the high price of chemical fertilizer and the existence of viable alternatives make thelatter seem a more prudent policy option.

Alternatives to Chemical Nitrogen Fertilizer

Manure

Animal waste constitutes the most readily abundant alternative sourceof soil nitrogen. Manure contains most primary and secondary nutri-ents needed for plant growth, including high concentrations of nitro-gen and phosphorous. In 1997, confined livestock operations producedmanure containing 1.12 million metric tons of recoverable nitrogen.

The farms that produced this waste collectively controlled 29.6 millionhectares of cropland. The 1997 census of agriculture estimated that, atmaximum, these same farms could feasibly utilize only 40 percent of the nitrogen they produced.