Living on air I 17 Nutrient nitrogen no longer comes only from natural sources By the end of the eighteenth century, population growth had led to a shortage of nutrient nitrogen. There simply wasn’t enough to meet the rising global demand for food. In the second half of the nineteenth century, guano – the dried excrement of seabirds – became popular worldwide as an extra source of nutrient nitrogen. It could not solve the manure shortage problem, however. It was time for a bit of cleverness. In the early twentieth century, two researchers came up with the eponymous Haber-Bosch process for the mineral fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. This innovation is still regarded as one of the greatest inventions of all time. The Haber-Bosch process fixes atmospheric nitrogen on an industrial scale with hydrogen obtained from natural gas or electricity. The nutrient nitrogen it produces is used as plant nutrition in the form of mineral fertilizer.
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