Living on air I 19 Ready for the future A hundred years have passed and we now share our world with more than seven billion people. According to forecasts, the Earth’s nine billionth inhabitant will be born in 2050. Our food production cannot lag behind population growth. If we depended solely on the nutrient nitrogen produced by lightning strikes and soil bacteria, our Earth would only be able to support four billion people. Much of our diet would be vegetarian and we would have to take a considerable amount of farmland out of production every year so that we could save up nutrient nitrogen by growing clover. The natural world would suffer because we would need to reclaim much more land for farming. Fertilizers are therefore inevitable in our day and age. In theory, we can produce an endless amount of nutrient nitrogen. However, we need to be economical in our use. Nitrogen fixation takes a lot of energy, and excessive use of nutrient nitrogen would be harmful to the environment. Today’s efficient farming methods allow us to achieve high crop yields while maintaining the long-term fertility of our soil. The key factor in all this is optimal fertilization: organic manure as the basis, supplemented by the smart use of mineral fertilizers. Mineral fertilizers help plants to absorb nitrogen efficiently, and organic manure ensures that nutrient nitrogen is properly recycled. It’s an unbeatable combination. Adding nutrient nitrogen is both efficient and economical. It makes perfect sense.
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