If fertilizers add nitrogen to the soil which gets used by the plants for their growth, then where are they going wrong and turning our planet dead? 🤔
Let’s understand!
Our atmosphere is primarily Nitrogen (78%) - N2, that are bonded together very tightly, not reactive to be freely used up by plants. To help them be available for the plants, we need organic content (bacteria) in the soil. There are a set of bacterias in soil that eat up atmospheric nitrogen and thrive on each other's poop.
- B1 eats N2 —> poops NH4 (Ammonia)
- B2 eats NH4 —> poops NO2 (Nitrite)
- B3 eats NO2 —> poops NO3 (Nitrate)
(Not specifying the exact bacteria names to keep things simpler)
All these forms of nitrogen are called loose nitrogen that are readily available for the plants to use. Now, since they are loose nitrogen in the soil, they are also susceptible to be lost to the environment a.k.a N2O emissions (major GHG), by mainly 3 means -
- Volatilization (evaporates in gaseous form when uprooting happens)
- Leaching (flows with water stream when plants are overwatered)
- Denitrification (in case of O2 deficiency, through anaerobic reaction)
The main point to consider here is that this nitrogen loss is only happening to the loose/free nitrogen in the soil that is not used by plants and eaten by bacteria, which is not in abundance in natural scenario (no-fertilizer farming).
Fertilizers are simply loose Nitrogen. They add Nitrogen without the organisms which creates an abundance of free Nitrogen in the soil that doubles/triples up N2O emissions. Moreover, such free Nitrogen irritates earthworms inside the soil which slowly start dying and leaving. And it also changes the soil pH, eventually killing the soil.
Now when all Nitrogen is used up by the plants, there are no organisms left inside the soil to build more, so you add more fertilizers, more worse.😫 Not to forget that organisms not only provide Nitrogen to the plants, they also provide other vital elements too - Zinc, Phosphorus, Iron, Copper. But since they are gone, you add mineral fertilizers to compensate these elements- more horrible.😣
Now that you know the truth, don’t you agree that we are actually buying our own death by spending more and more on fertilizers?! Our nature is self sustainable and it provides everything in optimum quantity freely to everyone without any bias. Our food mineral content is on the decline. If we want to reverse this, we have to stop the usage of fertilizers and start rebuilding the organic content in our soil using organic fertilizer i.e. compost.
— written by human, not AI 🤖
