Kosfeld Fenna Thesis - Flipbook - Page 56
Synthetic Fertiliser and Carbon Sink
(these are some notes that biocharged the material talks about but dies not solve, biocharded is not made for large applications and not connected to food and crop yield, yet the context feeds into the reason why biocharged exits )
Why are we even talking about urine as a fertiliser if an abundance of nitrogen and synthetic
fertilisers is available? The problem with synthetic fertilisers has many paths, from environmental to political to ethical to economical. Char and urine have always been used
as fertilisers in human agricultural activity.
But since industrialisation and the rise of the
world population, there has been an increasing demand for crop yield, basically food.
In the 1840s, Justus von Liebig formulated the
Law of the Minimum, which states that plant
growth is controlled not by the total amount
of resources available but by the scarcest
resource (limiting factor). This law or concept
became more critical in times of crisis, with
material scarcity most certainly resulting
from the war. In the 20th century, two Germans called Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch invented the so-called synthetic nitrogen fertiliser
by enabling the industrial 昀椀xation of atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. This process
has turned into one of the most crucial inventions in human history, enabling the global
population to rise drastically due to the wide
availability of food and crops.
In the Second World War, Germany used the
same -process ( Haber-Bosch ) to develop
chlorine gas, and it “represented a new and
horrifying chapter in both chemical and psychological warfare”.
While synthetic fertiliser has signi昀椀cantly
boosted agricultural productivity globally, its
environmental footprint is substantial, contributing to pollution through nutrient runoff,
which leads to eutrophication and dead zones
in aquatic systems. “Industrial nitrogen in food
production accounts for about 2 per cent of
all anthropogenic emissions and 5-8 per cent
of food system emissions”.
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Currently, China is the largest producer of fossil
fuels, followed by India, the US, and Russia. Politically and economically, dependence on synthetic
fertilisers creates geopolitical risks and market
volatility, while government subsidies can perpetuate economic disparities and hinder sustainable
practices.
A good example of that was the outbreak of war
in Ukraine in 2022, which resulted in drastic food
insecurity due to industrial dependence on fertiliser from Russia and Belarus, who stopped the
import and distribution. With synthetic fertiliser
comes a lack of autonomy for local food production ( and even national ), environmental degradation, and soil health deterioration, which create
more pressure to 昀椀nd alternatives to synthetic
fertiliser and enhance the circular carbon-nitrogen cycle. (Ifpri.org, 2024)
According to a paper from 2023 “Greenhouse gas
emissions from nitrogen fertilisers could be reduced by up to one-昀椀fth of current levels by 2050
with combined interventions” (Gao and Cabrera
Serrenho, 2023). Bates explains, bout 50-70% of
cultivated soil has lost its orginal carbon content,
and is simultaneously released in the atmosphere.
Through agroecology and working with a mix of
natural rythms, cycles and entities, through methods such as agroforestry, terracing, keyline and
contour cropping in combination with enhancing organic waste -cycles, there is a potential of
0.07-0.7 tons of CO2 per year per hectar. If applied
gloablly the drawdown potential could be 1.3 Gt/
year, which is less than 10 percent of todays global
greenhouse-emissions.
This is why the combination of urine ( based on
previous research ) with biochar is a promising
and scalable alternative to synthetic fertiliser,
supporting circular waste management, resource
independency, and socio and economic autonomy, reducing environmental footprint and charging the ecological battery of the landscape and
sequestering carbon.
