What are we going to do about the fertilizer crisis?
There’s a revolution in agriculture waiting to happen, and it’s right under our noses. Or rather, it’s right above them.
With the doubling in price of many fertilizers (largely nitrogen-based fertilizers such as urea) it’s time to go back to the drawing board. The strait of Hormuz being closed has only revealed our dependency, but we do not have answers to this yet. The Haber-Bosch method of producing urea is not enough for everyone, but the good news is that nature already has an answer in the soil itself.
In the USA alone, there is nearly $900 billion of agricultural debt held by farmers. That’s enormous. They can’t afford double the cost of nitrogen. So where on earth are farmers going to get affordable nitrogen? The air.
Yes, you heard that right. As legumes (such as beans and peas) can “fix nitrogen” from the air, a less well known source of nitrogen is free-living nitrogen fixing (FLNF) microbes. These are nitrogen-fixing bacteria that do not live in direct association with legumes, but can live wild in the soil.
What we need now is not a total abandonment of synthetic fertilizers, but a strategic reduction on external dependencies. If nitrogen fertilizer prices have doubled, Enzo Nastati might recommend applying half as much nitrogen fertilizer this year and adding the 500 horn manure so there is biological fixation of nitrogen without breaking the bank or reducing yields too much. A farm can be completely weaned off dependency on external nitrogen but only gradually, never "cold turkey." Much of the food produced in the world goes to waste -- and doesn't make it to hungry people. The issue is not strictly speaking the number of bushels produced, but quality and access to good food. Even where there are reductions in total yields by gentle transitions to biodynamics, these are rivaled by better nutrient density and better storage quality. With reduced input costs, the profit margin for farmers increases even where there is a somewhat decreased yield. It is more important to have healthier soils every year, more nutrient-rich food, and better storage quality than depleted soils, impoverished food, and poor storage quality.
Why does this matter? In the presence of sugars from plants — plants send as much as half of the sugars they produce into the soil around them — and a trace amount of available calcium, FLNF nitrogen-fixing bacteria can create that miraculous enzyme nitrogenase and, from inert atmospheric N2 into NH3 (ammonia) or NH4+ (ammonium).
Charles Walters, founder of Acres USA writes about this in Grass: The Forgiveness of Nature, but grass can fix more nitrogen than legumes. Yes, think about that: you can put more nitrogen into the ground with grasses than you can with a cover crop of legumes. But you have to have free-living nitrogen-fixing (FLNF) bacteria for this to work.
"Actually in a soil where organic lime is rich and easily available to azotobacters and azospirilla (clostridia, algae, etc.) that free fix nitrogen, grasses generate more nitrogen fixation than legumes. Grasses, because of their strong silica nature, are better photosynthesizers than legumes. They catch more carbon, make more sugars and provide more carbon compounds as root exudates to energize the nitrogen-fixing microorganism in the soil, which use up organic calcium as they fix nitrogen. What a balance of legumes does is keep the supply of organic calcium as they fix nitrogen. What a balance of legumes does is keep thre supply of organic calcium up. Thus it is appropriate to maintain a balance of grasses and legumes." Charles Walters, Grass: The Forgiveness of Nature (Austin, TX: Acres U.S.A., 2006), xxv.
You know what has repeatedly shown significant concentrations of these independently-minded nitrogen fixers? That foundational biodynamic preparation known as “horn manure” (sometimes spoken of as “500”). With a mere quarter cup per acre (stirred and distributed in water as a kind of biological tea), that is enough to colonize the entire field with its own ability to absorb nitrogen from the air itself.
Yes, a mix of grass together with legumes performs even better than either grasses of legumes alone, but free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria is part of how we can become nitrogen independent both farms and as as countries.
If this aspect of biodynamics were more thoroughly popularized, biodynamics wouldn’t be considered silly — it would be considered a real threat to the established agricultural system. But it’s here: you can make it it yourself. You just need one cow horn and some good grassfed manure, bury that over winter. The result: as the keratin of the horn breaks down, it creases an ammonia-saturated environment. The result? The spontaneous arrival of free-living nitrogen fixing bacteria who “fix” the nitrogen. You now have a natural kind of “leaven” to distribute the power of free nitrogen-fixation out over an an entire acre! And if you can’t make it for some reason, you can but it at ~$10/acre.
In addition to this, keeping your soil organic matter (SOM) level up gives you a free release of 15-25 lb nitrogen per 1% OM per year. Remember: the most nitrogen-rich thing in the soil is the corpses of microbes. Feed microbes with organic matter and you, as a byproduct necessarily also get nitrogen.
"Humus determines the stable nitrogen source. A 4 or 5 percent humus supply puts 90 to 100 pounds of released nitrogen on the other side of the equals sign. That is why it becomes impossible to have an honest organic acre under the Organic Standards Act when humus hovers around and under 2 percent." Charles Walters, Grass: The Forgiveness of Nature (Austin, TX: Acres U.S.A., 2006), 61.
I’ve been saying this for years, and it was always a moral imperative to make farms nitrogen-independent, but now it has finally become a practical necessity to reconsider nitrogen in agriculture altogether. At our small farm, we import virtually no nitrogen fertilizer, buy in no compost at all, and yet continue to produce every year by making our own compost and relying in the spontaneous nitrogen-fixing activity of this invisible labor force. There is more research to be done in this field, but we are at a point where it is clear that we cannot rely on expensive synthetic fertilizers alone anymore.
"There is no overemphasizing the importance of farms fixing all their nitrogen needs from the atmosphere, and recycling through the farm's own livestock both large and small. That way all of the farm's nitrogen is fully integrated into the organism of that farm. It make all the difference how a farm gets its nitrogen -- whether from crude chemical fertilizers or from its own biological fixation." Charles Walters, Grass: The Forgiveness of Nature (Austin, TX: Acres U.S.A., 2006), xxiii.
Feel free to ask questions here. There is almost nothing more important for agriculture today than solving this nitrogen problem, especially facing the many changes our future promises.
"It may seem quirky that biodynamic farms and ranches value their self-sufficiency, and especially their nitrogen-harvesting, so greatly. This is not merely a program to avoid buying nitrogen. It is a program to develop the forces of nitrogen and silica so that healthy thought and strong will are developed in those who eat the food from their farms. With this in mind, applying the biodynamic preparation patterns can do wonders for that biology to thrive." Charles Walters, Grass: The Forgiveness of Nature (Austin, TX: Acres U.S.A., 2006), xxiii.
I’ve been talking about this for a long while. Here’s an interview from 10 months ago which feels all the more timely now: how to become a nitrogen-independent farm:
