The headline is not hyperbole. Nitrogen is vital to life. This reality needs more coverage.
Nitrogen is essential for all living things because it is a major part of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins and of nucleic acids such as DNA, which transfers genetic information to subsequent generations of organisms. About 78 percent of the atmosphere is made of nitrogen, but plants and animals can’t take nitrogen directly from the air. A process called the nitrogen cycle makes this happen.
Humans and Animals Need Nitrogen
All human tissue – muscles, skin, hair, nails and blood – contains protein. Normal growth, cell replacement and tissue repair require nitrogen, and your body’s metabolic processes need proteins in the form of enzymes. You cannot take nitrogen directly from the air, so you get it from dietary sources. Protein-rich foods include:
- meat
- fish
- legumes
- eggs
- milk
- nuts
One Reason Why Nitrogen is Crucial for Sustaining Life on Earth
Feeding the Plants
Unlike humans, plants can make their own food through photosynthesis. This process requires chlorophyll, and nitrogen is one of chlorophyll’s major components. In addition to nitrogen, plants need other nutrients that come from water and the soil. When soil doesn’t have enough of these nutrients, people can add them to the soil using fertilizer. Plants can get some nitrogen from the air, but rainfall and water don’t supply them with much. In addition to keeping plants alive, nitrogen helps them grow faster and remain healthy.
Feeding the Plants = Feeding the People
7 replies on “Reduce Nitrogen/ Reduce Life = Death Cult Edict”
Good insight, Penny. How diabolical of them to be destroying the fundamental building blocks of life on this planet. But just in the last week or so I do believe the tables have turned. I do believe we finally have them on the run. What happened yesterday in Siri Lanka was seminal. A supercrowd of unarmed people, several million strong stormed the government palace and burned it. The government had been legislating starvation.
I am sure the video of that crowd sobered up a few hubristic WEFer political puppets.
“I am sure the video of that crowd sobered up a few hubristic WEFer political puppets.”
The people have to make sure the change that will come is for their benefit- not follow the wolves in sheep’s clothing
Penny: In a production line you don’t need to worry about what you have lots of but rather what is in short supply. For protein production, there is no shortage of nitrogen, as you point out. In low soil fertility, the deficiencies in the dozen or so minerals required to produce proteins are the problem. The microbes in the soil and those in nodules on the roots of legumes that fix nitrogen require these minerals to be available in sufficient quantities. Calcium,in particular, needs to be at least 60% of the base saturation percentage. Adding nitrogen to soil with fertilizer suggests to me that the human way is better than nature’s way and I disagree.
I was hoping you would stop by!
“Adding nitrogen to soil with fertilizer suggests to me that the human way is better than nature’s way and I disagree.”
Some additional info on nitrogen and nitrogen fixing plants
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/nitrogen-nodules-and-nitrogen-fixing-plants.htm
My understanding is that plants need nitrogen to grow.. Nitrogen is abundant generally speaking- so what do you means when you say
the human way is better then nature’s way..
since my thinking is that humans have generally reproduced or attempted to reproduce the conditions in nature for food production.
We see this in the idea of sustainable farming.
I realize this is a complex subject..
Hi Penny: The Gardening Know How article is a good representation of the misinformation of how nature gets nitrogen into the soil for use by microbes and plants.
William Albrecht points out that nitrogen can be fixed by bacteria in the soil as well as by microbes in nodules on the roots of legumes. The key word in this sentence is “can”. In both cases the fertility level of the soil is the determining factor. The critical element in the soil needed in both cases for sufficient nitrogen fixation to take place is calcium. Calcium, magnesium, potassium and hydrogen are the four major positive ions in the base saturation percentages in a soil test. Albrecht’s suggestion for quantities of the first three are 60 to 70%, 10 to 12 percent and 3 to 5% respectively. Needless to say Ca and Mg are not on a bag of “fertilizer” but K (potassium) is. When the calcium is below 60%, you cannot expect microbes in nodules on the roots to fix nitrogen. When the minerals in the soil are deficient with respect to the requirements of a legume in order to produce protein, the legume is no more nutritious than a non-legume and no microbes in nodules on the roots are fixing nitrogen.
I grow a legume, Wild Lupine, in a garden in Toronto. Legumes can be indicators of high soil fertility when, as Albrecht states in Volume I of “The Albrecht Papers”: “Certain big plants are more apt to be indicators of fertile soils than others. But for that, one must know something about what the plant is creating or making when it is growing. Crops like the legumes which are said to be ‘hard to grow’ are usually indicators of fertile soils when they are making big plants and especially a big output of seed. It is this reproductive aspect, the activity of making new cells, of creating proteins–through which like keeps flowing–and multiplying its parts and species that really reports fertile soils. Plants in nature are big and numerous because they have been multiplying themselves via production of more protein. The production of protein by plants is the real index of the fertility of the soil under the plants.”
In a tight clay soil which I amended, I grow large Wild Lupine plants that produce large quantities of seeds. The same plants grow in High Park. Their appearance there suggests that they are growing in low soil fertility. Apparently this plant needs human interference to continue growing in High Park.
Fixing nitrogen by humans is useful for making bombs. Using nitrogen fixed by humans to add nitrogen to soil is a failure to understand how nature works.
That’s why I say that I prefer nature’s way of adding nitrogen to soil. In growing the lupine in my garden, I have thus added no nitrogen. While the plants are flowering, there are a large number of bumblebees coming into the yard to collect pollen from the lupine flowers while ignoring other flowering plants in the yard.
This is the first I’ve heard of the “need” to reduce nitrogen. How utterly absurd. Nitrogen and ammonia are vital for food production, and the bulk are made from nitrogen fixation from the air using natural gas.
The Haber process was the first successful large scale economic industrial nitrogen fixation technology, and it literally began the industrial revolution by allowing large scale farming (and warfare, as it replaced guano for gunpowder production). Nitrogen is *removed* from the atmosphere by this process, and it is a petroleum based process. What the farmers are “emitting” is what is considered organic.
This is upside down world. Nitrogen oxides are emitted by internal combustion engines, but I am unaware of any agricultural process which emits NO2 in any significant quantity. NO2 is normally an air quality/smog issue. It may have “greenhouse gas potential”, but aside from the greenhouse effect being overblown beyond all proportion, NO2 is a minute (theoretical) contributor. There’s nothing about greenhouse potential on the Wikipedia page for NO2.
Thanks for the comment Gigolo Joe