Rethinking Fertilizer on a Fundamental Level: A Greener Revolution

Wired.com has published an interesting article describing how real environmental change will require a rethinking of agricultural fertilizer–not just its use, but is manufacture. Fertilizer is of course an energy intensive product to produce and the Wired contributor argues that any real fundamental shift towards greener agriculture will require both a rethinking of how fertilizer is used but also manufactured.  We still produce fertilizer by the same basic process used in 1909. Despite huge technological advances in farming and resource use, this basic building block of the agricultural system has remained oddy innovation free for generations.  Even though some scientists are hard on the trail of producing nitrogen using cleaner, more sustainable, and possibly cheaper, methods, it is hard to obtain the funding required for the overdue break through.  “So while billions of dollars in venture capital are flowing in to cleantech companies that would only make small differences in the world’s energy balance, research into new fertilizer tech is inexplicably underfunded.” Read the entire article at http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/06/nitrogen?currentPage=2