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How to feed the world without killing it – the Nitrogen Challenge
October 12, 2009

 Late last week mass media woke up to a core challenge of civilization: providing sufficient nitrogen to feed plants without exacerbating climate change and water degradation in a world going from 6 to 9 billion souls.

As the population increases, more nitrogen is required to feed crops that ultimately feed people. So more fossil fuel is burned to produce nitrogen, which drives energy prices up, releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere. In a linked problem, up to a quater of the nitrogen placed on the land is washed off by rains into water, which kills life in water bodies, or it is volatilized into the atmosphere adding to the climate problem (volatilized nitrogen is a destructive greenhouse gas). Management of nitrogen is a huge problem because of its energy intensive source and toxic leakage into the environment.

Over the next year, Roots of Change will roll out an education and action campaign focused on how farmers and ranchers can become a solution to some of the climate change and nitrogen pollution challenges currently faced.  Please promote the link to this page wherever you can: http://tinyurl.com/ygq9gy3 - your blog, Facebook, or Twitter - or pass it along to your friends so they can sign up to make sure they can be part of that campaign.    If you aren’t on our mailing list, please sign up in the upper right of the screen.

In the mean time, check out these recent news items:

Writer Michael Pollan was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation last week when two farmers, Blake Hurst and Troy Roush, raised the challenge of how to feed the world without damaging it through nitrogen pollution.  It’s worth checking out - the discussion took a surprising turn.

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece on New Zealand’s call for an international effort to seek solutions.

You can read my full blog on the Nitrogen Challenge here.

We look forward to productive conversations ahead.

Thank you,

Michael R. Dimock
President, Roots of Change
 

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