THE UREA TRAP: TIME FOR BOLD REFORMS?

Experts argue that the West Asia conflict is a 'black swan' opportunity to finally correct the imbalance in fertilizer use

- Sayantan Bera

A farmer sprays fertilizer in a field in Nalbari, Assam. Indian farmers tend to over-apply urea because it is heavily subsidized.

(PTI)

Even as a war rages on in West Asia, it's funny to think that centuries ago, countries fought over mere bird droppings.

In the mid-1800s, some countries considered guano-accumulated seabird and bat droppings to be the ultimate nitrogenous fertilizer. On the Chincha Islands, off the coast of Peru, centuries of seabird deposits had created mountains of poop. The US passed the Guano Islands Act in 1856 which allowed Americans to take possession of any unclaimed island containing guano. In 1864, Spain seized the Chincha Islands from Peru, setting off a series of battles between Spain and its former colonies.

The man who made these poop wars irrelevant was Fritz Haber, a German chemist who, in the early 1900s figured out how to extract nitrogen from air, which plants can use, via the Haber-Bosch process. In this process, hydrogen from natural gas (or methane) is used to produce ammonia (NH3). Then, ammonia is converted into granular urea, using carbon dioxide. Haber was awarded a Nobel prize because his invention helped increase food production manifold and avert famines.

In current times, Haber's invention remains as critical.

Nitrogenous fertilizers are the backbone of global agricultural productivity, with urea being the most widely used fertilizer. For plants, nitrogen is a vital nutrient for growth—without it they cannot convert sunlight into energy. If all crops knew how to synthesize nitrogen from the air (which is available freely), there would be no need for urea. But only leguminous plants like soy and peas know how to, not crops like rice, wheat, maize and sugarcane and many fruits and vegetables we consume.