The Promise and Peril of the Haber-Bosch Process: Background information when reading Becoming Earth

As Ferris Jabr describes in Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life, he and his spouse discovered an all-too-common problem when they tried to plant a new garden—ruined, lifeless soil. Despite our millions of acres of farmland, the intensity of modern agriculture, grazing, deforestation, and land disturbance have severely depleted soils and the nutrients they contain that support crop growth. Jabr quotes a 2021 study that revealed that "about one third of agricultural land across the Corn Belt in the United States has already lost all of its topsoil."

This isn't a new problem, however; agriculture is thousands of years old, and by the 19th century, farmers were using a variety of fertilizer to replenish soils. These included bat guano and saltpeter because they provided nitrogen, an essential element that plants need to grow.

Nitrogen is abundant in Earth's atmosphere, but it must be converted to molecules that plants can take up through their roots. Bacteria and ...