Summary

Modern farming depends heavily on nitrogen fertilizer because crops need nitrogen to build proteins, chlorophyll and ultimately yield, yet most major crops cannot directly use the nitrogen gas that makes up most of the atmosphere. Farmers have to buy nitrogen in forms plants can use, generally through ammonia, urea and nitrate fertilizers produced industrially at enormous scale. That system has underpinned modern agricultural productivity, but it also exposes food production to natural-gas prices, industrial energy costs and the environmental consequences of nitrogen that escapes into air and water.

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