NDLI: Nitrogen management and the future of food: Lessons from the management of energy and carbon

Content Provider	PubMed Central
Author	Socolow, Robert H.
Copyright Year	1999
Abstract	The food system dominates anthropogenic disruption of the nitrogen cycle by generating excess fixed nitrogen. Excess fixed nitrogen, in various guises, augments the greenhouse effect, diminishes stratospheric ozone, promotes smog, contaminates drinking water, acidifies rain, eutrophies bays and estuaries, and stresses ecosystems. Yet, to date, regulatory efforts to limit these disruptions largely ignore the food system. There are many parallels between food and energy. Food is to nitrogen as energy is to carbon. Nitrogen fertilizer is analogous to fossil fuel. Organic agriculture and agricultural biotechnology play roles analogous to renewable energy and nuclear power in political discourse. Nutrition research resembles energy end-use analysis. Meat is the electricity of food. As the agriculture and food system evolves to contain its impacts on the nitrogen cycle, several lessons can be extracted from energy and carbon: (i) set the goal of ecosystem stabilization; (ii) search the entire production and consumption system (grain, livestock, food distribution, and diet) for opportunities to improve efficiency; (iii) implement cap-and-trade systems for fixed nitrogen; (iv) expand research at the intersection of agriculture and ecology, and (v) focus on the food choices of the prosperous. There are important nitrogen-carbon links. The global increase in fixed nitrogen may be fertilizing the Earth, transferring significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere to the biosphere, and mitigating global warming. A modern biofuels industry someday may produce biofuels from crop residues or dedicated energy crops, reducing the rate of fossil fuel use, while losses of nitrogen and other nutrients are minimized.
Starting Page	6001
File Format	PDF
ISSN	10916490
e-ISSN	10916490
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Issue Number	11
Volume Number	96
Language	English
Publisher	The National Academy of Sciences
Publisher Date	1999-05-25
Access Restriction	Open
Rights Holder	The National Academy of Sciences
Subject Keyword	Research in Higher Education
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Multidisciplinary

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