The Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry: Integrating Industrial Ecology and Political Ecology Approaches

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This research project will examine the synthetic nitrogen production industry by combining an industrial ecological focus on metabolism to trace inputs and outputs of the industrial process with a political ecology focus on politics, history, and culture to ascertain the complex relationships among natural and human systems. The project will consider the evolution and operation of a major economic sector from new perspectives. It will expand on the consideration of metabolism by moving beyond traditional considerations that focus on industrial process to consider inputs and outputs among a broader suite of natural and human systems, thereby permitting consideration of the role of natural systems in terms of impacting on and receiving outputs from industrial processes. The project will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the processes though which atmospheric nitrogen has been transformed into a commodity as well as they ways in which this economic enterprise has evolved and interacted with various natural and human systems. The project therefore will expand knowledge about the role of social and other human factors in the transformation of global biogeochemical flows. The project is expected to result in a range of products that will enhance fundamental theoretical understandings and yield practical benefits. A book and other publications will be disseminated to groups like the Fertilizer Institute, the Food and Agriculture Organization, The Earth Institute, the Center for Industrial Ecology, and the National Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture among other organizations in civil society and industry, The investigators also will develop special educational materials, including teaching modules that deal with the social and natural aspects of the nitrogen cycle and illustrate the technical process of taking fossil fuel and creating nitrogen fertilizer in industrial facilities as well as the larger relationships this industry has with society and the environment.Scientists consider the "Haber-Bosch Process" of synthetic nitrogen production to be one of the most fundamental innovations of the 20th century. The process revolutionized global food production by lifting previous limitations on natural sources of nitrogen fertilizer, usually manure. The process has several sustainability concerns, however, because of its reliance on nonrenewable inputs, especially natural gas, water pollution, and excessive flows of nutrients into water bodies that can lead to eutrophication and phenomena like marine "dead zones." The process also yields significant levels of carbon emission and raises thorny questions regarding relationships between levels of food production and population growth. As such, nitrogen cuts across the energy-water-food nexus of environmental challenges. The investigators will combine an "input-output" analysis more traditionally employed in industrial ecology with a three-step research design focused on the historical and social dynamics of the primary "input" (natural gas), the industrial and related processes occurring at a representative site (Donaldsonville, Louisiana), and the primary "outputs" (nitrogen fertilizer and carbon dioxide). They will employ a range of methodological approaches, including archival research, interviews, and field-based observations.