Fritz Haber was a Jewish German chemist who won a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1918 after he found a way to pull nitrogen from the atmosphere and created synthetic fertilizer. “Using high pressure and a catalyst, he directly reacted nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas to create ammonia.” (Chemical Heritage Foundation). This is known as nitrogen fixation. He discovered this in a period of time when there was a shortage of food in the world. Half of our food comes from synthetic fertilizer. Even now with chemical fertilizer, millions of people don’t have enough food to feed themselves or their families. He may have contributed to chemistry with his findings, but he severely damaged agriculture. Chemical fertilizer does more harm than good because it damages the environment. More farmers should use organic fertilizers to grow crops. …show more content…
The fertilizer is acidic and contains mineral salts that can damage the roots of plants and the soil. It is true that synthetic fertilizers contain the three main elements needed to fertilize plants: nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous but it can deplete the soil and harm microorganisms and earthworms. Using only inorganic fertilizers can compact the soil which causes less water and nutrients to get into the soil. Since these fertilizers compact the soil, this causes farmers to add even more fertilizer. Plants cannot protect themselves from pests so farmers must use pesticide. All of this pesticide and synthetic fertilizer can cause water pollution. If it rains, the synthetic fertilizer can pollute the surface and ground water. This water runs off into lakes and other bodies of water and harm aquatic
Chidambaram, India’s minister for food and agriculture supports the use of technology in agriculture but it leads to many farmers competing for who is best at using the technology (Doc. 4). This is a negative consequence because the competition would lead to conflicts between farmers on resources in their contest to be the better farmer. Dr. Vandana Shiva, an Indian physicist points out that a result of the Green Revolution was that more chemicals were being inputted into the soil which would ultimately hurts the land (Doc. 6). As a physicist, her words have great credibility because as a scientist, she truly understands the damage chemical products can do to the environment. These chemicals include pesticides, hybrid seeds and synthetic fertilizers that could potentially harm the soil. The negative consequences of the Green Revolution can be seen in
Three substances mainly make fertilisers: nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Their percentage in the solution will change the effectiveness on a determinate plant; for example is recommended to use high proportion of nitrogen fertilizers during the spring growth of spurts. The fertilisers can be spitted in two categories: organic that contains a low level of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium and aren’t toxic to the environment and synthetic that are made by a high concentration of the three substances and can be corrosive to the environment if are overused.
Food additives are substances that are added to food to enhance it; they can be both chemical and natural ("Food Additives: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia"). Recently many food additives have been questioned by both the public and scientists world wide. One example of the food additives that have been studied is sodium stearoyl lactylate. It has recently been looked at due to indications that it might be unsafe for consumption. In this essay a couple main points and questions will be explained; what is sodium stearoyl lactylate, what are its effects both positive and negative, what are some indirect effects SSL has on society, is it ethical to use, and if sodium stearoyl lactylate safe for human consumption.
Pesticides are used daily throughout all types of places. In rural areas, farmers are applying pesticides on their crops to protect them from the devastation that some insects can have. In urban areas families are using pesticides to protect their houses and their children from pests. There are many different sections of pesticides. Fungicides kill fungus, herbicides kill plants, rodenticide kill rodents, larvicides kill larvae, and bactericides kill bacteria. When people use pesticides, they feel as though their houses and children are protected. Many people don’t see the down fall of using such harsh chemicals. Exposure to harsh chemicals can send your body in a downward spiral.
Currently, there is a global demand emerging for organic products specifically a huge consumer demand in the United States and Europe. The United States ranks fourth in organically farmed land globally, and sales of organic food have increased by almost a factor of six, from $3.6 billion in 1997 to $21.1 billion in 2008 (Reganold, Andrews, Reeve, Carpenter-Boggs, Schadt, Alldredge, Ross, Davies, Zhou, 2010). In the United States, organic farming has gained much popularity in the farm sector, mainly due to the new wave or generally recognized as healthy food products (Uematsu, Mishra, 2012).
With the world having so many people on it we use a lot of pesticides and fertilizers. If it was not for the help of these we would not have gotten to the place we are now. Pesticides and fertilizers do a lot more than just help grow and safe from pests. “Nearly 50% of the world labor is employed in agriculture and they significant risk”
These days and even way back when, we do not know what is in our food! I feel it is a human right to know what’s in our food especially when we are the ones paying whole price for these meals or groceries.
A bacteria that public waters system check for is called coliform, coliform is not a deadly bacteria but can indicate that there is a dangerous pathogen in the water. This is an example of runoff getting in the water supply and if this goes undetected hundreds of people could die from this. Pesticides, Herbicides, or fertilizer all pollute to water supplies if it end up in a water system. Putting a sufficient amount of lawn fertilizer is fine, but when you put too much on to get your lawn to grow faster is when the excess gets runoff into rivers. For the most part the main nutrients in fertilizers are nitrogen and phosphorus. The nutrients in these fertilizers makes the plant speed up growth, and to produce more vegetables or for the grass taller. Nitrogen is a nitrate, and the nitrate is what damages the water sources. If the phosphorus is not mixed with soil after applied it will run-off the grass the next time it rains. Phosphorus cause the water to get cloud, and also make a green algae in the water but most importantly causes a depletion of oxygen in the water which kills fish. also It only takes a tiny bit of pollution from one lawn to impact the body of water, because think of all the other people that had too much fertilizer in their lawn. Another problem is that some people use wells for water, but when too much is applied it soaks into the groundwater. So when the people get their water out of the well they are drink water that quite possibly could be
To help keep crops from being destroyed, conventional farmers use many methods such as pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Nearly 1 billion pounds of these chemicals are used every year (“pesticides”). Because of this excessive use, some scientists express concern that using artificial chemicals in the farming process could produce unhealthy crops. People who ate it over a long period of time could suffer from degraded health and stunted growth (“Organic Foods”). For example, in 1989, the EPA banned the use of Alar which was a chemical used to ripen apples (“Farming, Organics”). This chemical proved to be carcinogenic after causing tumors in mice after several laboratory tests (“Organic Food”). As a result of these findings there was a dramatic increase of the sales for organic food (“Organic Food”). Another study found that Atrazine (one of the most widely used herbicides in the United States) has the potential of being carcinogenic and reducing sperm counts in males (“Organic Food”). This was further proven when evidence was found that chemicals u...
As time has progressed, there has always been an overarching need for high amounts of crop production throughout the world. With the rapid rate of population growth, the need for crops and other sources of nutrients is only increasing. In order to meet these high demands and increase yields, farmers and other agriculturalists have started implementing the use of pesticides. These chemical mixtures are being used in order to prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate any pests from destroying growing crops. However, using pesticides on crops can create massive amounts of pollution, negatively affect an individual’s health, and can spark biodiversity loss within an ecosystem. According to Michael C.R. Alavanja, “Over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used within the United States (US) each year and approximately 5.6 billion pounds are used worldwide”. With all this in mind, it is clear that pesticides should not be made available to farmers and agriculturalists, and should
The chemical fertilizers and pesticides have effects on the soil organisms that are similar to human overuse of antibiotics. According to the soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ingham, she said that “If we lose both bacteria and fungi, then the soil degrades”. It meaning that some plants depends on a variety of soil microorganism to transform atmospheric nitrogen into nitrates, which plants can use. For example Toxic effects of high concentration of ammonia fertilizer on soil organism applied have been the potential damage to soil organism generally one issue to grower because some bacteria living inside the soil surface provides potential benefit for cropping. If chemical fertilizer unprofessional conduct used, it will affect to earthworm as a beneficial soil organism resulting in the loss an important actor playing the vital role as decomposer of land and cause loss of the land nutrient or organic matters effect for the soil loss of fertility.
Organic agriculture is the oldest form of agriculture on our planet. Until post World War II, farming without harmful petroleum based sources was the only way of farming. There were no hazardous fertilizers and pesticides made from petroleum based products. During World War II many agricultural technologies were created. For example, ammonium used for munitions during World War II evolved into nitrate fertilizer and organophosphate production led to the creation of strong insecticides. These technical advances have resulted in economic gains at the cost of severe environmental and social consequences.
There has been much excitement about the latest science news in which a remote controlled airplane was flown using seawater fuel. The U.S. Navy created the fuel by taking carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater and combing them to create an organic compound called a hydrocarbon, which can be used for energy. I believe this is a really an amazing discovery since the earth has a lot of seawater to use as fuel. The oil, gas and coal we currently use as fuel will not last forever. The possible use of seawater as future source of fuel is just one of many applications of organic compounds, compounds which contain carbon molecules. Carbon is a unique element because it has the ability to form many compounds with itself and with other nonmetal elements like oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous. Carbon has four electrons on its outer shell, which leaves four electrons available to create covalent bonds with other carbon molecules and other various elements. Carbon’s unique properties include forming single, double and triple bonds which can combine with other atoms, forming chains which can combine with other elements and forming isomers, which are molecules that have similar composition as the original molecule but a different arrangement of its atoms. Organic compounds, which have been found naturally or have been made synthetically by chemists, make our life much easier. Some of the many applications of organic chemistry are in medicine, energy sources and industry.
Nitrogen is used by plants in order to synthesize protein peptide bonds and for cell growth. Not only is this nutrient required in the largest quantity by plants, but it is also the most frequently limiting factor when it comes to productivity in crops. Plants cannot use nitrogen in the air and in the soil system it is lost easily. Because of this plants are forced to obtain nitrogen in the form of nitrate and ammonium from the soil. Too much nitrate can cause a negative effect on the plant including nitrate toxicity. High levels of nitrate are not only bad for plants but can also be dangerous to animals or humans in their presence. Here I discuss the scientific evidence of the effects of nitrate accumulation on plants and the environment and argue that too much nitrate accumulation can be harmful to its surroundings.
“ Know your farmer, know your food” goes the slogan by organic farmers to promote the consumption of locally grown food through organic farming. Subsequent to the clear distinction between organic and conventional food, there is an increase in focus towards organic farming. The “silent spring” that represents the seemingly solitary voice of the science writer Rachel Carson, 1962 ushered in the organic farming movement to counter the green revolution industrial-scale use of pesticides and fertilizers back in the 1960s. However the use of the term “organic farming” started with Lord Northbourne (aka Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne) (Pogash, 2008), which he derived from the concept of “the farm as organism” as, explained in his book titled