With the push of a red button, a milky-colored liquid sprayed onto a load of corn seed at a warehouse in central Missouri. It was a hint of a revolution underway in American agriculture, driven by a desire to combat climate change while still feeding and fueling the world.
Inside that liquid were bacteria whose DNA had been altered so that once the corn seeds are in the ground, the bacteria create extra nutrients for the plants. That could greatly reduce the need for the chemical fertilizers that dominate modern agriculture and are a source of the pollution that is heating the planet.
As the dangers of climate change become more apparent, scientists and entrepreneurs are exploring ways to engineer natural systems to reduce greenhouse gases.
A $200 billion industry dominated by a few global giants like Koch Industries, chemical fertilizer is made by mixing nitrogen from the air with hydrogen from natural gas at high temperatures and pressure to create ammonia. The ammonia is turned into ammonium nitrate, which is injected into the soil or spread onto corn, wheat and rice fields to help them grow.
Chemical fertilizer is credited with helping to produce enough food for a world population that has ballooned from about 1.6 billion in 1900, when the process was created, to about 8 billion today.
But it has also added to the climate crisis in two ways.
Making fertilizer produces carbon dioxide, which traps heat from the sun. When it’s spread on soil, a portion of that fertilizer is released into the air as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide.
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