So, I recently watched a video regarding the first synthesized fertilizer, and I thought it was pretty interesting that farmland was basically screwed if they didn’t figure out how to get more nitrogen into dirt.
But then I thought about it, I was taught that plants make the bulk of themselves out of carbon, which they absorb from the air in carbon dioxide. Why is the same not true with nitrogen? Our atmosphere is a little more than 2/3rds nitrogen after all.
I tried looking it up, but the result was basically “Because nitrogen in the atmosphere is in a gaseous form” but that wasn’t really helpful.
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It takes a huge amount of energy to break the bonds between the atoms of nitrogen in the atmosphere. The bond is so strong that concentrated nitrate fertilizer is a high explosive. Fertilizer bombs are very real, and [fertilizer factories sometimes explode](https://www.csb.gov/west-fertilizer-explosion-and-fire-/) The city of Lebanon was devastated when a warehouse full of fertilizer exploded. Basically, in order to make nitrogen based fertilizer, energy is pumped into nitrogen, and it is capable of releasing that energy with catastrophic speed. Some plants- mostly in the legume family (beans) can partner with bacteria in their roots, they pay the bacteria energy (sugar) in exchange for nitrate. But it is so expensive, most plants evolved to just use what is present in the environment.
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