The hero has grey shades too..

It was the time of monsoons. Like any other village of the 90's India, the electricity was making a hide and seek game. The only available light source, a Kerosene lamp with a dancing flame, was painting a yellowish aura to the people around the table.

The cloudy atmosphere and the rattling sound of raindrops on the asbestos roofing made the evening much scarier for us, kids. We were quite sleepy, but the excitement of having a special dish kept our spirits high.

Even though the jelly-like food prepared from?palm flour failed miserably to excite our tastebuds,? we found our way of amusement by creating shapes using the "special dish."

Strangely all the elders were eating it with devotion and in absolute silence, a rarity in our family.??

Our grandfather was a bit drunk and made an emotional speech about his ordeals as a family head. Even though I was used to such discourses occasionally, his narration about his walk of two-days with a palm trunk on his head to avoid starvation of his kids somehow made me emotional.

As a child from an agricultural family, I was used to the process of chopping the palm trunk to create fodder for the cows and ducks. I already knew people had the habit of using palm flour to produce food when no other food is available, especially during rainy seasons.?

But carrying such a massive piece of wood on the head and walk around 30 KMs was quite unimaginable for me. I ate the food as hastily as I could to escape from the emotionally charged scene.??

Our family had a reasonable area of agricultural land, and my grandfather was a hardworking man. So scarcity for food was something incomprehensible for us.

Later, from the conversions, we realized that even with the best efforts, the yield was abysmally low. Poverty and malnutrition were so rampant like air in our village, and everyone had the stories of losing someone due to it.?

It was on that day; my father coined the terms "Green revolution" and "Dr.M.S. Swaminathan" to our childhood vocabulary.

Green Revolution and its significance

The green revolution is an umbrella term for a spectrum of activities and novel approaches in the agricultural area. It includes high yielding plant varieties, irrigation projects, adaptation of innovative and scientific farming practices.?

The green revolution made farming a lucrative profession for the majority of the Indian population and made us a country with sustainable food production. But recently, the Green Revolution and its methods experience severe criticism from a variety of sources for its ecological impacts.?

Some of the purists claim that old times were serene and paint a rosy picture of a sustainable well-fed population. Still, the records of human history reveal that more than 75 million people died of malnutrition and starvation in the 20th century alone. It means their romantic claim of nostalgic past is a big lie.

The most contributory element in achieving the tectonic change in food production is the easy availability of affordable? Nitrogen fertilizers. To realize its importance, a basic understanding of the ways Nitrogen affects our life would be a useful tool.

The role of Nitrogen in Living Organisms?

Plants and animals require Nitrogen in various forms. For plants, it's an essential element for the generation Chlorophyll, the crucial green pigments for photosynthesis.?

Photosynthesis is the process of converting water and carbon dioxide to create more complex carbohydrate compounds such as fruits, vegetables, cereals, pulses, etc.?

It means improved nitrogen availability increases chlorophyll generation and enhances productivity.?

?Nitrogen is a vital constituent in Amino acid synthesis in animals. Amino Acids are the building blocks of hormones, muscles, organs, and are essential for the transfer of your genetic characteristics to your offsprings through DNA.

Animals obtain the required Nitrogen through the consumption of plant products or eating the dead animals that feed on plants.

In short, every living organism on the planet earth depends heavily on Nitrogen for its existence.

Nitrogen constitutes around 78% of our atmosphere.

But Nitrogen is an inert gas. Inert gases are reluctant to associate with other elements to make any compounds. So the availability of Nitrogen sources for direct consumption is very limited.

How do plants absorb Nitrogen??

The conversion of atmospheric Nitrogen to plant absorbable forms happens in three ways.

?1. Microbial Activity — Nitrogen-fixing bacteria present in the soil converts atmospheric Nitrogen to plant absorbable nitrates.

?2. Lightening — It contributes to 5–8% total natural Nitrogen fixation

3. Industrial Nitrogen Fixation — Haber-Bosch process is used for the synthesis of 99% Nitrogen fertilizers, we currently use

?It means until the introduction of Industrial Nitrogen fertilizers, the options to improve the productivity were limited to nature's mercy. This low availability of Nitrogen reduced productivity and impeded human developments in the form of famines and malnutrition.?

????Nitrogen Fertilizers — The Hero of the humans

The industrial production of nitrogen fertilizers at affordable prices triggered a great wave of farmer enthusiasm. A farmer of today can reap a harvest of a many-fold yield from the same land than his predecessors. This reduction in capital expenditure and the massive increase in productivity reduced the price of food grains significantly, making poverty eradication an achievable goal.??

For Norman Borlaug, the father of the green revolution, his works for fighting poverty gave a mixed bag of responses. Some labeled him as an agent of US agribusiness and Agrochemical corporates.?

For some, he is the sole reason for the rapid increase in the world population and the subsequent e exploitation of natural resources.

But for the majority of the human race, he is “The man who saved more human lives than anyone else in history.”

?Hero to Villain, The Fertilizer way.?

Of course, Nitrogen fertilizers played a significant role in poverty eradication. But it is creating severe issues to the ecosystem through its active contribution towards Global Warming.

In a perfect Nitrogen cycle, the leftover nitrates in the fertilizers get converted to Nitrogen gas by denitrifying bacteria living in the soil. The Nitrogen gas thus produced will return to the atmosphere.?

?But the injudicious use of nitrogen fertilizers leaves a massive heap of nitrates, in almost every farmlands. The denitrifying bacteria feed on them and multiply rapidly.

This exponential growth reduces the availability of atmospheric Oxygen for the area. It forces these facultative bacteria to break down the compound, nitrates, and consume the oxygen from it for their survival.??

It disrupts the natural Nitrogen Cycle and creates an accumulation of Nitrous Oxide (NO2), a potent greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere.?

Global Warming Potential (GWP) is the measure of the magnitude of heat trapped in the atmosphere by a particular gas for a specified time duration. The chart below explains the GWP of common GHGs.?

GWP uses CO2 as the basis, and hence its value is calculated as 1. It means one-ton of carbon dioxide can trap a particular volume of heat within the atmosphere for 100 years.?

Methane has 21 times more heat-trapping capability than CO2, but it has got a much lower life span of 12 years only. But for Nitrous Oxide, the lifespan is 114 years and has GWP of 289.?

It means, one molecule of Nitrous Oxide can generate the total heat trapped by 289 molecules of Carbon Dioxide, that too for over a century. It makes Nitrous oxide, the most formidable GHG among its siblings.

The scientific literature confirms that the atmospheric presence of NO2 has significantly increased during the last 50 years, especially after the Green Revolution era of the 1960s. So the elephant in the room is none other than our hero "Nitrogen Fertilizers."?

The Ozone depletion properties of Nitrous Oxide and the massive Carbon Dioxide emissions during the industrial production of Nitrogen fertilizers are also a grave concern for the environmentalists.? ?

As if not enough, Fertilizers spread its tentacles to water bodies too. The fertilizer reaches the water bodies through rain and stimulates the growth of algae and hyacinth. It reduces the oxygen levels in the water and affects the life of water fauna, mainly fishes.

The decay of the aquatic plants, animals, and poor quality of water encourages microbial growth to generate Methane, another greenhouse gas.

This multilayer and multi pronged impacts of Nitrous Oxide on ecology catch the eye of many policymakers and scientists alike. Some believe that instead of reducing carbon emissions by industries, we should focus on NO2 reduction.??

The significant points they put forward to support their arguments are:

1. Removing one ton of Nitrous Oxide is equivalent to the removal of 289 tons of Carbon Dioxide.

2.? Carbon Dioxide emissions happen from different sources and industries. It requires great efforts to reduce carbon footprints due to its diverse nature.?

3. Nitrous Oxide has only one source, the farmlands. So if we can switch to other alternatives such as Organic farming, we can avoid Nitrogen Fertilizers altogether.?

These arguments are receiving a great fan following among a large population, especially with the developed countries.?

For them, the farmers of developing countries such as India, Bangladesh, or Africa are the real culprits in global warming.?

Save the planet- Stop fertilizers, move to Organic Living

You are not alone. The anchor of the TV show I watched the other day, too, was pleading for such a change. She addresses the green revolution as the mother of all curses of human life from hair-fall to cancer to infertility.?

There were such arguments earlier too. Norman Borlaug gave the right answer for such people :?

"Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things."

And I found it true from my own experience. I am not doing any agricultural activities, at least for over a decade. Still, we can purchase our food grains, fruits, or vegetables of different varieties from the local shop without any doubt about its availability next time.

We should realize that the fancy idea of organic farming, which our ancestors did, can't feed the current population of 8 billion. If you wish to blame the Green Revolution for the massive growth in population, again, you have the data in favor of you.?

Scientific developments in various areas, especially in the Medical field has significantly reduced mortality rates and improved our life span. The population growth demanded more resources and increased the carbon footprint.?

Farmers are the most affected category of the population due to climate change. The unpredictable weather patterns, crop losses, and low productivity are making their lives miserable. But the consumers of their products are trying to keep them in the dock for heating the planet.?

Had there not been a green revolution, we had to convert the entire forest to farmlands to produce the food required for the population. In that way, nitrogen fertilizers made a significant contribution to preserve the ecosystem for living organisms.?

Is there a way out?

The green revolution was a panacea for the food scarcity of the world. Indeed, it is not a complete solution. But painting the green revolution as the only reason for Global warming is just an eyewash effort by the industrial lobbies to postpone their compliance with the new guidelines to reduce carbon emissions.?

The world has changed in every segment of human activity from transportation, storage, communication, medical science, education, and the list goes on.?

But the purists are advocating for a complete ban of technology, which is around 60 years old, in farming alone. They are the crusaders of protecting nature and reverse the damage inflicted on it by the "bad" humans.?

That is perfect; none of us are using the car of the '60s.

Still, these same people are vehemently opposing the introduction of modern solutions such as genetically modified seed varieties, advanced farming methods such as precision farming or food from the lab.?

Until we have a sustainable alternative to ensure food safety, any policy decisions based on this furor for organic farming is going to be suicidal.?

The movement from plate to the mouth should be definite, assured, and frequent. An empty stomach fills revolutionary ideas to the brain. It leads to revolution, political instability and can turn the world to utter chaos.

We, Homo sapiens, evolved through challenges and overcame the difficulties using our brain as the weapon. Science has been our reliable buddy, and it keeps on moving from better solutions to more better solutions in a systematic way.?

I am confident that with sensible and practical solutions, we can overcome this challenge too, without snatching the food from anybody's plate.?