They are so widely used today that it is estimated that around half of the nitrogen in our bodies was fixed from the air via the Haber–Bosch process. Were it not for these chemicals, we would have to turn over pretty much every square mile of land on the planet to agricultural production, covering it with manure from an equally enormous stable of animals, and even then we would still only be able to support roughly half the world’s population. But in those earliest years, the main use these nitrates were put to was creating explosives for the German army.
