How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future

by Vaclav Smil

The best account of recent nitrogen flows in China’s agriculture shows that about 60 percent of the nutrient available to the country’s crops comes from synthetic ammonia: feeding three out of five of the Chinese population thus depends on the synthesis of this compound.23 The corresponding global mean is about 50 percent. This dependence easily justifies calling the Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia perhaps the most momentous technical advance in history. Other inventions, as William Crookes correctly judged, minister to our comforts, convenience, luxury, wealth, or productivity, and others yet save our lives from premature death and chronic disease—but without the synthesis of ammonia, we could not ensure the very survival of large shares of today’s and tomorrow’s population.