Of Bombs and Fertilizer

The duality of innovation

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As the Second Industrial Revolution was under way, in a bizarre twist of fate, it was a military arms race and political rivalry that helped save billions of human lives in the 20th Century. After 1900, ascendant world power Germany found itself in a difficult position. With supplies of bomb-making and fertilizer ingredients controlled by foreign powers, German scientists embarked on a journey to leverage their chemical expertise and derive these ingredients from the air we breathe. Their success resulted in a near limitless supply of fertilizer to grow food.

An Energy Revolution

Previously, we briefly walked through the history of agriculture, from pre-history to the industrial revolution. I made the case that energy abundance, here specifically, the availability of stored solar energy contained within the food that we eat, was a key prerequisite for the industrial revolution to take hold. Food availability and agricultural output is the cornerstone of sustained human progress. But…