Environmentalists are proud of their ignorance. For them, it's a sign of right thinking to disparage fertilizer as undifferentiated whitish granules of some sort, with a sneer. But someone who was actually interested in the environment would be fascinated and seek to learn the details about this major environmental issue. Some history:

About 75% of fertilizers and fertilizer technology used around the world today were developed or improved during the 1950s to 1970s by scientists and engineers at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the United States . . .

TVA developed high-analysis fertilizers with high nutrient content as well as more efficient manufacturing processes. The fertilizers include urea, diammonium phosphate (DAP), triple superphosphate (TSP), sulfur-coated urea, and liquid fertilizers. TVA improved the manufacturing processes for ammonium nitrate and other products that help commercial producers provide efficient fertilizers to farmers worldwide. TVA's ammonium-granulation and bulk-blending technologies improve the efficiency of the manufacture of many mixed fertilizer grades. TVA generated most of the fluid fertilizer and dry bulk-blending technology used in the United States today.

Fertilizers were manufactured long before that, but the state of the industry today owes much to that mid-century work. Why has progress not continued?

. . . inadequate public funding caused closure of the TVA fertilizer research program in the early 1990s. Today, publicly funded fertilizer research and development has essentially ceased—and so has the flow of new and more efficient fertilizers and fertilizer manufacturing technologies. . .

"Most fertilizer products used today were developed when energy seemed abundant and cheap. But with rising prices we should develop a new generation of fertilizer products that use plant nutrients more efficiently.

"Such innovations will require investments in research—but such costs would be miniscule compared to the benefits for humanity," Roy says.

There is a clear need for improved fertilizers and improved manufacturing techniques, but it isn't clear that public funding is the only or best way to do this. And why is it assumed that the US must do this?

Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Laureate, says, "I am concerned about the state of the fertilizer industry itself. With the price of energy increasing, we need to find cheaper, more effective ways to nourish food crops. The price tag for increasing productivity in Africa will be quite high. The fertilizer industry needs to do everything in its power to minimize that cost. Farmers are paying way too much for fertilizer products because we are transporting millions of tons of material that is not nutrient and because much of the nutrients in applied fertilizers are never used by the crop. Nutrient losses to the environment are high with consequences for global warming and water pollution.

"Work should begin now on the next generation of fertilizer products using advanced techniques such as nanotechnology and molecular biology, especially in conjunction with plant genetics research. 'Smart' fertilizer products that will release nutrients only at the time and in the amount needed should be developed." Borlaug served on the IFDC Board of Directors from 1994 to 2003.

"The world needs a major research effort to improve the effectiveness of fertilizer production and use," says Peter McPherson, President of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) and current Chairman of the IFDC Board. "Fertilizer is a commodity industry and it is unlikely the industry alone will undertake the research. Some public investment is probably required."

We need more food, and that takes more fertilizer, which is expensive and takes energy, and increases the pressure on wild lands and fresh water. What is being done now? What could "smart fertilizer" possibly mean?

I'm not sure that Borlaugh and team are correct that fertilizer is only a commodity industry unlikely to attract research funds. There is significant progress developing fertilizers for turf and specialty growers. Golf courses, lawns, landscaping and nurseries use a lot of fertilizers and there are new products for their use including some "smart fertilizer". One example is the use of polymer coated fertilizer granules that slowly decompose, releasing fertilizer at a uniform rate over a period of time. Technologies developed for such use become available for wide use over time.

Another hopeful effort involves the use of biochar. To greatly simplify, it has a natural ability to attract and hold fertilizer, protecting it from leaching and bacterial consumption until plants release it for their own use. The char is also beneficial for soil life, structure and chemistry in ways that reduce the need for fertilizer. Some products have been developed that combine char and fertilizer. Applying such materials gives all of the above benefits and may be cost effective given that less fertilizer is needed for comparable results, and there is a permanent soil enhancement.

A related issue in char production is that it is a partial gasification of biomass. The gases produced have a variety of uses. In the simplest case the gases can be burned to provide heat for any number of purposes ranging from electricity generation to cooking food. More complicated cases use the gases as feedstocks to produce useful materials such as liquid fuel for transportation and nitrogen fertilizers.

This last use, fertilizer production, coupled with char production can result in one of the smartest of smart fertilizers. Amending fields with char doped with nitrogen fertilizer improves soil structure while providing time released nitrogen that doesn't leach away in rain and is not consumed by soil bacteria to release potent NOx GHGs.

Public funding for research into better fertilizers and better production systems is not a bad idea. I'm saying that it is not the only idea, not the only way that progress will happen. Public funding does seem smart, a good investment, based on past results since the benefits were much greater than the costs. I'd like to see more of the natural gas production, which is rising fast in the US in recent months, used for fertilizer manufacture rather than burning it for heat. New processes that are more efficient, and so cheaper, are needed to compete with lower cost imports. And I'd like to see more char production as part of forest management. It makes good use of the value of excess biomass from forests, which is a problem now due to fire hazard and has little commercial value to motivate its clearance. Both forest and farmland could be improved by the same processes. Better forests, better farmland and reduced environmental impacts from leaching and emissions would result from using forest slash for char and fertilizer production. Smart fertilizer indeed.