Microbial Magic Could Help Slash Your Dinner's Carbon Footprint
In one year, fertilizer production in the U.S. emitted as much carbon dioxide as two million cars. What if we could help plants make their own nitrogen so they wouldn't need man-made chemicals?
If you're interested in sustainability, you've probably thought about how to reduce your carbon footprint, from how you fuel your car to how you heat your home. But what about carbon emissions from growing the food you eat?
Most of the crops in the United States are grown using chemical fertilizer – a lot of it: American farmers used over 24 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer in 2011. And making nitrogen fertilizer requires fossil fuels like natural gas or coal.
In a single year, States emitted as much carbon dioxide as . But plants need nitrogen to survive, so farmers can't just stop using fertilizer. Without it,, according to some estimates.
