Nitrogens Importance
Plants have a huge appetite for nitrogen, the N in NPK. It’s required for root, stem, leaf and vine growth. The nutritional value of foods are dependent on nitrogen.
Crops cultivated for human consumption as well as those grown to produce poultry, pork and beef are huge users of nitrogen.
Because nitrogen is used so heavily it means that it is removed in huge amounts from the soils we use for crop production and must be replenished.
During a typical corn harvest in the U.S. more than 6 billion pounds of nitrogen will be removed from the land. Harvest of livestock hay removes over 7 billion pounds of nitrogen and the most common grain, wheat, means that over 2 billion pounds of nitrogen will be removed from the land each year.
Nitrogen is vital to the production of chlorophyll and photosynthesis can’t occur without chlorophyll so life can’t proceed without nitrogen. It is the quality nutrient and is a part of all plant and animal proteins. It is vital to human diets and we are dependent on nitrogens presence in our food supplies.
But plants can’t use nitrogen directly from the air. They can only take up nitrogen in the form or nitrates and ammonium. So producers of fertilizers combine nitrogen with hydrogen to form nitrogen fertilizers.
Nitrogen compounds are one of the basic building blocks for both plant and animal life. Beyond its use in fertilizers nitrogen is used to preserve the freshenss of packaged foods. It’s also used in the production of electronic parts, stainless steel, protecting aircraft fuel systems, pressurizing beer kegs, antibiotics and drugs like nitroglycerin and nitroprusside for regulation of hearts and blood pressure.
Nitrogen is critical to animal life and is a part of all animal and plant protein. There is no substitute for nitrogen…it’s the food super star. For the farm producer it is vital that the correct amounts of nitrogen are found in the soil. It is the role of the agronomist to work with the producer to ensure that the correct amounts of fertilizer, including nitrogen, are present in the field in order to grow healty, nutritious plants.
