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Paper short abstract

Reactive nitrogen is paradigmatic for the anthropocene: more than half of the world's food supply relies on it, but it is also turning inland and coastal waters into death zones. Based on an ethnography of nitrogen, I argue that as long as its flow can be maintained, however, this is not a problem.

Paper long abstract

Reactive nitrogen is one of the great achievements of industrial modernity. The ability to produce food from thin air has massively altered our ability to produce food independent of soil fertility. Over half of the world's (and rising) nutrition is sustained by industrially-produced nitrogen compounds. This plenty of fertility however causes problems elsewhere: excess nitrogen seeps into rivers, groundwater, lakes and coastal ecosystems, disturbing their chemical and biological milieus and causing so-called death zones where only algae can thrive. Yet given its essential role in feeding the world we cannot stop to produce and release ever more reactive nitrogen, even if the planetary boundary of this chemical has long been exceeded: the flow must go on.

In more than one way, I want to argue here, anthropogenic nitrogen is a good model for dealing with chemicals and the ecological problems they cause. Although the problem seems unsolveable on a global scale, a multitude of solutions have successfully mediated it locally, mostly through economic tools and strategies. Unlike many other chemicals, it is thus no longer a matter of broad public concern but can be considered well-managed even if we were unable to remove it from our social metabolism. Based on my ethnography of nitrogen in Germany, this talk outlines the logic underlying its management and circulation between fertiliser plants, farms, waterworks, kitchens, wastewater treatment and the Baltic Sea: as long as its flow goes on, we can be oblivious of nitrogen.