“Fertilizer is good for the father and bad for the sons.”
–Dutch saying

Just precisely what does all of that nitrogen ferilizer do to the soil?

For all of its ecological baggage, synthetic nitrogen does one good deed for the environment: it helps build carbon in soil -at least, that’s what scientists have assumed for decades.

Now a team of University of Illinois researchers led by professors Richard Mulvaney, Saeed Khan, and Tim Ellsworth argues that the net effect of synthetic nitrogen use is to reduce soil’s organic matter content. Read more.