[thaumasiotes]

> Go listen to Gabe Brown, he saves thousands and thousands by not not paying for synthetic fertilizers.

> "Above every surface acre on earth there's approximately 32,000 tons of atmospheric nitrogen, why would any farmer want to write a check for nitrogen?, I just can't figure that one out" -- Gabe Brown

It's not hard to learn. This is a topic of intense interest to many, many people.

The answer is that plants get their nitrogen from the dirt, not from the air. And if nitrogen in the air were prone to react with the dirt, there wouldn't be much nitrogen left in the air.

[pdpi]

> And if nitrogen in the air were prone to react with the dirt, there wouldn't be much nitrogen left in the air.

Our atmosphere is almost 80% N₂. If it weren’t for the fact that N₂ is basically inert and doesn’t like reacting with anything at all, life would be borderline impossible.

[thaumasiotes]

> If it weren’t for the fact that N₂ is basically inert and doesn’t like reacting with anything at all, life would be borderline impossible.

I don't think this argument can work; the stylized rest of the atmosphere is quite reactive.

That did indeed make life impossible for the forms of life that were around before the oxygen was there, but it didn't do anything to make life impossible in general.

[thatcat]

All sorts of reactions take place in the soil and with plants/microbes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle