On a summer day in 1909 C.E., a tabletop machine in a German laboratory dripped liquid ammonia at the rate of about 125 milliliters per hour. It was an almost comically small output. It was also one of the most consequential experiments in the history of food and farming.
What the evidence shows
- Haber-Bosch process: German chemist Fritz Haber, working with assistant Robert Le Rossignol, demonstrated in 1909 C.E. that atmospheric nitrogen could be converted into ammonia using high pressure, high temperature, and an iron-based catalyst.
- Ammonia synthesis: The chemical reaction — combining nitrogen (N₂) and hydrogen (H₂) over a catalyst — had long been understood in theory; what Haber’s lab proved was that it could be done reliably and continuously under controlled industrial-style conditions.
- Nitrogen fertilizer: The German chemical company BASF purchased the process immediately, assigning engineer Carl Bosch to scale it up; he succeeded in 1910 C.E., and the first industrial plant began production in 1913 C.E.
Why nitrogen was the limiting factor
Plants need nitrogen to grow. It is a fundamental building block of proteins, enzymes, and DNA. Nitrogen makes up roughly 78% of Earth’s atmosphere — and almost none of it is usable by crops in that form. Molecular nitrogen (N₂) is held together by one of the strongest chemical bonds in nature. Breaking it requires enormous energy.
Before 1909 C.E., farmers and nations depended on fixed nitrogen from a narrow set of natural sources: guano harvested from Pacific island colonies, sodium nitrate mined from Chilean deserts, and the slow work of soil bacteria over millennia. By the early 1900s, scientists and governments were warning that these reserves were running out. The world’s growing population was pressing hard against a genuine limit on food production.
The search for a synthetic solution had been underway for decades. What made Haber’s approach work — and what had defeated others — was the combination of high pressure (around 200 bar), temperatures near 500°C, and a carefully selected catalyst. Le Rossignol, Haber’s British assistant, played a critical but often-forgotten engineering role in designing the high-pressure apparatus that made the 1909 C.E. demonstration possible. His name rarely appears in popular accounts of the discovery.
From a laboratory drip to global agriculture
Carl Bosch’s industrial engineering achievement was, in its own way, as remarkable as Haber’s chemistry. Scaling a tabletop experiment to continuous, large-volume production required solving problems in metallurgy, thermodynamics, and chemical engineering that had no precedent. The first industrial-scale plant at BASF’s Oppau facility in Germany reached 20 tonnes per day by 1914 C.E.
The timing meant the process was immediately recruited into World War I. Germany, cut off from Chilean nitrate deposits by the Allied naval blockade, used synthetic ammonia from the Haber-Bosch process to manufacture explosives. Historians broadly agree that without it, Germany’s war effort would have collapsed within months. The same chemistry that could feed people was feeding the war machine.
After 1918 C.E., synthetic ammonia fertilizer spread across global agriculture. Today, the Haber-Bosch process feeds roughly half of all humanity. The nitrogen in the proteins in your body has, with measurable probability, passed through an industrial ammonia plant. It is one of the most direct ways that a single chemical reaction has reshaped human life at scale.
Lasting impact
The downstream effects are almost impossible to overstate. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer made possible the Green Revolution of the mid-20th century C.E., which dramatically increased crop yields across Asia, Latin America, and Africa at a moment when population growth threatened food security for billions. Without the Haber-Bosch process, agricultural scientists widely agree, the Green Revolution could not have occurred at anything like its actual scale.
Both Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch were awarded Nobel Prizes — Haber in 1918 C.E. and Bosch in 1931 C.E. — for overcoming the chemical and engineering challenges of large-scale, continuous-flow, high-pressure technology. The iron-based catalyst still used in most ammonia plants today was discovered in 1909 C.E. by BASF researcher Alwin Mittasch, another name largely absent from popular histories of the breakthrough.
The process also transformed the manufacture of explosives, industrial chemicals, and pharmaceuticals — industries that depend on reactive nitrogen compounds. Some estimates suggest that without synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, Earth could support fewer than half its current human population at existing dietary levels.
Blindspots and limits
The Haber-Bosch process is also one of the largest single sources of industrial greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. Ammonia production accounts for roughly 1–2% of global energy consumption and approximately 3% of global carbon emissions, almost entirely because hydrogen for the reaction is produced by burning natural gas. The same process that prevented mass starvation in the 20th century C.E. now contributes meaningfully to the climate crisis of the 21st.
Nitrogen runoff from synthetic fertilizers has damaged rivers, lakes, and coastal ecosystems around the world, creating oxygen-depleted dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, the Baltic Sea, and dozens of other water bodies. And the geopolitical use of the process in World War I — enabling a longer, more destructive conflict — remains a permanent part of its legacy. Fritz Haber himself went on to develop chemical weapons used in that war, a history inseparable from his Nobel-winning chemistry. Researchers are now working on green ammonia alternatives that could eventually decouple food production from fossil fuels entirely — but that transition is still in early stages.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — Haber process
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Ghana creates a major marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- The Good News for Humankind archive on the modern era
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