SPRING LOOPS

A wet blob of late-season snow falls on my head from a 50-foot-tall pine tree branch as I talk to a friend on the phone. Spring must be springing!

Rivers and Roads

As the days get longer and warmer, I feel reconnected to the places we go through and the life that emerges through the beige and white of winter. Splashes of color from budding trees and flowers root joy in me. The past few weeks we traveled to the wet mountains of Lake Tahoe, the dry, desolate mountains of Nevada, and the sparkly city of Las Vegas (…talk about a place to which I do NOT want to move).

We spent some time last week in Las Vegas for the International Pizza Expo. The Expo was tremendous, but Las Vegas was whack. It might be fun if you are a single person looking to get married to a stranger or want to see people take clothing off for money. But to its core, Las Vegas embodies so many things I do not like. The foremost is the concept of having a city that prides itself on creating a desert mirage with lush greenery, big fountains, and pools in a place that has just about no water on its own; the only reason it persists is because of the reservoir the Hoover Dam creates and human intervention.

My second problem with the city is that it is so car-centric that it can take an hour to walk to a monorail station that is ¼ mile away. There are a few inconsistent sidewalks and tons of gigantic roads on the strip. The assumption is that you just snap your fingers, and for 20 bucks, you can get a driver to drive you to the other side of the road any time of day! Woo! 

On the plus side, we truly got our steps in (so much so that Jesse said his feet hurt worse in this city just from getting from our hotel to the convention center and back than any day-long hike we’ve done thus far). We ended up getting a multi-day pass for the monorail, which was super convenient coming from the Sahara casino. Every other stop was weirdly hidden or in some back alley where you had to walk through parking garages and bushy medians to get to. Reddit warned us it was inconvenient, but I told Reddit to shove it. We’d see how the monorail is for ourselves.

When we got off at the convention center stop of the monorail, it turned out that we were still about a half mile away from the east wing of the convention center, the location of the Pizza Expo. This half-mile was impossible to walk due to construction unless you wanted to walk ON five-lane roads. Luckily for us, there was the Tesla loop: a futuristic underground one-way tunnel for Teslas to drive through to get people from one side of the Las Vegas Convention Center to the other (maybe it had other purposes, but I wouldn’t be the right person to ask). The tunnels were lit up like Space Mountain in Disney World and it felt like you were going at light speed through a wormhole. Though this seemed like the perfect place to demo an autonomous transportation system (like the light rail), the Teslas had drivers because, according to one of our drivers, some people panic and feel claustrophobic when there isn’t a person in control. I think Las Vegas would be SO much cooler if it had entirely autonomous vehicles driving in underground tunnels… but oh well. The loop was just an advertising ploy for Tesla cars because we can't seem to knock cars and 5-lane roads.

Cities like this exist at scale because of human ingenuity. Without the Hoover Dam and the pipes that cart water, Las Vegas would never have grown to the size it is today. It is able to survive due to advancements in its ability to retain used water, clean it, and send it back to Lake Mead, where it waits to get used again. It’s a blessing and a curse because the water technology allowed a bunch of new people to come in. Now that so many people live there, there is pressure on the water management agencies to figure out how to get more and more water to everyone. And if there is water, people will keep coming.

A similar trend has occurred when it comes to fertilizer and our food supply…

Hot Topic

MIRACLE GROW

The topic of the week is Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) flows. Yum. Or at least that is what the plants say. N&P are the minerals of life, which is why you might find yourself sprinkling them on your gardens and flowerpots this month. Bigger, better, faster! We want more plants. 

Nitrogen is a crucial part of DNA, and phosphorus makes up the energy pathways in cells and membrane layers, among other things. They are often the limiting nutrients for growth, which is why we stuff exorbitant amounts of these into fertilizers to grow food. 

About half of the world's population lives because of the food we are able to make due to fertilizer. That is WILD. If we didn’t have N&P fertilizer the world population might have naturally been limited to about half of what is currently. We are so dependent on fertilizer that it isn’t funny. 

Though N and P are necessary for plant growth, the way we produce them is unsustainable. Additionally, chemical fertilizers are often applied to a farm in excess because farmers must shoot their shot at having the largest yield possible. They do not want their output to be limited by something they can control (the fertilizer) and instead want to be limited by something out of their control (sun exposure or interspecies competition, for example). This means the excess fertilizer runs off with water, gathering in rivers and streams. If the rivers do not have plants that can uptake all the excess nutrients, they end up in the ocean (often gulfs). Here algae LURV these fertilizers and explode in population, sucking up all that nitrogen and phosphorous until you have a bloom. 

What happens after the algae population explosion depends on the location and species. Some algae release toxins that are harmful to humans and animals. Other algae are harmless themselves, but the sheer mass of it blocks any sunlight from reaching other living creatures in the ocean. Algae sequester CO₂ and emit oxygen into the atmosphere, but when algae die, they are broken down by decomposing bacteria that release CO₂ and suck up dissolved oxygen from the water. In large quantities, this bacteria is what leaves behind dead zones—areas where the fish and other animals that rely on oxygen in the water suffocate and die off.

It is a nutrient concentration problem. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. We have too much N&P in our wastewater collecting human pee and poop, too much excess fertilizer running off of agricultural lands, and a surplus of nutrients sitting in the cesspools of animal agriculture. We CAN use the N&P from animal and human waste when properly treated in agriculture and need to do a better job sequestering the excess fertilizer that runs off farms before it gets into our waterways.

For us nonfarmers, composting and buying organic foods are two ways we can lessen our demand for chemical fertilizer.

Things You Didn’t Notice

MORE LOOPS

Take a deep breath. The air we breathe is mostly nitrogen. But it just passes right through us because nitrogen gas is so firmly bonded. This might seem like a waste, but it actually deepens our connection…with bacteria!

Because nitrogen-fixing bacteria are the only living things that have the ability to break down the strong triple bonds of nitrogen gas, plants that really want that nitrogen allow the bacteria to grow on their root systems and feed them sugar in return for their services. We get our nitrogen from the plants we eat. That makes us deeply connected with plants and those little bacteria. I find it amazing how there is simultaneously something out there in this world looking out for us, allowing us to live by doing the things that our bodies cannot do. And we all live in balance. 

Or at least that is how it was.

Ever since Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch came up with a way to circumvent this natural process and make ammonia, NH₃, from nitrogen gas, N₂ (at ~200 atm pressure, 500°C, and using natural gas as the hydrogen source), we can crank out biologically available nitrogen (in the form of ammonia) for fertilizer. The Haber-Bosch process is more economical in the near term but relies on nonrenewable resources that actively warm the planet, making food production more uncertain in the future.

Now, we find ourselves caught in a feedback loop. The more nitrogen gas we can turn into fertilizer, the more food we can make. The more food we can make, the more people we can feed. The more people we can feed, the more people have babies. From there, the more people to feed puts pressure on us to make more fertilizer.

Loops like this are not unusual. There is a self-perpetuating cycle to grow more and more corn. The better we get at growing corn, the more efficient farmers become. The more efficient farmers are, the more money they make. Then, there are so many farmers wanting to grow corn that it becomes a cheaper commodity to produce. As a more affordable commodity, more consumer products switch to having corn in them (i.e. corn syrup over sugar). And then there is even more demand to grow more corn. And on and on. Corn so happens to be a very nitrogen-hungry plant and does not support the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its root system.

We may not realize these cycles are happening because, when looking at it myopically, we are doing a good thing by making more food. Only when we zoom out can we see the fate we are destined for… (only humans and corn are left in a much warmer world—Ahhh!) Something has to happen to stop the loop and achieve balance.

Let’s slow things down. Take a deep breath again. Do you need to go to the bathroom? Are you standing on soil? (You are probably reading this in a chair, so come back to this reflection next time you are on dirt)

Soils are a salad of decaying material. When allowed to build up over time, soils can sustainably store carbon out of the atmosphere, and “there are more microbes in a teaspoon of soil than there are people on the earth.” The more nutrient-rich the soil, the more nutrient-rich whatever is grown in the soil can be. Studies have shown that food grown in rich organic soils has more vitamins and minerals, even if the macronutrients (carbs) are the same as in industrial agriculture food.

Quality takes time and costs more because more resources go into making a better thing. Healthy soils, rich in nutrients, have been given time to build up their microbial and carbon content without disturbance. Dust that serves as a vessel for holding applied fertilizer, pesticides, and water long enough for food to grow but then gets tilled to start fresh (dead) each season is not going to be able to transfer much else to plants. Have you ever eaten a genetically bred-for-size strawberry that is as big as a clementine but felt like the flavor was diluted? Same. Have you tried a garden-grown strawberry fed off of compost that is smaller but so juicy and delicious? Me too.

Plants don’t just magically make nutrients. They do (kinda magically) make sugars from photosynthesizing water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. But those are empty sugars without the nutrients transferred from the soil.

We can resolve the bioavailable nitrogen demand by peeing on our plants! Well…using processed wastewater, that is. Our wastewater has tons of bioavailable nitrogen. If we separate our poo and pee, since urine is largely sterile, it can be processed and used as fertilizer (supplying plants with nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium). Poop has more pathogens to get rid of first, but it too can be a rich addition to your soil.

As spring sprouts its little life forms, think of ourselves as a part of the system. We might be the growers, we might be the eaters, we might be the poopers, but we all play a part in the big cycles of life. Take a look at a teaspoon of soil and thank all of the microbes that are turning waste into resources. The more we can work in tune with these tiny living organisms, the better off we will be as well.

Refresh

• Household: It’s time to play with color! Bigleaf Hydrangeas are a type of flowering plant that changes color based on the pH of the soil. You might be able to put some eggshells or coffee grounds to good use this spring.

• Transportation: Nitrogen is everywhere. It is even spewing out of cars! But do not breathe the smoggy fumes…these are lung cancer seeds.

• Mentality: Read The Four Winds, a story about persevering through the Dust Bowl and a search for a better land. I cried. You probably will, too. (And simultaneously, be fascinated by the resilience of people and the critical role that healthy soils play in the US.)

• Health: After a ski day, we drink Pedialyte. At this point, it is tradition. Pedialyte has three key electrolytes: sodium, chloride, and potassium, which help rehydrate cells and deliver electrical signals throughout your body. They know us adults are trying to get lyte.

• Community: Poop has been around for a long time. Read about how it was traded as a valuable commodity throughout Asia back in the day.

Mouthwatering

BUTTER BEANS

An old Italian man recently introduced me to magic beans. These beans are so good. Next thing you know, you’ll be saying abracadabra, hoping you can conjure an infinite supply, just like me.

The wise man also emphasized “it’s all about the ingredients”. So do your best…

Ingredients:

• 16 ounces beans (Corona, Chickpeas, or any white bean)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

• 1/4 tsp baking soda

• 1-2 parmesan rinds

• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

• kosher salt + freshly ground pepper

• 2/3 cup parmesan, finely grated

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Game Time

PaddleSmash is actually a thing!? I think this is a manifestation of a dream I had.