Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium--the "NPK" on every fertilizer bag--are as responsible for the shape of human civilization as any invention, war, or ideology. Science journalist and filmmaker Kerstin Hoppenhaus's The Elements of Life is determined to make readers feel the importance of these elements in their bones, where, as she reminds them with precision, they have always been present.
The Elements of Life, translated admirably from the German by Sarah Pybus, begins on the Pacific island of Banaba, once a carefully cultivated community whose soil happened to sit atop some of the richest phosphate deposits on Earth. Within decades of colonial discovery, those deposits were excavated and shipped away to fertilize distant farmland, while the island's people were forcibly displaced and a living ecosystem was converted into an industrial ruin. Hoppenhaus's context renders these elements as far more than abstractions on a periodic table. They have victims and beneficiaries; their flows throughout the world parallel currents of power.
In the 20th century, the world's soils were depleting as the human population was beginning to exceed the food supply. The Haber-Bosch process made it possible for roughly half the nitrogen required for food to come not from the natural cycle but from factories. A dramatic expansion of crop yields through synthetic fertilizers saved hundreds of millions of people from starvation. It also flooded rivers and coastal waters with excess nitrogen and phosphorus, triggering algal blooms that consumed dissolved oxygen and left vast marine dead zones in their wake. Spain's Mar Menor lagoon, once a thriving coastal ecosystem, has spent years teetering on the edge of biological collapse from agricultural runoff.
Hoppenhaus's scope combines geochemistry, colonial history, marine ecology, agricultural science, and environmental law. She explains why the three elements are so irreplaceable: nitrogen is the backbone of every protein and strand of DNA; phosphorus sits at the core of ATP, the molecule that transfers energy within every living cell, and forms the structural architecture of the double helix itself; potassium regulates the electrical gradients across cell membranes that allow nerves to fire and muscles to contract. Remove any one of the three from the equation and life, as currently constituted, stops.
The Elements of Life's final section takes an optimistic turn, however, to the possibilities being explored within conventional agriculture, even if currently not very widespread. These include networks of fungi that move phosphorus between plant roots with extraordinary efficiency. Precision farming technologies deliver nutrients where they are needed instead of blanketing entire fields. And reassuringly, there are emerging legal frameworks that attempt to extend protection to ecosystems and not just regulate the industries that threaten them. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.
Shelf Talker: The Elements of Life takes on the three irreplaceable elements of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in a rigorous and readable scientific work about the building blocks of life itself.