Jad Abumrad

And when you stick a seed, like a wheat seed, in the ground... One of the reasons it grows is because it's sucking up all the nitrogen in the soil.

To make its cell walls.

Without nitrogen, you don't have life.

Now, of course, you could find some nitrogen out in the world.

Natural deposits would be like seaweed or... Manure was one.

You know, you could find it in cow manure or... Wano.

Which was basically... Bat poop and seagull poop.

Which made that poop valuable.

And actually two nations in South America went to war.

Literally over bat s***.

You could say people were bat s*** crazy.

By the way, that's reporter Latif Nasser.

You know, this was like oil is today.

This is...

Everybody was desperate for sources, new sources of nitrogen, and to make the problem even more annoying?

The most common source of nitrogen is in the air around us.

It makes up four out of every five or so molecules that we breathe, so it's very... Which is a lot.

Yes, 80% of the air is nitrogen atoms.

So all the nitrogen you'd ever need was right there.

You can't, like, throw that air onto a plant.