The food system dominates anthropogenic disruption or the nitrogen cycle by generating excess fixed nitrogen. Excess fixed nitrogen, in various guises, augments the greenhouse effect, diminishes stratospheric ozone, pro- motes smog, contaminates drinking water, acidifies rain, eutrophies bays and estuaries, and stresses ecosystems. Yet, to date, regulatory efforts to limit these disruptions largely ignore the food system. There are many parallels between food and energy. Food is to nitrogen as energy is to carbon. Nitrogen fertilizer is analogous to fossil fuel. Organic agri- culture and agricultural biotechnology play roles analogous to renewable energy and nuclear power in political discourse. Nutrition research resembles energy end-use analysis. Meat is the clectricity of food. As the agriculture and food system evolves to contain its impacts on the nitrogen cycle, several lessons can be extracted from energy and carbon: (i) set the goal of ecosystem stabilization; (ii) search the entire produc- tion and consumption system (grain, livestock, food distribu- tion, and diet) for opportunities to improve efficiency, (iii) implement cap-and-trade systems for fixed nitrogen, (iv) expand research at the intersection of agriculture and ecology, and (v) focus on the food choices of the prosperous. There are important nitrogen-carbon links. The global increase in fixed nitrogen may be fertilizing the Earth, transferring significant amounts of carben from the atmosphere to the biosphere, and mitigating global warming. A modern biofuels industry some- day may produce biofuels from
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