Mary Allen
Fertilizer is a means of making plants grow better. There are fertilizers for plants in the apartment or on the balcony. But mostly one thinks of fertilizers for agriculture.
In the past, you either didn’t fertilize at all or only used manure. If you breed animals, you can spread their manure on the fields. Even the Romans improved the harvest with lime. Artificial fertilizer was invented in the 19th century. It has been found that certain substances are good for plants to grow.
Thanks to the fertilizer, the harvest turns out much better than without. If the earth can feed almost everyone today, this is mainly due to fertilizers. But there are also problems. Fertilizers can be bad for the little critters that live in the soil and keep it fertile. In addition, a lot of fertilizer gets into the soil and thus into the groundwater, rivers, and lakes. As a result, algae and plants grow much more there than is actually good. The lake then lacks the oxygen that the fish need to live.