The Necessity of Balancing Food Production and Planetary Health

Ni Putu Wulan Purnama Sari

Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University, Indonesia

23-07-2026

© Wix

Nitrogen and phosphorus are indispensable to food production. Without them, crops cannot grow at the scale needed to feed billions of people. Yet when too much of these nutrients escapes from farms, wastewater systems, aquaculture, and other sources, the same substances that sustain life can destabilize ecosystems.

The food system contributes approximately three-quarters of global nitrogen and phosphorus delivery to rivers and other surface waters (de Vries et al., 2026). Excess nutrients stimulate algal blooms, deplete oxygen, damage fisheries, contaminate drinking water, and erode terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. Current phosphorus delivery to surface water, estimated at 9.7 teragrams per year, is already substantially above a proposed critical level of 6.1 teragrams (Beusen et al., 2022). Agricultural nitrogen surpluses also considerably exceed estimates of environmentally safe levels.

However, nutrient pollution is not simply a problem that rises and falls proportionally with annual fertilizer use. Ecological systems often remember their history.

Consider phosphorus. Decades of excessive application can accumulate large phosphorus reserves in soils. Even after farmers reduce fertilizer use, erosion and runoff may continue transporting this “legacy phosphorus” into lakes and rivers. Similarly, nitrogen stored in soils and groundwater can keep moving through ecosystems long after the original inputs decline. The environmental impacts therefore remain even when the pressure has weakened.

This pattern resembles hysteresis: the conditions required to push a system into a degraded state may differ from those required to bring it back (Vuong, 2026). Before severe pollution occurs, keeping nutrient losses below a critical threshold may preserve clean water. Once eutrophication becomes established, however, merely returning fertilizer inputs to their previous level may be insufficient. Internal ecological reinforcement—including nutrient recycling from sediments, biodiversity loss, altered food webs, and accumulated soil nutrients—can stabilize the polluted condition. A system may need much stronger intervention before it shifts back toward recovery.

This insight changes how nutrient boundaries should be governed. Waiting until global averages cross a planetary limit is risky because nutrient impacts are highly regional (Rockström et al., 2009). Rainfall, soil characteristics, erosion, irrigation, crop systems, water flow, and ecosystem sensitivity all influence when a local threshold will be crossed. Once crossed, restoration may become slower, costlier, and less certain.

Prevention should therefore focus on controlling actual nutrient losses rather than fertilizer inputs alone. Priorities include precision fertilizer application, improved manure recycling, wastewater treatment, erosion control, soil conservation, buffer zones, dietary shifts, and reductions in food waste. Phosphorus-deficient regions may still require additional inputs, while regions with accumulated reserves should draw down legacy phosphorus.

Safe and just nutrient boundaries are not necessarily incompatible. Feeding humanity within ecological limits remains possible, but only if nutrient-use efficiency improves and pollution is addressed before reinforcing ecological feedbacks lock degraded systems into place (de Vries et al., 2026).

References

Beusen, A. H. W., et al. (2022). Exploring river nitrogen and phosphorus loading and export to global coastal waters in the Shared Socio-economic pathways. Global Environmental Change, 72, 102426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102426

de Vries, W., et al. (2026). Revisiting safe and just planetary boundaries for nitrogen and phosphorus. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 83, 101685. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2026.101685

Rockström, J., et al. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461, 472-475. https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a

Vuong, Q. H. (2026). Once the Door Swings Shut. http://books.google.com/books/about?id=Qur0EQAAQBAJ