Swords Into Ploughshares

I got to thinking the other day about a weird irony: the birth of the modern industrial fertilizer industry parallels the famous line from the Book of Isaiah about beating swords into ploughshares, symbolizing a transition to a time of peace and harmony.

After World War II, there was a surplus of nitrogen that had been used for making bombs, and industrious entrepreneurs repurposed the material into a product that could improve farm yields. Like the image of beating swords into ploughshares, they switched a military product to an agricultural use.

But beating swords into ploughshares was supposed to be a beautiful thing, and the birth of industrial agriculture which came about because of the widespread use of chemical fertilizer has led to inferior food, widespread damage to wildlife habitat and the centralization of the global food system.

I guess we'd be better off if we'd just never created the weapons in the first place.