Abstract
This article recovers and analyzes the sophisticated corporate response to environmentalist concerns already in the 1960s about the radical disruption of the nitrogen cycle that governs life on the planet caused by intensified application of chemical fertilizers. In 1971, ecologist Barry Commoner petitioned the Illinois Pollution Control Board to curtail the use of nitrogen fertilizer. This was the first-ever effort to use new state environmental protections to mandate limits on intensive agricultural practices. After holding ten public forums, the board ruled against restrictions. This decision marked a critical inflection point in the intertwined histories of US environmental activism, agribusiness, and the chemical technologization of food production at just the moment when nitrogen fertilizer was going global. This article aims to restore Commoner's long-forgotten campaign against the nitrogen fertilizer industry to its rightful place in postwar US environmental history. It additionally details how that industry had preemptively used a Malthusian logic of resource scarcity to make a nearly unassailable case for itself as a savior of humankind from the threat of global hunger. The article examines this early exemplar of “greenwashing” and reconstructs an untold story in the history of nitrogen capitalism.