Cherokee Nitrogen Plant, Alabama

Cherokee Nitrogen operates a 160-acre plant on the Tennessee River, in Cherokee Alabama, a few miles downstream from the former federal fertilizer research facility at Muscle Shoals. It is one of three nitrogen-based chemical plants owned by LSB Industries, including one within Exxon’s plant in Baytown, Texas, the largest oil refinery in the USA. Nitrogen is prevalent in the earth’s atmosphere, but in order to be absorbed into plants, it has to be fixed in the soil. This limitation on agricultural production was overcome by technology in the early 1900s with the Haber process, which uses gas to make ammonia, a highly reactive form of nitrogen. The Haber process created the synthetic fertilizer industry, and a global boom in agricultural productivity, dependent on fossil fuels extracted from the earth. In the USA, dozens of companies produce nitrogen-rich fertilizer components at refineries that are mostly fed by the nation’s network of natural gas pipelines.