Grappling with the success and trade-offs of global nutrient redistribution

Inputs of fertilizer nutrients in agriculture are estimated to have contributed to > 40% increase in crop production over the past century, resulting in widespread benefits to food security and prosperity. However, fertilizer nutrient redistribution has fundamentally altered global and local nutrient cycles alike, yielding trade-offs in socioeconomic and environmental outcomes. David Pimentel’s body of work on the management of energy, water, and soil resources in agriculture, along with his perspectives on agronomy and sustainable resource management, resonates with a critical understanding of the consequences of nutrient redistribution in agriculture. With Pimentel's legacy in mind, we consider trade-offs of global nutrient redistribution, improved recycling of nutrients in agricultural systems, as well as the challenges of, and opportunities for, transformations that seek to adjust nutrient cycles in modern agriculture. Pimentel’s legacy and contributions provide valuable insight into agriculture’s wicked nutrient challenge, as he framed the costs and opportunities of production systems across different scales of food production, developed foundational understanding of global resource challenges, promoted often marginalized or underemployed management strategies to enhance agriculture’s ecosystem services, confronted conventional wisdom and popular trends, and appropriately, attacked the use of “silver bullets” as singular solutions to ecological challenges and instead promoted systems-level analyses.