The breakthrough that helped feed the world

“This story shows how intellectual property and science, when aligned with purpose, can help solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. Over 100 years later, we’re still building on the ingenuity of that first patent to help secure a food future for all.” 

Victor Urban, Senior Vice President, Intellectual Property, Yara

A looming crisis 

In 1898, William Crookes, the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, issued a dire warning: “England and all civilized nations stand in deadly peril of not having enough to eat,” he said. Crookes believed that soil was being overtaxed and that the world was on the brink of a food crisis. 

But he also saw a potential solution: nitrogen, one of the most abundant elements in the atmosphere. The challenge, as he saw it, was to unlock this vast natural resource. 

"The fixation of atmospheric nitrogen,” he said, “is one of the great discoveries awaiting the ingenuity of chemists." 

By the early 1900s, scientists were experimenting with electrical discharges to capture nitrogen from the air. While promising in laboratories, these methods had not yet been scaled for industrial use. The main hurdle was generating strong enough electric discharges and managing the high temperatures and hazardous gases, such as nitrogen oxides, that resulted. 

That would soon change, thanks to a fateful dinner in Christiania (modern-day Oslo), Norway.

The start of a scientific legacy 

In February 1903, Norwegian engineer Sam Eyde met physicist Kristian Birkeland during a dinner hosted by Norwegian cabinet minister Gunnar Knudsen. 

Eyde had been exploring how to harness Norway’s abundant hydropower resources to produce fertilizers. Birkeland, meanwhile, had developed a technique to generate high-voltage electric arcs, initially for military purposes, that could potentially be applied to nitrogen fixation. 

A week after their initial meeting, Birkeland filed a patent for the generation of electric arcs with a large surface area, an essential step for industrial nitrogen fixation. This marked the beginning of a partnership that would ultimately lead to the founding of Norsk Hydro, the precursor to Yara International.

From idea to industry 

With Eyde securing the rights to Norway's hydropower resources and Birkeland providing the technical expertise, they set out to establish the first industrial-scale fertilizer plant. In 1904, they chose Notodden, a small town in southern Norway, as the site for their plant, ideally suited due to its abundant and inexpensive hydropower. 

By 1905, Notodden Salpeterfabriker AS began producing nitric acid and later fertilizers, marking a turning point in both Norway’s industrialization and the global fertilizer industry. These products helped address the very food production issues Crookes had warned of.

Securing financial backing

Despite the technological progress, financial support was essential to move forward. At the time, Norway lacked major financial institutions, so Eyde turned to Sweden.  

In 1904, Sweden’s Wallenberg family, via Enskilda Banken, invested over two million Norwegian crowns in Eyde’s venture. This led to the creation of Det Norske Aktieselskab for Elektrokemisk Industri (Elkem), which oversaw development of both hydropower infrastructure and electric arc technology. 

With solid financial and technical backing, production at Notodden quickly scaled up. By 1905, the plant employed over 100 people and was producing nitrogen fertilizers at an unprecedented rate.

The legacy continues

The fertilizers produced at Notodden allowed farmers to grow more food on the same land, delivering on the promise envisioned by Crookes and realized by Birkeland and Eyde. What began as a scientific challenge became a pillar of modern agriculture. 

Today, that legacy lives on through Yara. Spun off from Norsk Hydro in 2004, Yara has grown into a global leader in crop nutrition, present in over 60 countries. Each year, we produce enough fertilizers to help feed more than 50 million people, continuing to turn innovation into impact, just as our founders did more than a century ago.