The growing global population needs sufficient food. Its production causes overfertilization and increased nitrogen concentration in agriculture, which negatively affects the population, climate, and ecosystems. According to models of researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), however, today’s crop production might be maintained with a far smaller global fertilizer consumption, if nitrogen fertilizer would be used more homogeneously across global croplands. The results are reported in Communications Earth & Environment (DOI: 10.1038/s43247-023-00970-8).