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Bread, Vitamins and Water – BASF Nourishes the World

According to UN estimates, the world’s population will grow to around nine billion people by 2050. They need food – in sufficient quantity and high quality. Humanity faces a similar situation around 1900. BASF makes an essential contribution in solving the problem.

The Carrot Substitute

Vitamin A is fundamentally important for healthy nutrition. The synthesis of this vitamin opens up new possibilities. Since 1963, BASF has been producing the vitamin – but initially only in lesser amounts. In 1970, a large-scale vitamin A and vitamin E production plant goes into operation in Ludwigshafen. Today, BASF is the leader in many areas of the vitamin market worldwide.

Food from the Air

Nitrogen is the growth engine of plants – and is only available in limited quantities in organic fertilizers. Given the strong population growth, farming needs an alternative supply of nitrogen as early as 1900. A team of BASF researchers headed by Carl Bosch (1874-1940), later chairman of the BASF Board of Executive Directors, finds a solution to this problem based on the work of the Karlsruhe Chemist Fritz Haber (1868-1934). In 1913, BASF commissions the first ammonia synthesis. By binding nitrogen richly available in the air, it provides the raw material for synthetic fertilizers.

BASF Makes It Tasty

One hundred years ago, BASF revolutionizes baking. In 1915, it launches the baking agent ABC-Trieb onto the market. Unlike the formerly used salts of hartshorn, BASF's leavening agent is sold as a ready-to-use powder and does not leave behind an unpleasant smell, because it consists of ammonium bicarbonate. ABC-Trieb is especially suitable for dry flat pastries such as biscuits, crisp bread, and waffles – and continues to be used in the baking industry today.

Around 1900 and today: with the world population growing rapidly, conventional farming practices reach their limits in providing food to all people. In the first place, there is not enough nitrogen fertilizer for agriculture. BASF joins the search for a synthetic nitrogen compound – and succeeds: in 1913, BASF starts producing synthetic ammonia as a basis for mineral fertilizers.

After 1945, BASF starts tackling weeds and pests and in 1949 it produces the herbicide U46, its first of what is today a broad range of crop protection agents. BASF’s product range is supplemented by consultation on the effective and safe use of crop protection agents and fertilizers at agricultural information centers all over the world.

BASF’s ingredients are not only used in cultivation, but also put into baking agents (1915), carbonic acid (1917) or vitamins (1970).

In addition to the production of food, the supply of drinking water is also a key issue. In sea water desalination plants and thus in the production of drinking water, plastics produced by BASF play a significant role.