No, they also need C, H, and O and a bunch of trace elements.
In fact, CHON makes up most of a plant, and it comes from the atmosphere, mostly.
Always has and always will.
Please provide a source for "Most of the nutrients in heavily farmed soil are gone.
The reason that we don't use gallanium in fertilizer is that plants mostly use CHON and trace elements in very tiny quantities. And gallanium isn't one of them, much. If it was, we'd use it.
Plants used NPK from the beginning in larger quantities. We figured that out. We add that to steward the land we have been given dominion over.
/johnny
Plants take up what’s in the soil. Whether they need them or not.
It’s not that the Plants need the nutrients. Humans need the nutrients.
It’s not a farming issue as much as a public health issue. We used to get trace minerals from plants and from the animals that ate those plants. Those trace minerals have been taken up by the plants from the soil and eaten by us a long time ago.
We need those trace elements. Scientifically, we might not even know why. But we do need them.