Fertilizer
History

Management of soil fertility has preoccupied farmers since the beginning of agriculture. Middle Eastern, Chinese, Mesoamerican, and Cultures of the Central Andes were all early adopters of agriculture. This is thought to have led to their cultures growing faster in population which allowed an exportation of culture to neighboring hunter gatherer groups. Fertilizer use along with agriculture allowed some of these early societies a critical advantage over their neighbors, leading them to become dominant cultures in their respective regions (P Bellwood - 2023). Egyptians, Romans, Babylonians, and early Germans are all recorded as using minerals or manure to enhance the productivity of their farms. The scientific research of plant nutrition started well before the work of German chemist Justus von Liebig although his name is most mentioned as the "father of the fertilizer industry". Nicolas Théodore de Saussure and scientific colleagues at the time were quick to disprove the simplifications of von Liebig. Prominent scientists on whom von Liebig drew were Carl Ludwig Sprenger and Hermann Hellriegel. In this field, a 'knowledge erosion' took place, partly driven by an intermingling of economics and research. John Bennet Lawes, an English entrepreneur, began to experiment on the effects of various manures on plants growing in pots in 1837, and a year or two later the experiments were extended to crops in the field. One immediate consequence was that in 1842 he patented a manure formed by treating phosphates with sulfuric acid, and thus was the first to create the artificial manure industry. In the succeeding year he enlisted the services of Joseph Henry Gilbert; together they performed crop experiments at the Institute of Arable Crops Research.

The Birkeland–Eyde process was one of the competing industrial processes in the beginning of nitrogen-based fertilizer production. This process was used to fix atmospheric nitrogen (N) into nitric acid (HNO), one of several chemical processes generally referred to as nitrogen fixation. The resultant nitric acid was then used as a source of nitrate (NO). A factory based on the process was built in Rjukan and Notodden in Norway, combined with the building of large hydroelectric power facilities.

The 1910s and 1920s witnessed the rise of the Haber process and the Ostwald process. The Haber process produces ammonia (NH) from methane (CH) (natural gas) gas and molecular nitrogen (N) from the air. The ammonia from the Haber process is then partially converted into nitric acid (HNO) in the Ostwald process. It is estimated that a third of annual global food production uses ammonia from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this supports nearly half the world's population. After World War II, nitrogen production plants that had ramped up for wartime bomb manufacturing were pivoted towards agriculture uses. The use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers has increased steadily over the last 50 years, rising almost 20-fold to the current rate of 100 million tonnes of nitrogen per year.

The development of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has significantly supported global population growth. It has been estimated that almost half the people on the Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use. The use of phosphate fertilizers has also increased from 9 million tonnes per year in 1960 to 40 million tonnes per year in 2000.

Agricultural use of inorganic fertilizers in 2021 was 195 million tonnes of nutrients, of which 56% was nitrogen. Asia represented 53% of world total agricultural use of inorganic fertilizers in 2021, followed by the Americas (29%), Europe (12%), Africa (4%) and Oceania (2%). This ranking of the regions is the same for all nutrients. The main users of inorganic fertilizers are, in descending order, China, India, Brazil and the United States of America (see Table 15), with China the largest user of each nutrient.

A maize crop yielding 6–9 tonnes of grain per hectare (2.5 acres) requires 31–50 kilograms (68–110 lb) of phosphate fertilizer to be applied; soybean crops require about half, 20–25 kg per hectare. Yara International is the world's largest producer of nitrogen-based fertilizers.
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