Global use of fertilizers has more than doubled in the last thirty years. More than 200kg per hectare is used in Europe, China, Japan, and South Korea; 50kg in Australia, 10-20kg in sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, and an average of 100kg in other countries. This is partly due to the collapse of areas devoted to growing vegetables. During the 2006-2007 season, 164 million tonnes of fertilizer were used, of which 98 million tonnes were for nitrogen, 27 million tonnes for potassium and 39 million tonnes for phosphates. China is the world’s largest mineral fertilizer consumer using 49 million tonnes, followed by India (22 million tonnes), the United States (21 million tonnes), Brazil (9 million tonnes), Indonesia (3.5 million tonnes) and France (3.4 million tonnes). According to the United Nations (UN), since 1960 the number of dead zones in seas and oceans has doubled each decade, particularly because of nutrients such as nitrogen...
06/01/2012
Japan plans futuristic farm in disaster zone
UNEP
Were you aware that bats are key pollinators in many parts of the world? Pollination is a vital ecosystem service without which...
Today more than 900 million people are in danger of starvation. The grain market is at the mercy of the harvests: poor results place millions of lives at risk, as in 2008 when there was widespread famine across many countries. By 2050 the population will have reached 9...
Since the 1980s, the engineer Pierre Rabhi has been developing agroecology in very poor rural areas in...
Arable land Degraded soils Pesticide use
