Fertilizer Applications Global Views

Synthetic ammonia provided half of the world s inorganic nitrogen only in 1931 by 1950 that share was close to 80%, and by 1962 it surpassed 90% (appendix 

During the late 1990s Haber-Bosch synthesis supplied more than 99% of fixed inorganic nitrogen the tiny remainder (about 0.7%) comes mostly from Chilean nitrates and by-product ammonia from coke ovens (appendix L).  

Norman Borlaug, one of the leaders in developing and diffusing these new culti-vars, summed up the importance of fertilizer nitrogen in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 by using a memorable kinetic analogy  

Consequently, the most revealing way to compare the intensity of fertilization is to use averages for individual crops, but few countries regularly publish such data. The best available global breakdown of nitrogen fertilizer use by individual crops comes from worldwide surveys organized by the IF A, FAO, and IFDC. Fertilizer application rates based on informed estimates, rather than on actual field surveys, are now available for more than ninety countries.  

Naturally, the often cited global consumption rates hide an enormous amount of spatial variation. By far the most obvious gap used to be an enormous disparity between average applications in affluent and low-income countries. Both the production and consumption of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers used to be concentrated 

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