Organic fertilizer resources and utilization in China

The literatures published mainly in recent 30 years were reviewed to estimate the basic organic fertilizer resources in China, and inquire into the reasons for the huge yearly discrepancies in the amount of organic fertilizer resources. From the statistics, about 5.7 billion tons (partly in fresh and partly in air dry) of organic resources stock will be produced annually nationwide at present, of which about 3.8 billion tons from animal manure (in fresh), 0.8 billion tons from human excreta (in fresh), one billion tons coming from crop straw (in air dry), 0.1 billion tons from green manure (in fresh) and 0.02 billion tons from cake manure (in air dry), which could provide about 73 million tons of total nutrients (N+P₂O₅+K₂O) with 30 million tons of N, 13 million tons of P₂O₅ and 30 million tons of K₂O respectively. However, the huge organic resources were not fully used, the causes could be blamed on many factors including society, economy, policies, techniques and extension of technologies. The nutrient loss during collection, storage and processing of organic resources was thought one of key reasons for the low utilization of the resources and therefore the environmental pollution. The technique strategies should be concentrated on developing recycling agriculture, i.e combining the crop production with intensive breeding to create a whole benefit chain from the collection, procession to application of organic fertilizer resources. Government subsidies should be allocated to the construction of standardized facilities required for the above strategies.