Status and problems of chemical fertilizer application in crop plantations of China from 2014 to 2016

Objectives Crop farming consumes the largest fertilizers in china. Variation in chemical fertilizer input will cause the vibration of the balance supplies and efficiencies of agricultural industry. Clarifying the status of fertilizer application in crop farming is the premise of implementing new development concept and promoting structural reform of the agricultural supply side.

Methods In this paper, we used data collected from the state owned 339 retailers all over the country to calculate total amounts of fertilizers for planting crops in China from 2014 to 2016, analyzed changes in the main crops and different areas of chemical fertilizer application and fertilizer varieties over the past three years.

Results The total chemical fertilizer amounts were 5989.7×10⁴ tons, 6052.6×10⁴ tons and 6041.4×10⁴ tons in crop farming from 2014 to 2016. Among them, the average annual application amounts of chemical fertilizers for wheat, corn and rice were 728.3×10⁴ tons, 1214.2×10⁴ tons and 887.1×10⁴ tons respectively, accounting for 46.9% of the total fertilizer application. The average annual application amounts of chemical fertilizers in the North China area, the Central and South China area and the East China area was 1603.1×10⁴ tons, 1156.8×10⁴ tons and 978.7×10⁴ tons respectively, accounting for 62.0% of the total fertilizer application. Farmers preferred to purchase compound fertilizers and urea, the average annual purchase ratios were 76.8% and 65.1%, respectively.

Conclusions For the first time in China, the amount of planting fertilizer application has achieved zero growth in 2016, and fertilizer reduction has made important progress, however, imbalanced fertilization still existed in different regions. There were large surpluses in the North China and the Central and South China, and insufficient in the Southwest and Northwest China. In addition, different crop systems also had problems with unbalanced fertilization, as surpluses in corn and peanuts and insufficient in sugar cane and cotton. We suggest to implement soil test based fertilization, mechanical fertilization and organic fertilizer alternative fertilizers, promote the reduction and efficiency increase of chemical fertilizers and help build a beautiful China. .