Fertilizers
Fertilizers supply plants with nutrients that are essential for growth.
Fertilizers have played an essential role in feeding a growing global population. It's estimated that just under half of the people alive today are dependent on synthetic fertilizers.
They can bring environmental benefits too: fertilizers can increase crop yields. By increasing crop yields we can reduce the amount of land we use for agriculture.
But they also create environmental pollution. Many countries overapply fertilizers, leading to the runoff of nutrients into water systems and ecosystems.
A problem we need to tackle is using fertilizers efficiently: yielding its benefits to feed a growing population while reducing the environmental damage that they cause.
On this page you can find all our data, visualizations, and writing relating to fertilizers.
Explore data on Fertilizers
Research & Writing
How many people does synthetic fertilizer feed?
It's estimated that around half of the world population today are reliant on fertilizer for food production.
Can we reduce fertilizer use without sacrificing food production?
Some countries need more fertilizers to increase crop yields. But some could cut back without sacrificing food production.
More key articles on Fertilizers
All charts
Fertilizer consumption
Fertilizer production by nutrient type
Fertilizer use per capita
Fertilizer use vs. GDP per capita
Nitrogen inputs per hectare of cropland
Average nitrate concentration in freshwater
Average phosphorus concentration in freshwater
Cereal yield vs. fertilizer use
Eutrophying emissions per 100 grams of protein
Eutrophying emissions per 1000 kilocalories
Eutrophying emissions per kilogram of food product
Excess phosphorus from croplands
Excess phosphorus per hectare of cropland
Fertilizer application rates over the long-run
Fertilizer inputs per unit of agricultural land
Fertilizer use by nutrient
Fertilizer use per hectare of arable landLine chart
Fertilizer use per hectare of croplandStacked bar chart
Nitrogen fertilizer use per hectare of cropland
Phosphate fertilizer use per hectare of cropland
Potash fertilizer use per hectare of cropland
Total nitrogen inputs to crops
Which countries overapplied nitrogen without gains in crop yields?
World population supported by synthetic nitrogen fertilizers
World population with and without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers
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Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as:
Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser and Pablo Rosado (2022) - “Fertilizers” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/fertilizers' [Online Resource]BibTeX citation
@article{owid-fertilizers,
author = {Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser and Pablo Rosado},
title = {Fertilizers},
journal = {Our World in Data},
year = {2022},
note = {https://ourworldindata.org/fertilizers}
}
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