Understanding how much inorganic fertilizer (referred to as fertilizer) is applied to different crops at national, regional and global levels is an essential component of fertilizer consumption analysis and demand projection. Good information on fertilizer use by crop (FUBC) is rarely available because it is difficult to collect and time-consuming to process and validate. To fill this gap, a first global FUBC report was published in 1992 for the 1990/1991 period, based on an expert survey conducted jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) and the International Fertilizer Association (IFA). Since then, similar expert surveys have been carried out and published every two to four years in the main fertilizer-consuming countries. Since 2008 IFA has led these efforts and, to our knowledge, remains the only globally available data set on FUBC. This dataset includes data (in CSV format) from a survey carried out by IFA to represent the 2017–18 period as well as a collation of all historic FUBC data.

Latest fertilizer use by crop survey data

During 2020-2022 IFA collected and standardized FUBC data for the 2017-18 period, primarily through a survey of various country correspondents. As of May 2022 this is the most recent survey for FUBC data. Country correspondents were selected based on their knowledge for estimating fertilizer use, average fertilizer application rates and areas of crops for N, P₂O₅ and K₂O for their respective country, and access to any locally available farm data.

Country correspondents were asked to complete the questionnaire with the greatest detail possible, or to provide data for the crop breakdown available in their country. The task of aligning the data with FAO crop area statistics was particularly challenging, and sometimes impossible. Even when correspondents were able to mostly follow the provided crop breakdown, crops that are minor in a country’s agriculture were often included in a group of crops or other crops. For example, for most EU countries, the data provided by Fertilizers Europe follow the crop breakdown that is specific to their own annual survey. In this crop breakdown, rice is grouped with rye, triticale and oats, soybean is grouped with sunflower and linseed, and cotton is not identified.

Historic fertilizer use by crop survey data

For historic FUBC data the following sources had data manually extracted from the original pdf documents into a standardized format:

·          FUBC report number 1: FAO et al. (1992)

·          FUBC report number 2: FAO et al. (1994)

·          FUBC report number 3: FAO et al. (1996)

·          FUBC report number 4: FAO et al. (1999)

·          FUBC report number 5: FAO et al. (2002)

·          FUBC report number 6: Heffer (2009)

·          FUBC report number 7: Heffer (2013)

·          FUBC report number 8: Heffer et al. (2017)

References

FAO, IFA, IFDC. 1992. Fertilizer use by crop 1. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 82 p.

FAO, IFA, IFDC. 1994. Fertilizer use by crop 2. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 64 p.

FAO, IFA, IFDC. 1996. Fertilizer use by crop 3. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 74 p.

FAO, IFA, IFDC. 1999. Fertilizer use by crop 4. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 78 p.

FAO, IFA, IFDC, IPI, PPI. 2002. Fertilizer use by crop 5. Rome, Italy.: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 67 p.

Heffer P. 2009. Assessment of Fertilizer Use by Crop at the Global Level 2006/07 – 2007/08. Paris, France: International Fertilizer Association, 11 p. https://www.ifastat.org/consumption/fertilizer-use-by-crop.

Heffer P. 2013. Assessment of Fertilizer Use by Crop at the Global Level. Paris, France, 10 p. https://www.ifastat.org/consumption/fertilizer-use-by-crop.

Heffer P, Gruere A, Roberts T. 2017. Assessment of fertiliser use by crop at the global level. Paris, France: International Fertilizer Association, Institute IPN, 19 p. https://www.ifastat.org/plant-nutrition.

The R project related to analysis of these data are available at: https://github.com/ludemannc/FUBC_1_to_9_2022.git 

On 18 August 2022 data were updated following reviewer feedback from a submission to the Scientific Data journal (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01592-z).

On 22 August 2022 changes were made to crop names in the 'Argentina' worksheet of the 'Country_tables.xlsx' file to rectify a mistake. The error was limited to the excel file and did not effect the csv files, nor the results shown in the associated article published in the Scientific Data journal.