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China Fertilizer
Intensive use of the arable soil made the use of fertilizer
imperative to replace nutrients and to help improve yields. Organic
fertilizers have long supplied the bulk of soil nutrients and have
helped to maintain the structure of the soil. Over the centuries,
use of organic fertilizers also increased with the growth in
population and with the increased size of livestock herds. Peasants
have traditionally used a large proportion of their labor in
collecting organic materials for fertilizers. Use has been
especially heavy in south China, where more intensive cropping has
required more fertilizer and where the sources of fertilizer have
been more abundant. Chemical fertilizers, however, have been used
more widely since the 1960s. Use of chemical fertilizers in 1985
was more than 150 kilograms per hectare, measured in nutrient
weight. The country's considerable future requirements will have to
be met by chemical fertilizer because of the natural limits on
rapid increases in production of organic fertilizers.
Production and imports of chemical fertilizers increased
rapidly under the "agriculture first" programs of the early 1960s.
The domestic industry was expanded, partly with the help of
imported fertilizer factories, and production reached 1.7 million
tons by 1965. Imports in 1965 were more than 600,000 tons. In the
mid-1960s the government also began to emphasize the production of
nitrogen fertilizer in small plants, usually operated by counties,
that yielded about 10,000 tons per year. Their products were used
locally, which helped conserve transportation resources. In 1972
the government contracted to import thirteen large-scale urea
plants, each capable of producing more than 1 million tons of
standard nitrogen fertilizer a year. By 1980 these were in
operation, and total chemical fertilizer production in 1985 was
13.4 million tons, of which 12.3 million tons were nitrogen
fertilizer. Imports added another 7.6 million tons.
In the 1980s chemical fertilizer use per hectare was less than
the Japanese and Korean averages but more than the Indonesian and
Indian averages. Future production and imports were likely to
emphasize phosphate and potassium content in order to balance the
nutrients obtained from organic fertilizers and from existing
factories. Institutional reforms in the early 1980s encouraged
households to cut costs and maximize earnings, which probably led
to more efficient use of chemical fertilizer as farmers applied
fertilizer to those crops giving the highest rates of return.
Data as of July 1987
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