Fertilizer Market
Balancing The Fertilizer Market: Cost v.s. Efficiency
Cost v.s. Efficiency
The world demand for Fertilizers is growing (pun fully intended). Developing markets like China, India & Indonesia are major providers of ready to use fertilizers across the world as well, as covering growing local demand.
With economic advance in other areas such as Africa, fertilizer plants are being built there too.
Slow Release Fertilizers Industry is leading the way..
One of the drivers of the fertilizer industry is the resources required for the creation of the end product. Metals are used as catalysts to create fertilizers. The growing price for metals is causing manufacturers to look at different formulations. Relying on baser metals with lower costs where Iron is now a catalyst for a lot of fertilizer creation over finer metals like vanadium or palladium.
New methods of delivery like Slow Release Fertilizers are also changing the way that products are created. These methods add cost to the development, and therefore final price to farmers. This automatically slows industry uptake. Over time, slow release fertiliser will be seen to be more efficient overall. This is one advantage of using statistics & accounting over the traditional method.
Wetting Agents & Water Retention Fertilizers are a reasonably new area in the industrialized market, but have been in use in Organic Fertilizer methods for as long as we have farmed. Organic methods are wonderful in many ways but sadly, not so much in the areas of reliability, practicality & cost in large-scale farming. With care though, we are learning better how to mimic the processes of nature. These more complex products help maintain the longer-term viability of our growing environments.
Slow Release Fertilizers
Sadly, with immediate cost to the farmer still being seen as the main driver of product choice. Slow release fertilizers, wetting agents & water retention fertilizers are still a relatively small part of the overall fertilizer industry. Organic fertilizers have seen a sharper growth, but commonly they are limited in scope, as in to really do it perfectly, you have to do it in-house. This adds extra processes into each farm. Also it only works so long as your land has all the minerals you need. Slow release fertilizers & soil wetting agents still appear to be the best solutions for the larger farms we require to maintain food production for our large urban populations that require reliable, affordable foods.
Fertilizers help replenish what is taken
There is however a worry with importing fertilizers from another place. If another country is making a lot of fertilizers, which are based on the same few raw ingredients, they need to be sure to spread where they get these resources. Otherwise it is possible that a situation like that experienced by Nauru can easily occur. They strip mined their phosphate island so thoroughly that 80% of it is uninhabitable, with limited capability for fresh water and damaged local seafood. Not to mention of course, economic collapse once the resource ran out.
Slow release fertilizers & soil wetting agents built from local resources help replenish what is taken. It may not be perfect, but at least the components don’t completely leave the local system.
About UltraNaturals
We are an Australian owned company – Fertilisers Manufacturer that has been developing leading edge surfactant technology to counter weather extremes and combat hydrophobic soil conditions since the early 1980’s.