Feeding the crops to feed the millions
Poku Adaa
Fertilizers are by far the most important inputs in the efforts by developing countries to raise agricultural productivity to meet the food needs of their populations. POKU ADAA reviews the use and consumption of fertilizers in Africa.One of the basic and essential needs of developing countries in Africa is how to raise agricultural productivity to provide enough food to feed their increasing populations and also to provide raw materials for industrial processing. To meet these needs, it is not only necessary to expand the size of farms but also to ensure that higher yields of crops can be attained per acre of land cultivated.
Scientific evidence has established that a plant requires at least sixteen chemical elements to ensure normal nutrition, growth and higher yield. Of these elements, there are considered highly essential, Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. science. However, these are hardly ever adequate and when taken from the soil, are not renewable so rapidly by nature. Hence the need for artificial supply of these nutrients in the form of fertilizers which may be products manufactured for the purpose or they may be natural products such as compost, humus or manure.
Fertilization has assumed a central role in modern farming practices since the world has reached a stage where it is no longer possible to produce enough without fertilization. There are many parts of the world today where hunger may have been averted due to the benefits of fertilization. In recognising the role of fertilization in agriculture, André Voisin made an apt comment in his book 'Fertilizer Application' that:
"The use of fertilisers is one of the greatest discoveries of modern times and perhaps the greatest. It plays a decisive part in the destiny of our civilisation. It has considerably increased the production and lowered the cost price of our food. In this way they have made enormous contributions towards improving living standards and have thus had a profound effect on the life of the individual'.
Chemical products manufactured for the purpose of feeding crops has become a major occupation of the world's chemical industry and a central pivot in international trade in agriculture. The production, marketing, storage and distribution of fertilizers have become big business, often creating huge problems for the ultimate users. Fertilizers may be labelled as Nitrogen (N), Phosphate (P) or Potash (K) or a mixture of these depending on which of the three essential plant nutrients it is made of. Thus in international trade in fertilizers, one often comes across the term NPK fertilizers, the letters in parenthesis being the symbolic abbreviations designated by chemical science.
World consumption of fertilizers has been increasing steadily over the past decade, especially from developing countries where agriculture remains a mainstay of economic development. During this period, there has been rapid technological developments in the fertilizer industry which has allowed some developing countries to produce part of their requirements themselves, although the rate of transfer of the technology has been very slow, perhaps for reasons of economic or political nature. According to FAO estimates, in 1969/70, the developing countries produced 7 million tonnes of fertilizers and consumed 12.3 million tonnes, while it was estimated that 33 million tonnes would be required for 1980/81 and about 40 million tonnes by 1986.
Fertilizers which contain the chemical element, nitrogen, account for about fifty percent of all consumption of fertilizers in developing countries. In international trade, these fertilizers appear in many forms, the principal ones being: Urea, Diammonium Phosphate (DAP), Ammonium Sulphate (AS), Liquid or Gas Ammonia, etc., plants take up this essential element nitrogen in different forms dictated by the type of soil, method of cultivation, the type of crop and season, hot or cool, dry or wet and so on. Urea contains the highest component of nitrogen about 45% and can be easily stored and transported.
Besides, it is the cheapest of all nitrogen-based fertilizers. AS is particularly useful in areas where too much rainfall or over-irrigated land has turned the soil more caustic but it is not a popular brand because it contains comparatively low nitrogen content of about 20%. DAP is a high-grade fer tilizer considered useful for areas with low water supplies or arid regions such as is found in many parts of Africa.
Most developing countries import large quantities of fertilizers and in this sphere there are a number of problems that need to be highlighted. The market is polarised often favourable towards the producers in that smaller countries have little or no choice in the quality of fertilizers that come their way, the freight charges are very high, imports are not time-tabled correctly to coincide with seasonal demands and there is always the risk of shortages or unsold stocks to deal with. As a result, there are ill-defined and operated distribution channels.
But the greatest problem of all is the low level of technical knowledge of the use of fertilizers in the field. Usually the job of teaching farmers the type of combination of nutrients required for a particular type of soil in a particular season falls into the ambit of a Ministry of agriculture official or extension officer maybe, where bureaucracy often stiffles the useful dissemination of technical information in the practical use of fertilizers. In the international dealing in fertilizers, there is a practice of 'compounding', that is the way manufacturers and dealers produce mixtures and blends of fertilizers to beat competition in the market. This results in a variegated assortment of brands and special cocktails such that a farmer or technician with inadequate expertise is the ultimate loser.
Thus apart form the sheer cost of financing regular imports of fertilizers to sustain agricultural productivity, many developing countries have often lacked the back-up technical services that can ensure efficient distribution and application of fertilizers. There is also the logistics of fertilizer procure ment which involve central government planning, identification of type of fertilizer suitable, transportation or shipping, handling and storage. All these handicaps tend to justify the need to have the fertilizer manufactured locally. Fortunately, many African countries, for that matter, have or are likely to have natural gas deposits which can favour the local manufacturing of nitrogen fertilizers.
In the continent of Africa, the consumption of nitrogen fertilizers is quite staggering. In 1981, about 1,917,000 tonnes were consumed on the continent, of which Egypt alone took 650,000 tonnes followed by South Africa with 530,000 tonnes and Nigeria coming third with 130,000 tonnes. Nigeria consumption in 1971 was about 10,000 tonnes thus the increase after 10 years is huge. The general Increase in demand across the continent has been the driving force in the current efforts by many countries to set up and operate manufacturing plants, and to date, several plants are operating while others are in the planning stage.
The continent's capacity to produce urea was 841,000 tonnes per annum in 1981/82, expected to reach about 1,600.000 tonnes per annum by 1985 and up to 2,000,000 tonnes per annum by the end of 1988. The continent's Lapacity in total complex fertilizer production is expected to reach 5.500.000 tonnes per annum by the end of the decade.
Inside West Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Gabon and Togo are currently involved in nitrogen fertilizer programmes. In Nigeria, Port Harcourt has been chosen as the site of the ferilizer complex which is to be constructed by a consortium of foreign companies and when it starts to operate in 1984, it is scheduled to produce 272,000 tonnes per annum as ammonia, 228,000 tonnes per annum as urea, about 340,000 tonnes per annum as ammonium nitrate.
It is hoped that the complex will be Tanzania. able to satisfy domestic demand and curtail imports which cost the govern- ment there something in the region of 10 million naira in 1982. In Imo state also, a relatively smaller fertilizer plant is under construction and expected to produce over 30,000 tonnes per annum of DAP and operation may begin in 1985. The growth in Nigerian demand has been due to large scale mechanised farming ventures being developed by the World Bank in the northern states of the country.
In Senegal, a complex fertilizer plant is being set up at M'bao and scheduled to come on stream in 1984 with a cap- acity to produce about 17,000 tonnes per annum of DAP, however the country might continue to import urea for sometime until her gas refinery becomes functional. In Gabon, a fertilizer project capable of producing about 120,000 tonnes per annum of fertilizer products are still in the planning stage while in Lome, a complex plant with an expected capacity of about 300,000 tonnes per annum is expected to become operational in five years' time.
Elsewhere in Africa, countries which already have fertilizer producing plants include Libya, Zambia, Algeria, and Egypt. Countries which plan to commence production in a year or two include Malagasy, Somalia, Sudan and Tanzania.
It is fair to say then that by the end of the current decade, nitrogen fertil izer production shall have become established in the continent, making allowances of course for financial and operational setbacks which are inevita ble at times. There is the likelihood that most of the countries might look for export markets on the continent which is a way of stimulating intra African trade in this field. Boosting agricultural productivity on the continent will result from the active encouragement of fertilization practices among small-scale and subsistence farmers and consolidation of domestic markets.
It is a pity though to think that the advent of chemical fertilizers has displaced traditional humus and compost to gardening and horticulture.
