Reduced consumption of fertilizers, driven by supply disruptions, high fertilizer prices, and broader impacts of the war in Ukraine on global trade and energy markets, are threatening global agricultural production and worsening food insecurity.
Gro Intelligence’s Global Fertilizer Impact Monitor is the first tool to quantify the potential impact of fertilizer shortages on global crop production under different scenarios in a fully transparent way.
Built with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and in partnership with the International Fertilizer Association (IFA), an association which represents providers of plant nutrition solutions, and CRU Group (CRU), a leading independent authority on fertilizer, the Global Fertilizer Impact Monitor is designed to help quantify the potential outcomes of the worldwide fertilizer crisis. It is free to anyone to use and can be found here.
In developing the Monitor, Gro modeled a total of seven different fertilizer application scenarios, based on application rate forecasts and scientific inputs from IFA and CRU Group. These include three scenarios from IFA’s recently published Medium-Term Fertilizer Outlook; CRU Group’s application rate estimate; and three uniform global fertilizer reduction scenarios of 1%, 3%, and 5%.
Gro modeled the projected changes in yield caused by a given change in nitrogen fertilizer application rates for a given country and crop. From yield, Gro derives a production change. We then aggregate this production change across four major crops–wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans–after converting production to calories. See more on our methodology here.
Gro’s modeling indicates:
While the overall global impact of reduced nitrogen fertilizer applications is less severe than estimates by other sources had feared, the effects are not distributed equally. Production in some parts of the world will be hit harder as a result of fertilizer shortages than other regions.
These scenarios are based on forecasts exclusively for nitrogen fertilizer, the most widely used fertilizer type, and do not take into account other variables such as weather conditions, which can further impact production and yield. However, Gro’s in-season Yield Forecast Models account for these variables. Go to the About Outputs page within the Monitor to see the difference.
We welcome feedback and additional data to continue to improve the Fertilizer Impact Monitor and build on the work that we have done. Visit the Global Fertilizer Impact Monitor here.
Please reach out to support@gro-intelligence.com with any questions or to learn more about our platform.