About fertilizer
Yara produces and sells fertilizers to distributors and farmers around the entire world. The ambition, however, is not to just to sell fertilizers but to supply plant nutrition. That is why agronomists assist the sales organisation to identify and supply the plant nutrition solutions that help growers to grow their produce according to needs and demands of the food market.
Plants are the only species that are able to convert CO2 from the air and water into carbohydrates. The carbohydrates are the source of energy for most other species that obtain their energy from carbohydrates.
Hunger is still one of the major threats for many people worldwide, even though productivity at farm level has increased substantially during the last 100 years. In Europe for example it took one farmer to feed 2.5 people in 1900, currently the ratio He will feed well over 100.
Photosynthesis is a process that is unique to plants. Photosynthesis allows a plant to convert the energy from the sun into sugars. Sugars are the building blocks for any growth of biomass.
The predominant route for nutrients to enter plant tissue is via uptake through the roots. However, there are many situations where foliar fertilizer application to leaves, fruit or shoots can be a very effective complementary delivery system.
Plants need water and nutrients so why not to combine the application of both. Such a combination is called fertigation; it applies nutrients together with the irrigation water.
There are three main forms of nitrogen in mineral fertilizers: urea, ammonium or nitrate nitrogen. Irrespective of the type of nitrogen fertilizer applied, plants absorb by far most of their nitrogen as nitrate.
The amount of plant nutrients to be applied to the soil in the form of fertilizers has to be determined each year to ensure that it matches the nutrient requirements of the crop. Manures are by-products in agriculture and have to be used if available. To obtain maximum profit a farmer has to apply the optimum fertilizer rate, which usually changes from field to field and from year to year.
To achieve its growth cycle, a crop needs a full range of mineral elements. Six nutrients are required in relatively high amounts. Their concentrations in the plant tissue represent up to a few percent of the fresh plant weight.
Plants use nutrients in mineral form for their growth, regardless of whether the nutrients originate from organic or mineral sources. Of all plant nutrients, nitrogen is the one usually required in the highest quantities.
Based on the scientific work of Justus von Liebig, the introduction of mineral fertilizers in the middle of the 19th century was a milestone in the history of agriculture. Mineral fertilizers as a new and additional source of plant nutrients enabled farmers to increase their crop yields significantly.
Today we almost take for granted the facts that sunlight delivers the energy needed for plant growth and that plants derive their nutrition - minerals and water - from the soil. Yet it took mankind almost 10,000 years to make this basic, but very important discovery.
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