Mineral Fertilizers - Benefit Or Harm (part 1)

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Why we underestimate the importance of agrochemistry and mineral fertilizers in the rise of agriculture

We are often asked about biological, organic farming and whether it is possible to do without "chemistry", without mineral fertilizers in summer cottage farming? A suspicious attitude towards mineral fertilizers, towards "chemistry" sounds more often than we would like.

This opinion is shared by many gardeners and amateur vegetable growers. It arose mainly due to a lack of knowledge on agricultural chemistry, on the correct use of fertilizers, on the one hand, and an abundance of literature promoting agriculture without fertilizers, on the other. Many are passionate about the desire to have organic food on the table. And it is right. But fertilizers have nothing to do with it. Rumors about fertilizer toxicity are greatly exaggerated. In biological, organic or other agriculture, in the so-called agriculture "without chemicals", agriculture without the use of fertilizers, environmentally hazardous products are obtained much more often.

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Plants also need mineral and organic fertilizers, they cannot grow normally without the presence of readily soluble nutrients in the soil, which we deliver for them with mineral fertilizers. Plants starve without them, and hungry plants are not complete food products, they are not environmentally friendly products. Therefore, environmentally friendly farming cannot be without the use of mineral fertilizers. At present, science has developed an adaptive landscape farming system, it is now being introduced in a number of regions of our country and is the basis for intensive modern farming, we will definitely tell about it in the following articles.

The widely advertised so-called biological, organic, ecologically safe farming systems that have arisen abroad do not meet either the goals or objectives of modern Russian agriculture, they are developed mainly to solve particular problems in the context of food overproduction in the West. Biological agriculture, which denies the use of mineral fertilizers and other means of chemicalization, in general, the intensification of agriculture, is not progressive; it brings more harm than good for dacha farming.

Let's try to understand this in more detail. Firstly, all standard mineral fertilizers produced in our country have been tested for environmental friendliness and environmental safety for nature, animals and humans, therefore they are quite suitable for environmentally friendly agriculture. The ideas of environmentally friendly agriculture are mistakenly perceived as a ban on the use of mineral fertilizers, which for some reason are included in the category of "chemistry" supposedly polluting agricultural products. But this is a mistake. Biological, organic farming is possible only in special cases, for example, in strictly natural farming, and even then not everywhere. Subsistence farming is a passed stage, these are the conditions of the XV-XVIII centuries. It is currently impossible to buy organic fertilizers "without chemicals". Therefore, new farming systems are not suitable for gardeners and hobbyist vegetable growers.

Manure, for example, as the main organic fertilizer has many disadvantages. This is, firstly, the waste of modern animal husbandry, and there is always something missing in the waste, the animals have already taken a lot of nutrients from the plant feed, and the substances they no longer need have gone to waste. Therefore, manure is an inferior fertilizer from the point of view of plant nutrition. In addition, many different chemical additives, veterinary drugs for the diagnosis and treatment of animals, disinfectants for premises, etc. are used in animal husbandry, which in one way or another end up in manure. They are not needed both for plants and for you and me. And other organic fertilizers are even more "chemically contaminated". Therefore, there are practically no conditions for environmentally friendly organic farming now.

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Secondly, in the process of feeding, plants have critical periods of absorption of certain elements, when they require the obligatory presence of nutrients in the soil in an easily accessible form. Neither soil nor organic fertilizers can provide them with the necessary elements in the required amount. And plants in these conditions will give defective products for humans. For example, in order to save plants from hunger, it is imperative to add superphosphate when sowing plants as a pre-sowing fertilizer. In spring, gardens with abundant flowering require foliar feeding with a urea solution, otherwise, due to a lack of nitrogen, there is a strong fall of flowers, ovaries and fruits. A number of other examples can be cited when it is impossible to replace mineral fertilizers with something else.

Thirdly, and this is the most important thing, agrochemistry, like all agrarian science, is going through a most difficult period in its development, due to many objective and subjective reasons. On the one hand, the socio-economic situation has sharply aggravated - public consciousness turns back, sometimes to the Middle Ages (sowing plants and fertilizing in the phases of the moon, etc.), shadow strata and strata of society are formed, which profess the only principle: “For profit, all means are good. On the other hand, science itself found itself in a difficult situation, it lost its prestige and the role of an objective interpreter of various phenomena of nature and society.

The main criticism of science has been directed at agrochemistry, on which modern agriculture and food security is based. An active anti-agrochemical propaganda press continues and at the same time the widespread mass purchase and sale of mineral fertilizers abroad. Thus, the fertilizers produced in our country are beneficial in foreign fields, but they tell us and write for us that fertilizers poison our land and agricultural products. However, at all times and in all countries, the export of fertilizers was carried out only if there was no damage to their own agriculture.

Such "processing" of public consciousness leads to doubts about the advisability of using mineral fertilizers not only among vegetable growers and amateur gardeners, professionally unprepared farmers, but even among some specialists who set off in search of alternative ways to increase the productivity of agriculture. And this, unfortunately, is observed almost everywhere. Some call for a transition to alternative farming, others - to biological and ecologically safe farming, and still others simply buy mineral fertilizers to be sent abroad, although there fertilizers are already used in much larger quantities than in our country. Foreign firms that buy fertilizers from us receive tenfold profits, then selling to us the food products obtained from the use of our fertilizers.

At the same time, the fertility of our soils is depleted without the use of mineral fertilizers, and a sharply negative balance of nutrients develops in all soils. It is impossible to count on obtaining high yields and environmentally friendly products on non-fertilized soils, on soils after the predatory use of natural fertility. The science of agrochemistry has long proved that the reserves of local organic fertilizers are insufficient to compensate for the removal of nutrients from the soil with the harvest. Soil fertility without the use of mineral fertilizers will decrease, and with a drop in fertility, the productivity of agriculture, the quality of agricultural products, and the ecological purity of food will undoubtedly fall.

Agrochemistry and mineral fertilizers have been subjected to unreasonable attacks more than once, many have tried to belittle their role in agriculture. The first time was in the pre-war period, when scientific truths were trampled on, but they were successfully restored by Academician D. N. Pryanishnikov with his students. The second - after the war, during the reign of agrarian science, T. D. Lysenko, when agrochemical science lost many famous scientists. Now we are witnessing the third negative period, when some responsible workers, denying the importance of agrochemistry and mineral fertilizers in the rise of agriculture, willingly or unwillingly become accomplices in the deterioration of the people's welfare.

We must achieve the effective use of mineral fertilizers as a link in scientific agriculture, taking into account proper soil cultivation, the use of plant protection products, etc. After all, a reasonable possession of knowledge about fertilizing fields is not only the right and privilege of people, but also a great responsibility to descendants. For some reason, gardeners and vegetable growers engaged in farming in garden and summer cottages naively believe tales about the dangers of mineral fertilizers, about the miraculous effect of organic farming. Everything seems to be based on negative examples of poor fertilizer use and the use of fertilizers for terrorist purposes.

Read the second part of the article →

Gennady Vasyaev, Associate Professor, Chief Specialist of the North-West Regional Scientific Center of the Russian Agricultural Academy, Olga Vasyaeva, amateur gardener