Brazilian Nutrient Balance
Nutrient balance is a tool to evaluate the use of fertilizers. In order to have a sustainable crop production system it is necessary that the amount of nutrients removed from the field is replaced through fertilizer applications and that nutrient use is highly efficient. IPNI Brazil Program runs every year a national nutrient balance for the main crops that cover over 90% of the fertilizer consumption according to statistics, and every four year is produced information regarding every single state and crop. In 2014, IPNI Brazil will publish the nutrient balance for the last 4 years and will continue the journey collecting data for the coming years.
IPNI-2014-BRA-63
25 Mar 2015
2014 Annual Interpretive Summary
A nutrient budget is one important tool that can be used to evaluate agronomic use of fertilizers through the balance between inputs and outputs in crop production. In Brazil, IPNI has prepared several nutrient budgets over the years, and most recently Cunha et al. (2014) have extended a Brazilian nutrient balance analysis that includes many crops for the period between 2009 to 2012.
Manufactured mineral fertilizers (inputs) data were obtained directly from annual statistics of ANDA (Associação Nacional para Difusão de Adubos). Crop nutrient removals (outputs) were calculated using statistic data (IBGE, 2010 to 2013) for 18 crops (banana, beans, cassava, castor bean, cocoa, coffee, cotton, maize, orange, peanut, potato, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane, tobacco, tomato, and wheat) and their respective nutrient concentration in the harvested product (as described in Cunha et al., 2014). The 18 crops represent 93% of all nutrient input in this country.
The annual nutrient use in Brazil for the evaluated period was 2.84, 3.47 and 3.79 million t of N, P2O5 and K2O, respectively. In general, the study on nutrient budget in Brazil show that crop removal represented, 65%, 53% and 82% of N, P2O5 and K2O inputs between 2009 and 2012. The only region where N and K2O crop removal exceeded inputs was the North (+35% and +7%, respectively), which has low technology adoption, and hence low yield. The relative low budget presented for P2O5 (0.53) reflects its particular dynamics in tropical soils. These soils generally have high fixation of P, and also, recent expansion of crop production in new areas with previously low P fertility demands that P rates be very high. For N, its 0.65 removal-to-use ratio is lower than the previous nutrient budget performed in 2008 (0.72) presented by Cunha et al. (2010), and may be partially explained by the severe drought that occurred in 2012 in two states of the South and Northeast regions, causing a significant decrease in crop production, and N removal. Potassium, which is the nutrient with the highest consumption in Brazil, presents the most balanced budget among the three nutrients (0.82), mainly in response to a comprehensive understanding of the importance of K for crop production by farmers.