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

01 Jun 2018

2017 Annual Interpretive Summary


A nutrient budget is an important tool used to the evaluate the 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 has extended a Brazilian nutrient balance analysis that includes many crops for the period between 2013 to 2016. Manufactured mineral fertilizer (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, 2013 to 2016) for 18 crops (i.e., 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, considering the 18 crops, was 3.60, 4.37 and 4.97 million t of nitrogen (N), P2O5 and K2O, respectively. The respective removal to use ratios were 60, 0.51, and 0.78. Six states presented ratio values higher than 1.0 due mostly to low technology adoption and low yields. The relatively low ratio presented for P2O5 reflects its particular dynamics in tropical soils. These soils generally have a high fixation of phosphorus (P), and also, recent expansion of crop production into new areas with previously low P fertility demands suggest that initial P application rates be very high. For N, its 0.60 removal-to-use ratio is lower than the previous nutrient budget performed in 2013 (0.65) presented by Cunha et al. (2014). This may be partially explained by the drought that occurred in 2015 that affected several regions, causing a significant decrease in crop production and N removal, but also no increase in yields has been observed recently. Potassium, which is the nutrient with the highest consumption in Brazil, presents the most balanced budget among the three nutrients, mainly in response to a comprehensive understanding of the importance of K for crop production by farmers.

The collection of data regarding the period of 2013 to 2016 is being published on the next issue of Informações Agronômicas, March 2017.