As history reveals: why chemical fertilizers are simply great.

Chemical fertilizers are probably the greatest invention of all time for the farmers.

Traditional farming systems generally included a laborious practice known as ‘fallowing’ - which involved leaving a piece of land ‘fallow’ or inactive for a period of time to help restore soil fertility. Back then, about 1/3 to half of the available arable land were typically in ‘fallow’.

However, the ‘fallowing’ practice quickly became untenable with the rapid increase of population density. The mankind could no longer afford leaving large area of land inactive, as this was very inefficient.

Our enterprising ancestors quickly turned their eyes on intervention - rather than sitting out for the soil fertility to recover - they acted to expedite its recovery. Arguably the first generation of organic fertilizers were invented. Simple, no-frills techniques such as spreading animal manures directly to the land has proven fruitful for the early farmers in expediting the recovery of soil fertility, and hence improving overall crop yields.

As agricultural activities were further intensified, with multiple cropping rounds per year and more nutrients removed from the land consequently, yields began to decline again. According to rumours, in their futile attempt to restore crop yield, some farmers were desperate enough to glean human or animal bones from the great battlegrounds of Europe - only to crush and spread them on their field plots!

In 1842, English chemist Lawes invented the first artificial fertilizer - superphosphate. Subsequently, potash fertilizer were extracted from various geological deposits. Just before the World War I, through the great works of Haber and Bosch, nitrogen fertilizers were synthesized as well.

The advent of chemical fertilizers marked a revolutionary change to agricultural farming. Along with the improvement of pest controls, the development of fertilizers brought about dramatic increase to crop yields. Chemical fertilizers enabled precise crop nutrition to take place for optimal crop yields.