Improper fertilizer use costs US$2 billion a year
Improper fertilizer use costs US$2 billion a year
Vietnam may lose around US$2 billion each year due to inefficient and improper use of fertilizer products, according to a study by the Vietnam Agricultural Sciences Institute.
The study showed that the efficiency of fertilizer use is as low as 50% in Vietnam and one of the reasons is that many farmers fertilize their crops two to three times higher than needed in the hope of gaining high yields.
The institute’s director Nguyen Van Bo warned improper use of fertilizer would bring about unexpected diseases and this forced farmers to count heavily on insecticides and pesticides to protect their crops. He said many insecticide and pesticide products polluted the environment.
According to statistics of the Crop Production Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, some 10.3 million tons of fertilizer are needed every year for 26 million hectares of agricultural land nationwide. Around eight million tons of it is produced domestically.
Tran Xuan Dinh, deputy director of the department, told a seminar in Hanoi last week that there were up to 5,000 fertilizer types available on the market, so it was difficult for authorities to monitor and trace their origins.
“Last year, more than 50% of the fertilizer products on the market were found not to meet quality standards,” Dinh said.
At the seminar, many delegates sounded the alarm bell for the wide availability of fake and substandard fertilizers on the market.
According to the institute, many fertilizer products are imported into Vietnam and farmers have to pay high for fertilizers. This is one of the reasons why the competitiveness of the agricultural sector remains low.
Currently, Vietnam has over 500 fertilizer producers and over 30,000 fertilizer traders. Last year, the country imported nearly 2.3 million tons of fertilizer, with 90% of it from China.
vietnamnet
