Medium-term outlook for world agriculture and fertilizer demand

摘要

In recent decades, world agricultural production has kept pace with the fast-growing demand for food, feed, fiber and bioenergy. Feeding the extra 2.5 billion people expected by 2050, providing enough calories to the 800 million people who still suffer from hunger, and producing bioenergy as an alternative to the declining world oil stocks constitute a triple challenge for the agricultural sector. Since little additional arable land is available for farming, this will require further intensification of the currently cultivated land through the adoption and more efficient use of modern technologies and inputs. In this context, manufactured fertilizers have a key role to play. World fertilizer demand is forecast to grow by an average of 2.1 per cent per annum, to reach more than 160 million tonnes nutrients in 2008/09.