Import of fertilizer should increase

With 75% of the fertilizer used in the country purchased abroad, Brazil faces the risk of increase each year the import of the product if they are not made new investments in domestic production, said Jose Carlos Polidoro, Deputy leader of the BrasilFert Network.
Created in 2009 by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) for research in the area, the BrasilFert Network monitors the use of fertilizers in the country. To Polidoro, the Brazil needs a national policy on the subject, as it has for other sectors, "because it is a sector that requires very high investments in mining and manufacturing process".
The Deputy Leader recalled that, in 2010, the Government has drawn up a national plan of fertilisers which, however, it was never implemented. The plan included actions to encourage investments in the sector, aiming to expand domestic production. The Brazil currently consumes around 32 million tons of fertilizer a year, of which 75% are imported, according to the average of the last five years. The other 25% are produced in the country, which corresponds to about 10 million tonnes.
He explained that the trend is to increase the percentage of imports if there is no investment, because while the world increases, on average, the consumption of fertilizers, annually, in 2 percent, Brazil increases 4%. "We are, today, the world's fourth largest consumer". A researcher at Embrapa Solos, Polidoro reported that the FertBrasil Network aims to stimulate and promote technological innovation in both fertilizers in the country, as in Latin America. He clarified that the incentive to increase production for the Government, through the ministries of agriculture and mines and energy, "to do a national fertilizer plan".
For the FertBrasil Network, he stressed that the most important thing is to avoid waste in the use of fertilizers in agriculture. The researcher says that of the total fertilizer applied in agriculture today, around 40% are lost in various ways on the ground for lack of a proper technology.