Karandikars & Associates

Consumption Production Tonnage

In the fertilizer industry, "tonnage terms" refer to the physical weight of the product, while "nutrient terms" specify the actual weight of the active nutrients within that product. The two are necessary for understanding product concentration and for precise application based on crop needs

Tonnage terms are used in the sale, shipping, and reporting of fertilizer and relate to the total mass of the product

Nutrient terms are used to specify the concentration of the primary nutrients—nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)—that are critical for plant growth

Nutrient tonnes: This term, often used in large-scale agricultural reporting, refers to the weight of the actual nutrients (N, P2O5, K2O contained within a volume of fertilizer product

For 2023-24, Urea consumption (NH₂CONH₂ with 46% N) was 35,780.4 thousand metric tons (TMT) or 35.8 million tons, Urea production was 31,408.5 TMT, or 31.4 million tons and Urea imports were 7042.0 TMT or ~7 million tons

For those familiar with Chemistry, N is 14 / C is 12 / O is 16 / H is 1, so NH₂CONH₂ has 28 N / 4 H / 12 C / 16 O) or 28 N in 60 total, and that is how N content of 46% is arrived at, and similar for all fertilisers

As we saw in the section on Fertiliser Consumption / Production in Nutrient terms, total N consumption was 20.46 million tons (nutrient tons). We are sure readers would have clerly differentiated between consumption mentioned in tonnage terms and that in nutrient terms

For the same year, consumption of Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP,(NH4)₂HPO4), a popular fertilizer that provides both nitrogen (18% N, commercial specification and not theoritical ) and phosphorus (46% P2O5, commercial specification and not therotical), was 10,811.9 TMT or 10.8 million tons, production was 4,292.8 TMT, or ~4.3 million tons and imports were 5,567.0 TMT or ~5.6 million tons

Again, for those familiar with Chemistry, N is 14 / H is 1 / P is 31 and O is 16. We will leave it to the readers to calculate the theoritical N and P2O5 content, but highlight that here, the commercial specifications for N and P2O5 are different from the theortical numbers

View the trends graphically