Cheers Helene! I’ve been researching rice fertilizer management in Myanmar and India (both the farm and farmer sides) for the last five years (pretty well full-time). So I’m excited to see your post and I reckon you’ve identified a lot of key points (impressed you put this together in just 12 hours)
Highest priority points I’d add:
Fertilizer subsidies cost governments a lot—taking public resources away from other pressing causes. For example, the Indian government budgeted ~21 billion USD for fertilizer subsidies for 2023-24 (p.27 of linked doc). (Also worth noting fertilizer subsidy issues are commonly politicized in South Asian countries)
Fertilizer investments increase risk for farmers: purchasing, transporting and applying fertilizer has uncertain returns (see figure below). This is particularly concerning for poor farmers, who commonly hold debts with interest >3% per month.
Many farmers understandably don’t prioritize yield increases (and thus fertilizer increases): many farmers in low- and middle-income countries have insufficient scale and/or market access to benefit much from increased yields. Farmers often value their farms as a backup money source, backup food source and/or cultural/lifestyle thing (rather than a profit-maximizing business). I’d highly recommend this global analysis from Oxford researchers showing we can’t expect much food supply (for urban populations) or income growth from small farms—while noting small farms play other important roles.
Excess fertilizers can reduce crop yields: for example, too much fertilizer can cause crops to grow too much and fall over (called ‘lodging’). Also, excess fertilizers (over long periods) can make soils unhelpfully acidic.
I wouldn’t frame the cause around “interventions to raise crop yields and increase fertilizer use” in view of the above points and the negative environmental impacts you identified. An alternative framing might be ‘increasing returns from fertilizer’ (such as seasonal weather forecasting, improving post-harvest storage, improving market access etc). This sort of framing can (sometimes) harmonize multiple priorities (including food security, poverty alleviation, subsidy savings, emissions reductions)
For my PhD, I’m analyzing the scale and tractability of increasing Nitrogen use efficiency of rice farms across different regions in South Asia (analyzing the data in the below figure), as well as testing approaches for scalable farmer communication (to help realize these opportunities). I’d be very happy to informally support you or any other impact-oriented people working on agricultural cause areas where helpful (e.g. share useful papers/datasets, introductions to other researchers and practitioners—including people from the One Acre Fund NGO you mentioned). Thanks again for the great post
Interesting to hear that you’ve been working on fertilizer management for such a long time. The points you’re adding seem very useful for a better understanding of the topic – they certainly provided more nuance to my own thinking about fertilizers. I agree that “increasing returns from fertilizer” might indeed be a better framing and that working on the issue from multiple angles could be more productive.
Regarding your point about fertilizers subsidy spending taking away money from other causes, I think this is not per se an argument against fertilizer subsidies – it would be if the causes from which spending is subtracted would be more cost-effective (but I have no idea if this is the case). I do wonder though why fertilizer subsidies are politicized in South Asian countries. Because of fertilizers’ role in environmental pollution?
Lastly, just to make things clear, while I spent 12 hours on the research itself, I spent an equal amount of time writing up my findings.
Fertilizer subsidy cost-effectiveness: I agree—fertilizer subsidies could be cost-effective in principle. I guess I see reducing subsidy costs as more of a potential co-benefit of increasing returns from fertilizer. Specifically, growing more food with less fertilizer could alleviate the need for food and fertilizer subsidies (improving the cost-effectiveness and political feasibility of redirecting resources to other government services)
Why subsidies politicized: I guess a large part is the proportion of voters employed in agriculture (in South Asian democracies compared to western democracies). Also, South Asian governments commonly resist foreigners influencing government policies (partially because of colonization). This paper provides a neat introduction to fertilizer subsidies and their politicization in South Asia
Cheers Helene! I’ve been researching rice fertilizer management in Myanmar and India (both the farm and farmer sides) for the last five years (pretty well full-time). So I’m excited to see your post and I reckon you’ve identified a lot of key points (impressed you put this together in just 12 hours)
Highest priority points I’d add:
Fertilizer subsidies cost governments a lot—taking public resources away from other pressing causes. For example, the Indian government budgeted ~21 billion USD for fertilizer subsidies for 2023-24 (p.27 of linked doc). (Also worth noting fertilizer subsidy issues are commonly politicized in South Asian countries)
Fertilizer investments increase risk for farmers: purchasing, transporting and applying fertilizer has uncertain returns (see figure below). This is particularly concerning for poor farmers, who commonly hold debts with interest >3% per month.
Many farmers understandably don’t prioritize yield increases (and thus fertilizer increases): many farmers in low- and middle-income countries have insufficient scale and/or market access to benefit much from increased yields. Farmers often value their farms as a backup money source, backup food source and/or cultural/lifestyle thing (rather than a profit-maximizing business). I’d highly recommend this global analysis from Oxford researchers showing we can’t expect much food supply (for urban populations) or income growth from small farms—while noting small farms play other important roles.
Excess fertilizers can reduce crop yields: for example, too much fertilizer can cause crops to grow too much and fall over (called ‘lodging’). Also, excess fertilizers (over long periods) can make soils unhelpfully acidic.
I wouldn’t frame the cause around “interventions to raise crop yields and increase fertilizer use” in view of the above points and the negative environmental impacts you identified. An alternative framing might be ‘increasing returns from fertilizer’ (such as seasonal weather forecasting, improving post-harvest storage, improving market access etc). This sort of framing can (sometimes) harmonize multiple priorities (including food security, poverty alleviation, subsidy savings, emissions reductions)
For my PhD, I’m analyzing the scale and tractability of increasing Nitrogen use efficiency of rice farms across different regions in South Asia (analyzing the data in the below figure), as well as testing approaches for scalable farmer communication (to help realize these opportunities). I’d be very happy to informally support you or any other impact-oriented people working on agricultural cause areas where helpful (e.g. share useful papers/datasets, introductions to other researchers and practitioners—including people from the One Acre Fund NGO you mentioned). Thanks again for the great post
Thanks for your detailed comment, Sam!
Interesting to hear that you’ve been working on fertilizer management for such a long time. The points you’re adding seem very useful for a better understanding of the topic – they certainly provided more nuance to my own thinking about fertilizers. I agree that “increasing returns from fertilizer” might indeed be a better framing and that working on the issue from multiple angles could be more productive.
Regarding your point about fertilizers subsidy spending taking away money from other causes, I think this is not per se an argument against fertilizer subsidies – it would be if the causes from which spending is subtracted would be more cost-effective (but I have no idea if this is the case). I do wonder though why fertilizer subsidies are politicized in South Asian countries. Because of fertilizers’ role in environmental pollution?
Lastly, just to make things clear, while I spent 12 hours on the research itself, I spent an equal amount of time writing up my findings.
Cheers Helene!
Fertilizer subsidy cost-effectiveness: I agree—fertilizer subsidies could be cost-effective in principle. I guess I see reducing subsidy costs as more of a potential co-benefit of increasing returns from fertilizer. Specifically, growing more food with less fertilizer could alleviate the need for food and fertilizer subsidies (improving the cost-effectiveness and political feasibility of redirecting resources to other government services)
Why subsidies politicized: I guess a large part is the proportion of voters employed in agriculture (in South Asian democracies compared to western democracies). Also, South Asian governments commonly resist foreigners influencing government policies (partially because of colonization). This paper provides a neat introduction to fertilizer subsidies and their politicization in South Asia