Fertilizer labels must be understandable to farmers

I am an individual agricultural input dealer in Xiajin County, Shandong Province. I was born and raised in the countryside, and I deeply understand the hardships of farmers. Seeing farmers use inferior fertilizer pains me deeply. At present, overcapacity in the fertilizer industry is intensifying day by day, and many enterprises and unscrupulous traders, for their own interests, are playing edge-ball tricks. Fertilizer labels all use the chemical symbols for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, and many farmers simply do not recognize them. Some manufacturers even add the letters for zinc and calcium into the total content, misleading farmers into buying. Because single-element fertilizers are exempt from registration, many small enterprises press and pellet ammonium chloride and ammonium sulfate and sell them as urea. The cost is 500 yuan, while the selling price is more than 2,000 yuan. This not only harms the hard-earned income of farmers, but also affects food production security.

For this reason, the author hopes that the relevant departments can standardize fertilizer content labeling as soon as possible, and please be sure to use Chinese characters in the labeling so that farmers can understand it.