Serious soil pollution debt: fertilizer use exceeds the upper limit by more than 2 times

The Fourth China Food Safety Summit Forum, themed on “‘the 13th Five-Year Plan’ food safety science and technology challenges”, was held in Guangzhou a few days ago. Reporters learned at the meeting that China's average fertilizer use far exceeds the globally recognized warning upper limit.

Experts at the meeting believe that compared with the past, the quality of China's agricultural products has continued to improve, the pass rate of vegetable sampling inspections has shown an upward trend, and people are paying increasing attention to the environment and food safety, but the problem of soil pollution cannot be ignored. In a conference report titled "The Impact of Soil Environmental Pollution on the Safety of Edible Agricultural Products", experts disclosed that since 1984, China's use of chemical fertilizers (nitrogen fertilizer and phosphate fertilizer) has continued to increase, with an increase of about 225%, while yield per unit area increased by 56%. China's average fertilizer use is 400 kg/hectare, and in some areas it is even as high as 600 kg/hectare. China's average fertilizer use is more than 1.8 times the globally recognized warning upper limit of 225 kg/hectare, and more than 4 times the average use in Europe and the United States.

According to reports, the forum was led by the Guangdong Institute of Microbiology and jointly organized with the National Processing Food Quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Guangzhou), the School of Light Industry and Food Sciences of South China University of Technology, and the Food Safety and Technology Research Centre of Hong Kong Polytechnic University.