Global data on fertilizer use by crop and by country

Understanding how much inorganic fertilizer (referred to as fertilizer) is applied to different crops at national, regional and global levels is an essential component of fertilizer consumption analysis and demand projection. Good information on fertilizer use by crop (FUBC) is rarely available because it is difficult to collect and time-consuming to process and validate. To fill this gap, a first global FUBC report was published in 1992 for the 1990/1991 period, based on an expert survey conducted jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) and the International Fertilizer Association (IFA). Since then, similar expert surveys have been carried out and published every two to four years in the main fertilizer-consuming countries. Since 2008 IFA has led these efforts and, to our knowledge, remains the only globally available data set on FUBC. This dataset includes data (in CSV format) from a survey carried out by..., Latest fertilizer use by crop survey data
During 2020-2022 IFA collected and standardized FUBC data for the 2017-18 period, primarily through a survey of various country correspondents. As of May 2022 this is the most recent survey for FUBC data. Country correspondents were selected based on their knowledge for estimating fertilizer use, average fertilizer application rates and areas of crops for N, P2O5 and K2O for their respective country, and access to any locally available farm data.
Country correspondents were asked to complete the questionnaire with the greatest detail possible, or to provide data for the crop breakdown available in their country. The task of aligning the data with FAO crop area statistics was particularly challenging, and sometimes impossible. Even when correspondents were able to mostly follow the provided crop breakdown, crops that are minor in a country’s agriculture were often included in a group of crops or other crops. For example, for most EU countries, th..., The R project related to analysis of these data are available at: https://github.com/ludemannc/FUBC_1_to_9_2022.git 
On 18 August 2022 data were updated following reviewer feedback from a submission to the Scientific Data journal (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01592-z).
On 22 August 2022 changes were made to crop names in the 'Argentina' worksheet of the 'Country_tables.xlsx' file to rectify a mistake. The error was limited to the excel file and did not affect the csv files, nor the results shown in the associated article published in the Scientific Data journal.
On the 4th February 2025 minor changes were made to the FUBC data files based on feedback from Fernando Coello  (see:
Coello, F., Decorte, T., Janssens, I., Mortier, S., Sardans, J., Peñuelas, J., & Verdonck, T. (2025). Global Crop-Specific Fertilization Dataset from 1961–2019. Scientific Data, 12(1), 40. doi:10.1038/s41597-024-04215-x)
Versioned changes: March 2025 minor changes were also made to the Country..., # Global data on fertilizer use by crop and by country

This README_LUDEMANN_FUBC_DATA_2022.txt file was generated on 2025-02-04 by Cameron Ludemann

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Titles of Datasets:
-README_LUDEMANN_FUBC_DATA_2022.txt (describes all datasets in this [https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061%2Fdryad.2rbnzs7qh](https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061%2Fdryad.2rbnzs7qh) DRYAD submission)
-FUBC_1_9.csv (includes fertilizer use by crop data from the 8 previously published reports (FUBC 1 to 8), as well as the fertilizer use data from the latest (9th) survey (FUBC 9) carried out by the International Fertilizer Association. It is important to note that the FUBC 9 data have been aggregated by crop categories that align to those used in the previous survey (FUBC 8)).
-Meta_data_FUBC_1_to_9.csv (includes meta-data associated with the FUBC_1_to_9.csv file.)
-FUBC_9_raw_data.csv (includes fertilizer use by crop data from the latest fertilizer use by crop surve...,