i also dont understand why purposely ban fertilizers from the beginning, it started a chain reaction up to starve countless countries.
old fertilizers still works like the guano but farmers today are not very familair with it.
What I've found with my little research is that the problem is about yield.
With these fertilizers (rich with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) they can keep reusing the same soil and harvest a lot and multiple times a year. With no fertilizer or with traditional ones the yield significantly decreases and you can't harvest as many times. The soil simply doesn't have what the crop needs to grow.
Not to mention that you can't produce nearly as much traditional fertilizers like guano!
So for example if a wheat farmer was producing 1 ton of wheat before, without these fertilizers they can produce only 20-30% of that.
correctly. When we do agriculture, the land is not too large. then it is still possible to use organic fertilizers produced by themselves, such as fermented animal urine for spray fertilizer and fermented manure for sow fertilizer. But organic fertilizers have limitations. because we cannot possibly mass produce processed organic fertilizers ourselves. so when we farm in a large area. then the need for fertilizer must be very much. while organic fertilizers are difficult to make in a short time and difficult to make in large quantities. unless there is a special industry that makes it. as in Indonesia, there are now many companies producing liquid fertilizers. with low prices but the quality is not less competitive with chemical fertilizers.
but if you have to keep buying fertilizer. then the profit will still be small. especially coupled with the price of crops that decline during inflation. fertilizer increased but agricultural yields fell. This is what is happening in some developing countries. this can trigger farmers' protests against government policies. whereas the agricultural sector is the sector that the government should pay the most attention to. because the lungs of a country are in the agricultural and livestock sectors. related to food. but I see in developing countries the government does not pay attention to the farmers. they pay more attention to the construction of high-rise buildings. construction of the office sector and toll roads. while the agricultural sector is always marginalized. even though the food crisis can bring down a country.