Plant fertilisers: It's not what you use, but how you use it that's important

A balanced fertiliser regime for crop seedlings is required for quick, healthy and uniform crop growth. Photos: Tan Ngai Paing/UPM

Chemical fertilisers are synonymous with food production, but public perception towards their ubiquitous use has not always been positive. Someone once asked me what it takes to remove chemical fertilisers from modern agriculture.

To that, I replied that Thanos (from the movie Avengers) would have to snap his fingers not once but twice to reduce the global population from nearly eight billion today to fewer than two billion. There’s truth in my jest. Without chemical fertilisers, we would not have enough food for everyone in the world today.