DOI: 10.5061/dryad.59zw3r2mq
title: N-P-K fertilizer application rates by crop and country for circa 2020

description: All fertilizer application rates are on elemental basis (P = P2O5 x 0.436;
 K = K2O x 0.830). Imputation to build complete crop x year N-P-K time
 series data: Subnational- to global-scale understanding is built
 using FUBC information collected from individual countries and
 sub-nationally with ~800,000 data points for 1980-2022. Briefly, a
 three-step imputation process with an additional preprocessing was used.
 In the first step long-term average FUBC was determined. In the second
 step the exact year observations was identified, which is then allowed to
 pass on unchanged. In a final third step the numbers from the first and
 second step are readjusted (observations are not adjusted) to flexibly
 match the total agricultural fertilizer consumption in a country as
 reported by the FAO. Sub-national FUBC rates for ten major crops in 25
 agriculturally important countries use a similar three-step iteration
 method. For the remaining countries, only the national FUBC values are
 reported. For mapping the fertilizer application rates of the ten major
 crops an annual gridded crop dataset was used.
description: # N-P-K fertilizer application rates by crop and country for circa 2020
 Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.59zw3r2mq](10.5061/dryad.59zw3r2mq) ##
 Description of the data and file structure Description of the data present
 in each sheet of the Excel workbook (Supplementary_Data_1.xlsx): The data
 is present in several sheets. Sheet 1 is named "Description",
 and it contains metadata explaining the Excel data file structure. Sheet 2
 is named "Regional Summary" and it contains information on N-P-K
 fertilizer application rates for circa 2020 at global and regions scales
 for all crops and specific crops. Column A in this "Regional
 Summary" sheet is the name of the region. Column B is the data
 period, which is always circa 2020 (2018-2022 average). Column C in the
 "Regional Summary" sheet is the FAO denoted crop code, and
 column D is the crop name. For rows 4 to 23, we provide a summary for all
 crops, which is exactly what it means - fertilizer applications on
 average, for all crops. The application rates are given in columns E-G (N,
 P, and K-fertilizer application rates, respectively), followed by
 consumption (in metric tons) columns H-J and harvested hectares in column
 K (in thousands of hectares) in the "Regional Summary" sheet.
 This is followed by 18 sheets of these specific regions and N-P-K
 fertilizer application rates for each country of the region for circa
 2020, and each crop. These sheets are called: East Africa, East Asia,
 North America, South America, South Asia, Western & Middle Africa,
 Western Europe, Caribbean, Central America, Eastern Europe, North Africa,
 Northern Europe, Oceania, Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, Southern
 Europe, and Western Asia. The column headers in these 18 sheets are Year,
 Country Code (FAO style), Country Name, FAO Crop Code, Crop name, followed
 by 3 columns of N, P, and K fertilizer application rates (columns F, G,
 and H) in the units of kg/ha for circa 2020 and then 3 columns of
 consumption of N, P, and K fertilizers (in units of metric tons - columns
 I, J, and K). The last column (column L) is the harvested hectares of the
 crop in units of thousand hectares. Multiplying the application rates in
 columns F, G, and H with column L will give columns I, J, and K,
 respectively, as well. Description of the circa2020_grids
 (circa2020_grids.zip): There are 10 crops: barley, cassava, maize, oil
 palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane, and wheat. Each of the
 10 crops has three files grouped under N, P, and K application rates in
 the netCDF format. Each file is gridded data of dimension 4320 x 2160 grid
 cells (at 5 min spatial resolution and in units of kg/ha/year). The data
 can be directly imported into a GIS software such as QGIS. ##
 Code/software All data were developed using MATLAB.