Fertilisers - good or bad

The first 200 words of this essay...

Fertilisers

Although plants make their own food through photosynthesis, plants need soil nutrients, such as Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium, those are needed in large amounts and so are called Macronutrients. There are other nutrients that are needed in small amounts such as Iron and Magnesium, those are called Micronutrients.

In normal circumstances the plants do not suffer from shortage of nutrients, but in the case of crop plants the plants are harvested. Thus removing the nutrients and not allowing them to decompose back into the soil. In this case fertilisers are needed in order to get the nutrition balance back to the soil.

Adding fertilisers not only brings back balance to the soil but also increases the yield, but then again there is a point where adding fertilizer will result in an increase of yield but at a decreasing rate, this is also known as law of diminishing returns.

What this means is that fertilizers are very useful if used at exactly the right amount but could also be very harmful if it was carelessly used. Too much fertilizer will actually cause serious environmental problems if not used properly. Studies show that more than 8200 wells