Global consumption of inorganic fertilizers fell 7.5 percent to 156 million tons in 2008, the sharpest one-year decline in nearly half a century of data collection. The decline was a direct response to price spikes in 2007 and 2008 that caused demand to fall.

 

Demand for fertilizer had been expanding rapidly over the last decade, driven by growing demand for crops used to produce biofuels and to raise livestock, which drove fertilizer prices in April 2008 to at least double the levels of a year earlier. Farmers were unable or unwilling to pay that much, and consumption is believed to have dropped 1–5 percent in 2009.