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Agrochemicals

agro-chemicals (GB)

Term (also agrochemistry, agri-cultural chemistry) for a branch of chemistry. However, this is also a large-scale industrial production sector dominated by huge multinational corporations (BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, CropScience, DuPont, Syngenta and Makhteshim Agan). The world's food supply in the face of a growing world population, decreasing arable land and increased demand for biofuels is only possible by means of agrochemical products such as fertilisers and pesticides. Agrochemicals deal with livestock health, pest control, crop protection and fertilisation, pest reduction and the chemical processes in agricultural and forestry soils (soil chemistry) to improve fertility. Various groups of chemicals are used as active substances. The main products are synthetically produced mineral fertilisers (artificial fertilisers) and synthetic pesticides such as fungicides (vs. fungi), herbicides (vs. weeds), insecticides (vs. insects) and molluscicides (vs. molluscs).

Agrochemie - Porträt Liebig - Traktor

Negative impacts

Until the 1950s, it was common worldwide to use massive amounts of chemicals in the fight against pests because little was known about the negative impacts. Climate change also contributes to negative development. Today's conventional agrochemicals, with their extensive use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides to combat pests such as insects, weeds and microorganisms, have come under increasing criticism since the 1980s and are considered incompatible with sustainability and organic agriculture. However, a radical departure from these practices is hardly realistic in the short term, also due to crop failures. The targeted and well-dosed use of modern agrochemicals can help to combat crop failures and thus world hunger.

History

Since the beginning of crop cultivation, man has sought methods to improve plant growth and protect seeds and crops from damage in order to increase crop yield and quality and ensure food security. In ancient times, the Babylonians used organic fertilisers such as manure or slurry, as well as plant products such as compost, and the Egyptians used the Nile mud left behind by floods as a mineral fertiliser. Homer mentioned the use of cow dung as fertiliser in the Odyssey around 800 BC.

In ancient times, farmers used sulphur mixed with oil and arsenic as insecticides and treated seeds with salt water and lime. Pliny the Elder (23-79) reported on the use of calcareous marl as a mineral fertiliser by the Ubians and on green man uring, in which the Romans ploughed under legumes such as field beans to improve the soil. At the end of the first millennium, wood ash fertilisers were used in Central Europe as a source of potassium. In addition to adequate plant nutrition, crop destruction by insects and fungal attack was a major problem.

Justification of agrochemicals

The first systematic investigations into agrochemistry were carried out by the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) from 1840. This was inspired by a famine in 1816, the so-called year without a summer. Liebig discovered that plants absorbed pühospahte considerably faster, thus enabling an increase in agricultural yields. He thus became the founder of mineral fertilisation. As a result, so-called superphosphates were produced in England from 1846 and in Germany from 1855. From the middle of the 18th century, weeds were partly controlled by salts such as iron sulphate, copper sul phate and sulphuric acid, and later also sodium chlorate. Furthermore, large quantities of saltpetre were imported from Chile and guano from Peru. Shortly afterwards it was recognised that ammonium sulphate was suitable as a nitrogen fertiliser. In the 1840s, potato powdery mildew, among other diseases, destroyed the entire potato crop in Ireland several times, leading to a famine with many deaths. Events like these led to intensive research in the field of agrochemicals.

Further information

See also on this complex of topics under the keywords organic viticulture, fertilisation, sustainability, nutrients, plant protection and pesticides, as well as a list of relevant keywords under vineyard care.

Source: WIKIPEDIA Agrochemistry
Justus v. Liebig: by author unknown - images, public domain, link
Tractor: by joost j. bakker - Flickr: New Holland TL 90, CC BY 2.0, Link

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